Category: visual

“When Ho Chi Minh City’s property market perked up after a slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis, dozens of prewar buildings – spanning the colonial to modernist eras – were razed to make room for new ones. As the city’s modest skyline grows, residents are watching with a mixture of awe and trepidation.”

“The gift of more than 50 artworks, as well as endowment funds, announced by the museum Thursday includes contemporary works by Cy Twombly, Philip Guston, Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse, and Paul Thek” as well as a major Edward Hopper painting and works by both Eakinses.

“The court on Wednesday ordered Maya Widmaier-Picasso, who is 80 and a Paris resident, to pay 25,000 euros, about $28,000, in court costs to the Qatari [royal] family’s representative.” The Al-Thanis are in an ownership dispute with dealer Larry Gagosian over the sculpture, which was evidently sold twice.

“The encroachment of liberal guilt into curatorial decisions is undermining the traditional purpose of the museum; a secular institution in the service of historical inquiry. It risks transforming our great institutions into places where understanding the past is conditioned by present-day political and therapeutic criteria. And yet it should be the role of a museum to open up the past to everyone.”

“In the hands of … Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG, it won’t be any old brick wall. It’s a wall that will be stretched open and hollowed out, its oversized fibreglass bricks stacked up to form a paraboloid enclosure that will taper high above the park, transforming from a bulging cave to a slender screen as it undulates across the lawn.”

Even now, “the city has not fully recovered. … Some Cincinnatians see Mapplethorpe as a ‘liberating force’ that advanced the arts and tolerance in the city, while others view him as a kind of ‘blight’ that tainted Cincinnati’s reputation.”

“The arguments around ruin porn have intensified as artists, particularly photographers, have flooded into Detroit while city champions struggle to counter negative publicity without overselling the nascent renaissance.”

“Twelve miles north of Madrid in Mejorada del Campo, a 90-year-old man is working to finish his life’s work: a grand cathedral. It is a cathedral with no trained architect, no government approval and no benediction from the Catholic Church. It is either the work of a madman or that of a prophet.”

After three major galleries pulled out just before deadline, the board’s decision to cancel was unanimous.