Category: visual

“The 39 paintings, including some of the most celebrated works of the French artists Renoir, Monet and Manet, were left to the gallery by the art collector Sir Hugh Lane, who was killed on the Lusitania when it was hit by a German torpedo 100 years ago this month. In a codicil to his will, Lane made it clear that he wanted the paintings to go to Dublin, but because the amendment was unwitnessed the collection stayed in London.”

“The more closely one examines art-world statistics, the more glaringly obvious it becomes that, despite decades of postcolonial, feminist, anti-racist, and queer activism and theorizing, the majority continues to be defined as white, Euro-American, heterosexual, privileged, and, above all, male. Sexism is still so insidiously woven into the institutional fabric, language, and logic of the mainstream art world that it often goes undetected.”

“We are now once again hard put to find at the big institutions feminist shows or exhibitions of works addressing gender, sexual, and other interrelated social inequities.”

“Where notions of gender and success are concerned, the list, by virtue of its very format, embodies the crux of the problem: a litany of names and capsule bios, peppered with personal anecdotes and external endorsements, in lieu of analysis of enduring inequities and systemic biases.”

“Antiquities director Maamoun Abdulkarim said they had destroyed some modern plaster statues and also raised their flag on the ancient castle overlooking the Roman ruins. Most of the museum’s antiquities had been transferred to Damascus, he said.”

“When you see death mediated in this way, pinned down with such dramatic flair, the star is likely to be death itself and not the human who dies. The fact that a photograph exists of a man being shot in the head in Vietnam is easier to remember than Lem’s biography or even his name.”

“It requires much trust to think that the proposed Thames garden bridge will be an asset for Britain.”

“The artists there are very excited and they’re going all out. They’re looking at cultivating a better connection to the art world.”

“Decay and loss is the point. If ISIS knocks down the columns, or dynamites the carved lion’s head I found lying around that day, the disaster will be survivable. … I’ll take some consolation knowing the site has been explored and recorded by waves of archaeologists for more than a century. We know Palmyra’s secrets, and cannot lose them.”

“They were charged with unlawful posting of advertisements for projecting images critical of Koch and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even someone who’s not a lawyer can tell that there are two problems with that charge. The statute defines ‘posting’ as sticking to something. Images and projections don’t stick, and no advertisements were involved.”