Category: visual

How Did San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museums Lose Their Director After Just Two Years? And What Do They Do Now?

“The departure of Colin Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since June 2013, to become director of the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan. throws FAMSF back into a quandary, if not a crisis, of leadership. … Most museum directors who change jobs in less than two years’ time leave under a cloud of dissension or discontent, but Bailey told The Chronicle by phone that he had not been looking for a job elsewhere.”

How The New Whitney Could Be The Next Great Contemporary Art Museum

The museum used to be a storehouse for the art of the past, the display of supposed masterpieces, the insightful exploration of the present in the context of the long or compressed histories that preceded it. Now — especially as embodied by the Tate Modern, Guggenheim Bilbao, and our beloved MoMA — the museum is a revved-up showcase of the new, the now, the next, an always-activated market of events and experiences, many of which lack any reason to exist other than to occupy the museum industry — an industry that critic Matthew Collings has called “bloated and foolish, corporatist, ghastly and death-ridden.”

Online Art Buying Increased Dramatically In 2014

“The majority of online transactions — 84 percent — were below $15,000, the report stated. It also found that social media were influential in the online market, with 24 percent of respondents saying that posts by museums, galleries and artist studios had a direct influence on their art-buying decisions.”

Claim: There Are No Arguments That Aren’t Lame For Keeping Stolen Artifacts

“In many ways, the whole question of what role the British Museum had in preserving the Elgin Marbles is beside the point — as it is with the Indigenous Australian artifacts, many of which it did undoubtedly preserve for posterity. That museums have saved cultural artifacts is no reason for them to retain ownership of those objects obtained through questionable means from countries now more than capable of housing them — especially at a time in history when the malicious legacies of colonialism have become painfully obvious.”

What The New Yorker’s Comics Editor Looks For In Great Work

“Often, we separate intellectual discourse from emotional reaction. But I take such genuine pleasure in things that are intellectually well architected. It’s definitely an integrated experience for me. Much more than any kind of cheap, emotional pulls that you get in popular culture, when I read a sentence and it’s beautifully written, it can bring me to tears.”

The Dangers of Returning Artifacts

“For those of us who have worried about how to frame the loss of artifacts when multitudes are being raped, murdered or displaced, it is a message that is paradoxically comforting – or at least useful. The fate of living humans and the fate of ancient stones turn out to be intimately linked.”

The New Whitney Museum ‘Might Just Solve The Impossible Problem Of Contemporary Art,’ Says Jerry Saltz

“Believe it or not, I am in love with what this building represents – and with its perfectly titled inaugural show, ‘America Is Hard to See.’ The show includes 600 works by around 400 artists, drawn entirely from the museum’s collection of over 21,000 works by 3,000 artists, and it makes me think this museum might just point to one way through the current morass.”