Category: visual

“To the shock of Tasmania’s patricians, some of whom can trace their lineage to the early settlers, and to the surprise of most of the island’s 500,000 largely working-class residents, the Museum of Old and New Art has been a huge success.”

“The value of art traded reached an all-time high, worth an estimated €51bn last year. Art fairs accounted for around 40% of total revenue made by dealers last year (around €9.8bn), though the costs of taking part in them is steep.”

“In David Chipperfield, the Met has found an architect of personal reticence and sober intellect whose work can be bold and simultaneously deferential.”

“A question is what, exactly, in an age of expanded digital access, are museum audiences seeing? Through electronic media — cellphone screens, laptops, Pinterest and Skype — we can survey an extraordinary amount of art, see how it is displayed in museum galleries, zoom in on close-up details. But what are we missing by not putting these filters aside and just standing in front of the thing itself?”

“A lot of people won’t be purchasing actual products, so we want the online representation to be just as compelling as the objects themselves.”

“The art auction behemoth announced Monday that it has tapped Tad Smith, who has served as president and CEO of the Madison Square Garden Co. since 2014. Smith will officially assume his post at Sotheby’s on March 31.”

“American officials on Monday are expected to repatriate about 65 objects to the Iraqi government, among them the head of a massive statue that was stolen in 2007 or 2008 from the same ancient Assyrian archaeological site where Islamic State militants have been rampaging in recent weeks.”

“Police say the paintings, which sold for $2.5m and $1.1m respectively, were created in 2007 and 2008. [Brett] Whiteley died from a drug overdose in 1992.”

“You can bask in a certain solidarity with the rest of humanity, for starters. And then, better still, you can wise up. You can recognize your mistakes. You can shake your head and rub your eyes in disbelief that you were ever so dumb as to break into a museum, or to receive a stolen Vermeer, and you can marvel at the fact that back then you really didn’t know what the hell you were doing.”