Category: visual

Anne Hawley said “she has been quietly weighing the decision for two years now, as the museum completed fund-raising efforts that included $114 million for the museum’s sleek 2012 expansion, designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano, and an additional $50 million to fortify the museum’s endowment.”

“Frames are used as a metaphor in normal life. But it does make a huge difference to how a work of art is perceived.”

“Irina Lebedeva, the director of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, has been dismissed from her position, Russia’s Ministry of Culture announced … Zelfira Tregulova, a former deputy director of the Kremlin Museum, has been confirmed as her successor. … A statement on the ministry’s website was bluntly critical of [Lebedeva’s] managerial skills.

“United Talent Agency, the Beverly Hills-based talent agency known for representing actors like Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, and Gwyneth Paltrow announced the launch of a new division called UTA Fine Arts, which will manage the careers of visual artists.”

“The overarching narrative of the 82-page document is one of claims and ostensible efforts by involved parties to curb labor abuses — and the corresponding failure due to lack of enforcement.”

“Negotiations to sell the oil painting of a fifteenth-century noblewoman, Isabella D’Este, for around 120 million euros ($135.9 million) were at an advanced stage,” … when the canvas was taken from the vault of a Swiss bank currently under investigation for tax fraud.

Philip Kennicott: “Ever since [the two institutions’ merger], the National Gallery has been on a Falstaffian mission, the art-world equivalent of a six-month hot-dog-eating contest. Curators throughout the museum describe an unprecedented process, sorting through, analyzing and making a first round of decisions about what to accession, and what to set aside for future consideration, including possible distribution to other museums around the District.”

The 91-year-old Color Field artist has given the University of Texas’s Blanton Museum of Art “an unrealized design for a chapel first conceived for a private collector in 1986. For the past two years, Kelly’s been working with the museum to finally bring the now-titled Austin chapel to pass.”

“A man called David taps me on the arm. ‘Do you know there’s a website called Fuck Yeah Brutalism,’ he whispers. Is that a fan site? ‘Of course,’ he say. What made him a brutalist? ‘Insipid modern buildings,’ he says. ‘I like the unloved.'”