Category: visual

“There’s reason for skepticism. In 2007, the New York Public Library sold off its Donnell site in Midtown Manhattan for what now seems like a song. Library authorities also cooked up a scheme to pool resources and cash in on the property values of the Mid-Manhattan branch and a science library at 34th Street, consolidating both in the 42nd Street building by demolishing its historic stacks.”

“Galleries are not easy propositions. It can be a juggling act of finding artists, installing shows and alerting the public. There are critics to contend with, the public’s fickle tastes and the endless fluctuations of the market. It’s no surprise that spaces come and go like the tides.”

“If the architecture of the new gallery is not as eye-catching as Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, the collection is more impressive, in particular the photographic archive that goes back to the dawn of photography as an art form. It also features works by Rothko, Tàpies, Picasso and Kandinsky.”

“The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material.”

“Having 5% of your national collection on show is something people find difficult to understand,” says British curator Jasper Sharp, who was the commissioner of the Austrian pavilion at the 2013 Venice Bienniale. Many art institutions are thus coming up with ways to show their stuff, so to speak.

“The missing 352 paintings and drawings, together with tapestries and other works, constitute an art heist on a grand scale, according to the city. It is alleging theft and fraud in a criminal case against the four daughters of Julio Muñoz Ramonet, a Catalan industrialist who bequeathed the property to his native city of Barcelona when he died in 1991.”

“Social media giant Facebook has been taken to court by a French user whose account was closed down after he posted an image of Courbet’s racy painting L’Origine du Monde (1866). According to Le Figaro, the world-famous oil-on-canvas was part of a promo for an art history video about the artwork, broadcasted by the highbrow TV channel Arte.”

“A letter to staff from the director, Nicholas Penny, says all gallery services go out to tender in April, something no other national gallery or museum has done. That includes visitor services, school bookings, public information and even complaints.”

In recent years hundreds of objects have been sent back to Pompeii in envelopes and packages, often accompanied by letters of apology. “There is a colourful legend that says that those who steal from Pompeii will be persecuted by bad luck.”