Category: visual

The board of the Wright Foundation has decided not to incorporate its school at Taliesin as a separate entity – an organizational decision that, thanks to a change in the Higher Learning Commission’s rules, means the school will lose its accreditation in 2017. The school’s governors and faculty are, unsurprisingly, unhappy about this, amd they’ve begun rebelling against the Wright Foundation.

Dana Goodyear considers the tension between the Pritzker Prize winner’s very-high-profile designs for quick, inexpensive temporary structures for use after natural disasters and his very-high-priced work for wealthy clients like the Aspen Art Museum.

“Besides prompting a conversation about the role of art in our daily lives and promoting the names of the five participating institutions—the Dallas Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York—the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, a trade group for out-of-home advertisers and an Art Everywhere U.S. collaborator, is hoping the project will get more people looking up and around again instead of down at their digital devices.”

“Last week, the research center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts announced that an archaeological expedition led by Ivan Sprajc has uncovered the remains of two Maya cities, Lagunita and Tamchen. Slowly, the blueprint of a vast civilization is materializing. In 2013, Sprajc’s team found the only other city, Chactún, in the nearly 1,900-square-mile area.”

“Around 50 protesters gathered [Tuesday] outside the Musée Fesch in Ajaccio, Corsica, to demand the immediate removal of the photograph from an exhibition of 120 works by the artist.” Said one spokesman, “[Corsica] is soiled by the presence of this picture. It’s an insult to every Corsican.”

“At the end of the year, state-owned Chinese mining company China Metallurgical Group will take control of an ancient Buddhist city in Afghanistan, Mes Aynak. Southeast of Kabul, the ancient, abandoned city is home to sculptures, art, and jewelry dating back to the time of Alexander the Great – as well as 5.5 million tonnes of copper ore, one of the world’s largest deposits.”

“Nearly every image is original: either a graphic created in-house, a photograph taken in-house, or an image so manipulated by Photoshop as to not represent any real event that has ever happened. The tiny graphics team at The Onion pumps out about 50 original pieces of art per week.”

Is “Banksy, arguably the most well-known and successful graffiti artist in the world, now over? In other words, was his production permanently slowing down? Could he now be considered part of art history? Or would he start to mean less to the general public and the street art community?”

“While the destruction in Gaza, the Ukraine, and other conflict zones may be as harrowing, the recent rise of the Islamic State (IS), formerly ISIS or ISIL, is particularly worrying to the art world since it is taking place in an area rich with important archeological sites.”

“Just three patches of fresco remain in St Catherine’s, following restoration work carried out after the church was handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church by local legislators in 2010.”