Category: visual

“After five years of delays and difficulties, culminating in a public quarrel and the firing of its president in May, the museum’s reopening is finally set for the artist’s birthday, Oct. 25. … The renovation has doubled the public space, modernized outdated facilities and added a new entrance, a multimedia auditorium and a Cubist garden with geometric topiary trees.”

“A legal battle has reignited between the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and three of the late artist’s friends and business associates. The foundation yesterday appealled a Florida judge’s decision to award the trustees of the Robert Rauschenberg Revocable Trust a fee of $24.6m.”

“After much contention and delay, the Hohenzollern Palace, seat of Prussia’s monarchy and the jewel in the city’s crown until the East Berlin regime leveled the building in 1950, has begun rising again. … Off-site sculptors are crafting an exact replica of the palace’s baroque facade as it was before World War II.”

“The principle,” says the president of the AAMD, “is that works of art shouldn’t be considered liquid assets to be converted into cash. They’re records of human creativity that are held in the public trust.” On ther other hand (says the other side), “Once you’ve decided to sell a work of art, what you end up with is money. And money is fungible. And saying that that money has to be cordoned off and only used for art doesn’t address the realities of running any sort of museum.”

Máximo Caminero will spend 18 months on probation, do 100 hours of community service and reimburse the insurance company $10,000, but he’ll avoid further jail time for dropping one of Ai’s painted Han Dynasty urn in front of a photograph of Ai dropping a Han Dynasty urn.

“Why do companies such as UBS bother with collecting expensive modern and contemporary art at all? What’s in it for them?” Alastair Sooke looks at the Swiss mega-banks’ art collection, among the biggest held by any business.

“The gallery relaxed its strict no-photography policy last month after staff found it ‘increasingly difficult’ to distinguish between guests using free wi-fi to research paintings and those trying to take pictures with mobile phones.”

“But design, the hearing made clear, has become the word that dare not speak its name in an era when American diplomats fear being targets around the world.”

“Like some other art mavens I know, I thrilled to van Gogh when I was young, and then, with the snobbery of the insecure tyro aesthete, I took to disdaining him for his popularity. Art that wasn’t difficult couldn’t be serious. … In fact, there is no end of difficulty in van Gogh – his own, surmounted.”

Jayme McLellan, an adjunct instructor at the Corcoran, had been engaged to teach her usual class in professional practices for artists this fall. Last week “she was notified that the class was canceled and her employment terminated. … The problem: McLellan is the co-founder of Save the Corcoran” – the group that filed suit to stop the planned dissolution/division of the Corcoran between the National Gallery and GWU.”