Category: visual

The AAMD sanctioned the museum in June for selling a piece from its collection to raise funds. Now that it’s already in museum-Siberia anyway, the DAM has decided to auction off two more works: Winslow Homer’s Milking Time and Alexander Calder’s The Black Crescent.

“In a profession often associated with showmanship and ego, Ban’s work appears humble, and appropriate to a historical moment that celebrates altruism, or its posture.” And yet: “You can live in a house designed by Shigeru Ban only if you are recently homeless or exceedingly wealthy.”

Hoping to help in catching smugglers and eventually rebuilding whatever possible, Cheikhmous Ali and his fellows are risking their lives, using equipment such as cameras hidden inside ballpoint pens (yes, really) to document the catastrophic damage to historic buildings and artifacts from Syria’s civil war. (in English)

“There are people in the world – otherwise sensible people – who continue to think that the purpose of public art is to make people happy. … [Yet] the purest pleasure excited by a newly announced work of public art is invariably to be found in the breast of the person who cannot stand it. Take Sydney, which has been yelling at itself all week over … plans to install a 50-metre-high undulating arch of stainless steel fettucine right over the road outside Town Hall.”

The museum’s board was in talks to move the collection to the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach. City officials called the move a “modern-day art heist,” and vowed to do whatever was necessary to keep the museum in North Miami.”

Peter Schjeldahl: “It is idle to lament democratizing developments that have been inexorable for well over half a century, … [but at]what point does a widely shared yen for aesthetic engagement alter the character of that engagement? We’ve reached that point on many days … where the crowds experience mainly crowdedness.”

“Visitors wandering among the Met’s paintings, mummies and other treasures probably don’t notice that every European clock on exhibit not only still ticks but also tells the right time. That’s because for 40 years, [Claire] Vincent, who oversees the museum’s European timepieces, has been making sure they are wound like clockwork.” (includes slideshow)

“The most simplistic accusation against Abu Dhabi is that by building branches of the Louvre or Guggenheim, the city is buying culture. This logic pretends that Cleopatra’s Needle ended up in Paris through the goodness of Egyptian hearts, or that Lord Elgin didn’t just pillage the marbles that bear his name. Those accusations also perpetuate another myth: The UAE has no culture of its own.”

Well, more of a memory show – the New York Times‘ chief art critic imagines an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, buildings, books, and other objects that “have altered the atmosphere [and] changed how I see.”

“Jake Chapman, half of the revered Chapman brothers duo, called parents “arrogant” for thinking children could understand such complex artists as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. He says that standing a child in front of a Pollock is an “insult” to the American who pioneered the abstract expressionism. “It’s like saying… it’s as moronic as a child? Children are not human yet,” the father-of-three declared.”