Category: visual

“It’s risky to call any office building a masterwork. Even the most insightful architecture can prove too inflexible in the face of changing business models, advancing technologies and the volatile fate of companies themselves. Yet Wright’s design for H.F. Johnson Jr., the third-generation leader of what was then called S.C. Johnson & Son, endures both because of the innate intelligence of its design and the pride the family-owned company takes in it.”

U.Md. president Wallace Loh testified in court that, if the judge should deny permission for the current plan to break up the Corcoran and divide it between the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University, “he would be willing to quickly revive a version of the $46 million Maryland partnership plan that the Corcoran rejected in February.”

“Suggesting that the Corcoran should now entertain the same suitors it previously had reason to reject is probably a nonstarter. Instead of negotiating from weakness, the Corcoran should first focus on how to build on its strengths. Bolstering the board with munificent members is crucial. Notwithstanding his power play, [Wayne] Reynolds is to be thanked for identifying hot prospects.”

Philip Kennicott: “One [hand] resolutely grasps the dagger, the other is held open, in a pose of futile resistance. And they are very sturdy hands for a woman with a face as young as the Lucretia in this image. Rembrandt’s Lucretia kills herself with the hands of a man. Which makes visual the ugly truth of the story: Her suicide is a final act of male violence.”

It’s not just that an enormous piece (half again the size of the Statue of Liberty) of Socialist Realism (in 2010? Really?) made in Pyongyang got plopped down in Dakar. Look at the money involved (and not involved) and things get really bizarre.

“The practice has seen such MFA masterpieces as Monet’s ‘Grainstack,’ Van Gogh’s ‘Postman Joseph Roulin,’ and Degas’s ‘Edmondo and Therese Morbilli’ sent to fee-paying museums in Japan, to the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas, and to shows in northern Italy organized by Linea d’Ombra, a profit-making company that organizes blockbuster exhibitions.”

“The congressional salvo is only the latest hurdle for a project that has been plagued by delays, even as the servicemen and women who served under Eisenhower during World War II are rapidly dying.”

“The only way I had of making money inside was doing prison portraits; I charged two phone cards for one pencil drawing, which was good money.”

“Having watched ourselves increasingly backed into the corner of aesthetic elitism, we are now more interested in models of practice that do away with the egos and the glamorous buildings they are associated with.”

Many words – and no money: “We believe in the transformational power of immaterial art and multidisciplinary collaboration and we seek volunteers who feel the same way to join us to create a future for our Institute.”