Category: visual

“The painter can’t begin to understand how a painting that reveals no intimate flesh, other than the pelvic triangle, could possibly be described as pornography.”

“All told, this is an absolutely unprecedented series of foundation commitments from the foundation community, stretching the boundaries of what foundations might have ever considered doing anywhere.”

Still skittish four years after 21 people died and more than 500 were injured in a stampede at a Love Parade, the mayor of the German city of Duisberg refused permission for Totlast (“Deadweight”), a labyrinthine installation by Gregor Schneider, because it could induce “confusion, panic and disorientation.”

The Williamstown museum now has big new exhibition space (much of it underground) that finally enable it to show large-scale 20th-century art and to collaborate with major venues on touring exhibitions. That’s not to mention the one-acre, three-tiered reflecting pool designed by Tadao Ando and Gary Hilderbrand.

“The Odalisque in Red Pants (Odalisque à la culotte rouge) is thought to have been stolen from the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art in 2002 but its disappearance went unnoticed for some time because the thieves put a fake in its place.”

City funding for the museum, known as MACRO, was slashed from €350,000 in 2013 to €61,000 this year. Says the museum’s director, whose contract ran out at the end of June, “We literally have €5,000 a month” from the municipal government.

“Graham Holdings (as the company which once owned the Washington Post is now known) has decided to sell much of the corporate art collection begun by former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham in the 1970s. The company is offering the collection, which is strong on works by local Washington artists, for what it says is a reduced rate to employees. Proceeds will be given to TheDream.US, a scholarship fund founded by Donald Graham to help undocumented students.”

“‘Basically, it was a difference of opinion over the direction of the museum,’ [now-ex-director John] Wilson said late Tuesday.’The board had a model of the Timken that is similar to when [predecessor] John Petersen was here. So it’s time for a change.'”

“For three and a half years, conservators at the Acropolis Museum have been cleaning the [Caryatids], Ionic columns in female form believed to have been sculpted by Alkamenes, a student of ancient Greece’s greatest artist, Phidias. … Today they are star attractions in the museum; the originals outside were replaced with reproductions in 1979 to keep the real maidens safe.”

Yes, it’s a lot like Monty Python for the age of Tumblr.