Category: visual

“The $35 million project—the first full cleaning in the Colosseum’s history—aims to return it to its former splendor, while also strengthening the overall structure. Earthquakes, the pillaging of pieces of its outer frame, heavy car traffic and Rome’s nearby subway have damaged key parts.”

Prosecutors want the judge to send Hillel Nahmad to federal prison for 12 to 18 months for his involvement in an international gambling ring. Nahmad’s defense attorneys say he should be sentenced to paying for and running a scheme to bring Bronx schoolchildren to the Met Museum.

“The market has shifted,” said Anders Petterson, managing director of the London-based art analysis firm ArtTactic. “People who in the 1990s would buy paintings are now having to look at prints and works on paper.”

“The online art market accounted for an estimated $1.6bn of transactions in 2013 (up from $870m in 2012), and is forecast to grow to $3.8bn by 2018.”

“Part of the Grande Louvre renovation project, the great glass pyramid was designed for a museum that attracted 4.5 million visitors a year. Its attendance has since doubled and the museum expects that figure will continue to rise.”

“Tourism and blue plaques make houses into biographers. The past is irretrievable. All you can do is anthropomorphise a house – like looking at the empty shell of an animal.”

“It’s a trippy optical illusion, particularly when you realize you can walk through the passageways like a door. By turning the building into an apparition, the focus is shifted from the man-made structure back to the natural world.”

“What about my wedding?? Your wedding will go on as planned—if it’s on the books now,” but “by all indications, the building could be going dark in 2015.”

Alain De Botton “thinks we’ve got art all wrong. He doesn’t like the way museums are organised and finds the usual little wall labels, with their dates and movements and snippets of art history, unhelpful. Ideally, he envisages museums reorganised according to therapeutic functions – with a basement of suffering, leading upwards to a gallery of self-knowledge on the top floor. It’s like Dante’s circles of hell.”

“For nearly 30 years, a collector has been trying to prove his painting is a Rothko – potentially worth $20 million or more. Now, he’s got new evidence.”