Category: visual

“Philippe Vergne says his first task as the new director of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art is not to act quickly but to think and plan deeply.”

“The market is not one homogenous entity; some sectors are booming while others are lagging behind”.

The Assad government’s culture ministry says that its neighbor is “turning a blind eye to the systematic looting of the country’s cultural heritage. Illicit digging at archaeological sites is ‘fierce’, antiquities stores have been raided by armed gangs, and foreigners, from Turkey in particular, are smuggling hundreds of objects across its borders, Syria claims.”

“The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles announced Tuesday that three of the four artists who resigned from the museum’s board in July 2012 over concerns about the direction of the institution will rejoin it.”

“The online store has licences to sell prints of more than 60,000 images by 1,500 artists including Andy Warhol and Picasso as well as an eclectic array of images including vintage Vogue shoots, classic Hammer film posters and Penguin bookcovers.”

“The month-long exhibition of contemporary art, set to open on Friday, has been marred by a controversy that led to the dumping of a major sponsor, Transfield, and the resignation of the chairman of the Biennale board.”

“The report found that 8% of the art auctioned worldwide in 2013 accounted for 82% of the money spent. In the United States, the ratio was even more skewed: 7.5% of the works auctioned raked in 91.2% of the bucks.”

“The decision to sell off public assets invested with such historic significance has not only angered anti-austerity leftists. It has raised howls of protest from reform-minded conservatives with many wondering whether Greece is finally enacting what Germany’s tabloid press has long taunted it to do: sell off its cultural heritage to pay off its monumental debt.”

“Shanghai’s impulse to build so many museums is the direct result of a governmental five-year plan for the city to become an artistic center on par with London, Paris, and New York.”

Pity the poor artist who assumes a connection between price and the quality of her work. It is nothing of the sort; more often it is a case of “taking positions, using leverage, and weighing risk and reward more aggressively,” as one art world insider interpreted Daniel Loeb’s plan for holding Sotheby’s feet to the fire.