Category: visual

“A study released last week found that people remember 10 percent fewer objects and roughly 12 percent fewer details about the objects they’ve seen if they’ve photographed them rather than simply looked at them.”

“New York’s highest court on Tuesday reversed a decision in a case that could have forced the state’s auction industry to change its practice of keeping sellers’ names anonymous.”

“It’s emblematic of how coastal design is moving away from costly, large-scale walls and sea barriers that only work until overtaken by inexorable sea level rise.”

“They joust with one another at auction houses, where the fevered bidding has driven up prices to the point that some jades, ceramics, calligraphy and paintings now fetch huge sums. In 2011, for instance, a Ming dynasty vase sold for $140 million at an auction in Macau.”

“Art and critical thinking, yes. Art and enchantment, for certain. Without both, or without either, art and its encircling vocation of criticism risk irrelevance. A bigger problem is the culture of prohibitions we seem to be engendering against creativity.”

This foundation (you’ve heard of it) joined in anonymously on bidding for a group of sacred Hopi artifacts being auctioned in Paris – with the aim of returning them to their creators’ descendants.

“Remember all our gnashing of teeth about the Francis Bacon triptych of fellow artist and pal Lucien Freud? The one that fetched the staggering $147 million at auction last month?”

“Early in her career, [Alice Instone] wrote to Cherie Blair, explaining her mission to give women the painterly attention lavished on men. She was thinking of women of influence – the National Portrait Gallery, she points out, is overcrowded with paintings of famous men.”

“Westminster City Council, in central London, is proposing new measures to protect art galleries in Mayfair from encroaching fashion shops.”

The museum “has endured a tumultuous year that began with eight layoffs from its 41-person staff, two-month staff furloughs and a cutback in its days of operation, to four from six.”