Category: visual

“The painting was found to be missing from Welpak Art Moving and Storage in Queens on the evening of Sept. 13, the police said. The warehouse, at 58-60 Grand Avenue in Maspeth, provides shipping and storage services for museums, art galleries and private collectors, according to its Web site.”

“Ranging from as iconic a site as the St. Louis Arch to an overlooked mask-making tradition in Hong Kong to the entire country of Syria, the sites include landscapes, religious structures, and vernacular structures along with architectural sites, each selected from 248 nominations”

“It’s hard to deny that in its quest for instant accessibility, contemporary art has lost something of the sense of purpose that it enjoyed when it was genuinely pushing at the boundaries of moral and social consensus. It is no surprise that art is so popular these days, when it is so easily consumed and digested.”

“A Norman Rockwell painting that sold for more than $1 million at an auction in May disappeared from a storage warehouse in Queens last month.” The painting, titled Sport and made for a Saturday Evening Post cover, depicts a fisherman in the rain.

“The Met’s economic impact in 2013 marked a slight increase from the $398 million seen in the previous season but was lower than the $472 million generated in 2011, when a blockbuster show devoted to the late British designer Alexander McQueen prompted a surge in visitors.”

Tim Jenison “believes he has solved one of the greatest mysteries in art: how did 17th-century Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer paint so photo-realistically 150 years before the invention of photography?”

“You don’t have to be from Stuttgart to feel befuddled by the Met’s entrance policy, with its signs telling you what to spend and then suggesting that you do not have to spend it. Two lawsuits wending their way through State Supreme Court are seeking to address that confusion, accusing the museum of misleading the public not only about how much to pay – but also, more important, about whether it is necessary to pay at all.”

“In short: The Smithsonian and other federally funded museums rely in significant part on private funding — but the shutdown inhibits their ability to raise even the private funds.”

“The train itself was to be a moving kinetic light sculpture, additionally the ‘programming’ was designed to bring together widely known creative figures with local legends from each municipality drawing from art, music, food, literature and film.”

“The building stands empty and unused, because a group of local residents and architectural experts, assisted by its lawyers, argues that it breaches acts of parliament. They would, ideally, like the new building to be demolished, and years of work and about £1m worth of construction to be binned.”