Category: visual

“Mr. Bloomberg has long eyed a return to the more global lifestyle he enjoyed in pre-political days, and London — where he has cultivated deep ties to Britain’s cultural and political elite — is a natural first stop.”

“It is an unexpected act of fate that the rich and powerful become consigned to the dustbins of history, and it is a cheerful function of our spitefulness to apply the appropriate entropy to their bodies.”

“The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has published an ’emergency red list’ of Syrian cultural objects in danger of being looted and illicitly traded. The list, which includes vessels, architectural elements, stamps, coins and figural sculpture, will be distributed to customs officials, police, auction houses and museums around the world.”

“It has been home to three queens of England, served as a parliamentary garrison during the civil war and was a raucous hotel and bar, before it was ravaged by fire one particularly rowdy night in 1978. Now the fortified remains of Astley Castle near Nuneaton in Warwickshire have been declared the best building of the year – winner of the 2013 RIBA Stirling prize.”

“The most expensive item sold was a ruby necklace, which achieved $3.4 million. … Western art rarely appears in auction sales in Hong Kong and China, but the firm sold three such works” – Picasso’s Homme assis ($1.9 million), Calder’s Black 2-2-6 ($1.5 million) and Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes ($784,000).

“Not only will the foreign auctioneers have to do battle with an offshoot of the mighty People’s Liberation Army” – the giant auction firm Poly International, owner by a Red Army-controlled conglomerate – “they will have to operate in a market that is distorted by a mix of under- and overregulation, lack of openness and outright crookedness.”

“Zaha Hadid’s highly anticipated £14.5m extension of the Serpentine Gallery opens to the public on Saturday. Housed in a former gunpowder depot, the new Serpentine Sackler Gallery is a seven-minute walk from the main gallery.”

“People think that the most appropriate building is a rectangle, because that’s typically the best way of using space. But is that to say that landscape is a waste of space? The world is not a rectangle. You don’t go into a park and say: ‘My God, we don’t have any corners.’ It’s like saying that everyone has to write in exactly the same way. And it is simply not the case.”

“From its start in 2005, the biennale has gingerly steered a course between the organizers’ ambition to make this city an international center of contemporary art and the reflexive conservatism of a country where the line between what is acceptable and unacceptable can be a fine one.”

“Will MOCA ask prospective candidates for its top job how they would address these money issues? Or will the onus be on the museum and its search committee to reassure candidates that they need not fear being chronically hamstrung by financial limitations?”