Category: visual

When Japan re-opened itself to the world in the mid-1800s following two centuries of isolation, “the vast scale of Western inroads and the collapse of traditional patronage that followed the Meiji restoration threw Japanese art into a state of crisis.” One group of painters responded by applying European visual styles to traditional Japanese materials and genres.

The artworks “represent battles with the diseases of cholera and smallpox. As Japan remained largely closed to Western trade until Commodore Matthew Perry forced ports to open in 1854, the woodblocks show how Japanese people’s conception of sickness, health, and medicine changed through early contact with Westerners.”

“A row over photography censorship has broken out in Switzerland which could, says the director of a major Swiss museum, lead to institutions backing down from mounting shows that focus on real-life situations.”

“Placing living art in MoMA’s airy atrium has become the museum’s crystal meth. … It’s cute thinking: The museum has figured out a way to turn a snoozefest into spectacle. (And without using James Franco.)”

“Businessman-turned-artist Thierry Ehrmann has turned his 17th-century home in France into the ‘Abode of Chaos’ – a sprawling art installation dedicated to death and mayhem. Now some neighbors are trying to restore order.”

“Under an agreement with the city, patrons are allowed to pay whatever they want to visit the museum. But the lawsuit alleges that patrons are mislead into believing that admission is $25.”

“It is a thoroughly cynical piece of work, a building that uses a frenzy of architectural forms to endorse the idea that architecture, in the end, is mere decoration.”

“Four Latin American nations – Mexico, Peru, Guatemala and Costa Rica – had objected to the sale, and the controversy was publicized heavily in the European media. About half the items from the Barbier-Mueller collection sold in the face of assertions by the four nations that more than 100 of the 313 lots had been illegally exported in the 1900s.”

“Most of the … female students had been forced to study the supposedly ‘feminine’ subjects of weaving or ceramics too. The Bauhaus Archive in Berlin is now trying to make amends to the women like them, who felt marginalized at the school, by celebrating their work in the ‘Female Bauhaus’ series of exhibitions.”

“Now, as the ROM begins the countdown to its 2014 centennial, the museum is shifting gears: addressing the reality of stagnant attendance and a sometimes awkward building by starting a new conversation with visitors.”