Category: visual

“By giving up on free entrance, we stand to lose more than we would gain. What is at stake is the idea of who owns these collections and who they are for. When they are free, it is clear that they are ours – that they belong to the people.”

“We were startled when the Vatican authorities admitted that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes are in greater peril than at any point in their history. Powerful art institutions rarely broadcast their own embarrassments.”

“The painting, which was not thought to be important and in a bad condition, was covered in layers of dirt and varnish and was not on display.”

“The paintings are the work of Arthur Pinajian, a reclusive artist whom the art world had not known much about. Now, 14 years after his death, he has fans who mention him in the same sentence as Gauguin and Cézanne.”

“Child with a Dove, currently at the Courtauld Gallery in London, has been on long loan to major public collections since the 1970s, but its anonymous new owner is not obliged to put it on show. A temporary export bar lapsed in December, leaving the buyer free to take the work abroad.”

“If you were a wealthy major art collector, and for the price of one classic Jackson Pollock drip-painting or Andy Warhol’s 1963 silk-screen ‘Eight Elvises’ you could acquire a few billion dollars worth of art, including scores of incomparable and irreplaceable masterpieces, would you work to make the deal happen? Of course you would. And so would the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.”

Almost everyone seems to be warming to the proposal in L.A., but “the big question is what Mr. Broad will do now.”

“Life sucks up there. For you, for me, for trees, and just about everything else except peregrine falcons. It’s hot, cold, windy, the rain lashes at you, and the snow and sleet pelt you at high velocity. Life for city trees is hard enough on the ground.”

He also – along with his model and muse, Victorine Meurent – invented the modern spectator.

“Ironically, given the museum’s stellar program and collection history, there’s nothing that a hefty infusion of endowment cash could not solve. For whatever reason, though, it hasn’t been forthcoming — either from Broad or the many other very deep pockets on MOCA’s board of trustees.”