Category: visual

The scaffolding used by the restorers of Agnolo Gaddi’s The Legend of the True Cross in the Basilica of Santa Croce “will remain in place for most of 2013, allowing visitors to see [the fresco cycle] from the vantage point of the artist himself.”

“Catacombs of beauty” is how curator Achille Bonito Oliva describes his ten-years-and-counting project, which has recruited more than 100 artists and architects – including the likes of William Kentridge, Sol LeWitt, Shirin Neshat and Robert Wilson – to transform metro stations into cultural monuments.

“How does this happen with a person who supposedly has smart-enough eyes to operate as a critic in the first place? Does the mood of the times influence critics’ tastes? The high or low opinions of other critics? A lack of familiarity with a given medium or artist? And what do critics say of other critics who change course?” A passel of critics weigh in (and ‘fess up).

“The droit de suite (artists’ resale right) clause is contained in the draft of a new copyright law soon to be submitted to China’s State Council, the country’s cabinet.”

“It had been charging 25 percent for the first $50,000; 20 percent on the amount from $50,001 to $1 million, and 12 percent on the rest. As of March 11, it will charge 25 percent for the first $75,000; 20 percent on the next $75,001 to $1.5 million and 12 percent on the rest.”

The design and construction of the venue, a second stage for the Mariinsky’s opera and ballet performances, “enraged, first, Petersburg citizens and, then, Moscow intellectuals, who are now collecting signatures for a petition to the governor of St. Petersburg, demanding that the new theatre be razed to the ground.”

“It is the key cultural institution of north Australia, the landmark at Darwin’s heart, greatly loved, much visited – yet the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory is in deep crisis, underfunded, bleeding staff positions, unable to run an exhibition program worthy of the name.”

“While controversially conservative … the German-born religious leader did have an open mind at least in encouraging a renewed relationship between the Catholic Church and art, viewing the use of beauty as a path to the sacred.” He opened more of the Vatican’s enormous collection to the public and actively engaged artists in creating work for use in the liturgy or devotion.

“Many students and teachers describe the school’s generosity as an almost sacred principle. It creates, they say, an atmosphere unlike that at any other university, one in which class differences fade away.”