“The [Ming Dynasty] vase, owned by an unidentified family for decades, had been kept on a wooden stand and used as a doorstop, until someone spotted a similar piece in a Sotheby’s ad.”
Category: visual
In Van Gogh’s Flowers, A Tale Of Varnish Gone Wrong
“Researchers have spotted a never-before-seen chemical effect in Vincent Van Gogh’s Flowers In A Blue Vase that is dulling the work’s vibrant yellows.”
How Wayne Clough Is Remaking The Smithsonian
“With a budget of $1 billion and a salary of just over $500,000, he oversees a portfolio of museums as different as the National Portrait Gallery and the National Zoo. Some, like the National Air & Space Museum, get more visitors a year than the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Others, like the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, sit several states away in New York.”
Berlin Reconsiders New Home For Old Masters
“Following a wave of public outcry from prominent intellectuals, the city is reconsidering plans to move its 3,000-strong Gemäldegalerie collection out of its current home near Potsdamer Platz.”
Britain’s First Street Artist
“A while ago, a friend of mine from Lancashire asked if I knew where Alvin Stardust was born. She had a vague childhood memory of seeing a huge mural of the 70s star, the size of a whole house, on the end of a terrace in Bury. I checked and found out that Stardust – whose real name was Bernard Jewry [aka Walter Kershaw] – was born in London and grew up in Nottingham.”
The (Forgotten) Picasso In The Basement Raises Questions For A Small Museum
“This rare work was there in Indiana after all, mislabeled and stashed in an old shipping crate for more than 40 years.”
Venice’s Architecture Biennale – It’s About A Struggle For Relevance
“If this year’s biennale is the measure of anything it is that the time for showboat buildings is well past and that architects themselves are the most eager to move on and build for the everyday world where people really live. It’s about time.”
In Berlin, A Battle Between Old Masters And A Home For Modern Masterpieces
“In the German press, the plan has been represented as a clash between the old and the new, pitting Rembrandt and Leonardo against Jackson Pollock and Joseph Beuys.”
Ai Weiwei: ‘The Chinese Art World Does Not Exist’
“I don’t think it’s worth discussing new directions in the context of Chinese art – there were no old directions, either. … Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.”
Louis Kahn’s Only Design For New York Is Finally Finished
“The park – a memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt – was conceived four decades ago. The visionary architect who designed it died in 1974. The site, a landfill along one of the more dramatic stretches of waterfront in New York City, remained a rubble heap while the project was left for dead.”