Category: visual

Her installation at the Venice Biennale will be “Arum Shell, a tensile steel structure that looks like a mass of the flower from which it gets its name. The algorithmic basis of the structure pays homage to [engineer Frei] Otto’s skill in calculating structural stresses.”

“Federal prosecutors seeking to repatriate a 10th century statue to Cambodia filed court papers Monday accusing Sotheby’s of knowing the sculpture ‘was an important piece of cultural property that had been stolen’ from a remote temple complex when the auction house put the massive sandstone artifact up for sale in March 2011.”

“A security guard at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden shot and killed himself Monday afternoon in a basement locker room, according to authorities. The shooting forced hundreds of patrons to evacuate and drew a large contingent of federal and local police to the area.”

“On October 28, 1918, the Republic of Czechoslovakia was born and Mucha, patriot that he was, was determined to do everything he could to help the development of his new nation. When the government asked him for help designing documents, he immediately agreed” – creating the country’s first postage stamps and paper money.

“At first sight, it is an unlikely concept: a crew of leading lights from the street art scene making new works inspired by the great Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. What to expect?”

“Connecting Light will consists of 450 giant balloons fitted with LED lights, hovering above the Roman structure … The balloons will transmit ‘messages’ to each other that translate into different colours. As the messages move from one balloon to another, the installation will become a line of pulsating colours stretching into the distance.”

“Opponents of the Corcoran Gallery’s decision to sell its historic Beaux-Arts building at 17th Street and New York Avenue NW in Washington delivered a 3,200-signature petition to the gallery’s Board of Trustees on Monday, urging the panel to reconsider.”

The votes are in: Meleko Mokgosi, a 30-year-old painter who was born and raised in Botswana and is now based in Los Angeles, has become the first recipient of the Hammer Museum’s Mohn Award,” whose winner is “[c]hosen through an unusual combination of jury selection and popular vote.”

“But the FBI sting operation that recovered the French painter’s 1925 work Odalisque in Red Trousers in Miami last month has also resurrected awkward questions about more than a dozen other valuable pieces said to be ‘unaccounted for’ at the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art (MACCSI), including works by Jasper Johns, Henry Moore, Lucian Freud and Jesús Soto.”

“It is considered one of the most important contemporary art collections in the world, featuring Tracey Emin’s bed and Grayson Perry’s pots” – and worth £30 million or more. “But two years since announcing his generous gift [to the British nation], the collection has yet to find a home.”