Category: visual

A cancer center, a bank, a science building and more (including, of course, an Olympics stadium) – a slideshow of the six buildings shortlisted for the U.K.’s biggest architecture prize.

“How much art is stockpiled in the 435,000 square feet of the Geneva Freeport? That’s a tough one. The canton of Geneva, which owns an 86 percent share of the Freeport, does not know, nor does Geneva Free Ports and Warehouses, the company that pays the canton for the right to serve as the Freeport’s landlord. Swiss customs officials presumably know, but they aren’t talking. Suffice it to say, there is wide belief among art dealers, advisers and insurers that there is enough art tucked away here to create one of the world’s great museums.”

“The frothy contemporary-art scene here has lost some of its ebullience in the three and a half months since a German art handler and a Chinese associate were detained on charges that they undervalued imported art to avoid customs duties.”

Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, said the pieces’ restitution was “the outcome of the ongoing dialogue between our cultural institutions, as well as the support of the authorities, to identify and preserve items from the national collection of Afghanistan that had been illegally removed during years of conflict”.

“It’s no secret that graffiti and street art are being targeted in the run up the London 2012 games. Each day stories emerge of artworks treasured by locals being removed by excited councils, or of graffiti that had remained untouched for years suddenly being washed brown by the over-zealous buff.”

A professional graffiti artist has been ordered not to go within a mile of any Games site for more than three months after being arrested over years-old allegations just ten days before the Opening Ceremony

“Whereas one Perenyi forgery fetched more than $700,000 at auction, now he sells a nearly identical work for as little as $5,000. They are the art-world equivalent of a three-carat cubic zirconia that can be flaunted as a Tiffany diamond.”

“Nicknamed ‘Brandalism’, because it feeds into the graffiti versus vandalism debate, it has been taken up by artists in Britain, Australia and America and elsewhere. It is, like all street art, illegal. But street artists and graffitists are boldly exploiting the convenient rectangular spaces which normally purvey L’Oreal products or the latest albums.”

“How has one city managed to produce a generation of international contemporary artists, scooping an incredible number of nominations for Britain’s top visual art award, the Turner prize?”

“The explosion of art-investment vehicles has sparked concerns because they are thought to comprise a much greater percentage of the art market in China than in the US or Europe, and a run of redemptions would force the sale of a huge amount of art.”