Category: visual

“After 21 years of people climbing over it and salt air from the ocean eating away at it, ‘Chain Reaction’ is in danger of falling down. The city’s planning staff, estimating it could cost as much as $400,000 to fix, recently recommended that if proponents of the work can’t raise that money by November the city should simply get rid of it. In the meantime, they’ve put a fence around it (chain link of course) to protect the public.”

As of close of business June 30, the museum saw 6.3 million visitors – about 600,000 more than a year ago.

“In another vote of no-confidence in the current direction of the Museum of Contemporary Art, prominent Los Angeles artists Barbara Kruger and Catherine Opie have resigned from the museum board. John Baldessari left Thursday, making Ed Ruscha the only remaining artist-trustee on the MOCA board.”

“An early work by the symbolist artist Gustav Klimt that was thought lost forever has reportedly been found in a garage in northern Austria.The timing of the discovery could not be more appropriate as Austria is currently celebrating its most famous painter’s 150th birthday, which fell on Saturday.” But one expert says that’s not the correct Klimt – it’s actually by Gustav’s less-talented brother Ernst.

“A £500,000 bronze sculpture by Henry Moore has been stolen from the grounds of his former home. Sundial 1965 was taken late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday from the garden at the Henry Moore Foundation.”

“Over the past decade, bold and costly new art galleries have sprung up in towns from Margate to Middlesbrough in the hope of regenerating underloved areas and bringing modern art to the masses. Has the strategy worked?”

“Plans to empty the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin of its Old Masters and fill it instead with 20th-century art have left cultural chiefs facing accusations of irresponsible neglect of what one critic described as the nation’s family silver.”

“The J. Paul Getty Trust is gearing up to organise a sequel to its successful collaborative project, ‘Pacific Standard Time (PST)’, in ‘five or six years’ time’, says the trust’s chief executive and president James Cuno. ‘We recognise that [it] is just too good to let drop’.”

“The troubles of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art intensified with the resignation of noted artist John Baldessari’s from its board. … Baldessari is the fifth MOCA board member to leave since February. His exit after 12 years is another signal that the old guard of L.A.’s contemporary art scene has grown disenchanted with its direction under [Jeffrey] Deitch.”

“Across the country measures taken to curb the trade in looted artifacts are making it more difficult for collectors of antiquities to donate, or sell, the cultural treasures that fill their homes, display cases and storage units. Museums typically no longer want artifacts that do not have a documented history stretching back past 1970.”