Category: visual

“The gold- and silver-encrusted picture … isn’t a peculiarly incoherent painting, as I had once thought. It’s not a painting at all, but a largish, flattish bauble: a thing. It is classic less of its time than of ours, by sole dint of the money sunk in it.”

“A $25 million suit over the authenticity of a purported Mark Rothko painting is the latest fallout in the widening scandal, which has ensnared some of the most prestigious names in the New York art world.”

“Sotheby’s filed court papers on Tuesday urging a federal judge to dismiss efforts by prosecutors to repatriate a 10th century statue to Cambodia, contending that there is no proof the sculpture had been stolen from its homeland.”

“One of Los Angeles’ longest-running and most adversarial cultural disputes – over the future of the Southwest Museum in Mount Washington, and its prized collection of Native American artifacts – has a chance of shifting to a less contentious footing.”

We can thank our friends the Shakers.

“Concern for the cultural heritage of Mali is growing after militant Islamic fundamentalists desecrated a 15th-century tomb of a Muslim saint in Timbuktu in May, and threatened to destroy other tombs as well as anything else they perceive as being idolatrous or contrary to their version of Islam.”

“Few marriages have the potential to be as uneasy as that between an art museum and an art school. … Behind the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s controversial decision Monday to consider moving … is a bold gambit to thrive in a national cultural landscape where it has been much more common for museums and art schools to fall out of love and go their separate ways.”

Philip Kennicott: “[Museum insiders] acknowledged years of erratic leadership, and a board of directors that has flailed about from crisis to crisis. … These things don’t just demoralize staff, they create the toxic sense of a rudderless institution, which makes deep-pocketed supporters ‘run for the hills,’ in the words of one observer.”

“The structure, part of a development known as Centurion Symbio-City, will soar to 447 metres, or 110 storeys, more than double the Carlton Centre – and higher than the Empire State Building. It would become the 14th-tallest freestanding structure on the planet.”

Luke Jerram’s Aeolus “mutters breathy tunes while looking like somebody jammed a pipe organ and porcupine together in a transmogrifier, which then malfunctioned.”