“From paintings of colorful cultural scenes in Jamaica Plain to a mural of open books along the Neponset River Greenway, public art in Greater Boston has transformed walls that were once targets for taggers and graffiti artists.”
Tag: 10.07.09
Sheriff: $80 Million Art ‘Theft’ Appears To Be A Scam
“[T]he Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday that the Sept. 25 heist appears to be … a scam by one or both of the alleged victims, an aspiring lawyer who once sold puppies and a retired Harvard Medical School professor.” The sheriff’s office said that the alleged victims “had not provided documentation that the paintings existed.”
John Updike Archive Goes To Harvard, His Alma Mater
“The university will announce today that Houghton Library, Harvard’s primary repository for rare books and manuscripts, will house the John Updike Archive, making the library the center for studies on the life and work of the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and prolific novelist, poet, and critic.”
Is The Barnes’ Move Worth It?
“The architectural design [of the Barnes Foundation’s new home] can’t be evaluated in the usual terms because it is so much more than the latest contender for the title of the world’s most glamorous art palace. The architecture also must succeed as an exoneration of the foundation’s alleged crimes against the memory of its founder, the mercurial, vengeful Albert C. Barnes.”
In Convoluted Design, Barnes Architects Strain For Serenity
“For any architect taking on the challenge of the new [Barnes Foundation] space, the tangle of ethical and design questions might seem overwhelming. … The answers found in the drawings of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the New York architects who took the commission, are not reassuring.”
Bethesda Theatre Abandons Producing For Rentals
The Maryland theatre’s former executive director “says the theater has not yet recovered from the financial hit it took in April 2008, when it had to cancel its own new production of ‘Smokey Joe’s Cafe’ after the theater sustained damage from a burst water pipe,” prompting an insurance claim that has yet to be paid.
Parsing The Politics Of The White House’s New Art
“Working with curators at the White House and at the local museums that made loans, the First Couple selected some works whose politics are explicit, and mild. They seem to redress past imbalances in the nation’s sense of its own art.”
Barnes, Gardner Struggle To Honor Founders’ Wishes
“Both the Gardner and the Barnes are domestic in scale and appealing relics: the antithesis of today’s giant museums with endless white galleries. … We need museums that don’t toe the art-world party line, but idiosyncrasy can go too far.”
Why Americans Rarely Win The Nobel Prize In Literature
“The prize,” to be announced tomorrow, “has a political edge, so will the academy throw a bone to Barack Obama by giving it to an American for the first time in 16 years? Could be, though recent precedent suggests that U.S. writers don’t stand a chance.”
In BookSearch Battle, Google Finds Itself In Unaccustomed Position: Bad Guy
“Some analysts say the broad-based opposition to Google’s lofty plans was unprecedented and a harbinger of the intense scrutiny the company’s ambitious agenda will face. ‘This was the first issue through which Google’s power became clearly articulated to the public,’ said [one observer].”