When you’re a critic everyone loves to criticize you. One critic looks over the criticism that came his way this year. “The eminent critic and playwright Robert Brustein took me to task for reporting that his fashionably coiffed crony David Mamet was in a ‘slump’ because he had written an awful novel that couldn’t find a US publisher. (Good thing I didn’t know about the ‘poetry’ and the vanity CD.)” – Boston Globe 12/21/00
Tag: 12.21.00
MOST-WANTED LIST
In an important step in the repatriation of artwork stolen during World War II, the US Justice Department has released a list of 2,000 artworks seized by the Nazis. “The quality of many of the paintings on the list is extraordinarily high, because most of the items were stolen for Adolf Hitler and his Air Minister Hermann Goering, and they demanded masterpieces.” – CNN
SHADY DEALS
“Martin Fabiani, a Paris dealer who was arrested and fined by the Allies after the Second World War for dealing in ‘enemy property’ and art plundered by the Nazis, supplied Canada’s National Gallery with several notable paintings, among them works by Pierre Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas. Dealers, such as Mr. Fabiani, took advantage of cut-rate prices on art looted from Jews in Nazi-occupied countries. During the chaos that ensued when France was occupied by the Nazis, dealers like Mr. Fabiani were able to sidestep legal formalities in order to make quick sales.” – National Post (Canada)
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CULTURE?
Prague was named this year’s European City of Culture. But with so many state collections in the city closed or in flux, one has to ask how seriously the city is taking the designation. – The Art Newspaper
INTERDICTING ART
The US Customs Service has started a new unit of six agents to specialize in art seizures. “Art theft seizures demand an ability to recognize valuable art, verify the authenticity of a piece and properly preserve it, and the job requires a masterful grasp of international regulations and the ability to work with people of astounding wealth and expertise.” – Salon
MONUMENTITIS
- South Korea wanted to do something big to mark the turn of the millennium. But those plans have been drastically scaled back. “Gone are plans for 12 grand gate structures that were to be built around the nation over the next 120 years, and one of the few remaining projects is hanging by a thread.” – Korea Herald
MAJOR NEW PICASSO MUSEUM
The sale of the Berggruen Collection to the city of Berlin means “that Berlin will have a Picasso museum that is rivaled only by the Musée Picasso in Paris. Of the 165 works, 85 are Picassos, spanning every period of the artist’s life. The rest include outstanding examples by 20th-century masters like Braque, Giacometti, Matisse and Klee. The new museum will fill a serious gap in Germany, since most early modern art was driven out of the country by Hitler as ‘degenerate’.” – New York Times
‘OW YA DOIN?
An analysis of Queen Elizabeth’s accent and speech patterns between the 1950s and now indicates a change. “While Her Majesty is not about to refer to ‘My ‘usband and I’, she now speaks in a way ‘more typically associated with speakers who are younger and lower in the social hierarchy’, the Australian analysts write in Nature.” – The Times (UK)