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- MODERNIZATION:
Christie's turns some new corners under new leadership and modernizes
its London headquarters. London
Telegraph 01/31/00
- WE
LOVE BIMBOS: New generation of women artists are the "so-called
Bad Girls, the latest cool school in the art world. Defying the
rules of sisterhood, they elevate high-school stereotypes - the
slut, the bimbo, the messed-up chick - into the realm of art."
New York
Times Magazine 01/30/00
(One-time
registration required for entry)
- MASTERS
OF THE NEW WORLD: Prices and sales of Old Master paintings
are rising in New York. Many London dealers of Old Masters have
opened branches in Manhattan, leading to speculation the Big Apple
may surpass London as the center of the trade. New
York Times 01/31/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
- SUMMING
UP THE CARNEGIE: The impact of international art surveys like
Pittsburgh's Carnegie International showcasing installation artists
has been diluted by the proliferation of such shows and a somewhat
static cast of artists. Still, there was much to ponder at this
year's edition. Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette 01/30/00
- CANADA
DECIDES to write the history of its art. The question is:
what, and whose history should it be? CBC
01/31/00
- FLASHING
MAD: English museums increasingly allow visitors to take pictures,
maintaining that camera flashes don't damage artwork. Is this
true? Not exactly - at minimum it ruins the possibility of a contemplative
moment. And the cumulative physical effects of ultraviolet light
are uncertain. London
Telegraph 01/29/00
- DAYS
OF RECKONING: No one disputes Peter Eisenman's talents as
an architect. But "Eisenman has defined his position in theoretical,
abstract and academic terms that defy comprehension by a general
audience. The audience, in turn, has responded by wondering why
it should care." Six new designs should tip the balance of
his reputation. New
York Times 01/30/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
- THE
GURU OF MINIMALISM: John Pawson is the king of reductive design.
"His work, which ranges from the high Zen Cathay Pacific
lounge in the Hong Kong airport to the groovy chic of the Wakenabe
and Wagamama restaurants in London, is so reduced to the essential,
it ventures beyond the old Mies van der Rohe saw 'less is more'
into a kind of New Age sacred space." Toronto
Globe and Mail 01/29/00
- ONLINE
CLUB: Venerable Sotheby's got the
Dotcom bug last week and went online. But galleries sell elitism,
says one gallery director. “It’s a very, very private club intended
not to let people in, and if it gets too big, collectors won’t
want to be a part of it any more.” A risk of taking the business
online? The Economist
01/29/00
- JUST
WHEN DID THE MEDIA START HATING ARTISTS? Was it art's "difficult
characters?" The big-money 80's art markets? "The biggest
part of the problem may be the front-of-the-book/back-of-the-book
structure that ghettoizes all arts coverage, whether news or reviews,
in the back pages or special sections. But news is news, and the
art(s) worlds are huge industries that demand far more sophisticated
news coverage than they receive." Media
Channel 01/28/00
- NEW
CURATOR FOR WHITNEY: Lawrence Rinder, a respected Bay Area
curator who directs the exhibitions program at the California
College of Arts and Crafts, has been named curator of contemporary
art at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, succeeding
Lisa Phillips, who left the Whitney to become director of the
New Museum in Manhattan. San
Francisco Chronicle 01/28/00
- HAS
ABSTRACTION LOST ITS EDGE? "The practice of abstractionism
has failed to engage creatively with the radical change in human
experience in recent decades; it has, seemingly, been unwilling
to re-invent itself in relation to the systems of artistic expression
and viewer expectation that have developed under the impact of
the mass media." Like their confreres elsewhere in the world,
abstractionists in India are asking themselves an overwhelming
question today: Does abstractionism have a future? Art
News In India 01/00
- ART
IN THE SERVICE OF POLITICS: Hilton Kramer's had an advance
peek at a description of some of the art to be included in the
upcoming Whitney Biennial. And he's not amused. Or maybe that's
exactly what he is... New
York Observer 01/27/00
- FROM
DRAB CIVIL SERVANT TO CULTUREHOUSE: Somerset House in the
heart of London was an extravagant public gesture built at the
end of the 18th Century to house civil servants. Now it is being
transformed into a public drawing room of culture. London
Telegraph 01/27/00
- WITNESS
TO HISTORY: Madame Chiang Kai-shek was known for her shrewdness,
imperious style and the power she wielded in her late husband's
Nationalist Chinese regime. She's now 103 years old, and was,
as it turns out, a pretty good painter in the traditional Chinese
style. A show of 20th Century Chinese artists at the San Francisco
Asian Art Museum includes a collection of her art. San
Francisco Chronicle 01/27/00
- DESIGN
DEBACLE: Celebrated Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron
were hired in 1998 to design the $70 million Blanton Museum at
the University of Texas at Austin. But after drafting their ideas,
the architects quickly realized that university regents had no
interest in innovation - they wanted a grand design copied from
the campus' existing Mediterranean style. After several volleys,
the architects abandoned the project and left town. A missed opportunity,
lament critics. Architecture
Magazine 02/00
- STOKED
WITH INNOVATION - BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Eight years ago
Ireland's Arthouse multimedia center was set up to be "one
of the gleaming flagships of artistic innovation" in Ireland.
But lack of funding, confusion over what it should be and a revolving
door of leadership - three directors already - have pretty much
everyone confused about what multimedia means. Irish
Times 01/26/00
- BETTING
ON TECHNOLOGY: Youngstown, Ohio's Beecher Center, long a friend
to American painting, takes a plunge on technology with a new
wing to celebrate the digital artistic side. Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette 01/26/00
- KEYS
TO THE CASTLE: After 27 years at the banking giant Citicorp/Citibank,
ending up as vice chairman and chairman of the executive committee
and nine years as the second-in-charge at Fannie Mae, America's
largest investor in home mortgages Laurence Small took over the
top job at the Smithsonian this week. For the Smithsonian's 6,000
employees, a "hard-knuckled business type is a shift from
the long line of scientists and scholars." Washington
Post 01/25/00
- LOW-END
ART: London's TAG Sales, founded five years ago, "make
lips curl in the upper echelons of the art market, but they have
found their niche. They are
part of a growing market in affordable art aimed at people with
a limited knowledge of art and even less confidence about buying
it from traditional galleries, but who have vacant wall space
and disposable income." London
Telegraph 01/24/00
- QUAKEPROOFING
FOR ART: A $150 million retrofit of San Francisco's old public
library for a museum of Asian art is the Bay Area's most ambitious
museum reaction to its earthquake problem. San
Francisco Chronicle 01/23/00
- ARTBRIDGE:
The Milwaukee Art Museum is building a new landmark bridge designed
by Santiago Calatrava designed to boost the museum's profile.
With a length of 231 feet, topped by a 192-foot tower, the free-floating
span is said to be an enineering feat of immense proportions.
Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel 01/23/00
- FOR
THE SOUL OF A CITY: "Joining a debate as old as the reunification
of Germany itself, the President of the Berlin Chamber of Architects,
has called on the city to abandon "reactionary" plans
to rebuild the Emperors' Palace on Unter den Linden and instead
build a future-oriented and community-friendly structure. Rebuilding
the Stadtschloss, the Hohenzollern palace blown up by the East
German government in 1950, would, he said, produce a fake Disney-esque
facade that might become a tourist destination but would leave
a hollow heart in the city."
Die Welt 01/23/00
- LIFE
AS A FLAMBOYANT POSEUR: Was Salvador Dali a great surrealist
painter and draftsman or merely a buffoonish public charlatan
and poseur? A new 60-painting show at Connecticut's Wadsworth
Atheneum begs the question. Hartford
Courant 01/23/00
- RECONCEIVING
BERLIN: A new plan for Berlin's Museum Island with its five
great museums marks the reorganization of Berlin’s museum holdings.
The plan "advocates a return to the Hegelian universalism
that underpinned the creation of the island in the nineteenth
century. The five buildings, which are to be connected by a series
of underground passageways, will together present an overview
of European painting and sculpture from its beginnings to the
nineteenth century." The
Art Newspaper 01/21/00
- ELGIN
MARBLES DEBATED: All was civil at this conference until just
before the end... The
Art Newspaper 01/21/00
- GUGGENHEIM
AUSTRALIA? Plans for latest branch outside Melbourne. The
Art Newspaper 01/21/00
- Previously:
WORLD
DOMINATION: With Bilbao a hit and expansion planned for
Venice, the Guggenheim eyes its next move. This time the focus
is on South America. Sao Paulo, perhaps? ARTnews
01/00
- OVERBUILDING?
A dozen major arts buildings are scheduled to open around
Britain this year - £400 million-worth of new museums, including
the new Tate Modern - built with lottery funds. But most of them
are behind schedule and half are over budget. And when they do
open there are fears there might not be audiences to support them.
BBC 01/20/00
- Tate
Modern being carved out of a derelict former power station
in a rundown part of London for $223 million. Expected to
open in May and rank alongside New York's Museum of Modern
Art and Paris' Pompidou Centre as one of the great modern
art museums.
Chicago Tribune 01/20/00
- ONLINE
ART: Even a year ago trying to buy art online probably meant
having to endure a cheesy experience. No longer. Online galleries
and artsellers have proliferated and now represent a wide cross-section
of the art world. Here's a survey. Chicago
Tribune 01/20/00
- WEBART:
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art creates a $50,000 prize for
web art to encourage artists to work in the medium. New
York Times 01/20/00 (one-time
registration required for access)
- A
GOOD YEAR FOR GIVING: 1999 was a particularly good year for
donations to Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art, which acquired
some high-quality works for its permanent collection. Los
Angeles Times 01/20/00
- JUST
WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY: A writer in the New York Times recently
dated the contemporary period in art as beginning in 1970, writes
Hilton Kramer. Oh really? And just how are we defining "contemporary?"
New York Observer 01/24/00
- I-DON'T-GET-IT
ART: "I often think the art we don't understand falls
into three loose categories. First, there's the art we don't understand
and hate, secretly wishing it would disappear.The other two categories
are more complicated. First there's the art you don't understand
and like, maybe even love. Finally there's art you don't understand
or are ambivalent about, while being somewhat intrigued by or
passably interested in it—at least enough to make you not dismiss
it outright, though sometimes you wish you could." Village
Voice 01/19/00
- REDESIGNING
BOSTON'S MFA with London's defining architect. Boston
Globe 01/19/00
- "I
HATE TALKING ABOUT MY WORK." CLICK: Australian artist
Tracey Moffatt's slick images could be easily dismissed by the
artworld. But since an exhibition of her work at New York's Dia
Center in 1997 her career has taken off. Last year she had solo
shows at major institutions in Copenhagen, Paris, Boston and Barcelona.
In London, she's represented by the powerhouse Victoria Miro Gallery,
and in New York, she's with dealers Matthew Marks and Paul Morris.
Toronto
Globe and Mail 01/18/00
- SAATCHI'S
NEW CREW: Though one might not appreciate Charles Saatchi's
taste in young artists, usually there's some attitude to sink
your teeth into. But the group of Europeans gathered in Saatchi's
new show, are a puzzling lot. What exactly is so "ground-breaking"
about them? Indeed, they seem derivative, portentous and dull,
writes one critic. Financial
Times 01/18/00
- COLOR
FOR KOSOVO: Coloring books drawn by well-known British artists
for the children of Kosovo have become a bit hit. London
Telegraph 01/16/00
- SAVING
BECKMANN: Newly released letters and telegrams reveal how
Munich art dealer Günther Franke continued to support banned artist
Max Beckmann through the Hitler years; how he arranged for Beckmann's
painting to be smuggled from Amsterdam into Nazi Germany, sent
payments to the artist and even mounted a secret exhibition. The
Art Newspaper 01/14/00
- ARTIFACT
BAN: US bans import of certain Cambodian artifacts. Monuments
and sites in Cambodia such as Banteay Chhmar, and Angkor, a World
Heritage site, are being damaged and destroyed by the removal
of sculpture and architectural elements from ancient Khmer temples
for the illicit market, the US Information Agency has found. The
Art Newspaper 01/14/00
- HOLOCAUST
MUSEUM CHAIRMAN RESIGNS: Miles Lerman, a businessman who fought
against the Nazis in southern Poland during World War II, joined
planning committees for the museum in 1978 and has been chairman
since 1993, raised nearly $200 million to build the museum just
off the National Mall. He directed the transition from proposal
to the present full-fledged museum, which has had 14 million visitors
in 6 1/2 years. Washington
Post 01/14/00
- SETTING
IT RIGHT: Preliminary work to take some
of the lean out of the tower of Pisa has been completed. Chicago
Tribune (Reuters) 01/14/00
- THE
SCIENCE OF ART: Until recently picture
conservation has been a somewhat sensual, hands-on and almost
medieval craft. No longer. New scientific methods unlock secrets.
"When Rembrandt painted white preparatory ground on his canvases,
little did he realise that some 350 years later a scientist would
be interested in the tiny fossils it contained."
Financial Times 01/13/00
- RETHINKING
THE 20TH CENTURY: The Royal Academy's fascinating new show
looking at what was happening in art at the turn of 1900 recreates
the famed Exposition Universelle, that most glamorous of art fairs
in Paris. "The idea is to show what was happening in Tokyo
and Melbourne, Helsinki and New York at the very moment when Monet
was painting Charing Cross Bridge and Picasso was exploring the
dives and dance halls of Montmartre." London
Telegraph 01/12/00
- AUCTIONING
THE CONSTITUTION: Sotheby's will auction off one of 25 original
1776 copies of the US constitution on its website. The document
is expected to bring $4-6 million. Baltimore
Sun (AP) 01/12/00
- EURO-TRASHING:
Charles Saatchi's at it again, reaching across the Channel for
artists for the next big Sensation. London
Times 01/12/00
- GLOBAL
BLANDING: A Tokyo Gap may be indistinguishable from one in
New York. But there's still hope to recover from global blandishment.
The future of international design, say designers, is local identity.
Metropolis
01/00
- ONLINE
ART: Suddenly a number of art sellers have made major investments
to get online. Will selling art online be a success? Hard to tell
since no one even really has a good idea what the conventional
art market is worth.
ARTnews 01/00
- WORLD
DOMINATION: With Bilbao a hit and expansion planned for Venice,
the Guggenheim eyes its next move. This time the focus is on South
America. Sao Paulo, perhaps?
ARTnews 01/00
- DALI
AMONG HIS BELOVED TOURISTS: Not. Ironic in a Salvador Dali
kind of way that the artist who hated tourists has a museum of
his work in a place luring tourists.
Washington Post 01/09/00
- "SENSATION"
CLOSES at the Brooklyn Museum much as it opened - big crowds,
protests outside. New
York Times 01/10/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- A "CAMPAIGN OF INGENUITY"
In 1994 the Metropolitan Museum embarked on a $300 million campaign
for renovation and expansion. Now, with $450 million in hand,
the museum has set it sights on $650 million. New
York Times 01/10/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- BEATING
UP ON BEAUTY: In the 90s, notions of beauty were stirred around
like ingredients in a soup. Does beauty matter any more in art?
Salon
01/10/00
- EPIC
DESIGN CHALLENGE: In remaking Berlin, architects and politicians
are facing monumental challenges of history and expectation. So
far, so good... Washington
Post 01/09/00
- A
NOTORIOUSLY TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP WITH CONTEMPORARY ART: New
York's Metropolitan Museum was set up to be an encyclopedic collection.
Nonetheless, its attitudes about art of our times have been complicated.
And the museum's leadership are prickly when asked about it. New
York Times 01/09/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- NEW
RULES: Ground was broken on the Washington Mall last fall
for the National Museum of the American Indian, set to open in
2002. Assembling and moving collections into any new facility
is an enormous ritualized task. For this museum a whole new set
of rules also apply. Los
Angeles Times 01/09/00
- THE
BAUHAUS: Eighty years on, the Bauhaus legacy still reverberates.
London
Sunday Times 01/09/00
- SPIRIT
OF COOPERATION: Los Angeles' museums are learning that collegiality
and cooperation benefits them all when planning new exhibitions.
A new wave of sharing erupts.
Los Angeles Times 01/09/00
- CEZANNE
STOLEN LAST WEEK IN OXFORD was not insured. The news underlines
concern that many British museums are seriously underinsured.
The Art
Newspaper 01/07/00
- A TALE OF TWO MONDRIANS:
It's tax credit time again - that time of year
when collectors give away art to institutions (in part) to claim
tax breaks. Two such gifts - one in the US, the other in London
point up the differences in tax laws.
New York Times 01/07/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- THE
ART OF DIPLOMACY: The halls of the
United Nations are filled with valuable art. But curating the
collection is an art in itself. "The greatest problem facing
the arts committee is preventing the United Nations from becoming
a curiosity shop." Los
Angeles Times 01/07/00
- CLEAN
SWEEP: On the whole, last month's conference on the cleaning
of the Elgin marbles in the 1930s was pretty decorous, despite
the controversies. Until the last few minutes, of course, when
"the Greek press attaché was ordered to shut up, author William
St Clair was 'disinvited' from the closing dinner and for a moment
it seemed as if scuffles might break out among the warring academics."
The Art
Newspaper 01/07/00
- INTERNATIONAL
PLEA: Versailles was badly hit by
storms in the past week. Some 10,000 trees were uprooted in 90-mile-an-hour
winds and the palace roof and windows were damaged. Now Versailles
is trying to raise money for repairs. Versailles
Storm Damage Report 01/00
- AND
THE AWARD FOR MOST SPECTACULAR...
New Year's show has to go to Paris' Eiffel Tower. How'd it happen?
"It took five months for a crew of 20 mountaineers and rock
climbers to string the 20,000 screw-in bulbs on the 110-year-old
tower and an additional month for 47 more climbers and technicians
to set 4,800 pyrotechnic launches on 80 specially created tower
decks." Philadelphia
Inquirer 01/06/00
- WHAT
EVER HAPPENED TO LOOKING AHEAD? At
the beginning of the 20th Century the future held excitement and
allure. At the beginning of the 21st, we seem to be looking back
a lot. Particularly in our housing. "Today's domestic architecture
has got stuck in something quaint. It's like reading and rereading
contemporary versions of Chekhov or Dickens without ever considering
the merits of Margaret Atwood or Raymond Carver." Toronto
Globe and Mail 01/06/00
- AUSTRALIA
JOINS ON: Adding to a growing international
chorus asking Britain to return Elgin marbles to Greece. Sydney
Morning Herald 01/06/00
- DEATH
BY BRONTE: British writer has new
theory about the deaths of the Bronte sisters - and it's poisonous.
CBC 01/06/00
- HEANEY
WINS WHITBREAD: Nobel novelist Seamus
Heaney wins lit award for translation of "Beowulf" BBC
01/05/00
- IT'S
A HELLHOLE: London's Millennium Dome
"turns out to be the biggest fake orgasm in the history of
passionate pretence. It must also be the only symbolic monument
to be erected without anyone having a clue what it is meant to
symbolize. Hence the banal shape, all too indicative of its hackneyed
exhibition, every old broiler of an idea in the world of arts
and entertainment come home to roost." London
Telegraph 01/05/00
- MAYBE
NOT: Here's another critic, a self-confessed
cynic who kinda sorta gets into the spirit of the Dome.
London Evening Standard 01/06/00
- NEW DIRECTOR FOR CLEVELAND MUSEUM
OF ART: Katharine Lee Reid, currently director of the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, is the daughter of the Cleveland's
legendary director, Sherman E. Lee, a Chinese-art scholar who
ran the museum from 1958 to 1983 and built it into a leading showplace
for Asian art. New
York Times 1/05/00
(one-time
registration required for access)
- REBORN
POMPIDOU: After 27 months and a £54 million modernist fix-up,
the Pompidou Museum reopens. For the first time, it is possible
to properly take stock of the museum's extensive holdings from
the 20th Century.
London Times 01/05/00
- FUROR
OVER NEW TRAFFIC RAMP to slice through ruins of imperial villa
in Rome.
CBC 01/05/00
- AMONG
THE STAID OLD MASTERS GALLERIES clustered on a London street,
an upstart arrived a half-dozen years ago. Jay Jopling's Cube
Gallery has brought worldwide attention to some of the most talked-about
artists on the British art scene, including many of those in the
“Sensation” show, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum last fall.
His reaction to the Brooklyn flap? “That was great! You’d pay
a million dollars to get publicity on that scale!” ARTnews
01/00
- ARTISTIC
DICTATES: Siberia's Krasnoyarsk Lenin Museum wasn't exactly
a cutting-edge institution under the previous regime. But its
reincarnation into a modern art museum has been full of imagination.
In 1998, the Council of Europe even designated it the best museum
in all of Europe. New
York Times 01/04/00 (one-time
registration required for access)
- FRANCE
OPENS ITS MUSEUMS free to the public the first Sunday of every
month. ARTNewspaper.com
01/04/00
- URBAN RENEWAL: Think drug cartel
and you probably think Colombia. Probably think Medellin, Colombia.
Now Fernando Botero, Latin America's most celebrated living artist,
is putting the full force of his renown behind a wide-ranging
effort to overhaul the city's reputation and skyline, installing
79 of his paintings, drawings and sculptures he just donated to
the Museo de Antioquia. New
York Times 01/04/00 (one-time
registration required for access)
- CHARLIE
BROWN'S LAST DAY: After a quarter-century
Charlie Brown says goodbye to the funnies. Philadelphia
Inquirer 01/03/00
- PHILADELPHIA
IM-PEDIMENT: Betty Greenwood was a secretary
at Atlantic Richfield Oil, a hotline counselor and lover of tennis
who died in 1992. She loved a pediment filled with colorful sculptures
on the Philadelphia Art Museum, which she passed each day on her
way to work. When she died in 1992 she left $1 million to "add
to the sculptures in any or all of the uncompleted pediments"
around the building. But the job has turned into a bigger one
than anyone had anticipated. Philadelphia
Inquirer 01/030/00
- INVISIBLE
MAN: Sculptor Frederick Hart died last summer after a bizarre
and largely ignored career. "While still in his 20's, Hart
consciously, pointedly, aimed for the ultimate in the Western
tradition of sculpture, achieved it in a single stroke, then became
invisible 'simply because people refuse to see me.' " New
York Times Magazine 01/02/00 (one-time
registration required for access)
- CEZANNE
STOLEN from Oxford Museum on New Year's
day may have been stolen to order.
BBC 01/02/00
- UNHAPPY
MARRIAGE: Wedding a big piece of public
art with an enormous piece of architecture doesn't necessarily
improve either for New York building. New
York Times 01/02/00 (One-time
registration required for entry)
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