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Sunday April 30
- ART
CAPITAL:
Modern London is bursting
with museum openings this year. "There is a tremendous on-rush.
Wherever you look, there are things happening," said Richard
Cork, art critic for the Times of London. "It is incredibly
important, particularly the Tate Modern. At last we've got the
full-fledged museum of modern art in this country that we've needed
for 50 years. Finally, Britain is taking modern art seriously."
Los Angeles
Times 04/30/00
- STARS
OF BASEL (AND LONDON): Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
are architecture stars of the moment with this month's opening
of London's new Tate Modern. "All famous architects have
mighty egos, and Herzog is unusual only in the openness with which
he displays his. If he weren't brilliant he would be insufferable,
but it isn't unduly flattering to say that he is brilliant. His
immodesty is also redeemed by a talent for collaboration with
others, most notably his childhood friend and business partner
de Meuron. Both are turning 50 this year. They are young - in
the slow-moving world of architecture - to have got to their present
status." London
Evening Standard 04/29/00
- ART
OF RECONCILIATION:
The UK's Secretary
of State for Northern Ireland, is blocking plans for a peace sculpture
made of decommissioned weapons to be erected in Belfast. Richard
Branson has commissioned a £50,000 work from 97-year-old Josefina
de Vasconcellos, the world's oldest living sculptor. "The
idea of the sculpture has been widely welcomed by politicians
in Northern Ireland. However, the proposal to make the new work
from decommissioned weapons is causing disquiet at the Northern
Ireland Office." The
Independent 04/30/00
- THE
MEANING OF MODERN: New York's Museum of Modern Art is trying
to catch up with its name. On the eve of a major expansion it's
taking a look at its own collections with a sharpened eye. "It's
a chance for a monumental institution, one with a reputation for
having a glacial metabolism when it comes to change, to rethink
the modern-art tradition that it helped to invent, and to consider
its own identity in what is often called a postmodern world."
New York Times 04/30/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
- LATENT
ARTISTS: Some artists know right from the beginning that they
want to make art. For others it takes a little longer - after
establishing themselves in other ways, some take to art as a second
career. Is it any less of one? National
Post (Canada) 04/29/00
- COMING
HOME: A decade after a federal law gave Native American tribes
the right to reclaim human remains and sacred artifacts from museums,
less than 10 percent of the human remains believed to be in the
custody of federal agencies, museums and universities have been
returned to tribes. Chicago
Tribune 04/30/00
Friday April 28
- A
CRUSHING BLOW: Porters at Sotheby's London mistakenly put
a crate containing a £100,000 Lucien Freud painting arriving for
a sale into the trash, where it was hauled away and crushed in
a machine. The mistake was not, Sotheby's officials hasten to
explain, a comment by the porters on the artwork. The
Independent 04/28/00
- IDENTITY
CRISIS:
Frank Gehry's Experience
Music Project, soon to open in Seattle is one of a new generation
of experiential museums "characterized by a sometimes brash
and loopy mix of commercialism and high-tech exhibition space.
These facilities often "celebrate not the past but the present
of American popular culture: from Virginia’s Newseum to the Grateful
Dead’s prospective Terrapin Station in San Francisco, from numerous
science museums such as the Museum of Innovation in San Jose to
the various halls of fame. The new museums are sometimes more
akin to dazzling amusement arcades or electronic playgrounds than
to the somber and solidly physical dignities of the Met. Visitors
are called upon to play, participate, and buy, rather than contemplate.
Some curators, indeed, question whether they are really museums
at all and not entertainment complexes with a loose educational
veneer. Metropolis
04/00
- STILL TOO HOT TO HANDLE:
After reducing the time some
of Robert Mapplethorpe's more explicit photographs are shown in
its documentary about the 1990 obscenity trial over the work,
Showtime's "Dirty Pictures" gets an "R" rating
from the Motion Picture Association of America. As originally
edited, the film would have been tagged with an NC-17 which would
mean the network couldn't have shown it in prime time. Newsweek
(Variety) 04/27/00
Thursday April 27
- MONUMENTAL
CONCERN: "Throughout the centuries,
the grand, open-air museum that is Italy has been an easy target
for thieves. The peninsula is littered not only with Roman ruins
but also Etruscan, Phoenician and Greek artifacts - not to mention
the vestiges of countless pre-Roman peoples and even prehistoric
settlements. Today, the plundering of Italy's archaeological treasures
has become a highly lucrative business involving a sophisticated
network of tombaroli, ravagers of archaeological sites; expert
fences in Italy, Switzerland and England; and knowing buyers in
the United States, Japan, Australia and elsewhere." Washington
Post 04/24/00
- YO
PICASSO:
Heirs of a French collector
come forward to lay claim to Picasso work owned by New York's
Museum of Modern Art.
New York
Times 04/27/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- A
LITTLE DISTANCE PLEASE: Okay, so Sotheby's chairman has resigned
in the midst of the auction house investigations. But if his people
still control the board of directors, how will the company make
a clean break from possible misdeeds of the past? Financial
Times 04/27/00
- TARNISHED
TALE: Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman rebuilt Sotheby's
and helped make it successful - it was all a kind of fairy
tale. But sometimes fairy tales write their own dark endings...
New
York Times 04/27/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- HANDICAPPING
THE GUGGENHEIM: What are the chances the Guggenheim's proposed
Gehry building for lower Manhattan will ever get built? Not entirely
solid. On the other hand, "these days the Guggenheim name
is as much a prestige brand as BMW, Bollinger or Armani and not
one that is lightly dismissed especially in its home town. [Guggenheim
director Thomas] Krens says 'more than 50' cities and towns around
the world have invited the Guggenheim to set up shop. Sydney
Morning Herald 04/27/00
- BOLD
STROKE: No museum has been so defined by its architecture
as the Guggenheim. That helps explain the grand scale of what
the proposed lower Manhattan Guggenheim would be.
New York Magazine 04/16/00
- MUTUAL
RETURN: This weekend Germany and Russia meet to exchange some
of the art they stole from one another in World War II.
New York
Times 04/27/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
Wednesday April
26
- HEAD
HUNTERS: Thieves are literally chiseling off the heads of
statues at Cambodia's Angkor Wat, built some 1000 years ago. The
trade in international cultural artifacts is hot - an epidemic
that is irreparably ruining some of the world's cultural treasures.
CNN 04/25/00
- BUILDING
LOBBIES:
Architects on big public
projects often have to deal with the petty political concerns
of their politician/clients. They usually keep their disputes
quiet. But the architects working on Melbourne's landmark Federation
Square have gone public with their complaints, mounting a campaign
throughout Australia to lobby on their behalf.
Sydney
Morning Herald 04/26/00
- A
MILLION POUNDS OF ART:
Charles Saatchi just paid
a million pounds for Damien Hirst's latest: a 20-foot-high plastic
model of the human body. Hirst makes a lot of junk, says one critic.
But when he's on... " 'Hymn' is the first key work of British
art for the new century. To risk an overused term, it is a masterpiece."
The Telegraph
(London) 04/26/00
- UNDUE
INFLUENCE? Sotheby's
postpones it annual meeting as its largest shareholder pushes
the auction house to distance itself from its former chairman
amidst growing investigations into the company's practices.
New York
Times 04/26/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
- ART
WRITE OFF: Casino/hotel tycoon Steve Wynn helped get a tax
break passed in Nevada last year that looks like it will allow
him to get a tax break for the $5.5 million he charges the Bellagio
Hotel to "rent" part of his art collection. Las
Vegas Review-Journal 04/26/00
Tuesday April 25
- ART
OF POLITICS:
Do you know what your senator
has hanging on his walls? Does it tell you anything about him
or her? The Canadian Government's Art Bank provides art to members
of parliament. Too bad more of them don't take up the offer.
National
Post (Canada) 04/25/00
- DIGITART:
Does putting art on the internet
change the meaning of art? Students at Berkley and Sonoma State
Universities are posting and critiquing art to explore how the
medium changes the process of art. "We are using the Net
as our medium instead of print." Wired
04/25/00
- DAILY
RITUAL: There is
no other 20th-century painter quite like Balthus. At the age of
92 he still paints, still in his own way, as always, resolutely
ignoring the art-isms of his time - "I was never interested
in other modern painters because I had my painting, which preoccupied
my mind more than anything else." Financial
Times 04/25/00
Monday April 24
- DEATH
WATCH: In the furious competition for artwork to sell, today's
big auction houses skin their elbows trying to land prestigious
- read lucrative - art to sell. That means combing the daily obits.
And it means... New
York Times 04/24/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- PRIMITIVE
PROVENANCE:
Only a few days after the
Louvre opened its new collection of primitive art to the public,
experts are saying that some of the pieces were almost certainly
stolen. The
Observer 04/23/00
- MAD
FOR MONET: London's Royal Academy decided to stay open all
night during its recent Monet show. It worked. The museum has
become one of the top ten tourist attractions in Britain. "The
exhibition, which cost £1.8 million to stage and four years to
assemble, boosted the number of visitors to the gallery to 1.39
million last year, up from 912,714 in 1998. Nearly 8,600 people
attended the show each day despite the queues and the high entrance
charge of £9." The
Independent 04/24/00
Sunday April 23
- IF
THEY BUILD IT... Last week the Guggenheim showed off Frank
Gehry's models for a new extravagant museum in lower Manhattan.
But the distinctive architecture faces fierce opposition from
those who feel its radical style would mar an image of New York
that "has been immortalised in thousands of movies."
There is also a competing plan for the land - from a hotel and
casino developer. Some on Wall Street are also concerned about
"the idea of thousands of tourists invading the financial
district." BBC
04/23/00
- JUST
WHERE WERE YOU LAST THURSDAY? Being sure about the provenance
of a work of art isn't such an easy matter, as the recent Nazi
stolen art lists have shown. When did we start to care about the
history of a painting? "I think it entered the written history
of art probably at the time that people started collecting art
as something that one appreciates rather than something one has
for its function. It's really when there was a shift over from
stuff that you accumulated because it was a part of your life,
religious devotion or practice to things you appreciated for their
own sake. And that, I guess, happened about 1500." Chicago
Tribune 04/23/00
- BRIT
EPICENTER: "The greatest concentration
of contemporary British art anywhere in the world is to be found
in 50,000 square metres of an east London warehouse. Momart is
where private collections are put out to pasture, where works
that are too big, too precious, too fragile or simply supernumerary
to their owners' homes are discreetly tended by expert staff.
This is where the totems of Sensation go when they
are not on global tour - the waxworks, the mannequins, the ageing
shark." The Observer
04/23/00
- OF
DIRT AND GENIUS: The recent cleaning of the Sistine Chapel
has been described as the most important art event of the 20th
century. Because the uncleaned art had looked so dark and forbidding,
we believed Michelangelo's vision to be dark and forbidding. "And
we came to believe that this darkness was synonymous with true
creativity. In my mind, there is no doubt that the legend of the
Sistine ceiling contributed mightily to the facile fantasy of
the tormented genius: to the falsehood that an artist who was
not in pain was not a real artist. The profound cost of five centuries
of smoke and soot darkening the Sistine surfaces turns out not
to have been in damage done to the frescoes themselves - underneath
the charcoal haze they were wonderfully well preserved - but in
the serious warping of our image of genius." Sunday
Times (London) 04/23/00
- PART
OF THE CULTURE: August Wilson on his personal odyssey through
African American history in his plays: "Before I am anything,
a man or a playwright, I am an African-American. The tributary
streams of culture, history and experience have provided me with
the materials out of which I make my art. As an African-American
playwright, I have many forebears who have pioneered and hacked
out of the underbrush an aesthetic that embraced and elevated
the cultural values of black Americans to a level equal to those
of their European counterparts." New
York Times 04/23/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- WHAT
MODERN ART IS (AND ISN'T): The Museum of Modern Art has been
interpreting modern art throughout its history. Now a new series
of shows reinterprets those interpretations. "In a sense,
the museum is looking back at its own history and concluding that,
while the term modernism might have seemed self-evident
in 1929, when the museum was founded, it means something very
different today." Philadelphia
Inquirer 04/23/00
- THE
ART OF DIPLOMACY: Few
ordinary citizens get to visit their country's embassies around
the world. The artwork on display in those embassies represents
home culture to the international diplomats who come calling.
"If you don't agree on trade issues or you argue about oil,
at least you can talk about the art. It puts another face on us
and provides information about who we are." Now an attempt
to collect important artworks for American embassies abroad.
Los Angeles Times 04/23/00
- THE
PHOTOGRAPHY PROBLEM: Collectors are willing to pay exorbitant
prices for art when they think it's rare. But photography has
this problem of reproducibility, which was got around by the concept
of the "vintage" print. "How problematic the theory
has become is further illustrated by two recent scandals involving
counterfeit vintage prints by Man Ray and Lewis Hine, and by the
Walker Evans retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum, carefully
stocked with old prints when newer and, in some cases, finer ones
were readily available." New
York Times 04/23/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
Friday April 21
- CERTAIN
RETURN: Germany says
it expects to find owners for all the art stolen by Nazis, and
rejects the suggestion by the World Jewish Congress "that
heirless assets be auctioned, like the so-called Mauerbach collection,
which consisted of unclaimed Jewish art in Austria and was sold
several years ago for the benefit of the Jewish community. That
auction raised more than $13 million." Jerusalem
Post 04/21/00
- MUSEUMS
BUSTING OUT ALL OVER:
London is bursting with new cultural venues - new museums, new
art. It's a feast paid for with national lottery proceeds. "The
Lottery is clearing out the musty nooks and attics of London's
large and small art galleries and museums, and with them the crabby
spooks of the curators, scholars and civil servants whose eccentric
decisions were embedded in the buildings' fading fabric."
London
Evening Standard 04/21/00
- LOOK
WITHIN FOR ENLIGHTENMENT: Four documents,
which were discovered inside an ancient Japanese Buddhist statue
while it was undergoing restoration in Kyoto, have helped art
experts confirm the dates of the birth and death of Kaikei, a
famous sculptor of Buddhist images during the 13th century. The
documents included a mourning schedule in honor of the artist.
Daily Yomiuri 04/00
- STATE
OF THE ART - ER, SORT OF: For the first time this year, the
Whitney Biennial includes internet art. But "it's clear that
if 2000 is remembered as a turning point in the history of Internet
art, it may be not because of the Biennial but in spite of it.
It took the Whitney until five days after the show opened to get
a suite of computers operational in the lower level gallery, despite
assurances at the press preview that the computers would be available
to viewers as soon as the pre-show parties had ended." New
Republic 04/13/00
- VERY
VERY OLD: Pottery found in Eastern China dating back 4,800
years has inscriptions of Chinese characters. This predates by
some 2000 years what were previously thought to the earliest Chinese
characters found on bones and tortoise shells. China
Times 04/21/00
- ARE
YOU INSANE? Well, actually, yes. A new show of art "consists
primarily of drawings and paintings on paper gathered during the
early decades of the 20th century from asylums in Germany, Switzerland
and Austria by doctors at the psychiatric clinic of the University
of Heidelberg." New
York Times 04/21/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- ROAD
MAP FOR ART: The Detroit Institute of Arts has put up a flip
chart next to a Barnett Newman painting. The pages attempt to
walk viewers through the painting explaining it. "People
aren't born knowing how to look at a work of art," says Nancy
Jones, DIA education director. "It's a skill. We need to
help all people have a viable experience and that's a fairly new
approach. The old approach used to be 'Here it is. Good luck.'
" Detroit
Free Press 04/21/00
- WAIT
AND SEE: Art dealers are rushing to the web, and some are
even claiming to be making money at it already. The Art Newspaper
talks to art dealers about the experience so far. The
Art Newspaper 04/21/00
Added Thursday April
20
- YOU
WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME:
London’s Marlborough Gallery, convicted of defrauding the Mark
Rothko estate in 1975 and accused last month of cheating the Francis
Bacon estate, has also been fighting a legal battle over the estate
of the German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters for the past two years.
In 1998 a Norway court ruled against the gallery (to the tune
of nearly $4 million to be paid to Schwitters’ family), but last
month an Oslo appeals court reversed the decision. Now the family
owes Marlborough $1.2 million in compensation. New
York Times 04/20/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
- LOST
AND FOUND:
A growing number of stolen Chinese artifacts have been turning
up in Japan, a trend Chinese archaeologists view “as a clear-cut
example of a rampant global problem: the theft of cultural relics
that are then given a false provenance and sold to private collectors
and museums. The greatest number of such thefts occur in China,
where farmers, construction workers and criminal gangs unearth
thousands of relics, large and small, each year and quickly sell
them to smugglers.” New
York Times 04/20/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
-
TUT
TUT TATE: The newly renamed Tate Britain aims to re-present
British art thematically. Does it work? "The Tate, it seems,
has fallen into the hands of experts, not in art, but in marketing
and presentation, and the pun in representing, worn thin already,
is thrust home in every printing of the word as Representing
- how much did they pay the wit who thought of that?"
London
Evening Standard 04/19/00
-
THINKING
BIG, BUT... The proposed new $450 million Frank Gehry Guggenheim
Museum for Lower Manhattan is staggering in its ambitions. It
would "transform" the city's cultural life (if that's
truly possible in New York). But will it ever get built. There
are plenty of doubters.
Los Angeles Times 04/18/00
-
DAMIEN
DOESN'T JUST SHOCK: Of late, British corporations have been
a little more adventurous with the art they hang on their walls.
"Over the past 15 years the profile of contemporary art
has become much higher because of the media coverage of Damien
Hirst and exhibitions such as 'Sensation.' The consequence
is that chief executives are opening up to new approaches."
London Times 04/19/00
-
ART
VS RELIGION: Art and religion have a long history together.
Russia's Church of the Intercession is "the only intact
example of 17th-century Moscow Baroque to have survived the
ransacking of Napoleonic invaders and the desecrations of Stalin.
It is a jewel of the Baroque, lovingly preserved by curators
from the Rublev Museum. But President Vladimir Putin plans to
restore the building to the Russian Orthodox Church, which is
likely to return it to its original function as a parish church
open to the public 12 hours a day. Art experts aghast at the
prospect of a pious crush of stout, wet-coated babushki imperiling
the fragile interior. So what to do? Defend and preserve it
or use and lose it?
London Times 04/19/00
-
EVERYTHING
YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MUSEUMS: The New York Times' special
section on the art and state of the modern museum. New
York Times 04/19/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
-
COLOSSUS
II - THE RETURN: The Colossus of Rhodes was built in about
300 BC and came to be one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient
world. Now Rhodes has decided to rebuild and is commissioning
a new modern Colossus, which it hopes will be completed by the
2004 Olympic Games in Athens. CBC
04/19/00
-
MUSEUM
FEARS FUNDING LOSS: Grappling with making up a budget shortfall,
the Vancouver Art Gallery worries about the affect its fight
with its former director will have on fundraising. "There
is concern the public dispute could prompt the gallery's major
funding agencies to hold back money, forcing cuts to programs
and staff," says the museum's board president. Vancouver
Sun 04/17/00
-
GANTLETS,
GAUNTLETS...WHATEVER - FORE! Vancouver's art community is
furious about the resignation of the Vancouver Art Gallery director
and elevation of a board member as temporary director. The man
appointed to the job says he'd rather be out playing golf. But:
"We have really tough business decisions we have to address,"
he says. "They haven't got time to say we'll put it all
on hold." So the board decided: "Let somebody handle
the business side. Let's go ask old Joe."
Toronto Globe and Mail 04/18/00
-
GRIDLOCK
RELIEF: Europe's museums and monuments have become so clogged
in recent years it's difficult to get near them in tourist season.
So Italy has announced that starting this summer it is extending
hours hours of admission on Sundays to 11 pm. MSNBC
(Reuters) 04/17/00
-
YES
IT'S DRAMATIC, BUT... Critics call the design for Beijing's
new opera house "extravagant" and culturally insensitive,
like a "medieval castle," or a "glass submarine"
which could become a "tomb like the Titanic." Nonetheless,
the French architect who conceived the project predicts his
design will get official approval in a few weeks. China
Times 04/18/00
-
AT
LEAST THERE'S NO STAGE EQUIPMENT TO GET STUCK:
London’s National Portrait Gallery now has a dramatic new extension
- including a top-floor atrium with panoramic views of the city
- designed by Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones, architects of the
remodeled Royal Opera House. The
Guardian 04/17/00
-
REM
KOOLHAAS has won this year's Pritzker
Prize for architecture. New
York Times 04/17/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
-
HIGH
STAKES SUIT: The San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art is suing the heirs of a local collector for $18
million for refusing to come to an agreement about the sale
of a Picasso painting. "On one side you have SFMOMA, furious
that its generous offer — $3 million more than the family realized
at auction — was rejected. On the other, you have the family,
furious that its right to dispose of its inheritance as it sees
fit is being questioned. How do you explain SFMOMA's lawsuit,
which, even if it is won by the museum, might jeopardize its
relationship with many potential donors?" San
Francisco Examiner 04/15/00
-
THE
RUSH TO E-COMMERCE: The Museum of
Modern Art and the Tate Museum team up on a commercial website
for art. Plans include selling commissioned design products
and offering educational programs such as live webcasts of lectures
and concerts. It will also carry archival material on art. Profits
from the site will help pay the museums' operating expenses.
New
York Times 04/17/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
-
HAVE
ART, NEED HOME: New Zealand's big
state-owned company ECNZ is going out of business. So what's
to become of the company's publicly-owned "highly
discriminating corporate art collection" of some of the
country's best artists? By law, the collection has to be displayed
for the public, but...
New Zealand Herald 04/17/00
-
(NO)
EYE FOR ART: A University of Toronto
professor of psychology says that paying close attention to
the blind may tell us a whole lot about art. "Over three
decades of experiments, the Irish-born scientist has shown that
the blind can make and understand pictures in ways that no one
had imagined. And that fact forces us to rethink many of our
preconceptions about representational art in general."
Toronto
Globe and Mail 04/17/00
-
A
GIRL CAN DREAM, CAN'T SHE? This week
the Guggenheim shows New York the Frank Gehry building it wants
to build in Lower Manhattan. Will the project really get built?
Hard to say, but "like other sideshows that have kept New
York in denial about the mediocrity of the buildings it puts
up, the feasibility question distracts from the challenge presented
by the design. This is the top form architecture comes in these
days. Want some?" New
York Times 04/17/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
-
TROPHY
ART: Russia's Pushkin Museum has put the controversial Gold
of Troy on permanent display. The Troy collection was secretly
taken from Germany by Soviet troops at the end of World War
II, and was believed lost until the Russian government revealed,
in the early 1990s, that the collection was in Moscow. Germany
and Russia are arguing over the return of artwork captured in
World War II. The
Art Newspaper 04/16/00
-
THEY'RE
BACK: How old do you have to be before you're not a YBA
(Young British Artist) anymore? In any case, the YBA's have
new shows up, including an effort at the new White Cube branch
office. London
Times 04/16/00
-
BATTLE
FOR THE NEW: New York's Whitney Museum has its Biennial
stocked with 97 artists; across town P.S.1 Contemporary Art
Center has its "Greater New York" show, a "spirited
affair that rounds up enough youngish artists (146 in all) to
start a day camp. The latest art-world trend is untrendy artists.
Which show does it better? New
York Times 04/16/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
-
A
USE FOR DEAD TREES: A Detroit sculptor sees a picture of
a sculpture on the pages of the Detroit Free Press that was
stolen from him last fall and goes out to claim it.
Detroit Free Press 04/15/00
-
RUSSIAN
RETURN: Police have recovered 16
paintings stolen from St. Petersburg's Academy of Arts last
year, and two suspects have been detained. Last December thieves
broke into the second floor of the museum and took the paintings,
most of which dated from the 19th century. "One of the
burglars pretended to be an art historian and obtained false
documents allowing him to visit the academy's library for [a
period of] nearly two months. He repeatedly cut the alarm system
in several places, so that people got used to it sounding constantly
and became less attentive, making it easier to steal the paintings."
St.
Petersburg Times (Russia) 04/14/00
-
GEORGIA
ON MY MIND: Last fall a series of watercolors attributed
to Georgia O'Keeffe owned by the Kemper Museum was thrown into
dispute when experts cast doubt on their authenticity. The controversy
was heightened because other experts from the National Gallery
in Washington had previously praised the work and recommended
them. The Santa Fe New Mexican delves into the tangled story
behind the art transactions. Santa
Fe New Mexican 04/14/00
-
THEY
LOVES THEIR DRINKING HOLES IN SOUTH-EAST: Investing in interesting
architecture and yoking it to an artistic purpose has become
the preferred way of driving economic and cultural renewal in
many a distressed community - can you say Bilbao? But a landmark
building in southeast Britain is about to join the ranks of
missed opportunities. It's about to be wholesaled off by city
councilors. "Offered the chance to transform the pavilion
into the leading arts centre for the South-East,
they prefer to turn it into a pub." London
Telegraph 04/14/00
-
RUSSIAN
RETURN: Police have recovered 16
paintings stolen from St. Petersburg's Academy of Arts last
year, and two suspects have been detained. Last December thieves
broke into the second floor of the museum and took the paintings,
most of which dated from the 19th century. "One of the
burglars pretended to be an art historian and obtained false
documents allowing him to visit the academy's library for [a
period of] nearly two months. He repeatedly cut the alarm system
in several places, so that people got used to it sounding constantly
and became less attentive, making it easier to steal the paintings."
St.
Petersburg Times (Russia) 04/14/00
-
GEORGIA
ON MY MIND: Last fall a series of watercolors attributed
to Georgia O'Keeffe owned by the Kemper Museum was thrown into
dispute when experts cast doubt on their authenticity. The controversy
was heightened because other experts from the National Gallery
in Washington had previously praised the work and recommended
them. The Santa Fe New Mexican delves into the tangled story
behind the art transactions. Santa
Fe New Mexican 04/14/00
-
THEY
LOVES THEIR DRINKING HOLES IN SOUTH-EAST: Investing in interesting
architecture and yoking it to an artistic purpose has become
the preferred way of driving economic and cultural renewal in
many a distressed community - can you say Bilbao? But a landmark
building in southeast Britain is about to join the ranks of
missed opportunities. It's about to be wholesaled off by city
councilors. "Offered the chance to transform the pavilion
into the leading arts centre for the South-East,
they prefer to turn it into a pub." London
Telegraph 04/14/00
-
A
ROVING EYE FOR ART: Someone is stealing Detroit's outdoor
bronze statues. In the past six months dozens of pieces of outdoor
artwork have disappeared, probably to be sold by thieves overseas.
Detroit
Free Press 04/14/00
-
ARCHEOLOGY
WITHOUT A LICENSE: The Indian army and the country's State
Archeology Directorate have gotten into a battle over the discovery
of rock paintings in Kaimur Hills of central Bihar. The army
says it has discovered 52 rock shelters replete with prehistoric
paintings, while the Archaeology Directorate rebuffs the claim
as being "unprofessional, inadmissible and doubtful".
Hindustan
Times (India) 04/14/00
-
WAS
IT A SANDSTORM? Archaeologists are planning a foray into
Egypt's Western Desert next month to try to solve an ancient
mystery - the fate of the lost Persian army of Cambyses.
Experts think they may have discovered the place where the army
of Persian King Cambyses, who finished off the 26th dynasty
of the Pharaohs in 525 BC, ushering in two centuries of Persian
rule in ancient Egypt, disappeared and perished in the desert.
ABC
News.com
-
GERMANY
AND RUSSIA to exchange artwork looted from one another during
World War II.
CBC 04/14/00
-
FOLLOW
THE LEADER: Given the
quick success of British and German web lists of artwork of
questionable provenance, American museums discover the internet
as well. Yesterday the Metropolitan
Museum posted a list
of 393 paintings whose ownership histories have any gap between
1933 and 1945. Then the Museum
of Modern Art followed suit with a list of the known provenance
of 15 works acquired after 1933. New
York Times 04/13/00
(one-time registration required for
entry)
-
DITTO
CHICAGO'S ART INSTITUTE: 500 works listed by the museum.
Chicago
Tribune 04/13/00
-
WHY
NOW? And by the way, the Presidential Advisory Commission
on Holocaust Assets asked the heads of four major museums yesterday,
just how serious are you about this issue? And why is Boston's
Museum of Fine Art's list so thin? Boston
Herald 04/13/00
-
THE
MET, MOMA AND THE MFA trooped before the Presidential Advisory
Commission on Holocaust Assets Wednesday to declare their intention
to resolve provenance issues. The commission acts as a national
body examining what stolen war-era assets exist in the United
States and oversees the research to identify them. Newsday
04/13/00
-
FIRST
CLAIMS: Boston's MFA acknowledges that a family has made
a claim for one of the European paintings in the museum's collection
that was stolen and sold in France during the Nazi occupation.
The MFA responds: "We have researched the claim and found
it to be completely valid and have since been discussing an
amicable resolution with the claimant. The claim-ant wishes
to keep the painting at the MFA and we are working toward that
end.'' Boston
Herald 04/13/00
-
MINISTER
OF DEFENSE: British
arts minister Alan Howarth announced the creation of a new panel
to further investigate the Nazi provenance of art in British
collections. But he also tried to defuse the recent publicity,
declaring: “In fact, the museums and galleries were simply announcing
findings about uncertain provenance. It does not follow that
because there is a gap in the recorded history of a particular
item it must have been looted. Whatever wrongs were done in
the Nazi era, works of art held in our public collections were
- we should start by assuming - acquired in good faith and have
probably been held for the public benefit.” The
Guardian 04/13/00
-
A
FORMAL DENIAL:
In response to the recently filed civil suit alleging price-fixing,
Sotheby's officially denied conspiring with its rival auction
house Christie's to fix commissions and asked a federal judge
to dismiss the charges. New
York Times 04/13/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
THE
VALUE OF ART: Five
years after French President Jacques Chirac urged the Louvre
to create a permanent place for “primitive art,” the museum
has opened the doors to its first galleries of African, Asian,
Oceanic, and American art. “The idea is that, from now on, the
112 works on display there should be treated as the aesthetic
equals of the Egyptian, Greek or Renaissance art elsewhere in
the building.” But “a good many unhappy curators” are are grumbling
about the shift. New
York Times 04/13/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
AMERICAN
BIAS:
About 300 union cartoonists in Los Angeles say they plan to
picket KCET-TV, LA's PBS affiliate, to protest what they claim
is increased use of Canadian cartoons on public television.
The cartoonists say their jobs are being lost to Canadians "This
is sort of the last straw that PBS is giving tax dollars to
foreign companies," says one animator. But a PBS spokesperson
says: "Of 17 children's programs on the air at this point,
I believe three are produced in Canada, and none of them have
any federal money in them." Los
Angeles Daily News 04/13/00
-
CANCELLATION
COMPENSATION: A Hartford artist whose exhibition of artwork
depicting sex aids was canceled last fall by nervous city officials,
has made a settlement with Hartford City Council. The city will
pay the artist $2,500 after she complained that the city had
violated her First Amendment rights by canceling her show.
Hartford Courant 04/11/00
-
JUNKYARD
CHIC: “Brixton Breakers
was a rubbish-strewn, rat-infested junkyard in south London,
over-run by bikers and drug dealers.” Then artists started working
in its run-down Minet Road studios - including Damien Hirst,
who made all his formaldehyde pieces there -
and “after the artists came the collectors, dragging
their Gucci through the mire, and it became a compulsory stop-over
on the international collectors' circuit.” Now Brixton’s the
cradle of one of the most exciting new art movements London’s
seen in years. The
Guardian 04/13/00
-
DIZZYING
HEIGHTS Lucian Freud’s
most recent painting, “Night Portrait, Face Down,” just went
on view in New York and has visitors commenting that the prone
nude figure seems to be “plunging down through space.” “The
idea is that when you stand back from it you feel a little dizzy,”
Freud says. (Freud holds the auction record, at £2.8 million,
for any living British artist, and the new painting has already
been sold for an undisclosed price.) The
Telegraph 04/13/00
-
SPOTTED
AT AUCTION: Six years ago thieves broke into Bobby Henderson's
Cleveland home and stole a valuable stained glass window. It
was created by English artist William Morris more than 100 years
ago, measures 9 feet 9 inches high by 5 feet 6 inches wide,
and weighs about 600 pounds. So it was some feat to get it out
of the house. Six weeks ago, Henderson's friends spotted the
distinctive piece of art on the Internet auction site, eBay.
They contacted Henderson, who contacted authorities. Cleveland
Plain Dealer 04/13/00
-
IF
THE INFORMATION HAD BEEN AVAILABLE IN THE FIRST PLACE...
Less than two hours after Boston's Museum of Fine Arts put up
a website Monday providing details about seven paintings that
might have been looted during the Holocaust, the museum received
an e-mail providing information about one of the paintings.
Boston
Herald 04/12/00
-
St.
Louis Museum investigating four of its paintings - including
a Max Beckman and a Matisse to check Nazi provenance. St.
Louis Post-Dispatch 04/12/00
-
YOUR
PICTURE HERE: The
largest poster art project ever seen in Britain is currently
on display on billboards throughout London’s East End. Artist
Alison Marchant gathered candid snapshots from local families’
albums and enlarged them on 126 billboards and 85 freestanding
posters. “It's as if suddenly all the houses in the East End
were made of glass.” London
Evening Standard 04/12/00
-
THE
ART OF ONLINE: "Ten years ago, we used to have 500
people coming to an opening. Now it's closer to five than 500."
Art galleries discover that many people prefer the comfort of
choosing art online. CBC
04/12/00
-
VANCOUVER
ART MUSEUM stands by its recent leadership decisions, despite
petition by prominent artists condemning them. CBC
04/12/00
-
"SAD
SITUATION": A blue-chip roster of leaders from the
Vancouver cultural community, including architect Arthur Erickson,
author/curator Doris Shadbolt and artist Gordon Smith, is calling
for the resignations of the executive board and the interim
director of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Vancouver
Sun 04/11/00
-
FISH
(MAMMAL?) OUT OF WATER: Whale painter Wyland, who has made
a career of wandering up and down the West Coast painting giant
sea-life paintings on the sides of buildings, has proposed to
bring his show inland. To Oklahoma City, no less. But the city's
arts commission has declared the project isn't in keeping with
the character of the historic district in which Wyland proposes
to work, and turned down permission for it. The
Oklahoman 04/11/00
-
NOW
EVERYONE'S GOT TO DO IT: Last summer Chicago's art cows
were the hit of the town. Now Cincinnati is planning a Big Pig
Gig and Toronto is courting moose (mooses?). So Buffalo, well,
what else would the city deploy but the big brown beasts? The
project has been a hit with artists, sponsors and the public.
Look for the first herd in May. Buffalo
News 04/11/00
-
SAFE
HERITAGE: In February Hawaii's Bishop Museum turned over
rare Hawaiian artifacts to Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawai‘i
Nei in accoradance with the Native American Graves Protection
and Repatriation Act. Hui Malama officials told museum staff
the artifacts were reburied in a Big Island cave. But now some
critics say the items should go back to the Honolulu museum
because of concerns over their security. Honolulu
Advertiser 04/11/00
-
YOUR
LIST OF LISTS: Germany posts list
of Nazi-stolen art on the internet. "Over 2,200 works of
art, as well as 10,000 books and coins have already been indexed
on the pages of www.LostArt.de.
These works have been called the "Linzer Collection"
because they include paintings intended by Hitler for a "Führer
Museum" in the Austrian city of Linz." Die
Welt 04/11/00
-
NEW
TOOL: "The Internet makes this
information available to the most people possible. Those who
have survived can now easily search for what they have lost.
If they are unable, their children or grandchildren can search
for them." Wired
04/11/00
-
Boston's
Museum of Fine Arts posts web
list of seven European paintings whose provenance,
or history of ownership, may implicate them in the widespread
looting of art in Europe during the Nazi era. Boston
Globe 04/11/00
-
MFA
acknowledges that "there are
gaps in the ownership history of at least 200 other works in
its European collection and that some of these artworks also
could be cause for concern." Boston
Herald 04/11/00
-
STARS
IN THEIR EYES? Some 100 of Vancouver's
most prominent visual artists and critics have signed a petition
demanding the resignation of the Vancouver Art Gallery's acting
director and the the museum's board of directors who appointed
him. The petition says that "to appoint an unqualified
individual with no experience directing a gallery or public
institution is irresponsible and reckless." The museum's
previous director "left in the wake of series of disagreements
with the board, the most recent a clash in which he was pressured
to mount a show of photographs by rock star Bryan Adams."
Toronto
Globe and Mail 04/11/00
-
"I'm
very bothered by the conflict of interest
of having a board member take over as director of the gallery."
CBC
04/11/00
-
AUCTION
HOUSE DEFECTION: Russian heirs of
the pioneering abstract artist Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)
have decided to sell a painting estimated to be worth £13 million
at Phillips, the London auction house which has long stood in
the shadow of Christie's and Sotheby's. ArtNewsroom.com
04/11/00
-
QUESTIONS
OF WHERE: All well and good to talk about tracking down
provenance of a work of art - of course it's the right thing
to do. But actually doing it and making it stick isn't always
so easy. Boston
Globe 04/10/00
-
NO
ONE SAID IT WOULD BE EASY:
Efforts by the Art Loss Register to repatriate Nazi-confiscated
artworks to their rightful owners have been stymied by a little-known
German tax code. “We certainly have the impression that there
exists a willingness to return property to its legal owners,”
says the Register’s director Sara Jackson. “However, it is unclear
to us how this willingness corresponds with a German law that
went into effect in 1988.” Ha’aretz
04/09/00
-
CULT
OF THE NEW: "Every year fresh new ranks of art-producers
rise up almost fully-formed from the art schools, au fait
with the current ways of art-knowingness, hard on the heels
of their predecessors, intent on subverting the art world hierarchy
and establishing their own rightful niches within it. They have
to be seen to be doing something different from what was done
before, or revamping the old in contemporary guise, to live
up to and perpetuate the Western art tradition of continual
innovation." That we're in a new millennium only accelerates
the quest. *spark-online
04/00
-
HIT
‘EM WITH A ONE-TWO PUNCH: After more than four years without
a major show, Damien Hirst - the “original enfant terrible”
of the contemporary British art scene, whose shark in formaldehyde
stirred up controversy at the Brooklyn Art Museum - is back
with a new batch of work, and it’s just as theatrical and button-pushing
as ever. “You get people to think one thing, and then you come
round from another direction." The
Guardian 04/10/00
-
PURE
MARKETING GENIUS:
Hirst’s new work “Hymn” is at the center of a new plagiarism
controversy. The sculpture - a 20-foot replica of a children’s
anatomy kit - was bought for an alleged $1.5 million by gallery
owner Charles Saatchi, yet no one has yet to see the work in
person. NPR
04/09/00
-
IT’S
OUT THERE: East London’s Hoxton neighborhood is quickly
acquiring “status as the new center of the capital's contemporary
art market.” More than 30 new galleries have popped up there
in the last few years, including the White Cube2, which opens
later this week with its inaugural show, “Out There.” The
Telegraph 04/10/00
-
DEVELOPMENT
DREAMS: Last chance, says a Boston developer, to do something
dramatic with a piece of the city's waterfront. "One scenario
features a dramatic structure resembling the Sydney Opera House,
surrounded by green space on 4.6 acres on choice waterfront
property. A second would involve a smaller civic building being
built near the Federal Court House on a two-thirds acre plot."
Boston
Herald 04/10/00
-
NOT
AT LIBERTY: A Los Angeles artist, stopped from painting
a 12-story Statue
of Liberty mural on a building because he didn't have
the required permit, draped a 24-foot black banner with the
word "CENSORED" across Liberty's face.
Los Angeles Daily News 04/10/00
-
TAKING
THE ELITE OUT OF SELLING ART: By some estimates, there are
currently some 20,000 Web sites involved in selling art, and
more are on the way. "Marketing experts say these sites
will permanently alter the way art is sold and radically expand
the market. Whether the sudden flood of art sites is truly the
dawn of a new era bringing riches to sellers and creators of
art or just a shift down-market disguised as technological progress,
only time will tell." Washington
Post 04/09/00
-
WHAT
WERE THEY THINKING? A few weeks ago Christie's proposed
to auction a stolen 10th Century Chinese wall panel. Then American
customs agents stepped in to block the sale. "At best,
the auction house’s willingness to cooperate can be described
as an exercise in damage limitation in a case that raises serious
questions about Christie’s thoroughness in examining the provenance
of the works of art it offers for sale." The
Art Newspaper 04/07/00
-
THE
POWER OF ART: Five years ago, a derelict power station on
the south bank of the Thames fit right into its desolate surroundings.
Now, £135 million later, the building has been transformed to
house the new Tate Modern, one of the great modern art collections
in the world. Sunday
Telegraph 04/09/00
-
THE
POWER OF TRANSFORMATION: "It is all rich vindication
for the once-mocked activity of making contemporary art, which
has moved in only a couple of generations from marginal status
in a philistine, insular culture, via such famous scandals as
Carl André's bricks and the Turner Prize dust-ups, to become
the most glamorous, honky-tonky wriggle and pout in today's
self-consciously globalist Britain." The
Observer 04/09/00
-
TICKET
TO THE BIGS:
Designing a major new
museum has become the price of admission into the architectural
big league. Now it's happening for Herzog & de Meuron. The
Observer 04/09/00
- PULLED
PAINTING: A painting depicting a pope with an eye patch has
been replaced in an Oklahoma state capitol exhibition after
a conservative lawmaker called it anti-Christian.
Washington Post 04/09/00
- TOO
EXPLICIT? Producer Arthur Cohn has gone to Israel to talk
about the inclusion of forensic photographs of Israeli athletes
killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics in his Academy Award-winning
documentary "One Day in September." Relatives of the
slain athletes want the footage removed. Jerusalem
Post 04/09/00
- ONLY
55 YEARS LATE: Germany will publish a list of several thousand
works of art stolen from museums and individuals across Europe
in an effort to restore some of it with its rightful owners. Financial
Times 04/06/00
- CONSPIRACY
THEORY: Prosecutors in
the federal antitrust investigation of Sotheby's and Christie's
have evidence that the chairmen of both auction houses personally
set in motion a price-fixing scheme to limit competition. Both
men deny the accusations, but “the allegation that a conspiracy
was devised at the very top of the venerable auction houses raises
the stakes in the investigation, which has already roiled the
world of art collectors.” New
York Times 04/07/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- LET
THE FREAK FLAG FLY:
“In many ways, Frank O. Gehry is to architecture what Jimi Hendrix
was to rock music - a wild, original, creative genius with a giddy,
international appeal.” So he was the logical choice to design
Seattle’s new interactive music museum, the Experience Music Project,
which opens to the public in June. Gehry’s colorful, free-form
design pays homage to Hendrix, and rock music in general, and
was inspired in part by the look and style of electric guitars
“which he cut up and used as the basis for the design.” (Story
includes timeline of Gehry’s best-known buildings.) The
Guardian 04/06/00
- OUTSIDE
APPEARANCES ARE MISLEADING: In the past five years attendance
at the Vancouver Art Museum has doubled. Then suddenly last week,
the museum's director resigned. Why? Some say it was over a dispute
with the board of directors over whether the gallery should exhibit
photography by rock star Bryan Adams as part of a fund-raising
venture for the museum. But from behind the scenes emerges a story
of turmoil. Vancouver
Sun 04/06/00
- YO
PICASSO: For 20 years they all thought the picture on the
wall behind the boss's desk was just an odd portrait, maybe even
an unflattering one of the boss himself. But upon appraisal, the
"poster" turns out to be a genuine signed Picasso. Flint
Journal 04/06/00
- SILVER
FOR SALE:
Christie’s will auction German diamond baron Sir Julius Wernher’s
extravagant collection of antique silver and Old Master paintings.
“We haven't had a sale of this quality since World War II,"
said Harry Williams-Bulkeley, head of Christie's silver department.
The
Times of India (AP) 04/07/00
- THERE
HE GOES AGAIN: Hans Haacke, fresh off his Whitney imbroglio,
is into another, this time in Germany where his proposed project
for the new Reischtag - a wooden flower trough, 23 feet wide and
70 feet long - has also sparked controversy. "The trough
is to be filled with dirt brought by each of the 669 legislators
from their hometowns - something that many lawmakers across party
lines say draws an awkward allusion to the mythical veneration
of German "blood and soil'' practiced by the Nazis."
Fox
News 04/05/00
- HE
SAID, THEY SAID: Two prominent San Francisco families are
arguing over the sale of a $45 million Picasso. The painting was
to be bought jointly by a wealthy art patron and the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. The sellers agreed to the sale, thinking
the museum would own it. When it became clear the patron and SFMOMA
would co-own it, the sellers pulled out. San
Francisco Chronicle 04/06/00
- SO
YOU'VE GOT SOMETHING AGAINST BIG RED METAL SPIDERS? Sculptor
Mark di Suvero’s design for a “gateway sculpture” under consideration
for a prominent spot in Sydney’s Sculpture Walk has prompted “responses
from rapture to dread.” Sydney
Morning Herald 04/06/00
- INSIDE
OUT: A number of artists are experimenting with medical testing
in their art. Scans, endoscopy, genetic testing - "to obtain
images of their insides, artists are pushing the boundaries of
self-exposure, subjecting themselves to painful scrutiny on many
levels." ARTNews
04/00
- FRESCO
TECHNOLOGY: Using computer
re-creations and chemical technology to expose underlayers, after
15 years of arduous restoration a dozen 15th-century
wall paintings by Renaissance master Piero della Francesca will
be unveiled to the public Friday in the Church of San Francesco
in Arezzo, Italy. Twenty years ago such a job would not have been
possible. New
York Times 04/06/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- GOTCHA!:
Two men believed to be responsible for the rash of recent art
heists around Montreal have been arrested. Police have seized
several statues, but say artwork worth millions of dollars may
be unrecoverable. CBC
04/05/00
- A
DEEP LOVE OF ART? "Up to 16 times since the beginning
of autumn, some of Canada's toniest residences on the island of
Montreal were hit by art thieves who absconded with millions of
dollars worth of works by famous masters, including 10 by the
prolific 19th-century painter Cornelius Krieghoff and six by James
Wilson Morrice, the first Canadian-born painter to achieve an
international reputation." Toronto
Globe and Mail 04/05/00
- TECHNOLOGY
TAKES MANHATTAN: This spring New York's museums are full of
technology. "These artists were just working with what surrounds
them, and technology is so dominant, TV, computer and Internet-wise,
that artists have to confront these technologies." Wired
04/05/00
- WE
DIDN'T INVENT NEW, YOU KNOW: of the 1890s. Newspapers and
magazines were full of articles celebrating the new woman, the
new journalism, the new fiction, the new sculpture and, above
all, the new art - l'art nouveau." A new exhibit London's
Victoria & Albert Museum highlights the currents of change
in design and aesthetics that swept through Europe from 1890-1914.
The Telegraph
04/05/00
- OR
WAS IT "GAUDY"?: "infectious dominance"
and bizarrely extravagant ornamentation. London
Times 04/04/00
- OR
MAYBE "SEXY"?: "The most startling among 400
objects in the largest exhibition of art nouveau ever mounted
has been lent on condition that no salacious comments are made
about it." The
Guardian 04/05/00
- PERIPHERAL
VISION: Somehow Picasso paying restaurant bills by sketching
on menus seems a lot more palatable than the current craze for
artists' "peripheral works" - like the inky faxed pages
of David Hockney's works that sold for $17,000 last year. Now
snapshots from a roll of film taken by Hockney are going on sale
next week and they're "being hyped as a potential investment."
The Age (Melbourne) 04/05/00
- WHO
KNEW? Georgia O'Keeffe was fond of secrets. But everyone thinks
they know the artist's work. Turns out not as well as people might
think. In compiling the O'Keeffe catalogue raisonné its author
"was stunned to find hundreds of carefully preserved sketchbooks,
tiny line drawings, detailed renderings of landscapes, luminous
floral pastels, and completely abstract late watercolors. The
works on paper make up about half of the slightly more than 2,000
entries in the two-volume catalogue." ARTNews
04/00
- TRADING
ART AND ARTISTS: Hong Kong and Berlin aren't two cities usually
associated with one another. But this summer artwork by 1000 Berlin
and Hong Kong artists will be swapped for large exhibitions. Then,
200 artists from each will visit the other and do residences.
Organizers of the project feel there are natural links between
the two cities - "both have been politically reorganized
and are currently trying to redefine themselves, particularly
in the cultural, economic and political spheres; both function
as a window (Hong Kong to China, and Berlin to Eastern Europe);
and both are in the process of transformation." South
China Morning Post 04/04/00
- RETURN
TO SENDER: At a Europe/Africa summit conference, representatives
of 52 African countries have asked European countries to return
cultural treasures taken during colonial times. Items "in
dispute include the Sphinx's beard from Egypt, an obelisk from
Ethiopia and a golden throne from Ghana." CBC
04/04/00
- FOOD
FIGHT: Australia's newly competitive art markets have caused
art auction houses to slash their commissions and offer inducements
like "frequent buyer" programs to customers in an attempt
to increase business.
Sydney Morning Herald 04/04/00
- SO
MAYBE IT'S GOOD THE ARCHITECTURE DOESN'T FIT IN? Groundbreaking
for Beijing's new French-designed $567 million performing arts
center took place this week. Plans for an official celebration
were called off because of controversy over the project. "Critics
of the project say the futuristic design by French architect Paul
Andreu is a waste of money and is out of keeping with Chinese
and Stalinist architecture of China's capital." China
Times 04/04/00
- WHERE
ART AND COMMERCE CONVERGE (COLLIDE?): Vittorio Radice has
seen Bilbao. He's seen what Frank Gehry has done for an out-of-the-way
Spanish city. And he wants to work the same magic on Birmingham,
England. Not a museum, though. Radice runs a store and his great
grand shiny shimmery confection would be a tribute to retailing.
Daily Telegraph (London) 04/04/00
- OLD
LOOT LAWS: Someone's doing some work on your property. They
find a cache of buried gold coins. They claim it for their own.
Do they have a right to it? "Idaho Supreme Court will soon
hear a dispute pitting media mogul Jann Wenner, the owner of Rolling
Stone magazine, against a construction worker who discovered
a cache of gold coins buried on Wenner's land near the Sun Valley
resort area. The worker made his claim based on the ancient common
law rule of treasure trove, which awards title of an artifact
to the finder, be he looter or archaeologist." Is this fair?
Archeology Magazine 04/00
- FASCINATED
BY CANOES: The first-ever Bill Mason art exhibit and sale
opened Friday in a tiny gallery outside Ottawa, but don't bring
your checkbook - all 50 paintings were sold within 22 minutes
of the show's opening. Phone purchases were scheduled to begin
half an hour after the doors opened - but that was already eight
minutes after the last 'sold' sticker went up. "It's almost
as if Mason created these tiny glimpses of art just for people
who appreciate the charms made accessible by a canoe" All
About Canoes News 03/29/00
- HOW
BAD IS BAD? As though the word had a static meaning. Nonetheless,
academic art has had a bad rep for a long time. But there are
signs that is changing. Atlantic
Monthly 04/00
- HAM
AND FLIES ON... Belgian artist covered entry pillars of a
Ghent museum with 8,000 slices of ham. He hopes that over three
months the "sculpture" will attract swarms of flies
and be a "living" piece of art. "Good art must
stink a bit," he said. Critics have so far disagreed. Singapore
Straits Times (Reuters) 04/03/00
- MORE
THAN A TRIP TO HOME DEPOT: The Smithsonian badly needs repairs
- about $500 million worth. Though artifacts are largely protected,
a visit to some of the research and storage rooms on the Mall
showed how the neglect could damage irreplaceable collections.
Washington
Post 04/02/00
- THE
TATE USED TO BE A MUSEUM: But with its makeover into the House
of Britain, it's fallen down on the job, writes one critic. "Now
it is a card table on which teams of spectacularly ignorant modern
curators play snap with the nation's heritage. Here's a 17th-century
portrait of a squat Englishman. Here's a 20th-century portrait
of a squat English dog. They're both squat, so let's hang them
together. Snap!" The
Sunday Times 04/02/00
- BLOCK
THAT SALE: A 10th-century Chinese sculptured wall panel stolen
from the Five Dynasties (A.D. 906-960) tomb of Wang Chuzhi in
Hebei Province in 1994 has been ordered seized in New York. The
artwork was due to be auctioned at Christie's but the US Customs
office wants to return it to China. Archeology
Magazine 03/30/00
- WHO
OWNS ART: In the 1950s Maxfield Parrish gave employees of
the Windsor County National Bank a painting he had done to thank
them for the help they gave him, month after month, balancing
his accounts. The bank's been sold a couple of times, and the
painting has appreciated in value; it's worth several hundred
thousand dollars. The bank's new owners tried to sell it, but
the townspeople are mobilized for action to save their much-loved
civic treasure.
Boston Globe 04/02/00
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