Tuesday
April 30
BRITISH
MUSEUM TO CUT 150: Because of budget problems, the British
Museum is cutting 150 workers. " It is hoped that the job
losses - 7% of the total staff - will come through voluntary redundancies
and retirements, but the museum says some compulsory redundancies
may be necessary. The London museum says it hopes its 'core values'
of free access and maintaining collections will not be cut back
in the run up to its 250th anniversary year in 2003." BBC
04/30/02
ANOTHER
SOTHEBY'S SENTENCE: A week after ex-Sotheby's chairman Alfred
Taubman was sentenced to jail and a $7 million fine, Diana Brooks,
the auction house's ex-CEO was sentenced to "three years
probation for her role in conducting a price-fixing scheme with
the rival auction house Christie's. Mrs. Brooks, 51, was also
ordered to serve six months of home detention, perform 1,000 hours
of community service and pay a fine of $350,000." The
New York Times 04/30/02
AN
ODE TO...CONCRETE: Concrete is not the kind of material that
inspires warm affection. But the nearly completed Modern Art Museum
of Fort Worth is made of concrete and already drawing admiring
looks (well, maybe not from the builders - "every joint and
corner is exposed. Mistakes can't be camouflaged; they remain
for all to see. This has produced a run on Valium by the contractor
and structural engineer.). Architect Tadao Ando "is the Leonardo
of architectural concrete, investing it with an elegance and refinement
that rivals only dream about." Dallas
Morning News 04/30/02
THE
ART OF POLITICS: The new Scottish Parliament building has
seen its budget climb from £40 million to £295 million ("and
which is confidently expected to break the £300 million mark by
the close of business"), when it opens next year. "The
trick now is to ensure its artistic content mirrors the national
ideals expressed in the structure that has at last begun to punctuate
the Edinburgh skyline." The
Scotsman 04/30/02
Monday
April 29
DEATH
OF A GREAT COLLECTOR: Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza,
one of the world's great art collectors, has died in Spain. He
"ruled uncontested among the art collectors of the past century.
A Swiss national of German-Hungarian descent, he resisted the
pull of Modernism and recreated the whole universe of Western
art in a collection that embraced everything from the Italians
of the trecento. Yet people tended to look down on Thyssen as
nothing more than a rich hedonist, a lady's man and a dandy. In
the world of art, however, this head of a huge international conglomerate
was a great pioneer." Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 04/28/02
THE
"MEANING" OF ART: "Most people engaged with
visual art believe, like Mondrian, that it can produce experiences,
even awakenings, that are real but not necessarily available to
objectivity. Skeptics appear to believe that anything unavailable
to objective study must be merely subjective, therefore only a
step away from chicanery and private fantasy." An art critic
and a physicist argue about the search for meaning.
San Francisco Chronicle 04/28/02
BLEAK
FUTURE FOR SOTHEBY'S: Despite last week's conviction of Sotheby's
ex-chairman Alfred Taubman, "neither Sotheby's nor Christie's
are out of the mire in which they landed themselves by fixing
their commission charges in breach of anti-trust laws." Further
legal action is coming, and as Taubman moves to sell his stake
in the company, its financial condition looks suspect.
The Telegraph (UK) 04/29/02
HOW
DO YOU SELL DIGITAL ART? "As interest in online art has
increased, artists have been stymied in their efforts to get paid
for digital creations. Museums have commissioned and, in a few
cases, acquired such virtual works. Mostly, though, online pieces
have been a labor of love." Now one artist has sold shares
in an online artwork that is the visual equivalent of the online
chatroom. The
New York Times 04/29/02
AN
ITALIAN MOUNT RUSHMORE? The mayor of a Sicilian town wants
to build an Italian version of South Dakota's Mount Rushmore,
replacing US presidents with Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II,
and the recently beatified priest Padre Pio. "Unlike their
American counterparts which are carved into a mountain in South
Dakota, Mayor Cristaldi is proposing that the Sicilian effigies
be made in resin and glued onto the side of a mountain near Segesta
in Western Sicily." The Art Newspaper
04/26/02
Sunday
April 28
SHORT
TERM MEMORY: Los Angeles is a transitory place, a place fixed
on the moment. "But even by the standards of a region notorious
for its short-term memory, the recent spate of landmark demolitions
is stunning. In the last year, half a dozen Modernist works have
been destroyed or severely disfigured."
Los Angeles Times 04/28/02
INTRIGUE
IN VENICE: Confused about the political antics of this year's
Venice Biennale (and who isn't)? Here's a good map of the political
comings and goings of leadership at the top and who's winning
and who's losing in the art world's biggest soap opera.
The Art Newspaper 04/26/02
MILLENNIUM
LANDMARK: Denver opens a new suspension bridge, and already
critics are wondering if it might turn out to be the city's signature
architectural piece. "The most eye-catching facet of the
suspension bridge is a 200-foot-tall mast, which can be seen from
almost any direction as one approaches the north side of downtown.
It's painted white to set it off from everything around it."
Denver Post 04/27/02
BUDDHA
FIND: Where did the 400 Buddha statues, made 1500 years ago
and found buried in a pit south of Beijing for 1000 years, come
from? "The Qingzhou fragments may be the exhausted, stylistically
obsolete statuary that the monastery wished to replace with new
art but could not bear to destroy completely; or the pieces may
have been buried for safe-keeping during one of China's periodic
anti-buddhist purges; or they may even have been swept from sight
in a fit of iconoclasm." The
Guardian (UK) 04/27/02
Friday
April 26
LONG-TERM HURT: Though attendance at New York museums
has rebounded since September 11, long-distance tourists still
haven't returned. "After enjoying roughly five million annual
visitors apiece in recent years, the museums are now welcoming
around one million fewer visitors. That decrease, of course, has
a direct impact on admission receipts, as well as on income from
sources like restaurant and gift shop sales."
The New York
Times 04/24/02
SORTING OUT SFMOMA: In the 90s the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art seemed to be a high flyer, opening a swank
new building and collecting expensive works. But for the past
few years the museum seems to have been drifting, and with the
Dotcom crash and resignation of high profile director David Ross,
the museum has been struggling. Now big things are expected
of new director Neal Benezra, late of the Chicago Art
Institute. The
New York Times 04/24/02
AUTO
SHOW: Daimler Chrysler has built a car museum in Stuttgart,
one that puts the car at the center rather than fancy architecture.
"It was clear that the Mercedes-maker would spare no expense
with the construction of this museum, and it came as no surprise
that the future 'Mercedes Valhalla' would cost euro 60 million
($53 million), not including the museum extension. The already
existing Mercedes-Benz Museum is one of the most successful in
the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, with annual attendance
figures of almost half a million." Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 04/24/02
BLOCKING
CONSERVATION: A new Scottish report says that conserving some
of that country's most endangered historic buildings is being
blocked by property owners. "The Scottish Civic Trust (SCT)
said people who wanted to restore historic buildings were being
rebuffed by owners seeking unrealistically high prices. The trust’s
Buildings at Risk bulletin lists some of the most endangered among
1,300 properties on file. Among them are castles and mansions,
churches, cinemas, and hospital buildings."
The Scotsman 04/26/02
Thursday
April 25
A
WORLD AWAY: Performance art of the 60s and 70s - "happenings"
- seems so far away now. "What a world, it seems now – and
what a world away, in its extremity, its sincerity, its optimism.
These acts, sometimes wildly spontaneous, sometimes painfully
methodical, generally involving nudity, sticky messes (paint or
blood), embarrassing intimacy, actual suffering, degradation and
violence, duration and endurance, often trying to pull the audience
in and put them through it – they were staged as purgation rites,
caustic, ecstatic, mind-blowing. (Some of them were funny, too.)
They weren't shows to be spectated; they were experiences, and
after one or two outings they weren't repeated or revived. Performance
art wasn't meant to last." And yet, last week some of the
most famous stunts were reprised. The
Independent (UK) 04/24/02
STATE
OF CONTEMPORARY ART? "For several decades, wealthy Missourians
have been competing with one another to build collections and
then arrange for them to be viewed publicly. If some people on
the East and West coasts still think they have a greater intrinsic
interest in vanguard art than their brethren in the Midwest, the
flowering of these museums suggests they may be mistaken. Their
collecting has spurred the growth of art schools and helped create
a steadily expanding crop of museumgoers. This mini-boom may be
turning Missouri into a destination for art lovers from around
the Midwest. Museum administrators say they are seeing an increasing
number of patrons from states nearby, some of which offer very
little in the way of contemporary art."
The New York Times 04/24/02
PRICE
FIXING SCANDAL SNARES ANOTHER: "Sir Anthony Tennant,
the chairman of the Royal Academy Trust, is to stand down after
being implicated in the Sotheby's auction house price-fixing case...
Sir Anthony, 71, who was chairman of Christie's auction house
from 1993 to 1996, was named in court as the partner of Sotheby's
chairman Alfred Taubman in a deal to fix the commission on art
sales." BBC 04/25/02
PUTTING
A NUMBER TO ART: There is nothing some artists hate more than
being quantified. Art is art, say the high-minded, and statistical
analysis simply doesn't apply. Don't tell that to David Galenson,
who recently "came up with a notion about modern art, a notion
born of the unlikely fusion of economic analysis and creative
epiphany." Chicago Tribune 04/25/02
ARREST
WARRANT FOR HUGHES: An arrest warrant has been issued in Australia
for art critic Robert Hughes after he missed a court date to face
charges of dangerous driving. "The charges stem from a crash
in which Hughes, the art critic for Time magazine, was almost
killed in May 1999 while in Australia filming a documentary for
the BBC." BBC
04/24/02
Wednesday
April 24
TOO
BIG? "From Los Angeles' Getty to the Tate Modern in London,
many of the prominent museums to open in the last four of five
years are about as big, and as impersonal, as airports. Making
slow progress through their hangarlike halls, you brace yourself
for the news that the exhibit you came to see has been moved to
far-off Terminal D or delayed by bad weather in Chicago."
Where museums are concerned, bigger isn't always better. Slate
04/23/02
ARE
GALLERIES THE NEW MUSEUMS? "There has always been a relationship,
even interdependence, between the commercial world and the museum.
If galleries test the water, museums are supposed to develop the
context for works of art. But what has changed is that the commercial
galleries in London are starting to resemble the museums."
London Evening Standard 04/23/02
ACKNOWLEDGING
THE NEW: For 'traditional' art museums, the notion of collecting
and exhibiting the work of living artists has long been anathema.
But as the 20th century fades into the past, museums nationwide
have had to confront the reality that a continued snubbing of
contemporary art would degrade their status as displayers of the
world's great works. In Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts has made
a decision to reverse the long-standing 'nothing new' policy,
and other museums may follow. Boston
Globe 04/24/02
TAKING
DOWN THE deYOUNG: San Francisco may well be the most beautiful
city, architecturally speaking, in America. So when a beloved
structure has to be demolished, as is about to happen to the M.H.
de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park, damaged irreparably
by a 1989 earthquake, it is something of a local tragedy. "The
building was supported for the past decade by a truss of steel
beams, a stopgap effort to prevent the structure from collapsing
in another big tumbler. It will be replaced by a sleek $165 million
building designed by the Swiss architectural team Herzog & de
Meuron, expected to open in 2005." San
Francisco Chronicle 04/24/02
TELLING
THEIR SIDE: The 1915 slaughter of a million Armenians in Turkey
has long been the Armenian equivalent to the Holocaust, and just
as Jewish leaders are determined to keep alive the memory of those
murdered by the Nazis, Armenian activists (who are more influential
than you might think) have waged a non-stop war of words with
the Turkish government, which continues to deny that a massacre
of such magnitude took place. Most Americans are unaware of the
conflict at even its most basic level, but a new Armenian Genocide
Museum planned for Washington, D.C. may change that. The
New York Times 04/24/02
RESTORING
THE LONGEST MURAL: The longest mural in the world - Roots
of Peace - which is 530 feet long and "covers one wall of
a tunnel that passes under buildings of the Organization of American
States" in Washington DC, is being restored. Changes in humidity,
along with infrastructure repairs, passing mail carts and graffiti
writers - have inflicted considerable damage over the years."
Nando Times (AP) 04/23/02
Tuesday
April 23
PAYBACK:
Alfred Taubman, Sotheby's former chairman and principal owner
has been sentenced to one year in prison and fined $7.5 million
by a federal judge in New York. Taubman was convicted of colluding
with Christie's former chairman Anthony Tennant to fix prices.
"Prosecutors accused Mr. Taubman and Sir Anthony of running
a price-fixing scheme for six years that violated federal antitrust
law by eliminating competitive choice, which ultimately cost customers
millions of dollars." The
New York Times 04/23/02
- NOW
EUROPE TAKES ON AUCTION HOUSES: Having already been prosecuted
for price fixing in the US, Sotheby's and Christie's are under
threat by the European Commission. "Although the commission
conceded that the cartel had now been dissolved, it said the
case was so serious that it was launching a full investigation
which could lead to either firm being fined tens of millions
of pounds." The
Guardian (UK) 04/21/02
A
STEALING STRATEGY: Over the weekend, nine Expressionist works
were stolen from a public gallery in Berlin. "The claim that
some works of art are unsellable probably arises out of a bourgeois
misconception about how well-educated the upper crust really is.
We would like to suppose that every art theft is motivated by
bonafide connoisseurship, even if it is only that of a super-rich
but lonely madman, who retires every evening into the basement
hideaway of his cliff-top villa to be alone with his fragile Cranach
maiden. Most cases of art theft, however, are just crude blackmail."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
04/23/02
LOST
TREASURE: "A five-year-old voluntary scheme to encourage
thousands of amateur metal detector users to report all finds,
has been a tremendous success." The program has uncovered
"a treasury of objects lost, buried or hidden over 5,000
years of British history, along with thousands of sites previously
unknown to archaeologists." But Portable Antiques, as it
is known, might be discontinued without some government funding
from the UK lottery. The
Guardian (UK) 04/22/02
Monday
April 22
CHINA'S
GREATEST ART FIND? In northeast China, a trove of 400 Buddhist
statues dating for the 5th and 6th centuries. "At the time
these statues were made, it could hardly have been further from
the hub of Empire. Yet there is nothing provincial about them,
nothing clumsy or crude. For these are among the greatest sculptures
ever discovered in China." The
Observer (UK) 04/21/02
VAGUE
TO GREATNESS: The Victoria & Albert Museum's new £150
million plan is vague as vague can be. "This must be one
of the least masterful masterplans ever produced, in that it prescribes
very little about what might go where. It's basically a map of
the museum with areas coloured in to show where exhibits might
go, but then again, if curators change their minds, might not."
London Evening Standard 04/19/02
- DAUNTING
TASK: "The £150 million plan is more expensive than
Tate Modern, until now the UK’s largest museum or gallery project
and costing £134 million (although a further £32 was spent on
the Centenary Development at Tate Britain)." The
Art Newspaper 04/20/02
LOGISTICS
OF MOVING A MUSEUM: When you're moving a museum, you don't
just toss the art in the back of a truck and cart it across town.
New York's Museum of Modern Art is moving to Queens while its
Manhattan campus is being expanded. "Nearly 100,000 paintings,
sculptures, photographs, drawings, prints and other works of art
eventually will make the trip to Queens. (The objects that don't
make the return voyage to Manhattan in 2005 will remain there
in storage.) And that's saying nothing of the museum's nearly
600 employees, most of whom will be swept up in the borough-hopping,
too." Newsday 04/22/02
PAINTING
OVER LEONARDO: A year ago the Uffizi found itself at the center
of controversy when it wanted to perform a restoration on Leonardo's
The Adoration of the Magi, a work many art historians considered
to fragile to be worked on. Now one of the experts who consulted
with the Uffizi say that "None of the paint we see on the
Adoration today was put there by Leonardo. God knows who
did, but it was not Leonardo.'' New
York Times Magazine 04/21/02
SPIT
CLEAN: So you're a museum and your valuable art collection
needs a periodic cleaning. What do you use? A little spit. Spit
cleaning is a common "conservation technique, used for centuries.
"Scientific analysis supports the use of saliva as a good,
safe way to remove certain kinds of grime, particularly on varnished
surfaces. In essence, the proteins in saliva that break down food
also break down dirt and grime." Minneapolis
Star Tribune (Newhouse) 04/22/02
Sunday
April 21
HOW
ABOUT A HARLEY AD AT GUGGENHEIM VEGAS? As automakers seek
to attract an upscale demographic to their more expensive models,
advertisers have found a secret weapon to making the cars look
even more impressive on TV: architecture. Prominent buildings
around the country are popping up in adds for Porsche, Audi, and
Infiniti, to the delight of those in charge of the buildings.
Not only do the ads afford much-desired exposure, but there's
a tidy profit margin for the use of the facilities as well.
Chicago Tribune 04/21/02
WALKER
EXPANSION DRAWS GOOD REVIEWS: The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis
could have found a less controversial way to expand - it plans
to demolish the historic Guthrie Theater to make way for a parking
lot, for one thing. But the Walker, which is one of the nation's
most celebrated modern art museums, is winning rave reviews for
its $90 million expansion plans, which will include the replacement
of a particularly ugly office building next door with "new
galleries, a restaurant, a 350-seat theater, new-media sites,
a special-event facility, a 'learning arcade' and a series of
informal lounges intended to serve as a 'town square.'" Minneapolis
Star Tribune 04/21/02
WILL
THE SUN BE BIDDING? "Their affair scandalised
Britain and Ireland. He was the Dubliner who was the most celebrated
and highly paid portrait painter in Edwardian England, knighted
for his work; she was his mistress, a willowy wealthy heiress
to an American banking fortune married to an Anglo-Irish aristocrat.
Now their love letters - many illustrated by intimate line drawings
- are to be sold at Sotheby's auction of Irish art on May 16 and
are expected to fetch in excess of £150,000." Ireland
on Sunday 04/21/02
A
LEGACY OF HIT-AND-MISS? Norman Foster is to Britain what Frank
Lloyd Wright was to the U.S. - a beloved creator of buildings,
an icon of architectural prowess. But time opens as many wounds
as it heals, and success attracts critics like death attracts
flies, the upshot being that as Foster approaches the last years
of his career, his legacy is far from assured. The
Guardian (UK) 04/20/02
SHAKESPEARE
IN LOVE: Many would argue that it doesn't matter, and they
may be right, but new evidence suggesting William Shakespeare
may have been gay has been turned up in the form of a
portrait of the third Earl of Southampton, "Shakespeare's
patron, the 'fair youth' addressed in his sonnets," and very
likely his lover. The discovery is unlikely to sit well with vehement
defenders of Shakespeare's legacy. The
Observer (UK) 04/21/02
Friday
April 19
SOTHEBY'S,
CHRISTIE'S FACE ANTITRUST ACTION: The European Commission
is charging the world's two largest art auction houses with collusion
and anticompetitive practices. Sotheby's and Christie's are said
to have formed a 'cartel' nearly a decade ago. The charges come
on the heels of former Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman's conviction
on price-fixing charges in the U.S. BBC
04/19/01
- TAUBMAN
MIGHT GET AWAY WITH IT? Former Sotheby's chairman Alfred
Taubman could face a "maximum three-year term and a fine
of at least $1.6 million to $8 million for leading a six-year
antitrust conspiracy with Sotheby's rival, Christie's"
that cost sellers as much as $43 million in overcharges. But
the US Probation has recommended Taubman serve no prison time.
The New York Times 04/19/02
THE
PROBLEM WITH ROBERT HUGHES: It looked for a time earlier this
year that critic Robert Hughes would direct this the visual arts
component of this year's Venice Biennale. So why didn't it happen?
" 'Because of a series of complex problems with Hughes, the
Biennale would not even have got underway,' says the director
of the Biennale. 'He's a specialist in gratuitous polemics. He
insulted the Italian Government. He said Australia should be allowed
to sink into the sea'." The Age
(Melbourne) 04/19/02
SEIZING
SCHIELE: "In a stunning reversal, a federal court in
New York has ruled that the US Government may seek to confiscate
an Egon Schiele painting claimed to be stolen property illegally
imported into the US." The painting had been loaned by an
Austrian museum to the Museum of Modern Art in 1997 and had been
held in limbo there ever since while the legal process has ground
on. The Art Newspaper 04/15/02
FIGHTIN'
WORDS: "The head of London's National Gallery is slowly
'killing off' the institution, according Julian Spalding, a former
director of Glasgow's museums. Mr Spalding said [National director]
Neil MacGregor has done a deal with Tate boss Sir Nicholas Serota
so the National does not show work dated after 1900." BBC
04/19/02
CAN'T
PLEASE EVERYONE: Austria's new Cultural Forum building in
Manhattan has been drawing rave reviews from architectural observers.
But not everyone is happy with the ultra-skinny, ultra-sharp design:
"This isn't a "Wow!" building, like Frank Gehry's edgy but
exuberant Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. It's an "Ow!" building,
a structure of implied violence that grows from the questionable
proposition that beauty and danger are inextricably linked."
Chicago Tribune 04/19/02
- NOTHING
WRONG WITH MODERNITY: "In architecture, the history
of ideas is more reliable than the history of forms. It was
almost worth suffering through postmodernism to absorb this
simple lesson... In contrast to the lucid rationality of the
modern glass tower, the [Austrian Cultural Forum] projects the
idea that serious disturbances may lie beneath a relatively
smooth appearance. Call this a psycho-building: every skyline
goes a little crazy sometimes." The
New York Times 04/19/02
THE
AHISTORICAL COMMISSION? Philadelphia's Historical Commission
recently has begun behaving as if it has something against history,
handing over aging and historic properties to developers who intend
to tear them down. The latest victim is the Sameric Theater, an
old art deco movie house in Center City. "The actions of
[the commission,] whose members are appointed by the mayor, are
likely to cost it some credibility. After leaving to fate a building
as beautiful and significant as the Sameric, how is it going to
look when the commission tells property owners in the historic
districts that they can't even add rooftop additions or modify
their facades?" Philadelphia
Inquirer 04/19/02
NOLONGERFALLINGWATER:
No one ever accused Frank Lloyd Wright of lacking a sense of drama
in his architecture, but excitement very nearly met gravity when
the Fallingwater house outside of Pittsburgh began coming undone.
"After months of work, Wright's sagging architectural masterpiece
is standing on its own again with the help of an innovative system
of steel cables buried under the home's stone floors. Dramatically
cantilevered out over Bear Run, Fallingwater still tilts a bit
toward the stream but is no longer in danger of falling in."
Minneapolis Star Tribune (AP) 04/19/02
Thursday
April 18
DIFFICULT
TO REBUILD: Despite some claims, there is little consensus
on how Lower Manhattan ought to be rebuilt. "We are, after
all, dealing with a heavily contested site. History has different
claims upon it, as well as organized special-interest groups,
and little effort has been made thus far to sort out those claims,
or even identify them. Until such an effort is made, I see scant
reason to hope that a modern equivalent of Brunelleschi's dome
will arise in Lower Manhattan." The
New York Times 04/18/02
V&A
GETTING A NEW LOOK: "London's Victoria and Albert museum
is to undergo its biggest redevelopment in 50 years with a £150m
revamp. The museum's bosses are planning to redesign the layout
and construct new areas in a bid to make it more modern and visitor
friendly... New developments outlined in the 10-year plan include
a central garden which will have galleries surrounding it."
BBC 04/18/02
THE
SCIENCE OF THE AVANT GARDE: A professor of economics has applied
statistical methods to the analysis of avant-garde painting - "treating
aesthetic innovations as, in effect, a function of the labor market
among bohemians." But though he has written a book on his
findings, and submitted papers to leading journals devoted to
the scholarly study of art and aesthetics, it seems no one in
the art world is interested. Chronicle
of Higher Education 04/15/02
FEAR
OF THE FUTURE? What has happened to the idea of revolutionary
art? "Among the unexpected silences of today, the most significant
to me is the lack of sustained interest in ideal, perfected, or
revolutionary states of being. Where are the social utopias, the
celebrations of a transformed consciousness, the visions of renewal
and rebirth? Given the new millennium and the extraordinary scientific
advances of this time, it seems strange that so few contemporary
artists have a hopeful or otherworldly gleam in their eyes. Today,
the future is typically regarded with dread." New
York Magazine 04/15/02
Wednesday
April 17
LONDON'S
HOT NEW ART PRIZE: In only its third year, the Beck's Futures
Prize has gained a popular following in London's contemporary
art scene. "The marriage between a brand of beer and Britain's
hot new art prize is already so successful that when art students
mention 'the Beck's' it's the prize they're talking about and
not the beer they are inevitably holding in their hand."
London Evening Standard 04/16/02
- ANOTHER
BECK'S (ER...TURNER?): So isn't the Beck's Futures Prize
a retread of the Turner? They both exist for more or less the
same purpose. "So what, if any, are the differences? Beck's
Futures has more artists on its shortlist: 10 against the Tate
ration of four. Also, on the whole, the Beck's crowd are less
well-known. The Turner Prize shortlist, although it generally
includes at least one figure whom nobody has ever heard of,
is made up mainly of the already quite famous. Out of 10 on
the Beck's shortlist, only two are represented by a commercial
gallery, and most are in their twenties."
The Telegraph (UK) 04/17/02
BORING
BORING BORING: "Heavy on video, film, computer-generated
work and sound pieces that require audiences to don earphones,
the largest Whitney Museum survey of contemporary American art
in 30 years is also the most readily forgettable.The biennial
retains its reputation as a barometer of current trends even so.
Much of what audiences witness – a dearth of painting, a predominance
of performance-based work, a preference for things requiring little
concentration – is typical of what's going on around the country."
Dallas Morning News 04/17/02
REM
AND ROBERT TOGETHER: Star architect Rem Koolhaas comes to
Philadelphia for a meeting with Robert Venturi and a tour of the
latter's most famous house. The two get to talking about their
work and each other. Philadelphia
Inquirer 04/17/02
Tuesday
April 16
AN
ART RESTORER'S DREAM: Restoration of an altarpiece in the
church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome has uncovered an art historian's
dream. "When two wax stoppers were extracted from the relief
heads of the Madonna and Child, the restorers found two unknown
silk bags with relics and a note describing their contents."
Along with a story about the art, the piece turns out to be a
full century older than previously thought.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
04/15/02
REINVENTING
THE PRADO: Madrid's Prado is one of the world's great museums.
But it has fallen into great disrepair. Now the museum's new director
has plans to modernize and overhaul how the museum is run and
how its art is shown. "Although it is Spain's most visited
museum, and home to works by Goya, Velazquez and El Greco, less
than 10% of its 15,000 works of art is actually on display."
BBC 04/15/02
MENIL
LOSES DIRECTOR: "For the second time in three years,
the Menil Collection has lost a director and named an interim
chief to manage the museum and help find a replacement."
Houston Chronicle 04/12/02
THE
CONSTRUCTION THAT NEVER ENDS: Miami's Bass Museum has been
closed for renovations for four years. "The Bass' renovation
was expected to take just 18 months when it began in February
1998, and now the museum's extended closure is producing operating
deficits. This year's $500,000 shortfall was covered with cash
reserves, but those reserves could be exhausted by September.
Among the reasons why the Bass' opening has been delayed are shoddy
construction and administrative lapses. Miami
Herald 04/16/02
MEMORIAL
AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT: The twin beams of light evoking the
World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan are due to be shut off soon.
But some are wondering if a way to keep them lit might be possible.
"The lights were always intended to be temporary, and no
one expected that they would become an instant landmark, the best
abstract monument in this country since Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans
Memorial, in Washington D.C." The
New Yorker 04/15/02
RUSH
TO COMMEMORATE (STATUATE?): With Britain's Queen Mum dead,
the call for a statue in her memory is predictable. But "to
rush up a statue in the heat of the populist moment or to whip
up the prejudices of readers of a newspaper is not a good idea.
Few sculptors can rise to the occasion as Caius Cibber or Charles
Jagger or even Thornycroft did in past centuries. London plinths,
old and new, have been disgraced in recent years with statues
easily outclassed by Madame Tussaud's waxworks. Doubtless there
will be a memorial of some sort to the Queen Mother, but why the
hurry?" The Guardian (UK) 04/12/02
ROY
ROGERS FOR SALE: The Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Museum is losing
money and is up for sale. "Museum officials said they will
stay open unless they receive an offer for the property and the
33,000-square-foot building estimated to be worth $8 million.
The contents of the museum, including Rogers' stuffed and mounted
horse Trigger, and dog Bullet, are not included in the sale."
Houston Chronicle (AP) 04/16/02
Monday
April 15
AUSSIE TAKES
PRITZKER: Australian architect Glenn Murcutt
has won architecture's biggest prize - the Pritzker. "The
prize, which carries a $100,000 grant, is to be presented at a
ceremony on May 29 at the Campidoglio in Rome."
The New York
Times 04/15/02
AFGHAN SALVAGE:
Experts are examining the artwork in Afghanistan shattered by
the Taliban. "Archaeologists and other specialists,
evaluating the damage to see what can be salvaged from a centuries-old
culture, say the destruction by the Taliban and, in particular,
their allies in Al Qaeda, was even more methodical than previously
realized.The pillaging in the museum storeroom, as well as at
Bamiyan are regarded as crimes against Afghanistan's cultural
patrimony that are all the more chilling for their deliberate
and efficient execution." The
New York Times 04/15/02
CURATING VENICE:
After months of controversy over who would direct this year's
Venice Biennale, Francesco Bonami was recently chosen. So who
is he? Mr Bonami, 47, is a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Chicago and former editor of the magazine Flash Art. "I
always remind myself that the names in contemporary art are written
in pencil. It is extremely easy to rub them out, and one may grow
either more anxious or much calmer by flipping through some back
numbers, five or six years old, of authoritative magazines such
as Art Forum or Art in America, and seeing how many names have
disappeared already." The
Art Newspaper 04/12/02
SERIAL
SELLER: "Once upon a time, there was a very wealthy man.
One day, he sold almost everything he owned to dedicate himself
to the world's poorest people, the children of Africa. He arranged
for this generous relief work to be continued after his death
by establishing foundations in Switzerland and Liechtenstein,
which he endowed with a handsome fortune, including an imposing
art collection. The twist in the tale is that Gustav Rau sold
this selfsame art collection valued at up to euro 500
million ($440 million) several times over."
Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 04/15/02
NO NUDES
IN SCHOOL? "The reality of life modelling
is starkly-lit classrooms, dusty feet, and water retention. But
it has a sufficiently erotic image to be a matter of controversy
in schools. A scheme in the west of Scotland in which artists
and highly trained life models visit secondary schools to allow
fifth and sixth-year pupils to experience life drawing has been
blocked by Glasgow City Council. The news has caused dismay among
those who consider life drawing an important part of an artistic
training. It has also ignited a debate about the need, or otherwise,
for such moral policing." Glasgow Herald
04/14/02
Sunday
April 14
WHAT
HATH GUGGENHEIM WROUGHT? When the Guggenheim launched not
one but two satellite museums in the cultural wasteland of Las
Vegas, critics clucked, art aficionados rolled their eyes, and
everyone agreed that the project was doomed. Unfortunately for
the Guggenheim, which is facing severe financial shortages, the
naysayers appear, so far, at least, to be correct. "Far from
'bringing art to the masses,' the Guggenheim has brought corporate
branding to an anticipated public that has thus far failed to
show up." The New York Times
04/14/02
ANOTHER
VIEW OF THE WHITNEY: The Whitney Biennial always comes in
for plenty of critical scorn, if mainly because it tries to be
so many things at once. But some critics found this year's installment,
well, fun. "This exhibit is amazing simply because initially
it seems so underwhelming. Think about it: We're so used to sensational
art scandals - animal parts floating in tanks of formaldehyde,
nude Jesuses - that if a show doesn't shock, insult and offend
right away, we're apt to think it must not be the real thing."
Baltimore Sun 04/13/02
ARCHITECTURE
AS CULTURAL PR: "With a steeply raked glass facade that
appears to fall like the blade of a guillotine, the Austrian Cultural
Forum is one of the most striking buildings to have gone up in
New York in decades. It's also a dramatic, 24-story, $29 million
embodiment of how nations use culture to polish their image."
The New York Times 04/14/02
NATIVE
MUSEUM GETS A BOOST: "The Oneida Indian Nation, a small
New York tribe that operates a casino, a newspaper and a textile
factory, yesterday gave $10 million to the National Museum of
the American Indian... Since the plans were announced for the
museum in the 1980s, three tribes have contributed $10 million
each to the project." Washington
Post 04/13/02
HENRI,
PABLO, AND GERTRUDE? Gertrude Stein is not what one would
call a beloved figure in intellectual circles. While no one would
deny her influence on early-20th century literature and criticism,
her impact has often been said to be limited to her own era. But
as a new exhibit of paintings by Matisse and Picasso prepares
to descend on the UK, Stein's name keeps popping up in connection
with the century's (arguably) most important visual art movement.
The Guardian (UK) 04/13/02
ARCHITECTS
AND ENVIRONMENTALISM: A few years back, Oberlin College, a
respected liberal arts school in rural Ohio, announced plans to
design and build a new environmental studies center that would
revolutionize the way such structures use and distribute energy.
Some even claimed that the building would produce more power than
it used. But an Oberlin professor is claiming that the architect
ignored the objectives, and that the college decided to follow
form over function, defeating the very purpose of erecting the
center. The architect claims that the project is still a work
in progress, but some at Oberlin are not so sure. The
Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 04/14/02
Friday
April 12
THE
BMA'S DIRECTOR SPEAKS: The British Museum is an unwieldy institution
to try to run. "No issue is clear cut, every one compressed
into a gritty snowball of money, art, politics and ethics, tossed
between governments, curators, media and sometimes the public.
Cup of tea too pricy? Great Court stone the wrong colour? Galleries
closed (though each is open part of every day and any can be opened
on request)? Blame the director." London
Evening Standard 04/11/02
COVER
UP: The Glasgow Council has banned nude drawing classes offered
to students at three schools by the Royal Academy of Art. "Organisers
claim it is the first time the project, which has been running
since 1989 and has visited more than 1,500 schools, has been hit
with a blanket ban. Teachers involved in the one-day workshops
in Glasgow denounced the ban as prudish, claiming it deprived
pupils of the chance to include nude life drawings in their portfolios
- a pre-requisite for entrance to most art colleges." The
Scotsman 04/12/02
Thursday
April 11
SELLING
TO THE MASSES: The Glasgow Art Fair is "about to invite
the public, and their wallets, inside. The Art Fair, now in its
seventh year, is hugely significant for raising awareness of art
and, more importantly, selling it. Last year a record 15,000 visitors
came through the doors, and takings came in at more than £500,000,
an average of £13,300 each for the 40 galleries represented. While
this is encouraging for Scotland’s art economy, it is tempered
by the fact that the highest prices are generally commanded by
artists who are, not to put too fine a point on it, dead."
The Scotsman 04/10/02
FRANKFURT
LUMINALE: Frankfurt's mostly post WWII architecture is ugly,
and there's not much that can be done to dress it up. Nevertheless,
the city is staging a "luminale," lighting up its buildings
at night. "Among the special effects will be the illumination
of individual buildings, light projections and art installations
that together will create a 'panorama of light culture'."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
04/10/02
A
BIENNIAL THAT SHOULD KNOW BETTER: Art biennials are everywhere
these says. But "in the process, the exhibitions themselves,
once key cultural events, have become almost routine, with the
same cast of star artists featuring again and again like players
on the tennis circuit. The Sao Paulo biennale is old enough
to know better. Modelled on that of Venice, the first and oldest
in the world, it was the brain child of Italian immigrant turned
business man and patron of the arts."
Financial Times 04/11/02
Wednesday
April 10
NEW TWIST ON THE TURNER: "The Turner prize. It's hard
to think of anything more of our cultural time in its capacity
to inspire vitriol and curiosity, each condemnation generating
new publicity, another twist to the spectacle, more people who
want to go and see for themselves. This year, there's something
new. For the first time, a nomination form for the Turner prize
is being published in a national newspaper.
The Guardian
(UK) 04/10/02
WELLESLEY
CLEANS HOUSE: Wellesley College's well respected museum has
a new director. And now two of the museum's three long-serving
curators are leaving and the third is in negotiations for her
job. "The three curators made up a team highly respected
in the world of academic museums." Certainly new directors
bring in their own teams, but "the departures have that world
wondering why Wellesley is fixing something that wasn't broken."
The situation points up some of the current tensions in university
museums. Boston Globe 04/10/02
PARTNERING ANDY: The Andy Warhol show closed at the
Tate Modern last week having drawn 220,000 people, the most successful
show at the museum since it opened. "The Warhol show achieved
its success not by contention, but by smart partnerships and great
timing. For two months we saw Warhols writ large upon all of London's
main thoroughfares." London Evening
Standard 04/09/02
WHERE WILL THE CRITICS GO? America has a strong tradition of
art criticisicm. But "few institutional structures have existed,
however, to support and legitimize the profession. The number
of publications critics can write for has decreased along with
pay, which has declined from a onetime industry standard of $1
per word. At the same time, the Internet has not proven to be
a significant new space for independent art criticism."
American Art
04/02
AT
WHAT COST FAKE? The Korean government plans to build a replica
of a shrine built in the 8th Century to try to protect the original.
"The new building is to be used as a museum featuring life-size
replicas of the entire shrine structure and other multimedia exhibition
items to help protect the ancient structure from being damaged
as a result of the frequent traffic of tourists." But protestors
call the plan a "folly that would inevitably defame
the shrine's integrity and destroy the natural environment surrounding
it." Korea
Herald 04/10/02
Tuesday
April 9
WHAT
AILS THE NATIONAL: One critic sees disturbing signs of London's
National Gallery in a steep decline. "The National Gallery
is beginning to die, and the tragedy is that it is being killed
off. It began to ail in 1998, when it was decided, without any
public airing of the consequences, that the gallery's collection
would no longer grow as the art of painting itself grew, but would
be terminated at 1900." New
Statesman 04/08/02
REVIVING
PUBLIC ART: Percent-for-art programs are common in the US,
where developers are required on some public building projects
to spend a percent of their budgets on artwork. In the UK the
idea was tried but fell away with the first economic downturn.
But a project in the bowels of Glasgow's grimey inner city has
created "one of the most unexpected art projects in the country"
and may revive the percent-for-art idea.
The Guardian (UK) 04/08/02
JUMBO
(OR IS THAT DUMBO?)-SIZE ART: Artists Komar and Melamid are
at it again. This time the duo, who like to challenge ideas about
what is art, are getting elephants to paint. "Elephant artistry
provokes reactions ranging from curiosity to amusement to outrage.
Yet as the artists point out, inventiveness is not restricted
to human beings. 'The nature of creation is a much more common
thing in the animal kingdom," says Komar, who brings up the example
of beaver dams as a "fantastic style of architecture."
Contra Costa Times 04/08/02
Monday
April 8
THE
TATE'S BRAIN DRAIN: Jerry Lewison, the Tate's director of
collections, is leaving the museum. "Although Mr Lewison
did not wish to elaborate further on the whys and wherefores of
his decision to quit such a powerful post for a more precarious—albeit
stimulating—freelance existence, coming as it does after the departure
of Tate Modern’s Director Lars Nittve last July, the abrupt move
at the beginning of last year by Iwona Blazwick, Tate Modern’s
Head of Exhibitions and Displays to run the Whitechapel, and Tate
Liverpool Director Lewis Biggs’ new appointment to oversee the
Liverpool Biennale, the departure of yet another major Tate figure
sends out ominous signals about Tate’s ability to keep its top
personnel." The
Art Newspaper 04/05/02
DEREGULATED
BUT HARDLY FREE (THE MARKET, THAT IS): The French art market
has been opened up to international auction houses. But so far
the biggest change has been an increase in fees the French auctioneers
charge. "In the short term this situation is resulting in
a massive transfer of value from collectors and dealers to the
auction houses." The
Art Newspaper 04/05/02
SUNSET
FOR THE PAINTER OF LIGHT? "Thomas Kinkade's annual meeting
with the men and woman who have invested heavily to open Thomas
Kinkade Signature Galleries nationwide is supposed to be a feel-
good affair, with the millionaire artist outlining his plans for
new works and Kinkade-themed projects. But this year, according
to gallery owners and insiders at Kinkade's Morgan Hill company,
Media Arts Group, the focus will be on increasingly slack demand
for Kinkade's output and persistent rumors that Kinkade is angling
to take publicly held Media Arts private."
San Francisco Chronicle 04/07/02
- Previously: WRITER
OF SLIGHT: Thomas Kinkade sells schlocky landscape paintings,
"sold in thousands of mall-based franchise galleries nationwide,"
and earning "$130 million in sales last year."
"According to Media Arts Group, the publicly traded company
that sells Kinkade reproductions and other manifestations of
'the Thomas Kinkade lifestyle brand,' including furniture and
other examples of what the company's chairman memorably called
'art-based products,' his work hangs in one out of every 20
American homes." Now Kinkade's "written" a novel,
a "shamelessly money-grubbing little bait-and-switch"
aesthetically in line with the rest of the Kinkade empire.
Salon
03/17/02
- PAINTER
OF LIFESTYLE: Kinkade has his name on a housing development
north of San Francisco that promises the idyllic kind of life
depicted in his paintings. "What
is surprising, though, is just how far short of the mark
it falls. I arrived at Kinkade's Village expecting to be appalled
by a horror show of treacly Cotswold kitsch; I was even more
horrified by its absence." Salon
03/17/02
Sunday
April 7
GAMBLING
ON A MUSEUM: The Pechanga Indians in California have become
rich because of their casinos. Now the tribe is looking to be
known for more than its casinos. "If the tribal membership
approves and the plans pan out, the tribe will build a museum
here, roughly midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, and borrow
thousands of artifacts from the Southwest Museum, an underfunded
but widely respected institution founded by Los Angeles collectors
in the early days of the 20th century. Not everybody is ready
to embrace the idea. But together, the Pechangas' money and the
Southwest's collection could yield one of the foremost Native
American museums in the country." Los
Angeles Times 04/07/02
THE
IDEA OR THE WORK: Is a good idea for a museum show enough?
"Don't good ideas for museum shows come from seeing great
stuff? If a curator notices that a number of mediocre artists
are independently making mediocre art that shares a particular
image in common - Nazi paraphernalia, say - is that fair cause
to organize a show? Probably not. The most obvious lesson of Mirroring
Evil [at New York's Jewish Museum] is the futility of attempting
to make a productive exhibition from lousy work." Los
Angeles Times 04/07/02
OFF
THE WALL: The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is retoring an
11-foot-tall wall fresco displaying in one of its galleries. ''The
Crucifixion,' by an early Renaissance artist known only as
the Master of the Urbino Coronation, is too big to be restored
in the MFA lab," so the work is being done in public. "For
a work originally painted directly on the wall, this Crucifixion
has led a particularly peripatetic existence."
Boston Globe 04/07/02
HALLMARK
CONCEPT: The Atlanta Symphony is building a new concert hall.
So it invited six leading architects - Spaniard Santiago Calatrava;
Bing Thom of Vancouver, British Columbia; Atlantans Mack Scogin
and Merrill Elam; Morten Schmidt of the Danish firm Schmidt, Hammer
& Lassen; New York designer Steven Holl; and Boston-based Moshe
Safdie - to come give a public lecture on their philosophies of
building a concert hall. So what is a concert hall? Ideas range
across a spectrum "from the sculpture to the box." Atlanta
Journal-Constitution 04/07/02
CITY
ON A HILL: The Yorkshire town of Barnsley has decided to reinvent
itself as a Tuscan village. And thanks to a government initiative
to revitalize towns outside of London, the village has £150
million with which to make it happen. The
Guardian (UK) 04/06/02
Friday
April 5
THE VARIABILITY
OF CHROMATIC EXPERIENCE: What we see when we look at old artwork
may be very different from what the artist painted. For example,
"Van Gogh's Sunflowers today little resembles the
way it looked when it was first completed. The chrome yellow pigment
that figures heavily in the work was, at the time, a vibrant,
brilliant color — in keeping with Van Gogh's more typically lurid
color schemes. But over time it faded to the lusterless brown-yellow
that it is today, transforming the overall feeling of the work.
As for the thickness of the paint... one might as well 'lay them
on ... crudely,' he wrote in a letter to his brother, because
'time will tone them down only too much'." The
Atlantic Monthly 04/04/02
DECAYING
TREASURE: "It's been 30 years since a $7 million program
paid for a rebuilding of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts'
original wood-and-plaster structures, using concrete and steel
to give them new life. Until then, architect Bernard Maybeck's
vision of Greco- Roman grandeur was gradually crumbling into ruin."
But the place has deterioated alarmingly once again, and an efficient
plan to save the unique structures seems out of reach.
San Francisco Chronicle 03/31/02
DATING POTTERY
AND STONEWARE: Physicists now can determine the age of many
art objects by measuring thermoluminescence (TL), which is the
light an object emits when it's heated. "Geological clay
emits a strong TL signal. Once the clay artifact is fired by the
potter, all the TL drains away. If a new artifact is heated a
short time after it has been fired, no TL is observed, however,
if heated after many years have elapsed, a TL signal is again
seen." The process has roused the interest of museums and
auction houses. Discovery 04/04/02
Thursday April 4
ANOTHER
SMITHSONIAN CASUALTY: The Smithsonian has lost yet another
director. Dennis O'Connor, the undersecretary for science at the
Smithsonian Institution and acting director of the National Museum
for Natural History has quit. "His departure is the latest
in a series of resignations from the Smithsonian's upper ranks
since Lawrence Small took office as secretary of the institution
2 1/2 years ago."
Washington
Post 04/04/02
Wednesday April 3
CONFLICTING
ETHICS: The practice of archeology is changing rapidly as
ethical concerns play more and more of a role. "Archaeologists'
investigations frequently pit their interests against those of
other people, and the concerns of the present against the possible
concerns of the future. As ethical considerations come to matter
more, there has been a change in the way the public sees archaeologists,
and the way archaeologists see themselves. “We went through a
period when we thought ‘Hey, we're scientists, we should be the
number one priority here. But most of us have now come to see
it differently.”
The
Economist 03/29/02
FRICK'S
NEW FLACK: Pittsburgh's Frick Art & Historical Center,
one of the city's premiere cultural institutions, has hired William
B. Bodine Jr., chief curator of the Columbia Museum of Art in
South Carolina, to be its new executive director. Bodine has a
long and distinguished resume, and the Frick is hoping he'll bring
a renewed sense of vigor to the organization. Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette 04/03/02
DOES
ANYONE CARE ABOUT ARCHITECTURE CRITICS? It is a curious thing
that while we have book reviewers and film reviewers and theater
reviewers, we do not have architecture reviewers—only critics.
[Chicago Tribune architecture critic] Blair Kamin writes in the
preface to his new book Why Architecture Matters that 'the
very term ‘architecture critic’ may be a misnomer. We are, Kamin
writes, urban critics as much as architecture critics. In this
sense, then, an 'urban critic' can hardly be a 'reviewer'.”
New
Criterion 04/02
ENOUGH
FOR ITS OWN GALLERY: "A Dutch businessman's vast art
collection valued at £15m and includes works by Degas, Van Gogh,
Picasso, Monet and Cezanne is up for auction... The 1,300 pieces
will be split between London and Amsterdam... The auction, which
starts on 9 April, includes a Van Gogh portrait of the Sien and
a dune landscape, each with estimated price tags of up to £180,000."
BBC 04/03/02
SHASTA
LA VISTA: Last year after a wind storm, a classic 40-by 100-foot
1950s-era ad for Shasta Cola was uncovered on the side of a San
Francisco building - a real piece of Bay Area-history. The artists
who painted such ads were "known at the time as a 'wall dogs,'
so named because they hung onto rickety scaffolding with paintbrushes
and chalk in hand." Now the building's owners have
decided to cover the vintage piece with a giant Nike ad, and history
buffs are protesting.
San
Francisco Chronicle 04/02/02
Tuesday April 2
STEALING JAVA:
Indonesia, and in particular Java, has a rich trove of cultural
artifacts. But while most countries now have controls on the removal
of artifacts, Javanese treasures are being looted wholesale. "In the cross-hairs are dozens
of magnificent Hindu-Buddhist temples on the island."
The Art Newspaper
03/28/02
MORE
BIENNIAL CONTROVERSY: The 25th edition of the Sao Paulo Biennial
opened last week, and the critics aren't happy. Sao Paulo has
always had a "historical nucleus" mixing new work with
Cezannes and Magrittes or Van Goghs. But this year, the biennial
has gone all-contemporary. Its curator defends the move: ''Sao
Paulo has always been the only biennial among the 50 that exist
worldwide to have a historic nucleus. To eliminate it is not revolutionary,
it's very obvious.'' But the country's biggest weekly newsmagazine
dismissed the event with a snide swipe at Jeff Koons: "The
main attraction are the works of Cicciolina's ex-husband.'' Miami
Herald (AP) 04/02/02
FEMININE
DESIGN: It's been about 30 years since female designers entered
the field in significant numbers. For
some 70 years feminist theorists have "argued that female
designers would use their über-compassionate and collaborative
natures to rid the field of its arrogant and exclusionary practices. Well,
you can certainly say that design has changed significantly since
the 1970s, and many of those alterations have stemmed from women.
But I'd argue that it's not female designers who have had the
transforming effect as much as female consumers."
Metropolis
04/02
ART
FEW WILL SEE: Turns out some microchip designers are also
closet artists. A few years ago a senior research engineer was
peering through a microscope at a microscope when he thought he
saw a micro-picture of Wldo the cartoon character. Since then
he's found dozens more, etched on the chips by their designers.
"The images include everything from chip designers' names,
renderings of favorite pets, cartoon characters like Dilbert,
and planes, trains, and automobiles. These images are fabricated
along with the transistors and interconnects on one or more metal
layers overlying a silicon wafer." Now - of course - there's
a museum... IEEE Spectrum 04/02
NATURAL
HISTORY PALACE: The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
County has got the building bug. The museum is planning a $300
million (yes, that's three hundred) renovation/expansion
of its campus. And yes, the usual suspects are vying to design
it. "The firms are David Chipperfield Architects, and Foster
and Partners, both of London; the Swiss-based Herzog & de Meuron;
New York's Steven Holl Architects; and Boston's Machada and Silvetti
Associates." Los
Angeles Times 04/02/02
Monday
April 1
ANGKOR
WAT THEME PARK? Developers have submitted plans for a sound-and-light
show at Angkor Wat, with laser images and smoke effects; a 10-story
yellow sightseeing balloon, to be permanently tethered next to
the temple; and a scheme to provide visitors with nubbly-bottomed
rubber overshoes to better scale the crumbling stonework. At nearby
Phnom Bakheng temple mountain, they plan a zigzag escalator. Purists
may shudder, but as Cambodia gropes its way toward a functioning
economy, the Angkorian temples are about the best card the government
has to play." Washington
Post 04/01/02
WHERE GOES ART:
Critics are often tempted to make sweeping conclusions about the
artworld as they assess the latest biennale. Here's Roberta Smith's
conclusion after walking through this year's Whitney Biennial:
"The biennial offers evidence that museums are moving toward
a state of irrelevance as far as the contemporary-art world is
concerned, showing work that is either unimaginative or ill-suited
for a museum setting. This tendency may go beyond curators and
directors; it reflects the changing character of boards of trustees,
the people who hire and fire directors, choose architects and
have a big role in setting the agendas of the institutions."
The
New York Times 03/31/02
LINKAGE - ART
AND INSANITY: "For nearly 100 years, a few psychiatrists
and art historians have surveyed the art of the so-called insane
and come up with mostly anecdotal readings of it. The subject
raises questions about the nature of the creative mind and its
relationship to the world out of which it comes. How does the
atypical brain experience the world we share? In what respects
does art made by these individuals reflect the different realities
they experience? To what extent, and in what aesthetic terms,
do their works embody the fear and bewilderment they may endure?"
The
New York Times 03/31/02
BYE BYE MOMA:
For the first time in 70 years, the Museum of Modern Art will
be gone from Manhattan. For three years the museum will move
to Queens while its new home on 53'rd St. is being built. "With less than two months left before the closing of the Midtown
museum, the Modern's directors find themselves nervous about bowing
off the Manhattan stage. Three years is a long time to be away,
and Queens, while close, is not quite the same." The New York Times 04/01/02
IN
THE BUILDING SHADOW: In recent years museums have gone chasing
after big-name architects to design showy new homes. LA Times
architecture critic Nicolai Ourourssoff writes that "architects
have welcomed this attention as proof of the profession's growing
cultural relevance. But many art world insiders are skeptical.
Increasingly, architecture has become the central focus, and,
in the process, it has pushed art into the background."
Los
Angeles Times 03/31/02
PASSED
OVER: Twelve years ago a critic was served up the Britart
story readymade. But after a look or two at Damien Hirst and friends,
she didn't get what they were trying to do and wrote about other
artists. And missed the biggest art story of the 1990s. So much
for critical acument... The
Telegraph (UK) 04/01/02
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