Friday
June 29
JACKO AND THE
LADYBUG: A Styrofoam cup with dead ladybug, $29,900. Jars
of internal cow organs, $250,000. A life-size sculpture of Michael
Jackson with his pet chimpanzee, $5,600.000. "Who, in a troubled
economy, is buying this stuff? Do they really believe they'll
enjoy looking at it for the rest of their lives? And perhaps most
important, where do they put it?" Slate
06/28/01
PORTRAIT
OF THE ARTIST IN DECLINE: In 1996, portrait artist William
Utermohlen learned he had Alzheimer's Disease. He was 60 at the
time, and had just finished a self-portrait. Over the next five
years, as the disease progressed, he continued doing self-portraits.
That series of pictures, recently published, "graphically
demonstrates the decline of spatial awareness, co-ordination and
concentration associated with the disease." The
Telegraph (UK) 06/29/01
Thursday
June 28
ON THE TRAIL OF STOLEN ART: Theft of art seems to be on the rise. "Most of
the stolen art comes to London or America. Some of it goes to
museums, but much of it is bought secretly by private collections
for a fraction of market value. And this at a time when the focus
on the uncovering and repatriation of hot art - from the Holocaust,
the Soviet era, illegal digs at ancient sites, etc .- is at an
all-time high in the US." Forbes.com
06/27/01
SLIMMING DOWN THE DE YOUNG: San Francisco's de Young museum goes
through its storehouse and sells off a couple thousand works of
art as it refocuses its collections. "After the auction house
takes its commissions, the city-owned museums will net about $1.5
million, $500,000 more than projected." San
Francisco Chronicle 06/27/01
GIVING IMPRESSIONISM
ANOTHER CHANCE: "Of all art extravaganzas, the Impressionist
blockbuster tends to be the biggest, the most popular, and possibly
the worst." Ah, but wait. There's a show at the Clark gallery
which "brings back into focus some of the startling newness
of a Monet, a Manet, a Degas. It might even fortify you for the
next blockbuster." Slate 06/26/01
A
VIRUS IS A VIRUS: A computer virus written and launched for
the Venice Biennale is, its makers say, a piece of art. The artists
provide the source code and are selling it on T-shirts and on
CD's. But it's still a virus and viruses...
Wired 06/28/01
Wednesday
June 27
STOLEN
TO ORDER: Two paintings - a Gainsborough and a Bellotto -
were stolen in a three-minute raid on an 18th-century house in
Ireland Tuesday. "They are valued at £3 million, and were
almost certainly stolen to order."
A pair of latex gloves left behind may be the crucial clue.
Irish Times 06/27/01
- FUNDRAISING:
Dissident or Provisional IRA fundraising was suspected as a
possible motive for one of Ireland’s most daring art robberies."
The Times (UK) 06/27/01
TILTING
AT ART: London has embraced modern art in a big way. Contemporary
artists are stars. So how peculiar that national portrait prize-winner
Stuart Pearson Wright should lash out against the type of contemporary
art that has made Tate Modern a star.
The Times (UK) 06/27/01
LONG
GONE MONET SELLS: A Monet painting not seen in public since
1895, was sold for £10.12 million at Sotheby’s in London Tuesday.
The Times (UK) 06/27/01
SURVEYING
ARCHITECTURE: "While architecture is the most public
of art forms, it's the least subject to public debate in most
of the nation's newspapers. That's one of the findings of the
first-ever online survey of 40 architecture critics writing for
daily American newspapers. . . Only about a fourth of the critics
have degrees specific to the field of architecture, the survey
found, but about half report having practical work experience
in architecture or a related field." Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette 06/27/01
EMPTY
ISLAND: The buildings on Berlin's Island of Museums have been
closed for some time, with major plans for renovation stalled
by the city's perilous financial condition. Now one of the museums
has reopened after three years of renovation. Okay, there's no
art inside yet, but...Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 06/26/01
SERIOUS
CARTOONS: Political cartooning is a dicey profession. Politicians
threaten you, readers cancel their subscriptions because you made
their favorite pol look like a doofus, and editors constantly
ask you who that guy on the left is supposed to be. But a new
exhibit of Soviet political art on display in London shows another
side of the profession - caricatures as propaganda. Nando
Times (AP) 06/27/01
Tuesday
June 26
THE
NEW VAN GOGHS: In Berlin, a flourishing trade in commissioned
"fakes." "Under German law, the work of any painter
dead for at least 70 years can be reproduced, provided the copy
is an inch shorter than the original, and its origin clearly marked
at the back." The Independent
(UK) 06/26/01
THE
OLD MONETS: Two rarely seen but much sought-after paintings
by Claude Monet will hit the block at Christie's in London this
week, and are expected to fetch a pretty penny. According to one
art expert, "There's a bit more Monet around than you'd expect
because he's so expensive that museums can't afford to buy him,
so there's quite a lot of splendid pictures still washing about
in private hands." BBC 06/26/01
DIVINE
INTERVENTION: "A Buddhist-influenced artwork incorporating
the baptistry of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was removed
on Saturday after the director of the cathedral's visual arts
program ordered the work's artist to revise it or remove it. The
removal prompted two other artists to pull their works from a
group exhibition at the cathedral focusing on spirituality."
The New York Times 06/26/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
AMATEUR
STING: Archeologists in Egypt are protesting the allowance
of amateur diggers on archeological sites. "The experts,
who often fail to make headlines after years of painstaking work,
have been stung by the amateurs' sometimes spectacular finds,
like the discovery of the lost underwater city of Herakleion"
Middle East Times 06/22/01.
SO
NO RETRACTABLE ROOF, THEN? It's no secret that Chicago's Wrigley
Field, one of baseball's most beloved parks, is often a bigger
draw than the team that plays there (this year's Cubs' playoff
run notwithstanding.) A new renovation plan promises to bring
cosmetic improvements without disrupting the classic architecture
of the place. Chicago Tribune 06/26/01
NEW
GIANT BUDDHA: A plan to build the tallest Buddha in the world
- 43 metres high - in Korea, has ignited controversy among Korean
monks. Korea Times 06/26/01
LOOK
FOR THE "MADE IN CHINA" LABEL: So you can't afford
a real Van Gogh, but want something rich-looking to hang over
the mantle? That knockoff you pick up for a song at the museum
gift shop more than likely originated in a small Chinese village
called Dafen, and you probably paid ten times what the artist
got for it. Nando Times (AP) 06/25/01
VIRTUAL
PRESERVATION: "The British Library has preserved for
the nation a unique 15th century "illuminated" manuscript worth
£15m. The library has also made a virtual computer version of
the Sherborne Missal so visitors can see more than they would
if it was displayed under glass." BBC
06/26/01
Monday
June 25
SETTLING
ON NAZI THEFT: The owners of a Monet painting up for auction
this week have made a deal with the heirs of the painting's original
owner who was forced by the Nazis to sell the work in 1935. The
two parties will split the proceeds from the sale, estimated to
be between £1.5 million and £2 million. The
Times (UK) 06/25/01
ASSEMBLY-LINE
FORGER: "By French law, an artist is allowed to make
twelve copies of any bronze sculpture, all to be numbered. Any
further copy, even if made in the artist’s lifetime and under
his supervision, is legally considered a reproduction." So
the some 6000 bronze fakes perpetrated by French entrepreneur
Guy Hain and sold for $18 million are grounds for some good long
jail time. The Art Newspaper 06/22/01
THE
MUSEUM'S BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Outgoing Louvre director Pierre
Rosenberg is pessimistic about the future of museums. "Until
now there was art education in schools. You had a little bit of
knowledge about antiquity and Old and New Testament. Now this
knowledge is lost all over the world. What is the Annunciation,
for example? The Louvre does deal with 1 million children each
year. But that’s not enough. If the problem is not taken up by
the Ministry of Education, it won’t work. And that’s everywhere.
Without education, I am sure we are lost for the future."
Newsweek 06/25/01
HOT
FOR VERMEER: The hottest show in London this year is the National
Gallery's Vermeer exhibition, featuring 13 of the artist's 35
surviving paintings. The museum says it could easily sell twice
the number of tickets it is offering, but doesn't want to turn
the galleries into a mob scene. London
Evening Standard (UK) 06/24/01
RECONSIDERING
MIES: Paul Goldberger reviews the new interest in Mies van
der Rohe. "Mies's buildings look like the simplest things
you could imagine, yet they are among the richest works of architecture
ever created. Modern architecture was supposed to remake the world,
and Mies was at the center of the revolution, but he was also
a counter-revolutionary who designed beautiful things.
The New Yorker 06/15/01
Sunday
June 24
A
MISSED OPPORTUNITY: New York City recently held an architectural
competition to decide what form a new 9-acre development in Midtown
Manhattan would take. "The competition. . . raised public
expectations that New York was finally poised to embrace architecture,
as many other cities have, as a means of reckoning with the challenges
of a changing world. The outcome — the choice of two long-established
New York firms to create a master plan for the site — fell far
short of those expectations." The
New York Times 06/24/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
MORE
THAN JUST ANOTHER SKYSCRAPER: The tallest structure in the
world turns 25 this year, and it has aged well. "The CN Tower
is more than a terrific swizzle stick. It is more than unrequited
love over expensive beer and nachos in a revolving restaurant.
But, though it has defined monumentality over the last quarter
century, it maintains an enigmatic presence to those who look
upon it daily." The Globe &
Mail (Toronto) 06/23/01
SERIOUSLY
FUNNY: If you haven't yet encountered Aaron McGruder's edgy,
confrontational comic strip, you will. The Boondocks is
growing in popularity, even as its creator fields accusations
of racism and snubs from many of the black community's power brokers.
McGruder's main characters are all African-American, and he has
no intention of using his strip as a tool for educating white
America, which may explain why it is succeeding where other "black"
comic strips have failed. The
New York Times Magazine 06/24/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Friday
June 22
WHAT
SEROTA MEANS TO THE TATE: Figurative artists criticize Tate
director Nicholas Serota for his taste in collecting. And true,
you're not likely to see figurative work at the Tate under his
regime. But at mid-20th Century the Tate missed out on some of
the most compelling art of its time by being too conservative.
Serota, by contrast, is building one of the most important collections
of late-20th/early-21st Century art. The
Telegraph (UK) 06/22/01
- TATE
WATCH: The Tate has been completely transformed from what
it was a few years ago - good and bad. With Tate Modern director
Lars Nittve leaving, where should the Tate go from here? And
who are the
main contenders for the job? The
Times (UK) 06/22/01
- GREAT
EXPECTATIONS: "As the intelligentsia speculates on
who will be Tate Modern’s new director — the glamorous Julia
Peyton-Jones, director of the Serpentine, is this country’s
most obvious candidate — the role is starting to emerge as something
of a mixed blessing. Success may breed success, but Tate Modern’s
start is intimidating — even the lavatory paper budget has had
to be multiplied as the building creaks with an unforeseen quantity
of visitors." The Times (UK)
06/22/01
- Previously: LEAVING
THE TATE: The head of the Tate Modern, Lars Nittve, has
announced he is quitting the museum to become director of Stockholm's
Moderna Museet, the country's national museum of modern art.
"Friends said that he was partly influenced by homesickness
and denied that the complicated management structure at the
Tate, which effectively made him Number Two at the gallery,
played a part in his decision to leave." The
Telegraph (UK) 06/21/01
ARE
YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN? Postmodernism in architecture
is dead isn't it? At the least, no one wants to admit to being
a postmodernist. "We must offer respect for the dead, but
I’m not sure to whom the condolences should go if no one admits
to really being a postmodernist, and if most of those presumed
to have been such are still thriving, and, in some cases, are
designing in more or less the same style." Architecture
Magazine 05/01
AS
IF NEW YORK COULD GET ANY CREEPIER: Last year, a flower-covered
43-foot puppy adorned Rockefeller Plaza as part of New York's
public art program. But apparently, a pooch is just too tame for
those edgy denizens of the Big Apple, who will spend the next
several months under the steely gaze of a 30-foot high spider
named Mama. Nando Times (AP) 06/21/01
BUILD
IT AND THEY WILL COME (AND BREAK IT): A London artist hoping
to prove that Londoners could appreciate public art without destroying
it, found her sculpture vandalized. "I'd hoped to show that, even
here, open-air sculpture doesn't have to be made of bronze or
stone to survive. It looks like I've been proved wrong. I was
prepared for it to happen but not within eight hours of it going
up." London Evening Standard 06/21/01
ONE
WAY TO STEAL ART... Then there was that day in 1995 when a
visitor to the Museum of Modern Art in New York walked up to Duchamp's
famous bicycle wheel, pulled it off its pedestal, walked through
the galleries, down the escalator and out the front door, escaping
in a cab. The next day the artwork mysteriously reappeared, thrown
over the museum's fence... Forbes.com
06/21/01
- ...AND
ONE WAY TO GET IT BACK: "Berliners have woken
up to find their city plastered with "Wanted" posters depicting
the face of the late celebrated artist Francis Bacon. The posters
offer a reward of 300,000 German marks (£100,000). Yet it is
not Bacon himself they are demanding, but the return of a portrait
of the artist stolen 13 years ago." BBC
06/22/01
Thursday
June 21
THEFT
EVERYWHERE: A new report on looted art in Europe is alarming.
"New research shows that in Italy alone more than 88,000
objects have been stolen from religious institutions over the
past 20 years, while the Czech Republic has lost 40,000 objects
since 1986." The Times (UK) 06/21/01
LEAVING
THE TATE: The head of the Tate Modern, Lars Nittve, has announced
he is quitting the museum to become director of Stockholm's Moderna
Museet, the country's national museum of modern art. "Friends
said that he was partly influenced by homesickness and denied
that the complicated management structure at the Tate, which effectively
made him Number Two at the gallery, played a part in his decision
to leave. Nittve was said to have received a personal telephone
call from Gran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, asking him
to take the new job." The Telegraph
(UK) 06/21/01
CONCEPTUALISTS
MEET VERMEER: The hottest young British artists today are
highly conceptual. Vermeer, on the other hand, was a master of
technique. Six young Brits go to the new Vermeer show at the National
Gallery and record their impressions. The
Guardian (UK) 06/21/01
VIRUS
ART: Conceived and compiled for the invitation to the 49th
Venice Biennale, 'biennale.py' is the product of the collaboration
of two entities, 0100101110101101.ORG and epidemiC, already known
for other shocking actions, often bordering with crime. 'biennale.py'
is both a work of art and a computer virus. Exquisite
Corpse 06/18/01
Wednesday
June 20
THE HEART
OF RICHNESS: "Africa, already plundered of its people
by slavers, its animals by big-game hunters and poachers and its
mineral wealth by miners, is now yielding up its cultural heritage.
Across the continent, art and artifacts are being looted from
museums, universities and straight from the ground. Most of the
objects end up in Europe or the United States." Time
06/18/01
BEFORE
THE FLOOD: More than 1000 archeologists are working day and
night to rescue artifacts in the Three Gorges region of China
before the area is flooded by a giant hydro-electric project in
2003. People's Daily (China) 06/19/01
NOW
THAT THE CROWDS HAVE GONE, the Venice Biennale is a pleasure.
"Somehow, miraculously, the show, even in its charming incoherence,
manages to fit into and complement the city in the most remarkable
way, a Harold to its Maude, making for a brief, crazy romance
of unlikely soulmates, the true beauty of this event."
The New York Times 06/20/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
FRANKLY
FRIDA: The most anticipated art movie of the year is the Frida
Kahlo biopic. "How has the swarthy, moustachioed woman who
stares unsmiling from self-portraits become such a cult figure?
How has a small fierce, intellectually complex cripple with an
unbroken eyebrow become an icon? It happened partly by accident."
The Times (UK) 06/20/01
Tuesday
June 19
SURPRISE
- THE ASHMOLEAN DOES MODERN: Oxford' Ashmolean is the world's
oldest public museum But "the opening of a modern gallery
this week will uncover a collection quite unknown to the public
and is a dramatic development at a museum internationally renowned
for its old master paintings and its vast collection of antiquities."
The Guardian (UK) 06/19/01
VEXING
VEXILLOLOGY: The rankings are out, and New Mexico, Texas,
and Quebec are leading the pack, while Montana, Nebraska and Georgia
have some serious work to do. On what, you ask? Why, only the
most visible visual symbol of a state or province's identity:
its flag. Simplicity and relevance seem to be the best way to
get your flag at the top of the list, while crowded logos, too
many colors, and Confederate battle emblems will land you near
the bottom. Ottawa Citizen (CP) 06/19/01
Monday
June 18
MUSEUM
CRASH? The growth in the number and interest in museums in
the past decade has been unprecedented. But the growth is unsustainable,
and beneath the boom is the unsettling fact that many museums
are seriously undercapitalized. One expert says it will be a difficult
next decade as museums try to stabilize. The
Art Newspaper 06/15/01
BEING
AT BASEL: There are 260 galleries at this year's Basel art
fair. Another 640 galleries were on the waiting list to show there,
lured by the prospect of 53,000 art buyers attending the show.
"By the time Art Basel ends [today], collectors and museums
are expected to have bought $250 million to $300 million worth
of contemporary art, though the exact total is not known because
gallery sales are private." The
New York Times 06/17/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
VERMEER/NOT
VERMEER: Is it a 36th Vermeer or not? London's National Gallery
plans to display the disputed painting thought to be a Vermeer
next to two verified originals and let the public judge.
The Telegraph (UK) 06/17/01
SEEKING
CHAGALL: New York's Jewish Museum is offering a reward for
information about a Chagall painting stolen from the museum last
week. The New York Times 06/16/01
(one-time registration required for access)
CLEANING
BILBAO: About a third of the 42,000 titanium sheets cladding
the outside of the Guggenheim Bilbao are discolored with red stains.
Earlier this year architect Frank Gehry criticized the museum
for not maintaining the building; now the sheets will be cleaned
at a rate of about 150 a day. CBC
06/15/01
SEEKING
VAN GOGH: A writer seeks out three scenes that Van Gogh painted,
and finds that though they have changed much in the 113 years
or so since they were painted, they have stories to tell.
Financial Times 06/18/01
Sunday
June 17
THE
TWO FACES OF... As the US government investigation of auction
houses Christie's and Sotheby's for collusion wound up, Christie's
negotiated an amnesty agreement. But secret internal documents
recently obtained show that what the company was saying to investigators
and what it was actually doing were two different things. The
New York Times 06/17/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
PISA
REOPENS: After 11 years of working to stabilize it, the leanning
tower of Pisa reopened this week. "The $30 million project
to stabilize the 12th century tower and return it to the sustainable
tilt of 163 years ago is being hailed as one of the great engineering
feats of all time." San Francisco
Chronicle (Boston Globe) 06/17/01
CAUTIONARY
TALE: It's been five years since Chicago's Museum of Contemporary
Art moved into its new building. Expectations were so high for
a building that would transform the museum, but "what an
odd structure it is that forces staff to get around it in order
to best fulfill the mission of a museum. This one has done so
for the last five years, and because there is no other choice,
let's look on the bright side."
Chicago Tribune 06/17/01
THE
ARMANI UNIVERSE: Is Georgio Armani a billion-dollar clothes
industry or an artist working on the human form? Hint - if you
have dinner with the man, his people send over a selection of
clothes for you to wear for the evening. "But this is just
the way the Armani universe works. You accept an invitation to
dinner. You wear the dress. It's a deal most celebrities are used
to. But as a mere journalist, I have to confess, it made me feel
slightly uncomfortable." The
Observer (UK) 06/17/01
Friday
June 15
WORLD'S
BIGGEST ART FAIR: The art world is in Basel this week. "Once
a year, for a week, this quaint little city in the corner of Switzerland
becomes a fondue pot of culture. All the big dealers dip in as
it plays host to the world’s biggest modern and contemporary art
fair. The scene is truly international and so is the language
— which is money. Behind the schmoozing and smiles, you see the
glint of the hard sell." The
Times (UK) 06/15/01
KLIMT
INSIDE, STRIKERS OUTSIDE: That's how the National Gallery
of Canada opens today. "The strikers say it's their work
that made the Klimt show possible, and they're bitter that it's
opening without them." The view of management is that "it's
up to the public to decide if they can afford to miss the most
comprehensive show of Klimt's work ever to reach North America."
CBC 06/14/01
FLAME
BROILED ART: An art student at Britain's Sunderland University
had her car with her art project for school in the trunk stolen.
When police recovered it, the car and the art were a charred wreck.
So she had the 11-year Ford Fiesta towed to a shop where she made
an art project out of it and entered it in the school's final
show. The Telegraph (UK) 06/15/01
Thursday
June 14
GERMANY
RETURNS ART TO GREECE: Germany is returning some of the art
in its museums to Greece, which has been fighting to get it back.
"Berlin’s Pergamon museum will send Greece ten sections of
the Philippeion monument, built between 338 and 336 BC.
Germany will also help restore the monument at Olympia, the sanctuary
and site of the Olympic Games." The
Times (UK) 06/14/01
AND
IT WON'T EVEN KILL YOU: Jam a bunch of quarters in the slot,
pull the knob, and reach into the dispenser for a refreshing (if
habit-forming) pack of... art? Yes, art - step right up and meet
the Art*o*mat, a converted cigarette machine that dispenses pocket-sized
pieces of art for the consumer on the go. Coming soon to a museum,
grocery store, or laundromat near you. Washington
Post 06/14/01
PERCENT
FOR WHAT? Since 1979 the City of Chicago may have spent $15
million on its Percent for Art program. Or maybe it didn't. The
Public Art Program apparently hasn't kept records of how much
it has collected or what it has commissioned. Most alarming is
the director's explanation of his accounting: "It's the city.
We juggle money all the time." Chicago
Tribune 06/13/01
CHOCOLATE,
RAW OYSTERS, AND GUSTAV KLIMT? "According to a study
by the Institute of Psychoanalytical Psychiatry, published in
Rome last week, a visit to an art museum -- or even a church --
can get those erotic feelings flowing. The study of 2,000 museum
goers this spring concluded the lush flesh exhibited in Renaissance,
Baroque and classical masterpieces left at least one-fifth of
art lovers so excited they had a 'fleeting but intense erotic
adventure' with a stranger." Ottawa
Citizen 06/14/01
ART
THAT DICTATES ART: Frank Gehry's influence on museum design
is to elevate buildings to the level of showy pieces of art. But
what of the art inside? The new architecture dictates the art
by the nature of its strong personalities. And surely that isn't
good for art... The New Republic 06/13/01
A
FAMILY TRADITION: For decades, the Wyeth family has quietly
produced beautiful, if old-fashioned, works of art from their
family homestead in rural Pennsylvania. Three generations of Wyeths
(illustrator N.C. Wyeth, his son Andrew of "Helga" series
fame, and Andrew's son Jamie) have each carved their own personal
niche, but all three are bound together by a long tradition of
complete disregard for what the critics think. Chicago
Tribune 06/14/01
Wednesday
June 13
VISUALIZE
FRANCE: A new French government study of the visual arts world
warns that "French contemporary artists are being pushed
out of the world market because of stifling state patronage, a
lack of private collectors and a failure of imagination."
The Times (UK) 06/13/01
TWO MORE VENICE BIENNALE REVIEWS:
- MODEL
EXPERIENCE: "Fine painting, fascinating video, acres
of photographs, a sculpture or two and plenty of self-indulgence
- the Venice Biennale offers a perfect snapshot of the art world
today." The Telegraph
(UK) 06/13/01
- NOT
PLEASANT: over-crowded, under-inspired — and over-run with
little golden turtles. The Times
(UK) 06/13/01
SHAKESPEARE
ON DISPLAY: The Art Gallery of Ontario plans to show a painting
done in the early 1600s that is purported to be a portratit of
Shakespeare. CBC 06/12/01
LET
THERE BE LIGHT: A new exhibit produced jointly by museums
in Amsterdam and Pittsburgh examines the role of light, both natural
and artificial, in art history. The curators contend that the
direction of visual art was changed forever by the development
of gas and electric lights, and make a direct link between the
oft-competing worlds of science and art. The
New York Times 06/13/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Tuesday
June 12
POLITICS - AND
MORE - LOOM OVER NEW WARSAW MUSEUM: Anda Rottenberg was the
moving force behind a new Museum of Contemporary Art for Warsaw.
Frank Gehry was going to design it. Now the Polish Minister of
Culture has removed her from the project. Stated reason: criticism
of a selection committee. Apparent reason: politics. Suspected
reason: anti-Semitism. The Art
Newspaper 06/11/01
THE
OVERCROWDED BIENNALE: The Venice Biennale is up in full cacophony.
"As elsewhere in Venice, the crowd is now the problem more
than ever. Has the Biennale grown too big? The gardens in Castello,
its historic heart and home, have no more space for national pavilions.
The ancient Arsenale, with its sprawl of disused yards and workshops,
fill up as every new space becomes available. Meanwhile the Biennale
spreads ever more widely through the city." Financial
Times 06/12/01
TATE-HATER:
Hilton Kramer laments the Tate Museum and the toll of success.
"This ill-conceived project clearly represents the spirit
of the age, which in art and in life is besotted with an appetite
for destroying what is good by enlarging it to a scale of extinction.
It puts us on notice that in the twenty-first century we shall
need no wars to devastate our monuments to the past. Our cultural
bureaucrats have shown themselves to be fully capable of performing
the task for us." New Criterion
06/01
Monday
June 11
CHAGALL
MISSING: A rare Chagall oil painting has been stolen from
Manhattan's Jewish Museum. "A janitor noticed some sawdust
on the floor near where the painting had hung around 8 a.m. [Friday],
but didn't report it because he wasn't aware the painting was
missing." New York Post 06/09/01
PLAYING
POORLY IN CANADA: The Canadian branch of Sotheby's auction
house has been getting waxed by the competition, its share of
the Canadian market dwindling quickly. So the company has hired
a high profile celebrity to run the company's operations.
Toronto Star 06/11/01
TOTEM
RETURN: Chicago's Field Museum has agreed to return a 27-foot
tall totem pole to the Alaskan tribe that requested it. The pole
was taken in 1899 by an artifact gathering expedition.
Nando Times (AP) 06/11/01
VENICE
BIENNALE OPENS: "At least 65 countries are coming to
the 2001 biennale, including for the first time New Zealand, Singapore,
Jamaica and Hong Kong. This has stretched capacity to the limits.
The Italian artists were so numerous this year that they had to
be housed in the Padiglione Venezia, the pavilion usually reserved
for the press." The Art Newspaper
06/08/01
- BIENNALE
WINNERS: A list of artists
winning prizes at this year's Biennale. ARTForum
06/10/01
Sunday
June 10
VENICE
BIENNALE OPENS: "From the almost 300 artists showing
in this 49th Biennale - 130 chosen by Szeeman, and 156 by curators
in each of the 63 countries represented at the festival - you
get about a half-century's worth of styles, ideas and notions
about what good art can be." Washington
Post 06/10/01
REMAKING
LONDON: London's mayor's beliefs about his city's future can
be summarized as "either London buckles down and starts building
skyscrapers with the abandon of a Shanghai or a Hong Kong or else
Britain heads for the economic third division." In his drive
to remake the capital, he considers the preservationist English
Heritage "the biggest threat to London's future since the
Luftwaffe." The Observer
(UK) 06/10/01
THE
PUBLIC BLANK CANVAS: Two weeks before an artist was to install
art inside 200 New York taxicabs, the NYC Taxi Commission denied
permission for it. "The commission adhered to the common
civic notion that the public deserves nothing less than predictable
neutrality in its urban landscape. The flip side of our worship
of individual expression is the enforced uniformity and blandness
of the spaces we share: gray, blockish office buildings in the
International Style, muzak in elevators, Starbucks and McDonald's."
The New York Times 06/09/01
(one-time registration required for access)
Friday
June 8
VIENNA'S
BOLD AMBITION: Vienna's new contemporary arts center is ambitious
- "in its ambitions this project is right up there with Tate
Modern, the Bilbao Guggenheim and the Getty Center: an international
focus for the arts on a scale that only few institutions and metropolitan
spaces can aspire to." Financial
Times (UK) 06/08/01
GUERILLA
TRANSIT: A student at the Glasgow Institute of Art has been
conducting guerilla art on bus riders. At bus stop kiosques, "instead
of bus times and route information, puzzled travellers have found
musings by the 23-year-old about how his life has been intertwined
with bus journeys, including longing for a former girlfriend,
a past job at Asda and the joys of eating carry-outs on late-night
buses." The Scotsman 06/08/01
Thursday
June 7
THE
CRITICS HATE IT: Critics are piling on the design for the
new World War II memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC.
"Friedrich St. Florian's design for the National World War
II Memorial diminishes the substance of its architectural context.
The design does not dare to know. It is, instead, a shrine to
the idea of not knowing or, more precisely, of forgetting. It
erases the historical relationship of World War II to ourselves.
It puts sentiment in the place where knowledge ought to be."
The New York Times 06/07/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
PLEASE
DO NOT SIT ON THE ART: Chicago was the first American city
to put a bunch of fiberglass animals in prominent locations and
allow local artists to have at them, and the "Cows on Parade"
project sparked a wave of copycats across the U.S. Now, with "Suite
Home Chicago," the city is trying again, with furniture being
the rather unconventional theme. Still, don't expect function
to follow form: "Partly to discourage the homeless from camping
out on them, they 'have been made as uncomfortable as possible.'"
Chicago Tribune 06/07/01
- HERE
PIGGY PIGGY... Seattle's doing fibreglass
Pigs on Parade. Have artists been reduced to this? "It
does serious damage to the public conception of what artists
do. It moves artists away from being agents of inquiry and sensors
of cultural shifts toward decorators. Good eyes for hire. What
it amounts to is a retrograde shift in the artist's position
in society." The Stranger 06/06/01
Wednesday
June 6
TATE
MODERN - SUPERSIZE ME? Tate Modern wants to double in size?
"Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota wants more space because
there are living artists out there, especially in America, who
are reaching a certain age and are 'looking for places where their
work can be seen': Elsworth Kelly, for example, or Robert Rauschen-burg,
or Jasper Johns. The hope is to seduce them with beautiful expanses
of new gallery, so the Tate can have many versions of its room
of paintings given to them by Mark Rothko."
London Evening Standard 06/06/01
MARTHA
STEWART IN THE SMITHSONIAN? Nothing against rich people -
but should money allow you to choose what goes into a museum?
The Smithsonian seems to be in a conflict of judgment as big donors
get a very large say in some new projects. Washington
Post 06/05/01
POST-BLACK: A new
exhibit at the Studio Museum in Harlem presents "the work
of twenty-eight unheralded African-American artists, who... plainly
owe much to the politically convulsed nineties generation. This
exhilarating show suggests that the ordeal of race in America
may be verging on an upbeat phase that is without precedent."
The New Yorker 06/04/01
I
WANT MY PAINTINGS: The "great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson
of the last King of Poland, has written to the director of the
Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London, claiming ownership of
180 paintings - including several Rubens, three Rembrandts and
two Canalettos" - a collection worth £250 million. His claim,
at first look seems to be shaky. London
Evening Standard 06/06/01
MUSEUM
INQUIRY: The Australian government is grilling top management
of the National Gallery over some of the wrong answers museum
officials provided to a government inquiry, including sayings
that museum loans and traveling exhibitions had doubled when they
hadn't. One Senator demands: "I want to know why they got
it wrong." Sydney Morning Herald
06/06/01
MORE
NAZI LOOT? Last week Glasgow's museums put up lists of their
artwork with uncertain provenance. "A bronze bust of Mary
Queen of Scots and two paintings that once belonged to Charles
I have been included in the list of works of art in Scottish galleries
that may have been looted by Nazis." Glasgow
Herald 06/06/01
Tuesday
June 5
BATTLE
FOR THE STORY OF A NATION: Australia's recently-opened National
Museum attempts to tell the history of the country, and it has
been generally praised by critics for being surprisingly candid.
But documents obtained by the Sydney Herald show that deciding
how that story would be told and what would get into the museum
was a fierce behind-the-scenes battle. Sydney
Morning Herald 06/05/01
A
LAME DEBATE OVER ART: Australia is debating what its new Museum
of Contemporary Art should look like. But it hasn't been much
of a debate, complains one critic. "Commentary has overwhelmed
reporting and opinion pieces have pushed personal agendas. The
usual suspects have been rounded up for comment and it has been
nothing if not predictable. The newspaper letters columns too
have lacked any sense of middle ground in their discussion of
the MCA. It is as if reasoned debate must be avoided at all costs."
Sydney Morning Herald 06/05/01
WHAT
TO DO WHEN IT'S STOLEN? "Selling stolen art in the auction
business is, unfortunately, nothing new. At issue is the degree
of liability an auction house has if it is learned that they have
sold stolen goods--or at least goods to which the title is in
dispute - and what the unwitting buyer can claim in recompense.
In other words, how financially responsible should an auction
house be when it fails to provide the kind of rigorous background
check that can ensure buyers they aren't buying hot art?"
Forbes.com 06/04/01
MIES
BACK IN FASHION: After a decade and a half in which Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe has been "the juiciest target of those
who attribute the physical alienation of American cities, at least
in part, to the glass-and-steel high-rises on which he was the
supreme authority," the architect is suuddenly hot again.
Why now? Perhaps it's a reaction to "frustration in some
quarters with the blob-and-matchstick work of the post-Gehry generation
of architects." ARTNews 06/01
Monday
June 4
UNFAIR
ACCOUNTING: Was a recent audit of museums by the Scottish
government unfair and misleading? Some museums say the audit discriminates
against smaller institutions. "David Clough, director of
Kilmartin House Trust museum, in Argyll, claims it is unfair and
portrays museums such as Kilmartin as 'dead end institutions with
no economic future'." Glasgow
Herald 06/03/01
WHAT
TO CLEAN? Experts are piling on in condemning the Ufizzi's
plan to clean Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi. "It's ridiculous.
I have not the slightest idea why they want it cleaned. These
are the first sketches and first ideas that the master put down
with his brush, and who is to say which of these lines were really
his?" The Telegraph (UK) 06/03/01
Sunday
June 3
ART
IN THE SLUMS: When Jacobo Borges proposed a new museum in
one of the worst slums of Caracas, critics said few would come
to such a bad location to see art. "But six years later,
the Jacobo Borges Museum is one of the most celebrated in South
America - and not just because the neighborhood is bad."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution 06/03/01
TECH-SAVVY:
"Instead of taking place on the margins, in out-of-the-way
galleries with the requisite electrical outlets, technologically
based art, which now includes digital projects, has increasingly
become the main course." San
Francisco Chronicle 06/03/01
Friday
June 1
INSURING
PROBLEMS: It's getting more difficult to borrow major works
of art for exhibitions. The Australian government has a program
to help insure loaned art in Australia, but even that program
is becoming problematic. Sydney Morning
Herald 06/01/01
SOMETHING
TO GO INSIDE: The Guggenheim is expanding with new locations.
But it needs art to go inside. So it has established some acquisition
committees. "Unlike other museums, which have had such committees
for decades, the Guggenheim formed these only six years ago. During
the 1980's and early 90's, the collection barely grew." The
New York Times 06/01/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
AUCTIONING
CHURCHILL: A large collection of Winston Churchill documents,
including photographs never before seen in public, are to be auctioned.
But British historians - who have not yet seen the collection
- are upset that the collection may leave the UK without them
having a chance to buy it. London
Evening Standard 05/31/01
HEART'S
DESIRE: If Edwina Currie won the lottery, she knows exactly
what she'd do - buy a Rembrandt. Specifically The Night Watch.
"It invites you in; it begs you to leap inside the frame
and gird your loins in 17th-century Amsterdam." The
Times (UK) 06/01/01
THE
CRITIC THEY LOVED TO HATE: Joan Altabe was an award-winning
architecture and visual art critic for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
and the newspaper's most controversial writer. But her acid word
processor won her lots of enemies, and after she was laid off
last month, many wondered if her foes had finally got her fired.
St. Petersburg Times 05/31/01
IT'S
ALL ABOUT PRIORITIES: The spotlight-loving director of Canada's
National Gallery was awarded the prestigious Order of Canada recently,
and his employees are pretty steamed about it. Why? They've all
been on strike for three weeks. The
Globe & Mail (Toronto) 06/01/01
UP
NEXT - POTHOLE COLLAGE! Anything can be art if you look at
it right. Today's supporting example: Ottawa's Louise Levergneux,
who has made quite a nice little career out of photographing,
collecting, and marketing - get ready - manhole covers. Ottawa
Citizen 06/01/01
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