Friday November 30
SOTHEBY'S
CHAIRMAN WAS ABOVE CRITICISM: "A leading law firm, retained
by Sotheby's in 1997 to investigate possible collusion in the
auction industry, repeatedly questioned the company's chief executive,
Diana D. Brooks, but not its chairman, A. Alfred Taubman, the
lawyer who headed the inquiry acknowledged yesterday in the price-
fixing trial of Mr. Taubman." The
New York Times 11/30/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
IRISH
MUSEUM APPOINTMENT DISPUTE: The Irish Museum of Modern Art
has asked Brian Kennedy to be its new director. Kennedy is director
of Australi's National Gallery, and his term has been marked by
controversy. Two of the IMMA's board members have resigned in
protest over how the decision to appoint Kennedy was made. And
now the Irish minister of culture may get involved.
Irish Times 11/30/01
FREE
AT LAST: The idea was tossed around British art circles for
years, debated for months, and this weekend, it all comes to fruition.
Beginning December 1, admission charges to England's major museums
will be scrapped, and the public will be welcomed free of charge.
The move follows similar plans in Wales and Scotland, and is made
possible through a tax restructuring by the UK's government. BBC
11/30/01
RECORD
REYNOLDS: A bidder buys a Joshua Reynolds portrait for £10,343,500.
The 1774 masterpiece went for £3 million above the estimate and
was the highest for an art work in Europe this year and made it
the second most expensive British painting after John Constable’s
The Lock, which fetched £10.9 million at Sotheby’s in 1990."
Only one hitch - it looks like the buyer might pull his bid. The
Times (UK) 11/30/01
TIME
TO PAINT THE TOWER: It's time to paint the Eiffel Tower again.
"The tower evolved from bright red when it was built in 1888
to dark brown by 1892, and to yellow 7 years later. After a fleeting
foray back to red in the 1950s and 60s, the society plumped on
its current brown in 1968." CNN.com
11/29/01
SYSTEMATIC
DESTRUCTION: "For years the Kabul museum held more than
100,000 artefacts from across the country, some dating back to
prehistoric times. In the only guidebook written about the museum,
Nancy Hatch Dupree, the great Afghan chronicler, described the
building in 1974 as "one of the greatest testimonies of antiquity
that the world has inherited". However, since the mojahedin wars
began in 1992 the exhibits have been steadily destroyed or stolen.
The Taliban obsession with erasing all they saw as un-Islamic
nearly finished the job. When the museum reopened yesterday for
the first time since the fall of the Taliban, there were barely
a dozen exhibits left on show. The
Guardian (UK) 11/29/01
SAVING
THE BMA: Neil MacGregor has finally been named the new head
of the British Museum. He's "often referred to as 'a national
treasure' for his inspired running of the Trafalgar Square gallery
for the past 15 years, was the obvious choice to succeed Robert
Anderson, who leaves next summer. But he will take over at one
of the most delicate moments in its history, when the boost provided
by its spectacular Great Court conversion is being wiped out by
a catastrophic drop in foreign visitors because of the foot and
mouth and September 11 crises. The
Guardian (UK) 11/29/01
Thursday November 29
SAATCHI
TAKES ON THE TATE: In a direct challenge to the London museum
establishment, Charles Saatchi has announced he is opening his
own "museum," located between the Tate Britain and Tate
Modern. Even "calling his new gallery a museum is seen as
a direct challenge to the subsidised art establishment. But sources
close to him last night revealed that he also intends to match
Tate Modern head-on by staging themed exhibitions from borrowed
works, and not just shows of his own contemporary artists."
The Guardian (UK) 11/29/01
TONIGHT'S
VERMEER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY KODAK: "More than 25 curators
and scholars, artists and art historians will gather at New York
University this weekend to discuss — and, presumably, to debate
— David Hockney's iconoclastic theory that old masters, all the
way back to 1430, used optical devices to help them produce realistic
images." The New York Times 11/29/01
(one-time registration required
for access)
BRITISH
MUSEUM GETS MACGREGOR: "The head of the [UK] National
Gallery, Neil MacGregor, has been appointed the new director of
the British Museum. He will take up the appointment next August
when the current director, Robert Anderson, steps down."
BBC 11/29/01
CUTTING
THROUGH THE ANIMOSITY: "Who knows what makes visual art
so hard for people to cope with? For whatever reason, it seems
to be pilloried more in the public domain than other art forms.
As an art critic, you are mindful of this. If people don't understand
a work of art, they will often not simply move on; they will dig
in and actively hate." The Globe
& Mail (Toronto) 11/29/01
THE
EDIFICE COMPLEX: It isn't just the events of 9/11. Some architects
and planners have been saying for years that skyscrapers make
no sense. Higher than 50 stories? "There's absolutely no
reason to do this in Manhattan, or anywhere else for that matter,"
says one. "Building anything beyond 50 stories is irresponsible,"
says another. Nonetheless, they keep on going up. NPR
11/28/01
DALI
FOR EVERYBODY: "The National Gallery of Art has moved
Salvador Dali's famed Sacrament of the Last Supper to a new location
because wheelchair users couldn't see the painting. Officials
at the museum say this is the first time the gallery has moved
a work of art because of concerns over access for the disabled.
The large Dali canvas had hung for decades in a landing in the
West Building, visible only to those who could use the stairs
or escalator." Washington Post
(courtesy Dallas Morning News) 11/29/01
QUITE
A RAU OVER SOME ART: His name is Dr. Gustave Rau, and he is
the owner of one of the world's greatest privately held collections
of European art. He is also quite elderly, and of dubiously sound
mind, a condition which has caused his own lawyers to seek for
control of the collection to be wrested from him. As it turns
out, Dr. Rau, who spent a couple of decades setting up clinics
in rural Africa, still has quite a bit of fight left in him. The
New York Times 11/29/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Wednesday November 28
STEALING
RUSSIA BLIND: Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991,
thieves have plundered art from the region's museums. "In
the 1990's hundreds of millions of dollars in art, antiques, books
and manuscripts were stolen in Russia, mostly from cultural institutions
in St. Petersburg like the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
the Russian National Library, the State Russian Museum, the Academy
of Fine Arts and the State Hermitage Museum." The
New York Times 11/28/01 (one-time registration required
for access)
FRANCE
OPENS TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD: The French art auction market
opens this week as the government allows foreign auction houses
to to business. Both Christie's and Sotheby's have sales planned.
Why allow the foreigners in? Many believe that "the French
monopoly is responsible for France's shrinking share — just 6
percent today — of the global auction market." The
New York Times 11/28/01 (one-time registration required
for access)
THE
SCHOLAR IN CHARGE: There are sighs of relief at the British
Museum's choice of Neil McGregor as its new director. "At
the National Gallery, MacGregor never wavered in the face of the
government's hysterical anti-elitist and anti-historical line,
and he wasn't afraid to criticise policies with which he disagreed.
Time and again he demonstrated that he understood what the art
of the past is about, and, just as important, was able to communicate
that understanding to the public." The
Telegraph (UK) 11/28/01
A MAP
IS MORE THAN JUST A MAP: "'All maps are subjective. In
fact, the subjectivity is what makes them special. A map can be
unexceptional or highly controversial. What looks like a map can
be a political tract. If you want to understand mentalities, maps
are a good place to begin.' Like letters or diaries, they tell
human stories, and they reveal just as much by what they exclude
as what they include." Time
11/26/01
AN
UNSUSPECTED SCHOOL OF ART: "Wind-bent palm trees, sand,
surf, billowing clouds and vivid sunsets were the essentials of
Florida landscape painting that emerged following World War II.
From the late 1950's into the early 80's these colorful landscapes
were ubiquitous decorations in Florida homes, offices, restaurants
and motel rooms. They shaped the state's popular image as much
as oranges and alligators. Little known, however, is that such
paintings were largely the creations of a loose-knit group of
self-taught, African-American artists." The New York Times 11/27/01
(one-time registration required
for access)
Tuesday November 27
LEONARDO
DRAWING DESTROYED: Restorers in Florence have destroyed a
recently-discovered Leonardo drawing when they attempted to clean
it. "Restorers submerged the drawing in a solution of alcohol
and distilled water, a common restoration intervention,"
and the ink dissolved. The
Art Newspaper 11/26/01
WORLD'S
LARGEST PRIVATE COLLECTION ON DISPLAY: Queen Elizabeth is
putting some of her extensive art collection on display in honor
of her Golden Jubilee. "It will be shown at the new £20 million
Queen’s Gallery, the biggest addition to the Palace since Queen
Victoria had the ballroom built in the 1830s. More than 450 items,
from Rembrandt and Vermeer paintings to Sèvres porcelain, 15th-century
manuscripts, a Michelangelo drawing, a Fabergé jewelled egg and
the most valuable diamond brooch in existence, will offer a taste
of the world’s largest art collection in private hands."
The Queen has 6,500 paintings, three times as many as owned by
the National Gallery. The Times (UK)
11/27/01
COURTAULD+GETTY:
London's Courtauld Institute expects to become an independent
college and part of the University of London. The school has also
made an alliance with the J. Paul Getty Trust. "The powerful
Getty would not be taking over the Courtauld, although the link
will strengthen cooperation between the two institutions. It will
also facilitate the loan of paintings for display in the Getty
Museum and the Courtauld Gallery." The
Art Newspaper 11/26/01
KICK
'EM WHEN THEY'RE DOWN: "The Guggenheim is no longer a
museum of art so much as it is a kind of market-driven experiment
in cultural anthropology. This once great institution has become
a dark pit of cynicism - a black hole at the center of the museum
world - where shows are selected on no basis other than the availability
of corporate sponsors and the expectation of a box-office gold
mine." The
New Republic 11/20/01
OPPOSING
IRELAND'S TALLEST BUILDING: Trinity College Dublin has plans
to build a skyscraper hotel on campus. "The hotel will be
20 metres higher than Liberty Hall, at present Ireland's tallest
building. Trinity authorities claim the project will generate
hundreds of millions of pounds for the university." But students,
academics and senators who represent the college have united to
oppose the project," saying it will loom above the campus.
The Observer (UK) 11/25/01
PAINTER
OF LIGHT (AND SUBDIVISIONS): Thomas Kinkade sells thousands
of paintings. Now he's also selling homes in Northern California.
"The California painter has licensed his name and artistic
inspiration to Taylor Woodrow Homes, a London-based housing developer.
With Kinkade's paintings as a guide, Taylor Woodrow laid out a
101-house gated community called the Village. Streets, houses,
fixtures and landscaping will epitomize Kinkade's nostalgic style.
About 300 people tour the Village's model homes each week. Seven
homes have sold so far." Los
Angeles Times 11/25/01
Monday November 26
GLEE
IN DESTRUCTION OF ART: Eyewitness accounts of the Taliban's
systematic destruction of art in the Kabul Museum last year say
that the destruction was carried out with glee. "They walked
through the National Museum here last year, inspecting each object
to determine which ones depicted living beings. And then they
raised their axes and brought them down hard, smashing piece after
piece of Afghan history into oblivion. Over three days, as the
Taliban ministers walked from one artifact to another, an Afghan
archeologist and a historian followed at a respectful distance,
pleading for mercy as if begging for the lives of their own children."
International Herald Tribune
(LATimes) 11/24/01
INSTALL
THIS: "More and more of London's gallery space is devoted
to installations. What we need is the answer to three simple questions.
What is installation art? Why has it become so ubiquitous? And
why is it so bloody irritating?" The
Guardian (UK) 11/24/01
FREE
WORKS: It took awhile to get admission charges to the Victoria
& Albert Museum removed. But twice as many visitors checked
out the V&A on its first day of free admission. "At least
6,500 art lovers poured in as charges were abolished yesterday
- the average daily total had previously been around 2,500."
London Evening Standard 11/24/01
SPACE
TECH TO RESTORE MONET? Technology designed by NASA to simulate
damage on spacecraft in low earth orbit may restore a Monet painting
severely damaged by fire at the Museum of Modern Art in 1958.
"In tests on paint chips taken from a corner of the ruined
Monet, the team found the atomic oxygen easily vapourised soot
and dark particles of charred binder - the component that gives
paint its stickiness - but did not react with the coloured pigment."
New Scientist 11/23/01
Sunday November 25
CRISIS
IN PRESERVATION: "The combination of preservation legislation
and explosive growth in the Southwest over the last decade has
created an archaeological boom that has completely overwhelmed
the region's museums and anthropological centers, archaeologists,
museum executives and government officials say. Their institutions
cannot handle all the artifacts found and excavated during publicly
financed projects. The logjam is so bad that some museums like
Northern Arizona are closing their doors to the resource materials,
and others are limiting what they will accept, while a third group
has increased their fees for cataloguing, analyzing and storing
them by as much as 10-fold." The
New York Times 11/24/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
OPTICAL
ILLUSION: "The hottest, and most contentious, topic in
art history at the moment is the longstanding but murky relationship
between painting and optics. And painting exhibitions all over
the place now boast a photographic element."
The New York Times 11/24/01
(one-time registration
required for access)
THE
ART OF MONUMENTS: "Some people still think monuments should
be monumental, with classical architectural references - big and
white and grand." But "a new generation of artists and architects
has grown skeptical of traditional monumental form. This generation
questions the assumption that big, concretized forms can tell
people how to think and remember. Christian
Science Monitor 11/23/01
RICH
BUT UNKNOWN: Who's the richest painter in Britain? Forget
the usual suspects - it's Andrew Vicari. This year alone he sold
a series of paintings to a Saudi company for $28.6 million. "Unlike
his rivals in wealth, though, Vicari is practically unknown in
his homeland. No matter that in China they hold loving retrospectives
of his work, or that there are three museums devoted to his oeuvre
in Saudi Arabia. Or that Vicari is the official painter for Interpol
and the CRS, France's much-hated elite police force. No matter
at all." The
Age (Melbourne) 11/25/01
Friday November 23
ABOVE
THE LAW: One of the most striking things about the trial of
Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman is the glimpse it gives of the
lifestyle of the super-rich. So why would someone so well off
risk it all on an illegal scheme? After looking at Taubman's datebooks,
the jury "may decide that it was precisely the lifestyle
they reveal—the jets, the apartments, the friends who, like him,
seemed to inhabit an almost magical realm—that persuaded him that
he was above the law." New
York Observer 11/21/01
FAKE
ARTWORK SEIZED: French police have confiscated about 40 works
from a Paris gallery purported to be by the French sculptor Cesar.
"Police say several dozen fake works have been sold in France
and in neighbouring Belgium, with estimated gains running into
the millions of dollars." Cesar, who died in 1998, made sculptures
by compressing car wrecks into cubes. The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/23/01
Thursday November 22
NY
MUSEUMS SUFFERING: New York museums are suffering with drastic
downturns in business after Sept. 11. Earlier this week the Guggenheim
cut 80 staff and announced other cutbacks. At the Metropolitan
Museum "attendance is down 20 to 25%, largely from the drop
in foreign tourism, which brought in about half fits visitors."
The Art Newspaper 11/21/01
CHINA
TO BAN FOREIGN ART TRADERS: China has introduced a new law
that would ban foreigners from the antique business. "The
ban includes auctions, and covers both wholly foreign-owned enterprises
and joint-ventures. The National Relics Bureau specifically mentioned
Sotheby’s and Christie’s as a target."
The Art Newspaper 11/21/01
THE
WHITNEY'S 113: The Whitney announces the lineup of artists
for next March's Whitney Biennial. With 113 artists and collaborative
teams, the 2002 edition will be the largest since 1981.
Whitney.org 11/01
Wednesday November 21
A
BIGGER BUDDHA: A group upset at the Taliban's destruction
of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan earlier this year
has announced a plan to rebuild the statues, only larger than
before. "The desire is to show that 'an act of international
destruction cannot erase the memory of those things which are
valuable to humanity and its heritage'." But UNESCO is opposed
to the idea saying that "an international agreement - the
Venice charter - forbids the reconstruction of monuments that
have been destroyed." Nando Times
(AP) 11/21/01
BUYING
BRITISH: The Victoria & Albert's newly reopening British
galleries are a triumph - the most important event in British
art this year. "Though a handful of works are on display
for their historical, cultural or documentary significance, the
overwhelming majority of objects are included for their aesthetic
quality or rarity. Remember, as you walk through these galleries,
that the piece of embroidery or silver or ceramic you are looking
at is almost certainly as fine an example of its kind as can be
found anywhere in the world." The
Telegraph (UK) 11/21/01
BRASSED
OFF: The Churchill Society - dedicated to preserving the memory
of the great British prime minister - is protesting a new sculpture
commissioned by the Victoria & Albert Museum for its newly
refurbished British galleries. The complaint? Cornelia Parker's
Breathless is composed of brass instruments the artist
had crushed in the hydraulics of the Tower Bridge. "The society
is angry because, it says, instruments that might have been repairable
were sacrificed on the altar of conceptual art." The Society
calls the piece an "act of vandalism". "Little wonder that extremists
in the Muslim world think western civilisation is decadent ...
we are breathless with disbelief." The
Guardian (UK) 11/20/01
THE
IMPORTANT ARCHITECTURE: Is it true that when Westerners think
of great modern architecture, it usually comes wrapped in Western
traditions? "Much of the prejudice against non-Western design
lies in the way the dream of modernism, as imagined by white,
male, Western architects, is promoted in architecture faculties
around the world. The mainstream media regularly privilege the
work of a few superstar designers and ignore the important architecture
of many others in countries such as Iran, India and Sri Lanka."
The Globe & Mail (Canada)
11/21/01
SEAHENGE
CLUES: Three years ago, winter storms off the coast of England
uncovered a circle of timbers placed 4000 years ago. "Seahenge
has been a source of bitter controversy. The circle of 55 posts,
around the up ended roots of a giant oak, had originally been
built on swampy land well inland. After winter storms laid them
bare, English Heritage removed the timbers from the beach for
study more than two years ago, despite the protests of druids,
new age travellers and local tourism interests."
The Guardian (UK) 11/20/01
BLIND
BID: London's Royal College of Art is having a secret-art
auction. The art is by students and well-known artists whose work
sells for hundreds of thousands of pound. Buyers can see the postcard-size
art but "the identity of the artist remains a secret until
the time it is bought. The artist signs the picture on the back
and it is only revealed once it is taken off display and given
to its new owner." BBC
11/21/01
Tuesday November 20
THE
BIGGER THEY ARE... The Guggenheim has been the highest
of the high flyers among museums in the past decade. But
that just means the crash is louder when times turn bad.
And bad they apparently are: "Admissions are down
by almost 60 percent, revenue is running about half of
what it is supposed to be, and as of Friday 80 employees
— roughly one-fifth of the staff — had been given pink
slips in what [director Thomas] Krens described as the
initial round of layoffs. Besides the staff cuts, which
reportedly may reach 40 percent, the museum has scaled
back its exhibit schedule, postponing exhibitions by Matthew
Barney and Kasimir Malevich. Its SoHo museum on Prince
Street will close at the end of the year, and the fate
of its $20 million Web site, guggenheim.com,
is still unclear." The
New York Times 11/20/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
SELLING
CENSORSHIP: After a Baltimore radio talk show host
attacked Andres Serrano's Piss Christ earlier this month
for "defiling a sacred image" and denounced
the Baltimore Museum of Art for selling post cards of
the image, a listener bought the museum store's remaining
13 post cards "to prevent anyone else from being
offended by the controversial photograph. You could call
that a form of private censorship, since the person who
bought the images did so for the sole purpose of precluding
anyone else from seeing them. But it raises a knotty problem
for whoever took them off the market: Now what? Destroy
them? Keep them? Return them to the publisher?"
Baltimore Sun 11/20/01
THE
BANKRUPT TURNER: Critic Brian Sewell suggests that
the Turner Prize has run out of steam. "This year's
exhibition is more vain and futile than any of its predecessors,
and we are compelled to wonder if the prize has run its
course and should now be abandoned - either that, or [Tate
director Nick] Serota should retire from chairing the
jury and the jurors should be chosen from an altogether
wider field of cognoscenti rather than from card-carrying
members of the Serota Fan Club."
London Evening Standard
11/16/01
-
THE
SAD TRUTH ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART: "Despite
contemporary art's massive propaganda, public funding,
seeming popularity and apparently accepted cultural
importance, most people are not sure what it is supposed
to do or be; in their uncertainty they remain silent,
and in their silence their numbers are counted by the
Tate to legitimise the now ludicrous Turner Prize."
London Evening Standard
11/19/01
LATIN-AMERICAN
AT HOME: "For too long Latin America's 20th-century masters
of painting have lacked a permanent home in which to be viewed
and appreciated together. That vacuum is being filled by the new
Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, better known as
Malba, its acronym in Spanish. It opened in September as a welcome
respite for a city suffering through its longest and deepest recession
in generations." The New York
Times 11/20/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
CURATOR
JAILED: A former curator with the Wisconsin Historical Society
Museum was sentenced to 15 years in jail for stealing American
Indian artifacts from the museum. He took items "valued at
more than $100,000, including a rare war club, beaded buckskin
bag, cradle board cover, quiver and silver earrings."
New Jersey Online (AP) 11/19/01
Monday November 19
FAILURE
AS SUCCESS: Last week's contemporary art auctions sold about
half the value of last year's sales. "Nevertheless, many
felt that, in the circumstances, the sale had been a success.
Among the highlights was a string of revelatory prices by artists
whose work has rarely appeared at auction."
The Telegraph (UK) 11/19/01
WHEN
ART MOVES: "Contemporary art as a whole has become more
like film, dealing with duration and movement and with problems
of realism and representation." Organisers of next year's
Documenta debate the role of film in contemporary art.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
11/18/01
POLITICS
OF LABELS: Gallery labels for art aren't a small matter. Museums
agonize over them, and critics always seem to complain, no matter
what's written. "Now there are whole committees to discuss
the 'friendliness' of labels. One square of text can pass through
a dozen hands, so that by the time it gets on to the wall it is
picture perfect." The
Guardian (UK) 11/19/01
WAR
MEETS TRADITION: Traditional Afghan rugs are an art practiced
with centuries of tradition. "The ever-similar loops and
knots the women work into the sheep's wool are like the day's
work and their stories - they have remained unchanged for 1,000
years." But "ever since modern warfare became a part
of everyday life in Afghanistan when the Soviets marched in over
20 years ago, the technology of the modern age has become involved
in this enormous archaic repetition, and Kalashnikovs have become
integrated into the ancient symbolic world of Afghan folk art,
which always used to dwell on eternal life rather than death."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 11/18/01
PROTECTING
THE SMITHSONIAN: Buildings and monuments in Washington DC
need more security. That means those ugly cement barriers in front
of entrances, or... Door No. 2 - large planters, which is the
option the city's Fine Arts Commission chose for the front of
the Smithsonian. Washington
Post 11/16/01
NOT
GRACELAND TOO! With museums struggling all over America, tough
times have come even to Graceland. The Elvis shrine has had to
lay off 50 workers. "Since almost a third of our visitorship is
from outside the country, we have seen significant effects and
have put into effect a number of reductions and cutbacks."
Nando Times (AP) 11/19/01
THE
ARTIST WITHIN (THE SCREEN): Can't draw or paint? Want to be
an artist anyway? Producing or manipulating digital images on
a computer has become a popular at-home art. "Doctoring images
- or Photoshopping, as its practitioners call it - is a booming
online pastime for hobbyists and graphic designers whose altered
documents have taken up residence in the popular imagination alongside
political cartoons and satirical text."
Wired 11/19/01
Sunday November 18
WHAT'S
NEXT? It's awkward to say so now, of course, but the World
Trade Centers were not particularly good examples of urban architecture,
even when they first went up. "Even as the tragedy still
resonates, a growing contingent of architects and urban planners
has begun to question many of the tenets that led to the design
of the 110-story towers, the world's tallest buildings when they
opened in the early 1970s." Baltimore
Sun 11/18/01
-
WILL
NEW YORK TAKE A CHANCE? New York may boast one of
the world's most famous skylines, but the majority of
the city's high-rises are almost embarrassingly ordinary.
In a city dominated by 50-story condos and hotels squeezed
into tight Manhattan spaces, there is not the abundance
of architectural creativity one would expect from a
city of New York's stature. Some enterprising designers
are trying to sell the city on a new era of architectural
risk-taking. The New York
Times 11/18/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
ASSESSING
THE NEW IN BOSTON: Boston is an old city by American standards,
and its architecture tends to reflect that fact. And when a new
building rises on the skyline, especially a modern one, it draws
a certain amount of attention. After a local critic gave a lukewarm
review to the new skyscraper, the denizens of Beantown weighed
in, with some sticking up for the new-fangled style, while one
detractor sneered, "It would look right at home in Dallas."
Boston Globe 11/18/01
Friday November 16
CROWDED FIELD:
With Philips auction house spending lavishly trying to establish
itself as a major player, and Sotheby's and Christie's having
down years (for a variety of reasons), something will have to
give in the auction business. Is consolidation in the works? Forbes
11/14/01
WHITNEY
BIENNIAL TO GET LOCAL: "After curators at the Whitney
Museum of American Art visited artists' studios in 43 towns and
cities in 27 states and Puerto Rico, plans for the 2002 Whitney
Biennial are in place. Unlike the mammoth survey of contemporary
art two years ago, organized by six outside curators, this Biennial,
opening March 7, will be a homegrown affair." The
New York Times 11/16/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
NASHVILLE CUTS BACK ON ART: Tennessee museums lay off staff and cut back exhibitions
because of a tight economy, they say. Nashville Tennesseean 11/15/01
OPENING
U.S. EYES TO ASIA: For whatever reason, Americans haven't
had a very clear picture of Asia in the last few decades. Very
often, the world's largest continent was viewed, incredibly, as
a single culture, rather than the rich tapestry of countries,
peoples, and traditions that it is. New York's "Asia Society"
has gone a long way towards closing the culture gap, and when
its exhibition space reopens this week after an impressive renovation,
it is expected to continue its ascent in the NY art world. The
New York Times 11/16/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
A
DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH: Its renowned fiddling tradition aside,
Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia is not necessarily the happiest
place in Canada. Environmental devastation and massive job losses
have been the order of life on Cape Breton for much of the last
several years. But a small local university is the repository
for one of North America's most unique and treasured art collections,
and a now-annual art party and auction has become one of the social
events of the year on the island. National
Post (Canada) 11/16/01
Thursday November 15
THE
RELIGION OF ART: All world religions have had to deal with
the issue of art. Is art somehow an affront to God? "Today,
we are so far removed from our cultural ancestors' fear of idolatry
that we forget the ancient but enduring power of the human image.
As we flip through the pages of a magazine, catch a video billboard
out of the corner of one eye or lazily channel hop, it's hard
for us to even conceive of a culture that sees an ancient statue
of somebody else's god as we might view the vilest pornography."
The Globe & Mail (Canada)
11/15/01
£9
MILLION FLOP IN CARDIFF: "The Arts Council of Wales has
been accused of completely mismanaging its largest ever lottery
grant, which was used to create the doomed Centre for Visual Arts.
The CVA went over budget and was completed late in 1999 - 14 months
later, it had closed down through lack of interest."
BBC 11/15/01
MORALE
REBUILD: Next week the Victoria & Albert Museum unveils
its new £31 million redo of the British Galleries. "Every
department of the V&A has been involved. It’s just the kind of
project to kindle both the morale of the staff and the imagination
of the public. Fingers crossed." London
Evening Standard 11/15/01
Wednesday November 14
DEALERS
INDICTED FOR MONEY LAUNDERING: Two Boston art dealers are
indicted for a money-laundering scheme involving the sale of two
paintings. "Shirley D Sack, 73, an art wholesaler with offices
in New York, and Arnold Katzen, 62, a principal at American European
Art Associates, are accused of trying to sell two paintings for
$4.1 million in cash." BBC
11/14/01
RELEVANCE
OF ART: Artists try to sort out what art to make after September
11. "The mundane and banal, ironic and frivolous have never
been obstacles to contemporary art—far from it—but that was 'before.'
Now, as in 'after,' artists feel impelled to defend their vocation,
even as they struggle to find applications for most of their strategies.
Postmodernism, some commentators argue, has been swept aside by
this event, where reality has clearly superseded metaphor."
ARTNews 11/01
JUST
SAY NO: They all want you to love Norman Rockwell. "A
cadre of museum directors, curators, national critics, art historians,
and suddenly populist art theorists want you to love him. Rockwell
is a postmodern fad. He's hip. He's also a big moneymaker and
crowd pleaser, an everyman artist everyone can understand. He
gives good box office where museums are concerned (over a million
people have seen the current traveling retrospective); lends street
(or it is suburban?) cred to those who don't want to seem snobbish;
and revs up hucksters like Thomas Hoving, who spouts gibberish
in the catalog about the cooling of 'the obsession for abstraction'."
But really, people...resist the hype. Let good sense prevail.
The Village Voice 11/13/01
Tuesday November 13
POINTLESS
PRIZE: What's the point of the Turner Prize? "The suggestion
is that in the name of the painter widely considered the greatest
artist that Britain has ever produced, some of the very best of
all recent British art will be put before the public. But it also
means that half the artists in the country need not apply, for
only the comparatively young may count as best and brightest and
truly contemporary. And from the artists who have lately featured
on the shortlist, it is clear that only certain sorts of artist
qualify at all. The inference is that to work in perhaps more
conventional ways, or with interests less obviously contentious,
is never to fascinate, provoke or amaze again."
Financial Times 11/13/01
PULLING
BACK THE CURTAIN: Former Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman
is on trial in New York for price collusion. "The scene is
now set in Courtroom 110 for one of the most entertaining trials
ever to have sent shafts of light into the secretive and often
murky world of fine art. No trial has reached to the top of both
London auction houses, two 18th-century institutions that have
attracted generations of aristocrats posing as businessmen and
businessmen posing as aristocrats."
The Times (UK) 11/13/01
THE FATE OF
CORPORATE ART: Aer Lingus is selling some of its art collection
to pay corporate bills. A trend? "Whatever really motivates
big commercial concerns to amass art collections - investment
value, tax dodge, chairman’s whim or altruism - the current world
recession, and some recent well-publicised sales in the auction
rooms, have prompted some observers to speculate that more collections
might follow." The
Scotsman 11/13/01
- Previously:
WILL
SELL ART FOR FOOD: Ireland's national airline Aer Lingus
is losing £1.5 million a day. To raise money, the airline has
decided to sell as many as 25 works works of art, hoping to
earn about £400,000. London Evening Standard 11/07/01
Monday November 12
MERGERS
AND DE-ACQUISITIONS: What happens when a company with a big
art collection merges with another that doesn't want it? A hurried
sale that does no one credit. "As a result, and because many
of the artists have no saleroom track record, bargains may be
had. The estimates on the works by art stars - Emin, Chris Ofili
and the Chapmans - are in line with their gallery prices, but
most others are well below that line."
The Telegraph (UK) 11/12/01
AUCTIONEER
ON TRIAL: The price-collusion trial of Sotheby's former chairman
gets underway. First you have to explain to jurors how the auction
business works. "By the measure of his wealth, Mr. Taubman
is hardly being judged by a jury of his peers. One is a health
aide taking care of an Alzheimer's patient. There is a Transit
Authority ironworker and another transit employee, a station agent.
There is a letter carrier, a forklift operator, a second-grade
teacher, a former corrections officer and a deli owner and restaurateur."
During a "somewhat dry tutorial on auction house practices
and terminology, one of the jurors, the ironworker, appeared to
be fighting to stay awake." The
New York Times 11/12/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
WILL
THERE BE MORE SKYSCRAPERS? "For more than a century,
skyscrapers have been a symbol of American power and ingenuity.
But the recent terrorist attack on the World Trade Center has
brought into question the role these tall buildings play in the
urban landscape as well as their long- term prospects as a building
type." A group of experts says the tall building is here
to stay. There will be more. The New
York Times 11/12/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
WILL
THEY FIND THEIR WAY HOME? Next year New York's Museum of Modern
Art is beginning a $650 million, four-year reconstruction and
expansion of its Manhattan home. While the construction is going,
MOMA moves to a temporary home in Queens. But will its audience
follow? Philadelphia Inquirer 11/11/01
Sunday November 11
FINISHING
OFF WHAT'S LEFT: Located at the crossroads of Asia and Europe,
Afghanistan had one of the world's most impressive collections
of historical cultural treasures. But the wars of the past 20
years and the Taliban destruction of art have wiped out much of
it. And now American bombs are finishing off what remains.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
11/11/01
CRITIC
AS MURDERER: Ron Kitaj has a new show, and woe to the critic
who writes about it: "According to Kitaj, you are currently
reading the words of a murderer. At least, I think you are. I
have never been entirely certain if I was or I wasn't one of the
critics accused by Kitaj of killing his wife after his 1994 retrospective
at the Tate. You may possibly recall - although it was an event
of minor cultural significance - that Kitaj's Tate show received
bad reviews from most of the national critics. Later that year,
the artist's wife, Sandra Fisher, also an artist, died. Kitaj
concluded that these two events, the arrival of the bad reviews
and the death of his wife, were conjoined. Since then, he has
waged a curious campaign against critics, employing the somewhat-less-than-crucial
annual occasion of the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition to display
a new work on the subject and to out us as his wife's assassins."
The Sunday Times (UK) 11/11/01
HIDDEN
MASTERS: For years, a Detroit-area cardiologist and his wife
collected art by some of the most important names of the 20th
Century. They kept a low profile, kept the work in crates, and
told few people they had it. Last week, when the collection was
donated not to the big Detroit Institute of Art, but to the smaller
Cranbrook Art Museum, there were a lot of surprised Detroiters.
Detroit News 11/11/01
MUSEUM
SUES: Founders of New York's new $19 million Children's Jewish
Museum now under construction are "suing two contractors
for $3.5 million, claiming they did shoddy work, delayed construction
and interfered with the facility's ability to get city funding."
New York Post 11/09/01
Friday November 9
MUSEUM DIRECTORS'
SALARIES: The salaries of museum directors in the US and Canada
have risen fifty percent in the past four years, according to
a survey by the Association of Art Museum Directors. In Britain,
salaries are dramatically lower: the top British salary, $160,000
(£110,000) at the Tate, is the same as the mean US salary. The
top US salary is $1.7 million (£1,170,000), in Houston.
The Art Newspaper 11/09/01
AND
THEN THERE WERE 12: "The latest Rembrandt show, which
opened on Saturday in this central German city of Kassel, has
its origins in protest. Kassel is home to the oldest major Rembrandt
collection in the world. Nonetheless, the number of originals
has dwindled, through losses and reattribution, from the original
43 to the present 12." Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung 11/09/01
GETTING
TO TEN: Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art is 10 years old.
"It's a sweet and sour achievement that it took countless
stories of its financial crisis, plans to demolish it or redevelop
it into a giant coffee table for the museum to emerge into the
public consciousness. As the MCA marks its 10th anniversary on
Sunday, perhaps its most significant achievement is that it has
survived at all." Sydney
Morning Herald 11/09/01
THE
MODERN MONUMENT TOUR: The Grand Tour of monuments and cultural
treasures is an old tradition. But in recent years newly constructed
museums have become tourism destinations. "All signs also
seem to indicate that the public appetite for a connection between
architecture and tourism will only increase. There is yet to be
an example of a museum that has not benefited by an architectural
face-lift." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/03/01
GOLD RUSH BAR SELLS
FOR RECORD PRICE: It was lost in a shipwreck and recovered
fifteen years ago; until recently, it was locked up in a lawsuit.
Now the 80-pound ingot has been sold for $8 million, the most
ever paid for collectible money. When first made in California,
in 1857, it was worth $17,433.57; at current gold market prices,
it's worth about a quarter of a million. CNN (AP) 11/09/01
Thursday November 8
AFGHAN
ART IN PERIL: As bombs fall on Kabul, those interested in
art worry about the safety of what's left of Afghanistan's cultural
heritage. Ironically, there was a plan two years ago to rescue
remaining artwork for safekeeping. "Were it not for the red
tape surrounding the movement of cultural heritage, at least part
of these collections could have been safely moved to the West."
The Art Newspaper 11/06/01
GERMAN
MONUMENT: So Berlin's Holocaust Museum has filled up with
artifacts. "The museum may yet regret having earlier opened
the building to the public. Some are already saying that it was
more moving empty than it is now with many of the original grim
hollows obliterated by dividing walls, lofts, additional stairs,
decorative pillars, boxes and gadgets and shiny vitrines stuffed
full with manuscripts, books, posters, paintings, sculptures,
and assorted objects. If it had been left empty, the building
might have served as an abstract Holocaust memorial. Berlin already
has dozens of minor memorials to the Holocaust but a large-scale
monument, although much discussed, has never been built, mostly
out of lack of interest, funds, or even need."
New York Review of Books 11/15/01
WHAT
IS IT ABOUT VINCENT? A new van Gogh show is a big hit in Chicago.
But why? "More than a century after van Gogh's death, many
of his images are entrenched in the cultural conscience, and his
name attracts people in a way that curators and art historians
struggle to understand." The
New York Times 11/08/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
ROAD
TO NOWHERE: New York art dealers are pushing for a plan to
turn a 70-year-old elevated roadway that cuts through Chelsea
into a long 300,000-square-foot park. Some - including outgoing
mayor Rudy Giuliani, would prefer to tear the structure down.
The Art Newspaper 11/06/01
ANCIENT
MOSAIC DISCOVERY: A construction worker digging beneath some
old barns in Somerset, England, unearths an ancient Roman mosaic,
one of the largest and "most spectacular" ever found
in Britain. It's "a superb six by 10 metre mosaic, featuring
a dolphin, wine urns and twining vines, and a plainer strip of
mosaic, probably the corridor leading to a summer dining room."
The Guardian (UK) 11/08/01
RIFKIN
TO HIRSHHORN: "Ned Rifkin, director of the Menil Collection
in Houston, will be the new head of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, sources say." It's a homecoming; Rifkin spent much
of the 80s as a curator at the Hirshhorn. Washington
Post 11/07/01
THE
GREAT AUCTION HOUSE TRIAL: The trial against Sotheby's ex-chairman
opens this week. "For the incestuous art world, where auction-house
proles can grow up to be lordly dealers, the price-fixing trial
has a certain Freudian tone. Alfred Taubman, the former Sotheby's
chairman - and still its largest shareholder - plays the role
of overbearing father, and Dede Brooks, his former protégée, is
the bossy big sister. 'Of course he's guilty,' said one spectator,
relishing the Lear-like scene. 'He's such a megalomaniac'."
New York Magazine 11/05/01
ARCHITECT OF ANOTHER
TIME: When he died in 1974, Louis Kahn was considered by
some to be America's leading architect.
"Kahn used the basic tools of architecture—space, proportion,
light, texture—sparely and with an almost religious reverence."
But his personal life was messy and produced, on parallel tracks,
three families. The New Yorker 11/12/01
Wednesday November 7
VATICAN
ART SCANDAL: Two Vatican officials "are accused of
trying to sell works of art falsely attributed to artists such
as Michelangelo, Guercino and Giambologna, to art institutions
such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National
Gallery in Washington." The
Guardian (UK) 11/07/01
SAME
OLD SAME OLD: This year's Turner Prize show features a lot
of art that looks familiar. "For those of us familiar with
the four artists and their recent exhibitions, too much of the
work has been seen before." The
Guardian (UK) 11/07/01
-
ART
OF ENLIGHTENMENT: This year's Turner Prize exhibit is
up, and what's grabbed the early attention? Martin Creed's
empty room with a light that flips on and off at intervals.
"Creed's installation does exactly what is says. Every
five seconds the lights go on and off in the biggest and emptiest
room of this year's show at Tate Britain. There was also much
muttering about whether Creed, 33, had simply recycled a five-year-old
piece and why the electrician who had made it had seemingly
not been credited." The
Guardian (UK) 11/07/01
- END
OF THE AGE OF DECADENCE? "The trouble with the shortlist
is that the judges were too sophisticated by half, deliberately
choosing the difficult, the passe and the unknown, while overlooking
artists who had genuinely appealed to public taste." The
Telegraph (UK) 11/07/01
- LESS
SHOCK: "We would be wrong to conclude that the shortlisted
contenders are dull. The ability to shock is no guarantee of
quality, and this year’s Turner artists know how to sustain
our interest." The Times (UK)
11/07/01
WILL
SELL ART FOR FOOD: Ireland's national airline Aer Lingus is
losing £1.5 million a day. To raise money, the airline has decided
to sell as many as 25 works works of art, hoping to earn about
£400,000. London
Evening Standard 11/07/01
INTRODUCER
TO ART: Ernst Gombrich, who died last weekend at the age of
92, was one of the most influential figures in visual art. His
The Story of Art was basic history. In he "past half-century
the book, which has gone through 16 editions and been translated
into 32 languages since its publication in 1950, has been the
chief introduction to western art for millions of people around
the world." The
Guardian (UK) 11/07/01
Tuesday November 6
SAVING
AFGHANISTAN'S CULTURE: "A brightly colored fresco lines
the halls of an old temple, depicting images of a thriving culture.
A museum with an impressive modern art collection attracts tourists
from all over the world. This was Afghanistan 25 years ago...
But because the majority of Afghanistan's intellectual and artistic
community has left, the country's cultural history is on the verge
of extinction. Farhad Azad is hoping to bring it back. With his
website, he wants to archive what he believes to be a vital piece
of Afghanistan's history." Wired
11/06/01
DOES
TOO MUCH INFO LESSEN UNDERSTANDING? The problem with studying
art history? Too much information. "The piles of information
smother our capacity to really feel. By imperceptible steps, art
history gently drains away a painting's sheer wordless visceral
force, turning it into an occasion for intellectual debate. What
was once an astonishing object, thick with the capacity to mesmerize,
becomes a topic for a quiz show, or a one-liner at a party, or
the object of a scholar's myopic expertise." Chronicle
of Higher Education 11/05/01
AUCTION
SEASON KICKS OFF: Think art auctions, and most people think
of Sotheby's and Christie's, and little else. But there's an upstart
in the world of art sales these days, and it opened the fall season
yesterday with a much-improved showing. Phillips' sold 67 of 72
available lots, and earned some $86 million for the sale of mainly
Impressionists and Modernists. BBC
11/06/01
ART
IN A TIME OF WAR: "What is the point of encouraging them
in the 21st century, when the demand for visual immediacy makes
the war artist seem obsolete?" And yet, artists have a unique
ability to convey a sense of war. Here's one critic's list of
artists he send to capture a sense of the conflict.
The Times (UK) 11/06/01
TURNER
SHORT LIST TO GO ON DISPLAY: The folks in charge of England's
controversial Turner Prize have released the list of finalists
for this year's award, and now the public will get a chance to
see what's competing. "The shortlist for the award is often
seen to have favoured avant-garde, outlandish and daring work.
But this year's list... was criticised for including no women
artists." BBC 11/06/01
SUDAN'S
SUFFERING ART: "After a decade of Islamist government,
Sudan's art is suffering. The respected Khartoum fine art school,
now in its 50th year, is badly run down. Every leading artist
has fled: Ibrahim al-Salahi is in Oxford, Omer Khalil in New York,
Mohamed Shadad in Cairo." But whereas 10 years ago the minister
of culture was smashing statues, the current regime seems more
tolerant. The Guardian (UK) 11/06/01
SIR
ERNST GOMBRICH, 92: The eminent art historian's "The
Story of Art (1950, 16th edition 1995) has been the introduction
to the visual arts for innumerable people for more than 50 years,
while his major theoretical books, Art and Illusion (1960),
the papers gathered in Meditations on a Hobby Horse (1963)
and other volumes, have been pivotal for professional art historians.
The Guardian (UK) 11/06/01
Monday November 5
THE
BIG AUCTION HOUSE TRIAL: The former heads of Christie's and
Sotheby's auction houses go on trial next week "as the masterminds
behind a conspiracy to fix prices and cheat more than 130,000
customers over six years. Next week's courtroom drama will feature
a cast of characters as diverse as the treasures that fill the
refined and hushed halls of the two auction houses on Manhattan's
upper East Side." New
York Daily News 11/04/01
- POSSIBLE
JAIL TIME: "If past cases are anything to go by, the
odds are against [former Sotheby's chairman] Alfred Taubman's
acquittal, as 60 per cent of defendants in recent American anti-trust
trials have been found guilty. If convicted, he could go to
prison for up to three years." The
Telegraph (UK) 11/05/01
PROOF
OF LIFE: This year's Turner Prize shortlist proves British
art is regaining its footing - away from the sensational and broadening
its focus. "Contemporary British art is as strong as it has
been for a decade. We have merely emerged from the days of sensation-seeking
into a world where art is at last taken seriously."
The Scotsman 11/04/01
- Previously: LONDON'S
TIME PASSED? In the runup to this year's Turner Prize, some
are wondering if the edge is off London's contemporary art scene.
The buzz seems to be gone, and some are trying just a little
too hard to make buzz. "Once something becomes widely visible,
that is its moment of collapse. Tate Modern is the curtain call
for British art." The
Telegraph (UK) 11/03/01
NEW
ZEALAND'S TURNER: New Zealand launches a $50,000 art prize.
Inspired by the Turner Prize, "the biennial prize is open
to artists around the world but their work must be inspired by
their experience of New Zealand. Artists will not submit work
for the prize but will be nominated by a panel of four yet-to-be-named
judges who remain secret until the announcement of the finalists
next March 2002." New Zealand
Herald 11/04/01
RUSSIAN
MUSEUMS UNIONIZE: Some 600 museums across Russia have formed
a museum union to lobby for the industry. "The Museums' Union
must define and defend the professional interests of the country's
existing museums and create a basis upon which new museums can
emerge and develop." St.
Petersburg Times (Russia) 11/2/01
MILWAUKEE'S
NEW STAR: The Milwaukee Art Museum Calatrava-designed addition
is a big hit, and crowds have been coming to see it. "It
is an astonishing thing, an engineering feat made of 72 fins of
white painted steel that unfurls at the touch of a button. In
the course of a few minutes the hydraulically powered tubes rise
into the air, transforming a steep, stable conelike form into
a graceful creature whose mighty wings, spreading 217 feet, run
parallel to Lake Michigan's distant horizon."
Washington Post 11/04/01
Sunday November 4
WHAT'S
IT MEAN TO BE BRITISH? "Until very recently Britain hasn't
had much interest in self-consciously using its national museums
to say anything much about its identity. It's the unconscious
message that is more revealing. If the received wisdom is to be
believed, confident states don't need to worry about that kind
of thing. But with the division of the Tate into two, and the
creation of the Victoria and Albert's new British Galleries, the
country has started to think more carefully about the nature of
culture as an expression of national identity, which seems to
suggest the onset of a bout of insecurity."
The Observer (UK) 11/04/01
LONDON'S
TIME PASSED? In the runup to this year's Turner Prize, some
are wondering if the edge is off London's contemporary art scene.
The buzz seems to be gone, and some are trying just a little too
hard to make buzz. "Once something becomes widely visible, that
is its moment of collapse. Tate Modern is the curtain call for
British art." The
Telegraph (UK) 11/03/01
MILLENNIUM
DOME TO NEW YORK? The man hired by the British government
to oversee the Millennium Dome suggests the structure be given
to New York to cover the World Trade Center site. “It would be
a wonderful gesture on the part of the Government to give the
Dome to the City of New York. It would be a marvellous means of
seeing the Millennium Dome having a meaningful purpose to its
life.” The Times (UK) 11/03/01
Friday November 2
LEONARDO
BRIDGE OPENS: A bridge that Leonardo da Vinci designed 500
years ago was rejected by the Turkish sultan, and criticized as
being unbuildable. This week the bridge was finally opened, in
Norway, about 1,500 miles north of where Leonardo intended - in
Norway. Fans call it the 'Mona Lisa of bridges'. "This is the
first time any of Leonardo's architectural and civil engineering
designs has been built. There have been models, but this is the
first in full size." The
Guardian (UK) 11/02/01
REMBRANDT
AUTHENTICATED: A small 17th Century Dutch painting, purchased
by the National Gallery of Ireland for £20 in 1896 has been authenticated
as a genuine Rembrandt. At the time of its purchase "it was
believed to have been painted by another 17th-century Dutch artist,
Willem de Porter. While it is almost impossible to judge the precise
value of La main chaude, it is certainly now worth millions
of pounds." Irish
Times 11/01/01
THE
SAFETY-CONSCIOUS BUILDING: Frank Gehry warns that new architecture
will change after September 11: "Priorities are going to
change. Architecture might become marginalised because safety
will become paramount. People are bound to feel apprehensive about
skyscrapers ... so we'll have to think about installing fire escapes
on the outside of buildings and improving fire-resistant materials."
The Independent (UK) 11/01/01
DICTATOR'S
RIGHTS? Former Romanian dictator Nikolai Ceausescu's son Valentin
is suing the Romanian government for paintings he says were confiscated
from him by the country's art national museum in the 1989 uprising
against Communism. BBC
11/02/01
PRESSURE
MOUNTS TO RETURN MARBLES: A group of 14 British MP's are calling
on the British government to return the Parthenon Marbles. Greece
announced last month it was building a museum for the disputed
artwork. BBC
11/02/01
Thursday November 1
TRAPPED
PAINTINGS: A group of El Grecos is trapped in Vienna. On
loan from America for a show last summer, their owners are reluctant
to let the canvases travel after September 11. "This apparently
timeless ensemble on the venerable museum walls is thus deceptive.
The gallery has become a depot where the pictures wait before
being shipped out. The museum has added a few works by contemporaries
of El Greco to justify their display, and looking at the unexpected
works has an almost illicit feel to it."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
11/01/01
UNFORESEEN
CONSEQUENCES: Anthrax scares, terrorist threats, and indicted
executives are all contributing to a nervous climate at the
big New York auction houses this fall. November is a big month
for art auctions, but those in the know are worried that the
September 11 fallout will make for a dismal season of autumn
sales. The New York Times 11/01/01
(one-time registration required for
access)
THE
AFGHAN ART TRADE: Long before the latest war began, the
fabulous art treasures of Afghanistan — deposited there by overlapping
Greek, Buddhist and Islamic civilizations — were presumed gone,
destroyed by 20 years of war, economic desperation and, most
recently, by the Taliban's fundamentalist brand of Islam. And
yet during the last decade, much of the art has made its way
out of Afghanistan to North America, Western Europe and, in
particular, Japan. The New York
Times 11/01/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
-
Previously: THE
MOST DANGEROUS RELIGION (HINT: IT'S NOT ISLAM): The world
has watched in horror as Afghani fundamentalists willfully
destroyed cultural treasures. But destruction of art
is only a piece of a larger cultural battle going on here.
Is
international cultural conflict replacing political Cold War
conflict?
ArtsJournal 03/16/01
REDUCED
GREAT COURT HOURS: The cash-strapped British Museum has
decided to reduce the evening hours of the £100 million Norman
Foster-designed Great Court which opened last year. The Great
Court has been open until 11 pm, but attracted few evening visitors.
BBC 11/01/01
TAKING
ART LOCAL: In Los Angeles, a movement has been springing
up over the last several months that is changing the way the
city's residents look at art. Suddenly, the hottest destination
for fans of new art is a parade of small, locally owned, and
almost amateurish galleries. These new-fangled exhibition centers
are distinctive, reflective of their neighborhoos surroundings,
and, most importantly, exist not to turn a profit, but to fulfill
the dreams of the people who have opened them. Los
Angeles Times 11/01/01
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