Friday March 29

BRITISH MUSEUM ADMITS SALES - AN EMBARRASSMENT: The British Museum has admitted selling off valuable Benin bronzes during the 1950s and 60s. "The museum insisted that its claim to inalienable ownership of the bronzes and other artefacts such as the Parthenon (Elgin) marbles was not affected. Until now its standard response to restitution demands and any other claims has been that it is forbidden to dispose of items." The Guardian (UK) 03/28/02

IS THE BRITISH MUSEUM WHITEWASHING THE PARTHENON MARBLES CLEANING CONTROVERSY? In 1999 the British Museum participated in a conference about the controversial cleaning of the Parthenon marbles in the 1930s that damaged them. Now the BMA has published a report on the conference. But the report doesn't include contributions of Greek scholars, leading to charges of a whitewash of the issue. The Art Newspaper 03/28/02

MONA LISA MAY NOT BE MRS. GIOCONDO: While there was an historic Lisa bel Giocondo, "the title has a perfectly plausible existence without her. Giocondo is an adjective, meaning 'jocund', so this traditional name for the painting could have originated as a purely descriptive title - the witty or playful one, the joker-lady, perhaps even the tease." And that's only the beginning of the mysteries and confusions about her. The Guardian (UK) 03/28/02

COURTHOUSE, COURTHOUSE, WHO GETS THE COURTHOUSE: New York's historic Tweed Courthouse was renovated at a cost of $89 million. Former Mayor Giuliani promised it to the Museum of the City of New York. But new Mayor Bloomberg says no, it's going to be used by the Board of Education. So the head of the museum quit. One answer was suggested in a New Yorker piece (not available on-line): "Has anyone thought of using it as a courthouse again." CNN 3/27/02

Thursday March 28

RUNNING OUT OF ART: The world supply of art from the past is running out. "Ironically, the success of the art market is the cause of its defeat. Interest in art, and in buying art, has exploded in the last four decades. Confined until the 1960s to closely defined circles within clear-cut geographical areas in Western Europe and North America, demand for art now cuts across social strata and international borders, scattering worldwide the sum total of the works of the past." International Herald Tribune 03/26/02

WORSE THAN DUMBING DOWN: Hilton Kramer is stunned by New York's Jewish Museum's decision to present Mirroring Evil, the controversial show that features Nazi symbols. "Exactly why a respected institution devoted to the study and exhibition of Jewish art and culture should wish to inflict this numbskull mockery of the Holocaust on the New York public is not a question easily answered. Who could have imagined that the question would ever have to be raised in this quarter? Given the cynicism that now reigns in certain parts of the museum profession, opportunism — the hope of reaping the rewards of controversy — cannot be ruled out. Nor can the sheer stupidity of museum curators and the trustees who support their folly." New York Observer 03/27/02

WHAT'S THE STORY? Scotland has a new national history museum. But "instead of working together to tell Scotland’s story, our national institutions have plodded on within their outmoded categories of collecting, and this unique, £64 million chance to present the bigger picture of Scotland’s past has been missed. No wonder most of the visitors to Scotland’s new museum leave looking bewildered." The Scotsman 03/28/02

THE LAST LAST SUPPER? The little town of Brainerd, Minnesota (made famous by the movie Fargo) has an unusual Easter tradition: every year, some of the more Biblical-looking townsfolk grow beards, haul out a good long table, and spend some time becoming a living reenactment of da Vinci's Last Supper. But the minister who started the tradition is leaving town, meaning that the tradition could end after this Sunday. Minneapolis Star Tribune 03/28/02

Wednesday March 27

CROSSING THE LINE: Artists often play with crossing the line between acceptable and not acceptable. Shock sells, after all. But how does a critic say an artist has crossed the line without sounding censorius? Perhaps Gunther von Hagens' Bodyworks grisly show of bodies crosses that line. "Walking past body after body, I can't help but feel diminished by the experience. Von Hagens has made me a voyeur upon a scene I should not have witnessed. And I feel abandoned as I move through the grizzly tableaux." London Evening Standard 03/26/02

VAN GOGH 'FAKE' ISN'T: "Art experts have declared that a painting by Vincent van Gogh at the centre of forgery claims is genuine. Experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam have just published research into the authenticity of the Sunflowers painting. They said there is surviving documentation proving the painting first belonged to Van Gogh's brother Theo." BBC 03/27/02

AND IT COSTS LESS THAN BRIBERY! "In a campaign reminiscent of those waged by such art activists as the Guerrilla Girls, students at the Massachusetts College of Art are protesting the state Legislature's continuing cuts in the budget of the country's only freestanding public college of art and design. The MassArt students are... sending state representatives original, one-of-a-kind art in the form of eye-catching postcards. Each design is different, but the message printed on each card's border is the same: 'Public higher education is an investment in the future. Keep public schools affordable.' At the bottom of the cards is the simple declaration, 'Art is everywhere.' Even in legislative mailboxes." Boston Globe 03/27/02

ART OF OZ: For 10 years John Furphy has been keeping track of every piece of art that sells at auction in Australia and New Zealand. "In '92, following the market's collapse, $28 million worth of paintings, prints and drawings were sold in Australia. A decade on, the auction houses were turning over more than $70 million, with Aboriginal art contributing $6 million to the total - up from a mere $157,000 10 years earlier." The Age (Melbourne) 03/27/02

ARCHITECTURE AS DIPLOMACY: The Canadian government has been extending itself quite a bit on the diplomatic front lately, and embassy-building has been a big part of the plan. But unlike so many embassies, which resemble uninviting compounds, the Canadians are making a distinctive effort to create buildings which are an architectural credit to the cities they serve, and the plan is drawing rave reviews from around the world. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 03/27/02

Tuesday March 26

VENICE BIENNALE CHOOSES CURATOR: Francesco Bonami, 47,  a senior curator at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, has been chosen to curate the 2003 Venice Biennale. "The appointment puts an end to growing speculation about the future of the festival, which Italians have dubbed the 'Soap-Biennale' in recent months. It comes in the wake of a controversial attempt by Vittorio Sgarbi, Italy's outspoken undersecretary for culture, to appoint the Australian critic for Time magazine, Robert Hughes, as curator." ArtForum 03/26/02

ART HEIST: "Thieves stole five 17th century paintings valued at $2.6 million from the renowned Frans Hals museum in the western Dutch city of Haarlem, police said Monday. The paintings taken Sunday night were by Jan Steen, Cornelis Bega, Adriaan van Ostade and Cornelis Dusart, Dutch television reported." Nando Times (AP) 03/25/02

FAKES TO THE RIGHT OF ME, FRAUD TO THE LEFT... Julian Spalding, former director of the Glasgow Museums, says that Scottish museum collections are "riddled" with fakes. And that museum officials know it. "His claims were met with a mixture of anger and disgust. One union leader accused him of 'clutching at straws', while Glasgow City Council declined to comment." Glasgow Herald 03/25/02

MAN AFTER MONEY: How does the modern museum director spend his day? If you're Harry W. Parker III, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, you think about money. "Almost everything Parker does in a day concerns money - how to raise it, how to allocate it, how to spend it." San Francisco Chronicle 03/25/02

WARMED-OVER COOL: The Beck's Futures competition and its £65,000 in prize money for contemporary art ought to provoke the best new work. The show that has opened in London's Institute for Contemporary Art isn't it. "The real problem is one of language. Why is it that so much of the work depends on quotation and requotation, sampling, collage and cut-up? Art driven by the idea that there is a crisis of originality has become a dreary convention. The death of the author, with its attendant eschatological theorising, has been a blessing to people with no ideas to call their own. It is just a dumb conceit." The Guardian (UK) 03/26/02

BUT IS IT ART? WELL, NO: That controversial exhibition featuring human bodies is still open in London. It is intended, not as art, but as an educational experience, according to an interview with the professor of anatomy who created it. "I have been called an artist, but I reject it. I give an aesthetic feeling to my exhibits--but in the way you would do in designing a book. Instruction is at the centre." New Scientist 03/25/02

• Previously: CREEPY BUT LEGAL: "A controversial exhibition featuring human corpses has been given the go-ahead by the government. Body Worlds, due to open in London on Saturday, features 175 body parts and 25 corpses - including the body of a pregnant woman, her womb opened to reveal a seven-month old foetus... [T]he Department of Health said no British law covers such an exhibition and it will open as planned at the Atlantis Gallery." BBC 03/20/02

MIRRORING BIALYSTOCK: The controversial show at New York's Jewish Museum that uses Nazi symbols is not the first to try to use those symbols for artistic purposes. "Few took account of the show's unacknowledged but obvious inspiration: The Producers. Its effect is what a baby feels while playing peekaboo: laughter as an explosive release from anxiety. We were afraid that Adolf Hitler would keep making us feel bad forever, but you know what? He's dead, and we're not. In "Mirroring Evil," only one of the nineteen works has a Brooksian zing to it, but the show plainly owes its timing to Max Bialystock's reign on Broadway." The New Yorker 04/01/02

• Previously: CONFRONTING THE MONSTERS: Why make art out of the symbols and images of monsters? The question arises out of the opening at the Jewish Museum of the show Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art, the "notorious exhibition opening today at the Jewish Museum, explores the use of National Socialist imagery by 13 contemporary artists, all in their 30's and 40's." Difficult as the art is, "proximity to the perpetrators," Mr. Kleeblatt, the son of refugees from Hitler's Germany, said recently, "makes you rethink who you are." The New York Times 03/17/02

BIG BUCKS ART: Gerhard Richter is now considered the world's most expensive artist. "Today a major work can command over $9 million, and MoMA itself recently spent some $15 million" on a work. The Art Newspaper 03/23/02

Monday March 25

SOMETHING NEW FOR THE NATIONAL? Charles Saumarez Smith takes over as director of London's National Portrait Gallery when it  needs a rethink. "It is not elitist to explore the further reaches of art history. It is depressing, however, to see the National Gallery fall prey to the kind of clubbish pretentiousness that used to hold court when art in this country was the preserve of faux-tasteful philistines for whom Duchamp was non-U, and any 17th-century Italian painter you could mention was inherently better than anyone alive." The Guardian (UK) 03/25/02

AWARDING THE AWFUL STATE OF SCOTTISH BUILDING:  The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland has just launched a £25,000 annual prize for the best new building in Scotland. "Gordon Davies, the RIAS president, says: 'Scottish architectural talent is currently producing buildings of unprecedented quality and originality.' Unprecedented by what? In the land of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Alexander Thomson, it's a claim that is just plain daft." The Observer (UK) 03/24/02 

EXPLOITATION OR EDUCATION? An artist who collected up "missing" posters hung everywhere in Lower Manhattan after September 11 for a touring art show intended a tribute. Instead, the "what could have been a sensitive commemoration into a jarring, tasteless presentation of some of September 11's most powerful fragments." This is the danger of using 9/11 as artistic fodder. "The artists behind exhibits and films commemorating and documenting September 11 have each had to grapple with difficult questions about what separates education from exploitation - and how to clearly mark the distinctions between history and art." American Prospect 03/20/02

TRADITIONAL CONSPIRACY LURKING? Is there a conspiracy to keep more traditional forms of contemporary art out of the press? "The coverage of visual art in newspapers does a disservice to the majority of artists while serving to keep their readership in ignorance of the true diversity of contemporary art." NewKlassical.com 03/02 

Sunday March 24

NAZI LOOT TO STAY IN PRAGUE: "In a disheartening setback for a Chicago-area man who has claimed a multimillion-dollar art collection looted by the Nazis, the Czech government has declared the most valuable of the paintings "national treasures," thereby blocking their return. The move by the Czech Culture Ministry reflects the erratic record of the government when dealing with restitution claims from Holocaust survivors and their heirs. Though the Czech Republic has passed liberal laws guaranteeing the return of looted works 'free of charge,' it has invoked a variety of arcane legal codes to prevent the most valuable works from leaving the country." Chicago Tribune 03/22/02

CORPSE EXHIBIT GETS A PAINT JOB: A controversial exhibit featuring dozens of preserved corpses has opened to the public in London, to a great deal less public outcry than one might have imagined from the furor that preceded it. The general impression of most visitors seemed to be that the display was interesting, but not art. One man apparently felt more strongly, and dumped paint on the floor of the gallery in protest. The relevance of the paint was not explained, and probably can't be. BBC 03/23/02

Friday March 22

BRITISH MUSEUM CLOSURES: The British Museum has closed a number of its galleries in a cost-cutting move. "The museum recently projected a budget deficit of $7 million for 2004-2005, its largest ever, unless it cuts expenses by 15 percent. As a result, it imposed a hiring freeze and suspended plans to build a study center. It also cut the opening hours of 23 of its 94 permanent exhibition galleries to as little as 3 hours a day." Nando Times (AP) 03/21/02

OLDEST PHOTO SOLD: The earliest known photographic image was sold for $443,000 at a French auction this week. "The 1825 print by French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce, which shows a man leading a horse, was bought by the Musees de France, which runs the country's museums, for France's National Library, officials at Sotheby's said." Nando Times (AP) 03/21/02

WHERE YOU FIND IT: Great architecture is in the eye of the beholder, and goes well beyond the ultra-public theaters, museums, and skyscrapers that are alternately panned and praised in the world's big cities. If you ask the Society of Architectural Historians, great buildings can be found in every nook and cranny of all 50 U.S. states, and they've got the books to prove it. Chicago Tribune 03/22/02

Thursday March 21

CHANGING FORTUNES: The Maastricht Art Fair is billed as the world's leading art and antiques gathering. This year a report on the world's art sales was released in conjunction with the fair. "From 1998 to 2001, the average price of a work of fine art sold at auction in the EU declined 39% to $7,662. The average price of a painting sold in the United Kingdom advanced 54% to $24,968; in the United States, the average price advanced 75% to $79,003. The EU as a whole has lost 7.2% global share of market since 1998. The Continental EU has lost 9%. The US, the principal competitor of the EU, increased its market share by 7%." New York Observer 03/20/02

A NEW GENERATION OF PUBLIC ART: Funded by proceeds from a large $6 billion construction project, "Melbourne is about to be decorated by the largest public art program since the cavalcade of bronze statues that was funded by the 1850s gold rush." But many in the city have ambivalent feelings about what kind of art might be chosen. The Age (Melbourne) 03/21/02

PAY TO NAME: "The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has quietly removed the name of aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley from its movie theater and renamed the facility for the Lockheed Martin Corp. The change comes weeks before the global technology company is giving the museum a gift of $10 million." Washington Post 03/20/02

KEEPING GROUND ZERO FOR THE PUBLIC: The debate over how a rebuilt WTC site might memorialize the victims of 9/11 has become a contentious one, and one architecture critic says the key is to keep the decision out of the hands of private interests who want merely to cut their losses, and put up a quick-and-dirty memorial surrounded by office space that may well go unused. "The real issue is how to build a living city --a place that offers a vibrant mix of culture and commerce; a place that is easy to reach by subway, commuter train or ferry boat; a place where a frazzled office worker can find a few minutes of serenity at the waterfront; a place, like Rockefeller Center, where great buildings form an even greater urban whole." Chicago Tribune 03/21/02

Wednesday March 20

KNOW-IT-ALL NEGATIVISTS: They've started demolishing the old deYoung Museum in San Francisco, in preparation for building a new one. But despite numerous reviews and public meetings, a small band of opponents is still trying to stop the project. This "fledgling band of negative nabobs refuse to give up and have now cost the museum close to $500,000 in attorneys fees for a campaign they're all but destined to lose -and all for the single reason that they don't happen to approve of the new museum's design." San Francisco Chronicle 03/19/02

ABANDONING MUSEUM ISLAND: The Berlin government - trying to deal with a budget crisis - has announced it will no longer fund restoration of the five museums collectively known as "Museum Island." That leaves the federal government as the sole funder. "The Museum Island was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's list of world cultural heritage sites in 1999." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 03/19/02

CREEPY BUT LEGAL: "A controversial exhibition featuring human corpses has been given the go-ahead by the government. Body Worlds, due to open in London on Saturday, features 175 body parts and 25 corpses - including the body of a pregnant woman, her womb opened to reveal a seven-month old foetus... [T]he Department of Health said no British law covers such an exhibition and it will open as planned at the Atlantis Gallery." BBC 03/20/02

SACKLER-FREER GETS NEW DIRECTOR: "Julian Raby, a British art historian who has taught Islamic art at the University of Oxford since 1979, has been named director of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the two-part institution that functions as the nation's museum of Asian art. Raby, 52, will assume the post May 20. He succeeds Milo C. Beach, who retired last October -- amid considerable bitterness -- after 17 years at the Sackler-Freer, the last 14 as director." Washington Post 03/20/02

BYGONES IN SYDNEY: The architect behind the revolutionary Sydney Opera House has never seen his creation in person. Back in 1966, with the hall only partially completed and facing stiff criticism for huge cost overruns, Joern Utzon walked off the project and vowed never to return. Decades later, he's back on the job, agreeing to oversee the AUS$24 milion opera house's renovation. BBC 03/20/02

FRESCO FRACAS: "The official unveiling Monday of Giotto's restored frescoes in Padua's Scrovegni Chapel, commissioned 700 years ago for a banker's private place of worship, included VIP guests, fanfare and entertainment. It also revived criticism that restorations -- especially those that aren't crucial -- can harm the original art." National Post (AP) 03/20/02

TAXING ART: The US Congress' repeal of the estate tax last year appears as though it will have an impact on sales of inherited art. Owners of inherited art will have to keep track of values and pay new taxes on capital gains. The Art Newspaper 03/15/02

HOW TO KILL AN EXHIBIT: "Efforts by [Canadian] Heritage Minister Sheila Copps to use federal money to move a major art show from Toronto to Hamilton have left the exhibit without a home and Canada with diplomatic egg on its face. An exhibition of Sami and Inuit art, jointly organized by Norway and Canada, was slated to be opened at the University of Toronto Art Centre by King Harald V and Queen Sonja during their state visit to Canada in May. Sources in the art world say Ms. Copps threatened to hold back federal funding unless the show was relocated to the Art Gallery of Hamilton, in the city she is from." The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 03/20/02

BACK TO THE FOREGROUND: If there can be anything positive said to have come out of the 9/11 attacks, artistically speaking, it is that New York City's shining example of glorious urban architecture is once again the city's tallest and most prominent building. The Empire State Building, with its 102 stories of art deco styling and forward-thinking design, is the building New Yorkers most think of as theirs, and it, not the World Trade Centers, is the skyscraper that it would truly be a tragedy to lose. Chicago Tribune 03/20/02

Tuesday March 19

NEW DIRECTOR FOR NATIONAL GALLERY: Charles Saumarez Smith, currently director of the National Portrait Gallery, is expected to be named the next director of London's National Gallery. "He has pushed the frontiers of what was seen as possible in a gallery of portraits, including a conceptual piece by Marc Quinn, unveiled last year, which contains real DNA." The Guardian (UK) 03/18/02

FITTING RIGHT IN: "The Oklahoma City Museum of Art, which officially opened Saturday, has its aspirations, but they are as much civic as architectural. The $22.5 million building plugs a gaping hole in a 1930s municipal square in the heart of downtown, using the same limestone and massing as its neighbors while also preserving the shell of an art moderne movie theater. Such quietly dignified ensembles, once common in American cities, are becoming extinct." Dallas Morning News 03/18/02

OUT OF THE GALLERIES: "The echoey white cubes of contemporary galleries still display art, but is that the best place for it to be seen? Of all the places where today’s artists experiment, they are perhaps least comfortable with domestic space." A new project in Scotland has artists making work for people's houses. The Scotsman 03/18/02

ART OF ENRON: In the year-and-a-half before it filed for bankruptcy, Enron spent about $3 million on art for 20 pieces for its new building. An art committee of five decided what art to buy, and its choices included some of the best-known contemporary artists working today. "The mandate was to build a collection of forward-looking, cutting-edge art that would represent the Enron culture." So what happens to the art now? Dallas Morning News 03/19/02

Monday March 18

AUCTION FALL-OFF: So in the year after the auction house scandals, how did their business fare? "For what it's worth - which is not a great deal - Christie's won the annual turnover contest for the second year running, outselling Sotheby's by $1.8 billion to $1.6 billion. But Christie's turnover was down by 23 per cent, the biggest drop since the dark days of the art market collapse in 1991. At Sotheby's, the decline in turnover was 16 per cent, with American sales dropping by 22 per cent to $809 million and European auctions suffering an eight per cent decline to $723 million." The Telegraph (UK) 03/18/02

HIDING BEHIND THE THEORY? Shows like the Jewish Museum's Mirroring Evil aren't pushing the boundaries of art. "That was what was so disappointing about the essays in the Mirroring Evil catalog, which are incessantly patting themselves on the back for their "daring," their "transgressiveness," but which seem to me collectively to constitute a retreat from facing the subject: a retreat into a comforting, familiar and fashionable art-theory framework. One that shields the theorists from questioning the postmodern preconceptions so dear to them." New York Observer 03/14/02

HOME SHOPPING FAKES: Giorgio Corbelli, the owner of an Italian auction house, has been arrested for selling fake art over a TV shopping channel. "Mr Corbelli is accused of attempting to sell thousands of forged works by contemporary artists, mainly by Michele Cascella but also some by Giorgio de Chirico, Giuseppe Migneco or Mario Schifano among others." Oddly, the Italian undersecretary for culture has defended Corbelli. The Art Newspaper 03/15/02

THE NEXT BIG THING? He's famous for championing art of the fillet 'o shark, elephant dung and unmade bed variety. But we haven't heard from collector/dealer Charles Saatchi for awhile. So what's his latest predilection? Landscapes. Landscapes? You bet, but as you might expect, not the traditional variety... The Telegraph (UK) 03/18/02

WHAT'S THE POINT? Architect Renzo Piano's proposed 1000-foot tall London Bridge Tower would be England's tallest building. "But the big question is not whether or not the building is good architecture, or even to do with its prodigious height, but rather what real purpose does it serve? It may be a catwalk model of a building, lithe and eye-catching, but is it little more than a naked machine for making money beneath its sleek and glassy dress? Or will it make a real contribution to the culture and economy of the capital?" The Guardian (UK) 03/18/02

Sunday March 17

A NATIONAL ARCHITECTURE POLICY? Cities build showy signature buildings in hopes of attracting attention and becoming players on a national or international stage. But do such buildings really mean much? "A signature building is the definition of a second-rate city. They need something to say 'Here we are!' By itself, a signature building is not important. The real importance is the texture of the city and its vitality. . . . What we really need is better urban design." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/16/02

CREATIVITY - SO GOOD IT HURTS: Performance art has a long tradition in 20th-century art. "Much 20th-century avant-garde art was fuelled and punctuated by a series of theatrical happenings and events. The Dadaists, Futurists and Surrealists were all fond of these manifestations." Performance art of the 1960s and 70s led to many artists trying to shock audiences by hurting themselves. Why would anyone want to hurt themselves in the name of "creativity"? The Telegraph (UK) 03/17/02

THE ART OF NEVER GIVING UP: Christo and Jeane-Claude have been trying for 21 years to swath New York's Central Park walkways with bright fabric. They've been repeadedly thwarted. But a new mayor (who has supported the idea) and for "a city determined to re-energize tourism after the attacks of Sept. 11, a boffo attraction might not be such a bad idea." The New York Times 03/17/02

CONFRONTING THE MONSTERS: Why make art out of the symbols and images of monsters? The question arises out of the opening at the Jewish Museum of the show Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art, the "notorious exhibition opening today at the Jewish Museum, explores the use of National Socialist imagery by 13 contemporary artists, all in their 30's and 40's." Difficult as the art is, "proximity to the perpetrators," Mr. Kleeblatt, the son of refugees from Hitler's Germany, said recently, "makes you rethink who you are." The New York Times 03/17/02

Friday March 15

LESS THAN THE FUSS: Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art, which opens Sunday at New York's Jewish Museum, has provoked much controversy before it even opens. But as often happens with notorious shows, the art turns out to be lower wattage than the controversy. This show "is dominated by the sort of dry, cool, Conceptual art that a vocal part of the contemporary art world invariably congratulates itself for finding endlessly fascinating. But it is art that leaves much of the public feeling confused, excluded and finally bored, if not pained and offended, which is of course the point." The New York Times 03/15/02

WOMEN'S MUSEUM MERGING WITH AUTRY: The Women of the West Museum in Colorado is disappearing, becoming part of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles. "WOWM was founded in Boulder in 1991 'to discover, explore, and communicate the continuing role of women in shaping the American West'." Denver Post 03/14/02 

DECODING MONA: A German art historian believes he has solved the mystery of the Mona Lisa. "Until now, the most popular theory had been that the enigmatic beauty was a young Florentine woman named Monna Lisa, who married the well-known figure Francesco del Giocondo in 1495 and came to be known as La Giaconda." Instead, she was really "the Duchess of Forli and Imola, who had been born the illegitimate Caterina Sforza." Edmonton Journal 03/15/02

Thursday March 14

SFMOMA GETS ITS MAN: "After a seven-month search, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has named Neal Benezra as its director. Mr. Benezra, who has been the deputy director and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, succeeds David A. Ross, who left the museum abruptly after a whirlwind three years in which he spent $140 million building the museum's collection of contemporary art." The New York Times 03/14/02

CONTRAVENING PARTS: The British government has 10 days to decide whether a controversial exhibition of "175 body parts and 25 full corpses to go on display at the Atlantis Gallery on March 23 contravene the Anatomy Act created after the 19th century Burke and Hare bodysnatching scandal. But anatomist Gunther von Hagens said last night that a government legal challenge would not stop his Body Worlds exhibition opening in London next week. He called on British art-lovers to donate their bodies to future exhibits of corpses posed to look as if they are engaged in 'interesting' activities such as chess." The Guardian (UK) 03/12/02

HOLOCAUST ART CALLED OBSCENE: "Jewish leaders and Nazi death camp survivors have denounced as obscene an exhibition of Holocaust-related art in New York. Among the items on show at the city's Jewish Museum are sculptures of the infamous concentration camp doctor Joseph Mengele. The exhibition, entitled Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art, also includes a children's Lego building set with a picture of a concentration camp on the cover." BBC 03/14/02

• SELF-INDULGENCE, NOT ART: It's not that the Holocaust should be completely off-limits to the art world, says one New York critic, just that the art should serve the subject, not vice versa. The offensive thing about Mirroring Evil is "not that it uses contemporary art to probe the Holocaust, but that it uses the Holocaust to promote contemporary art." New York Post 03/14/02

A CLOUDY VISION: "In the realm of outlandish architectural fantasies, a building made out of mist surely has to rank near the top. But this bizarre-sounding concept, dubbed the Blur Building, is no fantasy at all. It's under construction in Switzerland, and is one of five architectural projects featured in Architecture + Water, a new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art's Heinz Architectural Center." The Christian Science Monitor 03/14/02

FIREBALL: Edinburgh artist Marc Marnie fell behind on his taxes. So the sheriff came and seized a collection of his photographs for payment. But they were irreparably damaged after they were stored in a damp basement, so now Marnie plans to "create a 30ft wall of fire out of the photographs" and film the event. "I’m trying to find a positive way of finishing the exhibition, of getting closure so I can move on to other things." The Scotsman 03/13/02

RIOPELLE DIES: "Jean-Paul Riopelle, a great but impulsive artist who even when famous would burn his paintings to heat his apartment, died on Wednesday at his home on the Ile-aux-Grues in the St. Lawrence River. He was 78." The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 03/14/02

Wednesday March 13

LOOKING FOR SMUGGLERS AMONG THE POSH SET: The European Fine Art Fair, held annually in the Netherlands, is the largest of its kind in the world, and collectors, connoisseurs, and casual art fans gather in Maastricht each year to browse and buy. But this year, the fair had some unexpected visitors - camera-wielding Italian cops, to be precise - who are trying to determine if some of the art on display was illegally exported from Italy. The New York Times 03/13/02

CONTROVERSIAL RESTORATION: Frankfurt's much-loved 19th Century central library was ruined in World War II. Now there are plans to rebuild it, incorporating some of the remaining ruined facade. But the plans may be more trouble than they're worth. "Such plans do not suggest urban vitality, but rather the kind of blind ad-hoc approach Frankfurt is often prone to, to the detriment of its art scene and atmosphere. Initial delight at the chance of regaining one of Frankfurt's finest buildings quickly evaporates in view of greater losses." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 03/12/02

CANADIAN AWARDS HANDED OUT: The Governor-General's awards were announced in Canada this week, with seven artists taking home a $15,000 grant each. "Success in mixed media work was a theme in the awards founded in 1999 and presented initially in 2000." Toronto Star 03/13/02

ALL ABOUT THE CONTEXT: An exhibition attacked this week for including body parts (see previous story below) played to great success in Belgium before coming to the UK. "Everyone came away feeling that they had learned a lot about the human body. It is basically an anatomical exhibition. Some 5% of the Belgian population - 505,000 people - saw it in Brussels, with five-hour queues to get in." BBC 03/13/02

• Previously: PARTLY GRUESOME: Critics, including two members of parliament, are protesting a show called "Body Worlds, due to open in London later this month, featuring 175 body parts and 25 corpses - including the body of a pregnant woman, her womb opened to reveal a seven-month old foetus. The government has already said it may take legal action because the show may contravene a 19th century dissection law." BBC 03/11/02

DON'T COUNT OUT VEGAS YET: Despite the general panning of the Guggenheim's expansion to the city of casinos and sloth, and the massive wads of cash the organization has dropped on its new Las Vegas outpost, the city may yet become a serious arts destination. Perhaps all that's required is a true understanding of Vegas's curious blend of artificial city and real-life desert solitude. Or maybe just a scaling back of expectations. National Post (Canada) 03/13/02

HARVARD GETS RELIGION: "Curators of Islamic art collections around the country are reporting an increase in attendance in their galleries, a growth they can only attribute to the current political situation. Harvard is now in a far better position to present Islamic culture than it had been, thanks to a major gift of 120 works just donated to the university's Arthur M. Sackler Museum by Stanford and Norma Jean Calderwood." Boston Globe 03/13/02

Tuesday March 12

REMEMBERING THE WTC: Two twin towers of light were activated in Lower Manhattan as a memorial to the World Trade Center Monday. "Relatives of some of the thousands killed stood and watched as 12-year-old Valerie Webb activated 88 powerful searchlights arranged to simulate the twin towers. Her father, Port Authority police officer Nathaniel Webb, still hasn't been found in the ruins nearby." Yahoo! (AP) 03/11/02

• DESIGNERS BEHIND THE LIGHT MEMORIAL: "We set out to 'repair' and 'rebuild' the skyline—but not in a way that would attempt to undo or disguise the damage. Those buildings are gone now, and they will never be rebuilt. Instead we would create a link between ourselves and what was lost. In so doing, we believed, we could also repair, in part, our city's identity and ourselves." Slate 03/11/02
• WTC SCULPTURE RETURNS: A giant scuplture crushed in the collapse of the World Trade Center has beeen repaired and was dedicated as a memorial Monday. "The Sphere, created by German artist Fritz Koenig, had stood in the World Trade Center plaza as a monument to world peace through world trade since 1971." BBC 03/11/02 

PARTLY GRUESOME: Critics, including two members of parliament, are protesting a show called "Body Worlds, due to open in London later this month, featuring 175 body parts and 25 corpses - including the body of a pregnant woman, her womb opened to reveal a seven-month old foetus. The government has already said it may take legal action because the show may contravene a 19th century dissection law." BBC 03/11/02

A GAMBLE THAT DIDN'T PAY OFF: A Texan art collector thought he was buying an original Van Dyck portrait that had been identified as a Van Dyck copy worth £275,000. But it turns out that the painting was indeed a copy and the £1.5 million the collector paid was too much. He sued the London dealer who had advised him, but the court has ruled against him. The Guardian (UK) 03/11/02

Monday March 11

POWER OF LIGHT: Tonight, two towers of light commemorating the World Trade Center will be lit on the downtown Manhattan skyline. "A huge sense of anticipation greets their debut. Partly it's a result of anxiety. Tribute of Light, as the temporary memorial to the tragedy of Sept. 11 is called, offers the first real inkling of what an official, permanent remembrance of the awful event might be. The complex question of a permanent memorial looms large. Tribute of Light is an avatar of the long, stressful road that lies ahead in determining what shape that memorial might take." Los Angeles Times 03/11/02

ATTACKING FRENCH MUSEUMS: France's largest museums are in disarray after a damning government audit of their operations. The museums have been attacked for "poor visitor figures, understaffing and underfunding." Museum administrators have fought back, and government policy towards museums is under attack. The Art Newspaper 03/09/02

IS ART SCIENCE, IS SCIENCE ART? Much attention is currently being paid to the relationship between art and science. But "this obsession for showing that art - particularly the visual arts - is similar to science in content and the creative processes is bemusing. I detect in it an element of social snobbery - artists are envious of scientists and scientists want to be thought of as artists." The Observer (UK) 03/10/02 

WORLD'S LARGEST ROOF: British architect Lord Norman Foster has been hired to to redesign a major part of Hong Kong’s waterfront with a project featuring the world’s largest roof. The Star (Malaysia) 03/02/02

WIRED ARTIST: A Canadian artist has had microchips embedded in her hands so she can explore relationships between technology and identity. "I am expecting the merger between human and machines to proceed whether we want it to or not. If I adopt it and make it my own, I will have a better understanding of this type of technology and the potential threats and benefits it represents." Wired 03/11/02

Sunday March 10

HISTORY ON THE BLOCK? The Polaroid photography collection includes 12,000 pictures. Its historical importance makes it priceless. "But when Polaroid filed for bankruptcy in October, it owed creditors $950 million. The fate of its collection of a half-century's worth of images by more than 1,000 artists is now in the hands of a bankruptcy judge in Delaware, where Polaroid is incorporated." Photography curators are worried the collection will be broken up and sold. Boston Globe 03/10/02

ROUND AND ROUND AND DOWN? The giant London Eye ferris wheel that towers above the city has been a big hit. "It is a beautiful structure that could be seen as the ultimate expression of the dominant high-tech aesthetic, where engineering merges with architecture. Architects love it, and in a recent opinion poll voted it the building with which they most wish they had been involved." But it was meant to be a temporary structure - intended to be taken down in five years. "To make the London Eye permanent would be to undermine the transience - a quality we find increasingly hard to value, at least in buildings - that made the idea so appealing in the first place." The Telegraph (UK) 03/10/02

Friday March 8

LOVING TO HATE YOU... The Whitney Biennial, the show everyone loves to hate, is open. "The biennial is, by nature, a giant version of a gallery group show, a kind of art fair with curators. So you can ask only so much of it. In its present edition, though, more than half the work is of lingering interest — a high average." The New York Times 03/08/02

STOLEN ART RETURNED TO POLAND: A year and a half ago museums all over the world struggled to get lists of art they owned of questionable provenance posted publicly. The goal was to identify any art that had been stolen by the Nazis in World War II. Most lists haven't yet turned up any claims. Now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has identified and turned over to a Polish museum a "late medieval Persian or Mughal canopy that was looted from a Polish collection by the Nazis and has spent most of the last three decades in storage." Los Angeles Times 03/07/02

• COULDN'T IT HAVE STUCK AROUND FOR A COUPLE DAYS? There's no question that returning the canopy to Poland was the right thing to do. But at least one critic wishes that the LA museum could have held onto it just a bit longer, long enough for Californians to have a chance to see it. Los Angeles Times 03/08/02

THAT SINKING FEELING: A 360-foot tower, "the centrepiece of Scotland's most expensive millennial attraction has been forced to close its doors for at least three months after engineers discovered it was sinking. The £10 million Glasgow tower at the science centre on the Clyde was hailed as a unique structure - the only tower in the world which turns through 360 degrees. Unfortunately, it is not unique in exhibiting that feature common to innovative building across the globe: teething troubles." The Guardian (UK) 03/06/02

REHABILITATION THROUGH ART: The city of Genoa thought to put itself back on the international map last summer when it hosted the G8 political summit. But then violence broke out and the city felt like it suffered a black eye. To rehabilitate its image, Genoa is taking to art. It's sending some of its finest Renaissance art for an exhibition at London's National Gallery. "The city clearly sees the National Gallery exhibition as a marketing tool to put it back on the Italian 'grand tour' art circuit. But it is also likely to find itself embroiled in typically Italian domestic politics." Financial Times 03/08/02

SOON TO BE BOUGHT BY RON POPEIL: "The most valuable Rembrandt painting ever likely to reach the market is on sale at the Maastricht art fair for an estimated $40m (£28m)... The painting of Minerva, which has undergone a year of careful restoration work, was once owned by the Swedish inventor of the Electrolux vacuum cleaner and then by Baron Bich, the Bic ballpoint pen magnate." BBC 03/08/02

Thursday March 7

DIFFICULT IMAGE: After September 11, many people expect artists to somehow respond to the event in their work. "But now, six months later, many artists are hesitating to churn out likenesses of the towers: If they render them in any obvious way, they may be at best sentimental, at worst exploitative. Being metaphorical and ironic isn't necessarily the answer, either: An artist who contorts the towers till they're as abstract as a Picasso nose risks public scorn." Christian Science Monitor 02/07/02

PAY PER VIEW: Though others may buy physical pieces of art, artists retain copyrights to their work. After 18 months of negotiations, Australia's auction houses have agreed to pay artists a fee whenever images of their work are used to illustrate sales of the work. "The rates range from $50 for one-eighth of a page for works estimated to fetch up to $2000, to $187.50 for a full-page illustration of higher-priced pictures." The Age (Melbourne) 03/07/02

IN A FRIGHTFUL MOOED: Some 500 fiberglass cows are set to hit the streets of London. Yes, it's the invasion of the Art Cows. Animals on Parade were "originally scheduled last summer: the sites had been found, the artists lined up - and then came foot and mouth, and the prospect of cows dressed as ballerinas prancing against a daily backdrop of reports of smouldering pyres of their real sisters. The event was cancelled." The Guardian (UK) 03/06/02

PUTTING YOURSELF INTO YOUR ART: Australian artist Pro Hart worries about the authenticity of his work. He believes if you buy a Hart you ought to get a Hart. So he's "signing" his work with his DNA. "Hart's DNA is harvested by scraping the inside of his mouth with a cotton bud to collect cheek cells, which are sent to a laboratory and processed before being applied to the artwork. The precise method of application to the works is secret, but the location of the DNA is put on a database with the work's particulars - the title, the size and who bought the painting - for easy identification in the future." The Age (Melbourne) 03/07/02

HUGHBRIS - CRITIC UNDER GLASS: Australian artist Danius Kesminas compacted the rental car Time Magazine art critic Robert Hughes was driving last year when Hughes had a car accident, sealed it in glass, and added objects meant to comment on Hughes' life. "Mr. Kesminas was able to create Hughbris by tracing the wreckage of Mr. Hughes's car to a dealer who was about to melt it down. He persuaded the dealer to swap it for three cases of beer and worked for several months to convert the scrap metal into a comment on the event." The New York Times 03/07/02

Wednesday March 6

THE RUINS OF BAMIYAN: "One year after the Taliban destroyed two colossal, centuries-old carvings of Buddha, and several months after the last of the radical Islamic movement's operatives left the area, this former marvel of the ancient Silk Road remains a largely desolate ground zero. There are no repair crews, no guards, nothing to suggest this was a treasure considered by the United Nations as a world historical monument. The Buddhas long dominated the mountain valley below, and now so does their disfigurement." Washington Post 03/06/02

• Previously: LAST DAYS OF THE BAMIYAN BUDDHAS: Here's a chilling, detailed account of the Taliban's efforts last year to destroy the giant stone Bamiyan Buddhas. "The destruction required an extraordinary effort, so complex that foreign explosives experts had to be brought in and local residents were forced to dangle on ropes over a cliff face to chip out holes for explosives. According to witnesses and participants, the Taliban struggled with ropes and pulleys, rockets, iron rods, jackhammers, artillery and tanks before a series of massive explosions finally toppled the statues." Los Angeles Times 02/24/02

THOSE BLOODY AMERICANS: There's something about America that fascinates the British, and a new batch of art exhibits drives home the point. Tate Britain is taking on 19th-century Yankee landscape painting, while Tate Modern is jumping on the always-crowded Andy Warhol bandwagon. Add a good-sized Nan Goldin retrospective at Whitechapel, and it becomes clear that what attracts the Brits is the sheer outsizedness of the whole American art thing. Everyone hates it when America talks big and walks big, but when the same quality translates into art, the results are extremely alluring. Boston Globe 03/06/02

ART AND HORROR: A new exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York is causing much controversy for its mixing of Nazi symbols and art in works that some consider flippant and demeaning. "It's also driven a wedge into the Jewish community between those who say fresh approaches are needed to reveal new insights into Nazi atrocities, and those who say the works bring unnecessary pain to Holocaust survivors and their families." The Christian Science Monitor 03/06/02

JUST LET US BUILD SOMETHING: "Being a young architect in Britain is the ultimate exercise in learning life’s hard knocks. You spend seven years at college dreaming up arty squiggles to save the world, then another 20 designing drainpipes in some enormous firm called BGTHJ, after which every last drop of youthful ambition is squeezed from you till the pips squeak. Either that or you go it alone like Eva Castro and Holger Kehne." Even then, after winning a top prize, it's still a struggle just to get someone to let you build something. The Times (UK) 03/06/02

EXTRA-LARGE POPCORN TO THE CRITIC IN ROW 3, PLEASE: "One has to wonder: How many people have actually watched a video exhibition from start to finish? After all, they can run anywhere from one to 30 hours long. Even their curators never watch them all at one go. Yet this is how the medium is packaged for the public." One Toronto critic adds herself to the list of people who have watched such an installation, and, along the way, discusses where the video art medium is going. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 03/06/02

Tuesday March 5

BEAMING THE WTC: Next week, a memorial at the World Trade Center will go online, when two giant beams of light will shine up from the site. "The beams will be lighted from nightfall until 11 p.m., but are subject to temporary shutdown based on Federal Aviation Administration concerns about how the light plays in certain weather conditions and conservationists' concerns about the impact on bird migratory patterns." Washington Post 03/05/02

GETTING HUGHES TO VENICE: The invitation to critic Robert Hughes to direct the Venice Biennale still hasn't been withdrawn, even though Hughes has publicly attacked biennale politics. "Italian dailies have speculated that the deal has not been clinched because Hughes asked too high a fee - the figure of $US700,000 has been mentioned." The Age (Melbourne) 03/05/02

• HUGHES BLASTS BIENNALE: Last week's attack by Hughes was carried in Neal Travis' column in the New York Post: "I informed them I was pulling out yesterday. Life's too short to waste fooling around with ditherers." He complains that the Biennale is 'a shambles' at this stage and wonders whether it will even happen." New York Post 02/28/02

ONE STRING SHORT: The new American quarters honoring Tennessee include images of a guitar and a trumpet. But sharp-eyed musicians have noticed that the guitar only has five strings and he trumpet's valves are in the wrong position. "Will the [US Mint] pull the plug for a while on the giant quarter-making machines to fix the Tennessee design for the rest of its production schedule?" Nando Times (Scripps Howard) 03/04/02

KILLING PUBLIC ART? Philadelphia's Percent-for-Art program, which has put hundreds of artworks on the city's streets, is being challenged. "More than four decades after the city founded the Percent for Art Program requiring developers to set aside 1 percent of their construction budget on public art, a developer is trying to get an exemption for his multimillion-dollar riverfront apartment high-rise." Nando Times (AP) 03/04/02

WHERE IS THE RISKY NEW ART? If risky contemporary art has ceased to live at London's Institute of Contemporary Art (as the ICA's former chairman claimed), where can it be found in London? "Because of its roster of film, art and talks it is often referred to as 'an alternative ICA', but The Horse Hospital is privately run by a staff of just three and receives next to no public funding." London Evening Standard 03/05/02 

COMPUTER BUILDING: More and more buildings are being designed - and their parts shaped - with the aid of computers, resulting in ever more complicated designs. But no one has yet invented a computer that will build them." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 03/05/02

Monday March 4

REDOING LA COUNTY: So the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is going to get a major redo. "This brand new LACMA had never been in anyone's cards. The museum was supposed to get a face-lift, not the wrecking ball. So how did a fixer-upper become a tear-down? Why did the museum choose a design that its fans call a brilliant clarification of an architectural muddle and its detractors consider merely a $300-million roof?" Los Angeles Times 03/03/02

REBUILDING THE BUDDHAS: UNESCO policy opposes rebuilding monuments that have been destroyed. But the Afghan government has proposed rebuilding the Bamiyan Buddhas, which were destroyed by the Taliban. So UNESCO is convening an international meeting on the plan. "Reconstruction at Bamiyan is regarded as 'an absolute political priority'. Symbolically, it would be a dramatic rejection of what the Taliban and Al-Qa’eda represented. Economically, it would encourage foreign tourists to return to Bamiyan." The Art Newspaper 03/01/02

ROGUE WHITNEY: An alternative website dedicated to the Whitney Biennial goes online. "The Internet has made it relatively fast and easy for anyone with a computer to bedevil entrenched governments, mammoth corporations and venerable museums. As these institutions embrace the Internet, they became more vulnerable, with their own online offerings ripe for criticism and parody, not to mention the embarrassing possibility that someone searching the Net will stumble upon a rogue site and think it authentic." The New York Times 03/04/02

PROOF OF ART: No more taking sellers of art at their word that the work they're trying to sell isn't stolen or forged. Insurance companies have gotten into the act, and auction houses, museums and galleries are demanding proof for all claims... The Telegraph (UK) 03/04/03

SICILY - LAND OF LINCOLN? "Sicily wants to copy Mount Rushmore, one of the most important memorials to U.S. patriotism. It will not be an exact copy, of course. What business do George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt have on the Mediterranean island, after all? But the concept is being openly plagiarized." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 03/04/02

Sunday March 3

WHAT'S A BIENNIAL TO DO? Art biennials are everywhere. "Just this year, one could biennial-hop through 17 cities in 15 countries." Some wonder what the point is? To promote artists? Cities? Egos? "As mega-events, however, biennials may be a troubled form. Last month, the Venice Biennale approached bureaucratic meltdown as it was announced that the entire biennial committee and chairman had resigned amid wrangling over political and artistic control. In fact, some professionals see down- scaling — call it a countermovement against globalism — and events held outside Europe or the United States as the real trend." The New York Times 03/03/02

SELLING THE MODERN MUSEUM: Merchandising has become a major factor in the business plans of most museums. "While catalogues are the largest revenue producers, it is the variety of manufactured products - from stationery, vases, T-shirts, jewellery, mugs and even underwear - that characterises the modern museum or gallery shop." The Telegraph (UK) 03/02/02

Friday March 1

THE NEW PICASSOS: Nearly 30 years after Picasso's death, significant collections of his work are still coming to view for the first time - a show of 103 works inherited by the artist's grandson, many never before seen in public, is opening in Germany. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 03/01/02

TURNER.COM: When landscape artist JMW Turner died in 1851, a collection of tens of thousands of his paintings, sketches, and drawings was left to the United Kingdom. Since then, they have rarely been seen, and are in fact currently housed in closed vaults at the Tate Britain. Now, the Tate has announced a plan to display the works online. BBC 03/01/02

BRAND NEW RUBENS: "Sotheby's auction house said Thursday it has identified a previously unknown painting by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, a find it says is one of the greatest Old Masters to be offered at auction in decades... The painting, "The Massacre of the Innocents," from between 1609 and 1611, is expected to sell for anywhere from $5.7 million to $8.5 million when it is auctioned on July 11, the auction house said." Nando Times (AP) 02/28/02

WARHOL THE PACKRAT: An exhibition celebrating the legacy of Andy Warhol doesn't sound like anything new. Next to Norman Rockwell, Warhol may just be the most overexposed American artist of the last century. But at Pittsburgh's Warhol Museum, the latest tribute to Mr. Fifteen Minutes focuses not on his art, but on his obsession with collecting. Says the museum's curator, "Collecting itself was a form of artistic practice for Warhol." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 03/01/02

ART OUT OF SUFFERING: "Drawings by a World War II veteran depicting horrific scenes from Japanese prisoner of war camps in Burma are to be sold at auction next month. The collection of more than 100 drawings and paintings by Jack Chalker, 83, goes under the hammer on 16 April at Bonhams auctioneers, in London. It is expected to fetch up to £80,000." BBC 03/01/02

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