ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

VISUAL

Is The Sackler Disgrace A Warning To Other Potential Museum Funders?

The resulting glare is sure to have a dampening effect on future donations from individuals or families whose wealth derives from practices today considered unethical or otherwise problematic. Museums and boards with ties to fossil-fuel companies, for instance, have long been targets of criticism. - Apollo

Consider The Velvet Painting

"They are the ultimate kitsch, and in this era of hipster aesthetic, they lend themselves well to some ironic display. But does dark velvet truly hold the power of rendering the most masterful stroke into scoffworthy scribblings?" - Quartz

Health Care, Hospitals And Design Choices

The basic trajectory of hospital design has, so far, been toward buildings that are ever bigger, more complex and more sealed off from the world. The trajectory of dignity is less linear, and more improvisatory, with a lot of circling back to old ideas. - Washington Post

Was Modernist Architecture Really The Product Of Brain Damage?

Why should it matter that the people who gave us modern architecture in the 20th century had traumatic brain damage and disorders? For one, the information reframes our understanding of how modern architecture came to be. - ArchDaily

New Art Museums Are Opening All Across Australia

"An injection of more than $2.4 billion has already resulted in five major openings since late 2020, with another half-dozen projects well under way. Now … the recipients of all this dosh finally have a chance to show us how it is being spent." - Australian Financial Review

Painting Is Stolen, Then Replaced With Smaller Painting, Which Is Also Stolen…

A controversial painting was stolen from the Catholic University of America campus last month. When it was replaced by a smaller copy of the same image, that painting was also stolen. - InsideHigherEd

UNESCO Adds Arabic Calligraphy To Its “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” List

Congratulations, but isn't this a bit like putting, say, European portraiture on the list? Calligraphy is one of the most basic, fundamental genres of Arabic visual art. - ARTnews

TEFAF Maastricht, One Of The World’s Biggest Art Fairs, Postponed Yet Again

The last TEFAF that actually happened was (bad timing!) in March 2020, and it closed halfway through. The 2021 event was put off for six months and then called off. Now the 2022 fair, scheduled for March has been postponed with no target date. - Artnet

COVID And The Art Of Party Tents

Last year, as the pandemic isolated us into our respective domestic cocoons, designers took to their AutoCAD to imagine a brave new world of design “solutions” for the pandemic. - Los Angeles Times

The 16 Defining Art Events of 2021

In-person gatherings return, NFTs (or the people involved) go nuts, $20 billion-with-a-b worth of art donated in South Korea, major new museums in Paris and Hong Kong, a big departure in L.A. and a big mistake in Indianapolis, and, occasionally, justice is starting to be served. - ARTnews

Robert Indiana’s Foundation Sues Publisher For Forgery

The Morgan Art Foundation's filing in US federal court accuses publisher Michael McKenzie of "allegedly forging Indiana's artwork, defaming the foundation, and intentionally interfering with its exclusive contractual rights to reproduce the artist's 'Love' works." - Artnet

Cleaning Staff At Guggenheim Bilbao Stage Performance Art To Protest Appalling Wages

The artist Lorenzo Bussi (alias "Art Builders Group") and the workers devised the action, titled "Is Everyone's Work Equally Important?", at the top of the stairs leading to the Frank Gehry building's entrance. The pay rate they're protesting? €5 ($5.65) an hour. - Hyperallergic

AI-Powered Robot Could Help Rebuild Pompeii’s Ancient Frescos

"The project … melds robotics, AI and archaeology in an attempt to reconstruct architectural features of Pompeii that would otherwise remain incomplete, because they're either too complex or would require impossible amounts of human labor and time." - Scientific American

Piet Mondrian’s Heirs Sue Philadelphia Museum Of Art Over Painting They Say Was Looted By Nazis

The suit by the descendants of Harry Holtzman, the artist's heir and executor, argues that Composition With Blue (1926), having been seized from a German museum as "degenerate art" in 1937, should be returned to them. (No mention of returning it to the museum in Germany.) - Artnet

Louvre Agrees To Undo Renovation Of Room With Cy Twombly Ceiling Mural

When the museum changed the color of the walls and floor of its Salle des Bronzes, the Cy Twombly Foundation sued, arguing that the remodeling altered the character of the mural (designed specifically to be seen against the original colors). The Louvre caved. - ARTnews

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