Like most Gilded Age institutions, the Huntington has a lot to figure out. "Certainly, getting to a more equitable version of the future is going to take some work — and some unsentimental self-examination. 'We need to look with a detached historical eye and not do hagiography,' Nielsen says." - Los Angeles Times
Glass, concrete and steel are far from carbon neutral, says a leading architect working on climate change. "The production of these materials entails burning a huge amount of fossil fuel. ... The climate emergency is not a game and we can’t just spin our way through it. We need to think about where our materials come from, how they’re...
Hello, freedom of artistic expression? Nope. Trademark protection - for both Satan and, perhaps, Jesus shoes: "MSCHF asserts that just like an earlier limited-edition of Jesus Shoes, these will be displayed in artistic collections, perhaps in museums. (In court papers, Nike has left open the possibility of amending its complaint to include a claim over Jesus Shoes, too.)"...
The standards for heating, ventilation and air conditioning at North American and European museums tend to be quite high: minimizing airborne dust and maintaining consistent air temperature, humidity, and circulation are crucial for keeping the items on display in good condition. So the upgrades necessary to keep airborne transmission of the novel coronavirus low have been relatively simple to...
"It sounds like an April Fools joke, and it both is and isn't. Author and art historian Ben Lewis has created a real non-fungible token (NFT) of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi — and, like the original, he's hoping to auction it for $450 million. Okay, he's not really expecting to sell it for that much." Because it makes...
The traditional hierarchies of the art market, where values, both monetary and aesthetic, were established and policed by art historians, curators and museums, are being assaulted by a new breed of wealthy new players, with new tastes and “new” money. Their wallets are stuffed with the currently surging cryptocurrencies. The traditional art world may sniff at some of their...
The mobile experience will allow people to zoom in on the details. It will include six poems in the voice of Balthasar, the black king pictured to the left of Mary, with his gift of myrrh and wearing a lynx-fur-lined red robe and fabulous boots with leather so fine you can see his toes. - The Guardian
"For human art lovers, learning which style or category a piece of art falls in is a relatively straightforward and objective task. Like the neural networks , we can learn how to do that by looking at a lot of art and finding patterns. But there's something humans do that computers don't: we also form opinions about the art...
"Despite the reopening of most private museums in Washington, the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art have no set date to reopen from pandemic-related closures that began in November. … When they are ready to reopen this spring, they will mimic last summer's multiphased approach, Bunch said, with the National Zoo one of the first to come...
"The conceptual restructure, if it goes ahead as planned, will make the museum itself look curiously out of time, out of touch with the world and with its own history. If the planned changes to the V&A are a harbinger of what ‘Global Britain’ will look like, then a parochial, nostalgic future – marked by redundancies of vision as...
“The visitor experience this year will be phenomenal. It will be culture without crowds. You will be up close and personal with animals or art in a way you would never have experienced before and possibly won’t in the future. If you were ever going to have a holiday in Britain, this is the time to do it.” -...
As prices for the digital artworks soar, with payments made in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, some observers are throwing around words like "tulipmania." Says the CEO of a company that verifies NFTs, "We're in a frenzy of speculation. … We're living in a moment of collective hysteria." Especially now that the finance guys are moving in on the art...
"The counterfeit canvases came from a non-specialist collector based in the province of Toledo who had intended to sell the works as originals. … The asking price? A combined €12.5 million ($14.6 million). … Potential buyers had been lined up." - Artnet
The museum was conceived by the Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi, wife of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and opened to international acclaim in 1977. Just 15 months later, in the face of a massive popular uprising, the couple left the country on what was officially called a “vacation.” The revolution replaced the monarchy with an Islamic Republic weeks later. The...
