Art Deco As A State Of Mind Art Deco was one of the most pervasive styles of the modern era. “But what is art deco? It is easier to say what it isn't, for there was never any coherent theory, principle or aesthetic to it, nor any clear and particular source. Art deco, if anything, was simply the celebration of eclecticism as a virtue and stylistic opportunism as a principle. It scoured the world and the ages for its sources, from tribal Africa to Japan, and ancient Egypt to Peru, and then looked to contemporary high art, to cubism, futurism and the Ballets Russes for present excitements and stimulation.” Financial Times 03/31/03

Interest In Iraq Art Soars The British Museum reports that visits to its Iraqi exhibitions have tripled since the war on Iraq began. The British Museum has the greatest collection of Mesopotamian art outside Iraq. A spokeswoman confirmed that visits to its Mesopotamian and Assyrian galleries had risen significantly. 'It's just general curiosity from what's going on (with the war). Members of the public are coming from all over the world." BBC 03/31/03

Sotheby's Catches Up To Christie's After two years, Sotheby's has caught up with rival Christie's in art sales. "Annual turnover figures published this month show that in the year ending 31 December 2002, Sotheby’s sold $1.77 billion (£1.11 billion) worth of art, while Christie’s announced sales of $1.9 billion (£1.3 billion). But the Christie’s figure included private treaty sales of $120 million, so for auction sales the two companies are about even." The Art Newspaper 03/28/03

Looted Art On Display In Moscow An exhibition of paintings taken from a German castle by Soviet troops after World War II went on display in Moscow this weekend. "A campaign by mainly Communist members of Russia's parliament has kept the 364 works in the country, though many Liberals back the idea of returning them to Germany. Returning war booty has long been a sensitive issue in Russia, where memories remain keen of more than 20 million Soviet war dead during a four-year campaign against the Nazis. The Moscow Museum of Architecture has held the 362 drawings and two paintings - which include works by Rubens, Degas, Delacroix and Goya - in safekeeping for 43 years."
BBC 03/30/03

• Previously: Russian Prosecutor Threatens Culture Minister Over Plan To Return Art The Russian Prosecutor's office has informed the Russian Culture Minister that he will face criminal charges if he goes ahead with a plan to return an art collection stolen from Germany after World War II. "The prosecutor's office, which has been investigating the matter over the past few weeks, said the Culture Ministry does not have the authority to decide to hand over the 362 drawings and two paintings that once belonged to the Bremen Kunsthalle." Moscow Times 03/26/03

Celebrating Vincent's 150th Birsthday Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum celebrated the painter's 150th birthday Sunday as thousands of fan came to pay their respects. BBC 03/31/03

• Two Van Gogh Paintings Stolen Two Van Gogh paintings have been stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. "The stolen paintings are well known to art lovers: 'View of the Sea at Scheveningen' and 'Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen.' Both from the artist's early period, they were executed in 1882 and 1884, respectively. Police have not yet put a value on them. But Van Gogh's later works have sold at auction in recent years for tens of millions of dollars." BBC 03/31/03

Tracking Down Some Maleviches In a few weeks the Guggenheim Museum will open a show of Malevich paintings with important works that have never been seen in the West. But the tale of how the paintings ended up getting out of Russia and into the show is a tangled one. "The art dealers, the Guggenheim and Russian officials all deny having done anything improper. It is through their efforts, they argue, that superb art hidden for decades is finally being seen." But still, there are questions... The New York Times 03/31/03

Dispensing Art From Machines (Who Needs Dealers?) Would you take a chance on buying art out of a vending machine? "The Art-o-Mat offers miniature paintings, sculptures and other tiny trinkets for not much more than a pack of Parliaments. The concept has hooked accidental art investors with refurbished vending machines in art galleries, coffee shops and grocery stores nationwide. We're wanting to reach quality investors who haven't taken art seriously before, and to support artists trying to make a living."
The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) (AP) 03/30/03

Destroying Angkor Wat With Bad Decisions To "Save" It So often, conservation attempts at Angkor Wat have resulted in disaster. "Between 1986 and 1993 in an attempt to clean the temple of lichen and prevent water erosion, many exquisite details were erased forever. Concrete was used to fill cracks." and the damage was irreparable. Now there are more plans - some which seem ill-advised. "Who is making these decisions? The Cambodian body nominally in charge of Angkor's 100-odd monuments is the Apsara Authority, created by Unesco in 1995. But while the Cambodians are the hosts, they are not yet the masters of their legacy: they hold the keys but not the essential resources. Within the tangle of international politics and conflicting philosophies of architectural restoration, Angkor Wat, with its beautiful honeycomb towers is, in reality, a latter-day Tower of Babel." The New York Times 03/30/03

More Women Moving Into Museum Leadership As recently as 1989 there were fewer than a dozen women directing American museums. Now there are more than 50. "While there has been an increase in the number of women museum directors, the largest increase has been in the small museums." But for the most part, women haven't cracked the top jobs at larger museums. Boston Herald 03/30/03

Michelangelo "Doodles" being Restored For six weeks in 1530, Michelangelo hid in a little cell-like room while the Medicis wanted him dead. While there, he drew on the walls. "The collection of around 50 'doodles', first discovered by Paolo dal Poggetto in 1975, include a self-portrait, a life-size risen Christ and some sketches experts believe are copies of figures the artist had painted earlier on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel." The drawings are being restored after having badly deteriorated. The Guardian (UK) 03/29/03

Moshe Safdie And The "Anti-Bilbao" Since the Bilbao Guggenheim opened, no museum can afford to be blase about getting bigger. "Today, no museum Web site worth its salt is without a section on its imminent, or just completed, 'expansion,' 'renovation,' 'renaissance' or 'transformation.' The rhetoric is eerie in its uniformity: The new building will display the museum collection in a 'fundamentally new way.' It will provide the public with a 'richer and deeper experience.' It will be an 'exciting new public space.' And, of course, the café and bookstore will be expanded." Architect Moshe Safdie has come along with a kind of "anti-Bilbao" approach to museum-building. National Post (Canada) 03/30/03

Bay Area Museum "De-Merger" Hires Some Help A year ago Berkeley's Judah L. Magnes Museum and the Jewish Museum San Francisco decided to merge. But it didn't work out, so the two are "de-merging." And that requires somebody to help pull it off - so the Magnes has hired Joanne Backman as its acting executive director. San Francisco Chronicle 03/29/03

Trading Up - Boston's MFA Sells Art To Buy Art Boston's Museum of Fine Arts is selling a Renoir and two Degas pastels, hoping to raise $12-17 million so the museum can buy an [unnamed] 19th Century painting it wants to acquire. "It will be by far the most money raised through a sale in the MFA's history. It will also mark the museum's highest profile deaccession since 1984. That's when the MFA traded two Renoir pastels and a Monet painting - plus $600,000 - to a New York dealer for a Jackson Pollock painting. It was a controversial move, and an assistant curator resigned in protest. But this week, MFA officials stressed that support for the deaccession was unanimous from the five curators in the art of Europe department, the 27-person collections committee, and the 70-member board of trustees." Boston Globe 03/28/03

Crowds Change The Art Experience Epic lines at New York's major museum shows make going to see some art a confusing and difficult experience. "You either have to get in the very front, in which case you get pushed, or in the very back, in which case you can't see. It's not like you can stand in front of a painting and wait. You'll get trampled." The New York Times 03/28/03

Wales, Scotland, Striking Out On Their Own At Biennale Scotland and Wales are jumping ship at the Vennice Biennale this year - both countries are pulling out of the British pavilion to set up their own shows. "As if to underline their secessionist tendencies, the Welsh have bagged a bigger venue - the Ex-Birreria brewery on Giudecca - and they are throwing a party for the art glitterati while sobriety will be observed in the British pavilion. The Welsh deny that they harbour historical resentments, but do point out that the British council has not honoured a Welsh artist at the biennale for 40 years." The Guardian (UK) 03/28/03

Collapse Of Art Investment Co. Hurts Artists, Investors The collapse of art investment company Taylor Jardine has left a lot of artists and investors owed money. "Investors were told that once they had bought the paintings, Taylor Jardine would arrange for them to be leased to companies in London. They were assured this would generate an annual income of about 15 per cent on top of any increase in the value of the paintings. But, by the time the company folded, just 300 of the 2,000 paintings had been leased. This was a company that banked at Harrods and stored its art at Christie's. Its brochures were glossy, its website was slick and its salesmen had public school accents. But despite the swanky exterior, investors have lost £6.4m and struggling artists have been told they may have lost the works they offered for sale." The Telegraph (UK) 03/28/03

The New Saatchi Museum...Er, Gallery So is Charles Saatchi's new gallery in competition with the big London museums? "The press has made so much of the supposed rivalry. I'm looking forward to working with the two Tates and the Hayward. Where we differ is that we will always be able to remain at the cutting edge of new art because we can buy and sell, and we're not answerable to taxpayers or to the idea of a national collection. We're about contemporary art - that's to say of the past 20 or so years - not modern art. Our job is to showcase new British art, and to act as a springboard between art colleges and major museums. We'll always be changing the collection, sometimes gradually, at others quickly. And we don't plan ahead. Only once a show is up will we think about what the next one might be." London Evening Standard 03/28/03

UK - Finding All The Public Art Britain is initiating a national campaign to catalogue all the oil paintings in all the public collections in England, "down to the last dusty alderman hanging in a council waiting room." The Guardian (UK) 03/28/03

Russian Prosecutor Threatens Culture Minister Over Plan To Return Art The Russian Prosecutor's office has informed the Russian Culture Minister that he will face criminal charges if he goes ahead with a plan to return an art collection stolen from Germany after World War II. "The prosecutor's office, which has been investigating the matter over the past few weeks, said the Culture Ministry does not have the authority to decide to hand over the 362 drawings and two paintings that once belonged to the Bremen Kunsthalle." Moscow Times 03/26/03

Torturous Art "It was torture with a creative flair -- build tiny cells that kept prisoners from sleeping, sitting or pacing, and decorate the walls with mind-bending art. These chambers operated during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, and were the work of Communists fighting for the government side as it battled troops under fascist Gen. Francisco Franco. Their existence is a bizarre, little-known footnote to the conflict and is now the focus of historians and artists. Researchers say the Soviet-inspired cells were the size of a walk-in closet, with terra-cotta bricks sticking up from the floor at sharp angles. A cot and a seat attached to the walls teased prisoners with the lure of rest, but tilted so far downward that they were useless." Star Tribune (AP) 03/27/03

'Lost' Goyas To Be Auctioned Two paintings discovered in the home of a wealthy Madrid family have been certified by Spanish art experts as original Goyas, and will be put up for auction shortly. "The auction house admitted it was puzzled there was no record of the paintings but suggested the reason could be because they formed part of a religious triptych - three panels usually hinged together." The works are expected to bring up to 5 million euros ($5.36 million). BBC 03/26/03

Is Saddam Holding Historical Treasures Hostage? "Millennia ago, Iraq was the cradle of civilization, hence the concern about its cultural and archaeological sites. Is the U.S. taking sufficient care to spare Iraq's treasures? The laws of warfare make clear that while combatants may not target such sites, if they are used for military purposes they lose their protection." Unfortunately, say US commanders, the Iraqis have are putting military targets next to important archaeological sites. Recently Iraq "placed military equipment and communications equipment next to the 2,000-year-old brick arch of Ctesiphon on the banks of the Tigris River, the world's largest surviving arch from ancient times and the widest single-span arch in the world." OpinionJournal.com 03/27/03

Seagram Art To Hit The Block "The famous Seagram art collection, including a 1919 curtain mural painted by Picasso, is to be auctioned in New York through the spring and summer by Christie's auction house, it was announced yesterday... Last year, Vivendi Universal, the heavily indebted Paris-based media group that owns Seagram, decided it didn't want to be an art owner and ordered the 'liquidation' of the 2,500-piece collection, setting off a storm of controversy." The company's collection of photos will be sold by Phillips De Pury & Luxembourg at a separate auction in late April. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/26/03

Injunctions, Donations, And Auctions, Omai! London's Tate museum has been given a surprise £12.5 million gift in order for it to purchase a valuable British painting at risk of leaving the country. Sir Joshua Reynolds "Portrait of Omai" was sold at auction for £10.3 million last year, and a concerted effort was launched by the government to insure that the portrait stayed in the UK. An injunction was put in place barring the work's export temporarily, while a UK buyer was sought. The Tate had previously tried to purchase the work in 2001, but its offer was turned down. BBC 03/26/03

• Previously: Will Tate Use Profit to Save Painting? Last week the Tate was mounting a campaign to raise money to prevent the sale and eexport of Joshua Reynolds' "Portrait of Omai". Then the museum came into a £14.6 million profit in a deal that recovered two Turners stolen from the museum in 1994. So will Tate use the money to rescue the Reynolds? Er... The Guardian (UK) 12/23/02

We're Watching You - The Eye Project British artist Antony Gormley travelled to China and enlisted the help of 300 villagers to create thousands of small figures with only eyes for features. "He and the villagers got stuck in to 100 tonnes of clay. He hoped for 120,000 figures but in five days 192,000 were produced." Now they're all arranged to fill up a room - 384,000 eyes all staring at whoever comes to see them. The Guardian (UK) 03/25/03

India's National Museum To Expand India's National Museum in New Delhi has got the go-ahead for a major expansion. "Pending for more than a decade now, this ambitious project will not only provide the museum with much needed space but also result in the headquarters of the Archaeological Survey of India being shifted to a new location." The Hindu 03/25/03

Art - The New (Old) Investment "In a year when many business investments have suffered, the value of art has kept rising. Over recent decades, everyone from Madonna to the Queen Mother discovered that if you invested in a Monet, you could end up making a lot of money. Collecting art today is perhaps more widespread than it has ever been. Once the prerogative of those with inherited wealth, auction houses are enjoying a new and varied clientele, including millionaire rock musicians and actors. Professional collectors will tell you it is addictive: there is always another - better - acquisition on the next horizon. Part of the thrill is the chase." The Scotsman 03/25/03

Art Sales Scandals - Broken Trust Recent tax scandals with art sales, and the auction houses' price fixing trials damage all of the art world, writes ex-dealer Andre Emmerich. "Art dealing is a business based on trust. People who buy and sell art - whether or not they consider themselves collectors - must have confidence in the person they are doing business with. When one dealer is seen to be dishonest, the public is likely to conclude that most dealers are shady, just as the recent scandals surrounding Enron, Tyco and a few other corporations have affected investor confidence across the board." OpinionJournal.com 03/25/03

Breaking Up Andre Breton's Treasure "Why are some scholars aghast at the idea of breaking up Andre Breton's art collection? "The surrealist wizard was an outstanding art critic as well as a classic prose writer, a major poet, and a perceptive commentator on more general intellectual history. Because of his commitment to the work of leading painters and sculptors, Breton's art collection ranged from André Derain to Man Ray and Joan Miró, from Giacometti to James Rosenquist, a Pop artist he admired. But he was also a connoisseur of the indigenous arts of the Pacific, especially New Guinea and its neighboring islands, as well as of the Hopi and other Pueblo Indians and the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico. What's more, his personal friendships extended from the outstanding Parisian poets and artists of his time to such figures as Sigmund Freud and Leon Trotsky--all of whom presented him with signed books and manuscripts." Weekly Standard 03/31/03

Destroying The Cradle Of Civilization? Archaeologists fear that George Bush's war on Iraq and its aftermath could "obliterate much of humanity's earliest heritage. Heavily looted in the last 10 years, Iraq's archaeological treasure remains as precarious as the rest of the country's post-war future. 'What's really at stake here is our past. What happened here was the establishment of civilization as we know it - codified religion, bureaucracy, cities, writing. What developed there was modern life - urban existence." Philadelphia Inquirer 03/24/03

Preservation Hall - Those 60s Buildings As Art London's Royal College of Art needs to expand in the worst way. The college held a design competition, and everything seemed set to go, until preservationists got wind of the plan to demolish some of the RCA's current 60s-vintage building. "Hold on a sec, says the Twentieth Century Society. Isn’t the RCA listed? You can’t just knock it about willy-nilly..." The Times (UK) 03/245/03

America's Asia Connection Asian art is everywhere in the US these days. "This week 10 or more sizable exhibitions devoted to Asian art are under way or about to open in American museums. The Puritans, who saw the devil’s hand in almost anything foreign, would have run for their torches. But if they saw the U.S. museum calendar these days, they would not have known where to run next. Immigration has produced larger Asian-American communities all over the U.S., which have not only heightened the demand for their cultural patrimony but also produced the prosperous donors and collectors who slap the money down for the shows." Time Canada 03/24/03

Looking at What Matters In Art Art magazines are full of stories about how communication between artists, the art establishment and the public have broken down. That leads to lots of bristling opinions, often without much thought. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel invited a group of "artists, curators, critics, a museum director and his visiting farmer friend, art students and art teachers - one Saturday morning to tackle some tough but fundamental questions about contemporary art. Why does art even matter? What's 'good' or 'relevant' anyway? Who gets to say so? Should art be beautiful, expressive, dense with ideas, easily understood, a perfect match for the sofa?" Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 03/24/03

Art & Auction Magazine Sold Louise Blouin MacBain, former CEO of auction house Phillips has bought struggling "Art & Auction" magazine from LVMH Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton, with plans to "redesign the 25-year-old magazine and develop a sister newsletter on art market data and investment trends. She plans to nearly double the magazine's circulation of 22,000 over the next three months by expanding into Germany, France and England." Crains New York Business 03/23/03

Brit Galleries Take To New York The theory is that more Americans will be staying at home for awhile instead of travelling out of country. Reluctant to give Americans up as customers, "a growing number of British dealers are establishing a more formal presence by opening galleries in New York. The logic is simply that if the customers are not coming to you, then you must go to them." The Telegraph (UK) 03/24/03

Art For Smart Investors There are some signs that art is currently a better investment than stocks and bonds. "Since London shares were last at present levels, seven years ago, the painting segment of the art market, as measured by Artprice.com, has provided an annual return of 6.8 per cent. A painting pays no dividend, is expensive to insure, and will cost you fat commissions to buy and sell. But if you put your 1996 nest-egg into a well-chosen work of art, rather than a selection of FTSE 100 blue-chips, you could afford to be pretty smug." The Telegraph (UK) 03/24/03

The New Irish Architects "Paradoxically, despite the fact that architecture now seems more than ever to be dominated by that flying circus of the perpetually jet- lagged who get to build everything, architecture is one of those areas in which, given the right circumstances, the differences between the metropolitan and the provincial count for much less than they do in most other cultural forms. The new names that are beginning to attract international attention in architecture are as likely to be from Croatia, Iran or China and Ireland as they are from America or Japan." And now Irish architects are making their move. The Observer (UK) 03/23/03

California's Perpetual Museum-In-Progress The California African American Museum reopens this week after a $3.8 million renovation. This is good news, but the state's budget crisis has once again put the museum at risk. The CAAM was created 25 years ago, but it has never really had the opportunity to become financially stable, since a heavy reliance on wildly fluctuating state funding has kept it subserviant to the whims of politicians. The latest round of state cuts will see the museum's budget shrink by 35%, and the CAAM is scrambling to find ways to make up the difference. Los Angeles Times 03/23/03

Uncovering Vermeer Jan Vermeer is one of the great enigmas of the art world, and the dearth of real information about his life has only increased the popularity of his work in recent years. A new documentary attempts to tie together the scraps of biographical interest which have been unearthed over the years, and creates a more complete portrait of the Dutch master than any seen before. And while Vermeer's work tends to reflect quiet contentment, the filmmaker "argues that the artist imagined on canvas a vision of tranquility which eluded him in life." The Telegraph (UK) 03/22/03

Bringing Art To The Hinterlands "Masterpieces from the Tate collection, including The Rock Drill - an icon of 20th century sculpture by Sir Jacob Epstein which expresses his revulsion at the carnage of the first world war - will be loaned to regional museums through a scheme funded by a £440,000 heritage lottery grant announced yesterday... The loans project, launched in 2000 on a modest budget, has been a spectacular success and resulted in some exhibitions in the regions - notably one on Constable in Sheffield - which were more admired by critics than major exhibitions at Tate Britain." The Guardian (UK) 03/21/03

Cops And Robbers And Broken Statues "Fragments of an ancient Roman statue of Apollo, illegally excavated several years ago near the Italian capital, were recovered in London, police said this week." The fragments were actually discovered in February, but the find was not announced until this week. Authorities had been searching for the artifacts for six years, and had pursued the thieves through at least four European nations. Two people have been arrested in connection with the discovery. The Globe & Mail (AP) 03/23/03

Ohio Museums Expand Despite a down economy, four museums in Ohio are embarking on big expansion projects. The Cleveland Museum of Art announced plans two months ago for a $225 million renovation and expansion, the Toledo Museum of Art is spending $27 million on a new, 47,000-square-foot center for glass art, in June, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati will open its new $37-million Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center, designed by Zaha Hadid of London, and the Akron Museum is raising $34 million for an expandion. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 03/20/03

Dresden Old Masters Won't Be Returned Yet The director-general of Dresden’s 12 museums says he won't return Old Master paintings from the reserve collection to the refurbished store of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. The storage area was flooded last year when the River Elbe and its tributaries broke their banks and a new storage facility is not likely to be built soon. The Art Newspaper 03/17/03

Steal-To-Order Ring At Australian Museum? An investigation into the theft of tens of thousands of objects from the Australian Museum suggests that many of the artifacts may have been stolen from the museum's mail room. "The Independent Commission Against Corruption, which has recovered a 'substantial amount' of items pilfered from the mammals collection, is looking at the possibility that a steal-to-order racket, with foreign links, has been operating at the museum and some zoos for years." Sydney Morning Herald 03/21/03

Boston Museum of Fine Arts Cancels Catalog At its peak, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts shops catalog generated $3.5 million a year. "In this age of the museum mall, cultural institutions have come to increasingly rely on income from exhibit-related products. The MFA's gift magazine is designed to compete with the Pottery Barn, L. L. Bean, and Sundance catalogs. MFA officials say the museum's stores continue to do well, but the catalog has struggled." In 2001 the museum's retail enterprises were spun off into a private company...and lost $2.9 million in its first year. So the museum is canceling this spring's catalog. Boston Globe 03/20/03

Albertina Museum Gets A Redo Vienna's Albertina Museum has just reopened after a $100 million facelift to rave reviews. "Although this tradition-bound Viennese institution houses one of the world's premier collections of graphic art, spanning artists from Michelangelo to Egon Schiele, it has never generated much public interest." The New York Times 03/20/03

Aussie Police Recover Thousands Of Stolen Artifacts In Raid In a series of raids, Australian police have recovered thousands of items stolen from the Australian Museum. "The items include precious skulls, bones, rare species in jars of formaldehyde and even a stuffed gorilla." A former museum worker is being questioned, and thousands of items have been returned to the museum. They were stolen from the museum between 1996 and 1998.
Sydney Morning Herald 03/20/03

Gagosian Vs. The IRS New York Larry Gagosian is jousting with the Internal Revenue Service on two front. He's is under investigation for his dealings with tax cheat Sam Waksal. And he's suing the IRS over tax claims the government is making over three painting. New York Post 03/19/03

• IRS After Gagosian "In a civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, prosecutors accused Gagosian, the Gagosian Gallery and three other men of failing to pay taxes on the 1990 sale of 58 works of art that earned $17 million in taxable gains." NJ.com (AP) 03/19/03

"Saving" Art In Britain - Is This A New Definition Of Save? Yet another important painting in Britain is apparently "in danger" of being sold abroad. And another campaign is mounted to raise money to "save" it. "This rhetorical flourish is becoming commonplace in Britain. Our public galleries are so strapped for cash that barely a week goes by without an appeal being launched to 'save' some work for the nation, or some top aesthete bending the knee before Lottery paymasters for lolly to keep something beautiful from leaving this country. This rhetoric may be to an extent justified by the parlous state of public funding for the arts, but it does raise suspicions that the principles underlying these claims are sometimes questionable." The Guardian (UK) 03/20/03

Should Artists' Estates Be Protected For The World? The estates of Francis Bacon and Andre Breton are currently in danger of being broken up and sold. "Our instinct cries out to protect the 'integrity' of such inheritances by keeping them together. But is that justified? Should the state, as it does in France, have a say? Or should great art have a life of its own when its creator dies, beyond the control of its maker and his loved ones?" London Evening Standard 03/18/03

Right Project At The Right Time Ada Louise Huxtable is a fan of the winning design for the World Trade Center site. "The design by Daniel Libeskind is not about death and destruction, as some have feared; it is an original and eventful reconstruction of the World Trade Center site that brings the architecture of the 21st century to New York, where it has been sadly and shamefully lacking. Even as we preserve that tragic pit and its sustaining wall, they will become the source of new life. But this will happen only if the spotlight stays relentlessly on the rebuilding process, and if we do not lose the urgent sense of necessity and inevitability that has brought us this far." OpinionJournal.com 03/19/03

Finalists For UK Museum Of The Year Four English museums have been shortlisted for the first £100,000 Gulbenkian Prize for museum innovation. Finalists include London's Natural History Museum and The Discovery Point in Dundee, the galleries of Justice in Nottingham and Rotherham's Clifton Park Museum. BBC 03/18/03

Going Bust On Blockbusters Appreciating art at blockbuster art shows has gotten near impossible. "As with any blockbuster you can't linger too long and you have to expect big crowds. But does there come a point when the crowds are too big, the jostling too irritating and the noise too distracting for any real enjoyment, let alone serious appreciation? To judge from the letters column of this paper this week, that point has been reached." The Independent (UK) 03/15/03

This Year's Maastricht - A Harder Sell War fears loom over this year's Maastricht Art Fair. "Traditionally this small Dutch city has been an annual mecca for serious collectors from all over the world. But officials here report that attendance at this, the world's largest art fair, will be down about 10 percent from last year. There are far fewer blockbusters than in recent years. Not only are great works of art getting harder to find, but often when dealers do have something extraordinary, they tend to hide it away during bad economic times, afraid that if it doesn't sell, it will become overexposed and therefore less desirable. Dealers definitely seemed to be holding back this year."
The New York Times 03/18/03

Bush Tax Plan Threatens Historic Preservation Incentives Tax credits for preserving historic buildings and building low-income housing have resulted in the rehab of tens of thousands of buildings in America. "These credits help make historic rehab and low-income housing projects viable for profit-minded developers who might otherwise opt for less risky ventures." But "despite the fact that they have helped stabilize neighborhoods, create businesses and jobs, and boost tax revenues in small towns and big cities alike, these incentives are in danger of being marginalized by a current White House proposal." OpinionJournal.com 03/18/03

Spectator Sport - Surveiling This Year's Vennice Biennale This summer's Vennice Biennale carries the subtitle of “The dictatorship of the spectator.” So what does it mean? "Is it that the spectator is the artist’s enemy, distanced by a different viewpoint? How important is the spectator anyway at the Biennale? Apparently not enough. One of the stated aims of this year’s show is to increase the number of visitors, which usually nose-dives after the initial crush of the opening week. The last Biennale attracted 243,498 in six months, 30,000 of whom were press who visited in the first three days." The Art Newspaper 03/14/03

San Francisco's New Asian Palace This week the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco opens in a new home. "The building - the old Main Library in Civic Center - has been deftly restructured inside by Italian architect Gae Aulenti, famous for having transformed the 1900 Gare d'Orsay train station in Paris into the tremendously popular Musee d'Orsay. The overall cost will be $160.5 million, and it gives the Asian Art Museum the kind of prestige and stature to which it has aspired." San Francisco Chronicle 03/16/03

• Just What Is "Asian" Art Anyway? "At its crudest, 'Asia' as a concept betokens the 'orientalism' that Edward Said famously redefined in terms of Western colonizers' need to understand themselves by contrast with a mysterious - potentially dehumanized - other. The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has a collection deep and extensive enough to awaken glimmers of imagination for the complex material culture of Eastern societies across six millennia." San Francisco Chronicle 03/16/03

• Much To Offer "Modern architects need to develop a more imaginative bag of tricks when they are working alongside the ornate architecture of the past. The Asian Art Museum's new glass-enclosed light courts are dramatic, but they shunt the grand beaux-arts spaces of the old building onto a sidetrack. The rhythms of the original structure are largely ignored by the new, when they should have blended." San Jose Mercury-News 03/16/03

Miami Heat - South Florida Steps Up To Latin American Art "A new wave of artists and curators have relocated to South Florida. Dealers and fairs have followed suit and infused Miami with the promise of becoming a capital of contemporary Latin American art." Miami Herald 03/16/03

War Fears As Maastrict Fair Opens The European Fine Art Fair opens in Maastricht with 200 of the world's most prestigious galleries in attendance. "The art and antiques for sale are breathtaking, and are estimated to be worth a total of about £600 million this year. Some 60 per cent of the world's currently available supply of good-quality Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings are on show." But dealers are worried what impact an Iraq war will have. "Maastricht airport once famously ran out of parking space for private jets during the fair, but this year there are fears that there may be plenty of spare tarmac alongside the runway." The Telegraph (UK) 03/17/03

Art Theft - A Nice (Not So Little) Business Art crime is flourishing. "It is an area of crime that costs insurers £500m a year. The database Invaluable, a London private company, lists more than 100,000 stolen art and antique works. Among them, I discovered 26 Renoirs; eight Warhols unstrapped in transit from Heathrow to New York last year; 180 George III walnut clocks; Goyas, Gainsboroughs and Rubens. Unfortunately this activity is not matched by stories of thieves being collared, receivers incarcerated and "mad collectors" being sent up the river. Profits are high, punishment all too easily evaded." The Guardian (UK) 03/15/03

Live And Online - Exploring The Museum Before You Get There "For museum aficionados, the Internet can be a serendipitous joy but it can also be a tease. A number of sites provide directories that can reveal museums you'd never think of while putting together a travel itinerary, but which can end up as the cornerstone of a trip. This is particularly true of the sites with directories of domestic museums. But for travelers who speak only English, the Web is not as generous a place."
The New York Times 03/16/03

Next Year In Terra? Chicago Museum Embroiled In Turmoil Again A few years ago trustees of Chicago's Terra Museum, frustrated by what they perceived as the city's lack of support, decided to move the m useum to New York. After a battle, a compromise settlement was reached in June 2001, "required that the Terra Foundation and a significant portion of the museum's collection stay in the Chicago area for at least 50 years. It also called for the resignations of all board members and the installation of replacements last September." But now Judith Terra, widow of museum founder Daniel Terra, "filed an appeal last month maintaining that some former board members were bullied into supporting a deal to settle the museum's future." Chicago Tribune 03/16/03

Autry, Southwest Museums To Merge After All Last month the Autry and Southwest museums in Southern California decided to delay their plans to merge. But after lengthy negotiations, the two museums have decided to go ahead with the plan. "To cover costs of the merger, Autry officials say they plan to raise $100 million over the next five years, including $38 million to boost the center's endowment and an estimated $15 million to restore and renovate the Southwest buildings." Los Angeles Times 03/14/03

Guggenheim To Build Rio Outpost The Art Newspaper is reporting that the Guggenheim has made a deal to open a branch in Rio de Janeiro. "The so-called Guggenheim Rio will be the New York-based foundation’s first outpost in South America, augmenting a global network that presently includes the Frank Lloyd Wright flagship in Manhattan, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas. The city-run museum will be housed in a striking new building designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and set within the waters of beautiful Guanabara Bay, affording sweeping views of the picturesque harbour whose entrance is marked by the famous 'Sugar Loaf'. Construction is to begin this summer with completion scheduled for late 2006." The Art Newspaper 03/14/03

Court Battle Over Nazi-Looted Picasso May Shift From LA To Chicago "The legal battle over ownership of a $10 million Picasso masterpiece looted by the Nazis during World War II may shift from Los Angeles to Chicago if a tentative ruling issued Thursday by a California judge becomes final and survives appeals." Chicago Tribune 03/14/03

Libeskind - Bringing Your Feelings To Work Daniel Libeskind's design for the World Trade Center site, which he calls 'Memory Foundations', "epitomises American society's current morbid preoccupation with death and conflict. Several architecture commentators have pointed out that the subjective nature of Libeskind's work is something new among architects, who rarely express their own feelings and tend to be more comfortable talking about the functional and technical aspects of buildings. The difference between Libeskind and a cool, rational architect such as Norman Foster is something like the difference between Princess Diana and a regal head of state." spiked-culture 03/11/03

Web Of Prehistory A new website will show detailed images of prehistoric rock art in the UK, cataloguing work that is thousands of years old. "The website will include global positioning system readings - highly accurate positions of the artwork compiled using satellites - and digital drawings and photographs." The Scotsman 03/14/03

Williamson Wins Second Archibald Prize For the second year in a row, Sydney artist Jan Williamson has won the Archibald packers' prize for portraits with a picture of actor/writer Rachel Ward. "Williamson, a full-time painter and mother of nine, took out the packing room prize last year with her painting of singer-songwriter Jenny Morris." The Age (Melbourne) 03/14/03

NAC Gets An Unexpected Gift Canada's National Arts Centre "is expected to collect at least $500,000 from the sale of the estate of James Wilson Gill. He died in December after a long fight with cancer, leaving his Ottawa home and his extensive and valuable art collection to the centre... He was unknown to most NAC patrons, including many of those heavily involved in fundraising for the centre... The precise value of Mr. Gill's estate will not be known until his house and art collection are sold, a process that could take several months." Ottawa Citizen 03/13/03

A Warhol Stolen While On Loan? How did a valuable Andy Warhol painting on loan for a traveling Guggenheim exhibition in 1998 end up in the collection of a Guggenheim trustee a year later? The painting's lender is crying theft. The New York Times 03/13/03

When Pictures Aren't What They Seem... "One of the most successful - if bizarre - cases of overpainting a great artist's picture came to light earlier this week, when it was disclosed that a Rembrandt self-portrait had been hidden under layers of concealing paint for 300 years. An unnamed pupil changed the 28-year-old Rembrandt into a flamboyantly dressed Russian aristocrat in a red hat, earrings, long hair and dashing moustache. For the next three centuries it was regarded as a portrait by an anonymous minor Dutch artist." These things happen more often than one thinks. How? The Guardian (UK) 03/13/03

Weakening World Heritage Site Protections An organization that helps advise on World Heritage Sites says proposals being considered by the international body would severely weaken protections for the sites. "Among the changes the world heritage committee, which runs the world heritage scheme, will discuss are: Allowing states to veto any criticism of them for damaging or neglecting sites within their borders. Allowing states to prevent the creation of new sites in their borders if they stand in the way of development." The Guardian (UK) 03/13/03

Vision vs. Practicality "Will Alsop, the acclaimed British architect, stormed the gates of Toronto more than two years ago and convinced the Ontario College of Art and Design that he was their man... Today, the fireworks get shut down so that some tough decisions can be made about how to get OCAD built by next January." The major issue to be discussed is the building's cladding - what exactly the outher facade will be made of. Cost is an issue, as is durability, and, of course, visual appeal. Lisa Rochon says a decision needs to be made, and soon. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/12/03

Green Space vs. History Dallas, Texas, is not the greenest city in America. In fact, Dallas's downtown is almost completely lacking open space. A proposal for a new, 4.7-acre park aims to change that, but there's a catch. The plans for the park would require the destruction of a number of old buildings described as "the best block of 1950s architecture in the city." There is no question that the 'greening' proposal is well-intended, says David Dillon, "yet a park proposal that requires the demolition of historic buildings and the closing of major streets, in a downtown that is already one-third vacant land, creates as many problems as it solves– not just for historic preservation but for planning and economic development." Dallas Morning News 03/12/03

Dangerous Dig "Indian archaeologists prepared on Tuesday to start digging in search of a lost temple whose disputed existence lies at the heart of India's tense and often violent Hindu-Muslim divide. Archaeologists put up tents at three places at the site in the northern holy town of Ayodhya to maintain secrecy as they search for remains of a temple which some Hindus say was buried under a 16th-century mosque. Hindu zealots razed the mosque in 1992, triggering nationwide Hindu-Muslim riots in which some 3,000 people died." Wired (Reuters) 03/11/03

The Life And Legacy Of Francis Bacon The story and legacy of Francis Bacon's £60 million estate are growing murkier and more complicated after the death of his sole beneficiary last week. The Scotsman 03/12/03

Russia Reveals Troves Of Art Looted By Nazis After more than 50 years of hiding them away, Russia has decided to reveal the whereabouts of "thousands of paintings, archives and rare books looted by Soviet forces in Germany and Eastern Europe during and after World War II and taken to Russia as so-called trophy art. (Now the preferred term in Russia is 'displaced cultural treasures.') Hitler's forces had previously pillaged many of the works from Jewish owners and other Nazi victims." The New York Times 03/12/03

Painted Critique - Condemning Critics Richard Eurich was a "awfully good painter" writes Richard Dorment. But he was a stubborn independent who went his own way. And though pleasant, he fired off a savage critique of critics in the form of a painting. "The contrast between the foolishness of the impotent critics and the moral clarity of the virile artist is the picture's unmistakable point. A reproduction of The Critics should hang over the desks of all of us who write about the arts, for it reminds us how easy it is to become focused on emerging artists, while neglecting true but idiosyncratic talent." The Telegraph (UK) 03/12/03

Flood Fears For Museums British museum directors have been warned about protecting their collections in case of a flood. "In London, a string of national museums is located along both banks of the Thames. These include Tate Modern and Tate Britain, and the priceless Gilbert precious metal collection at Somerset House, to be joined next month by Charles Saatchi's new gallery at County Hall, and, in May, by a new museum in Docklands. Many museums, such as the V&A, which stand a safe distance inland, have stores much closer to the river, while others, such as the Wallace Collection, just north of Oxford Street, recently gained space by excavating large basement areas." The Guardian (UK) 03/12/03

Where Are The Great Women Artists? Back in 1971, art historian Linda Nochlin published an influential essay titled "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" "It was a provocative, lengthy, and wide-ranging examination of women’s status, past and present, which commenced with the author’s "open-minded wonderment that women, despite so many years of near-equality . . . have still not achieved anything of exceptional significance in the visual arts." Now - 30 years later - "how many of Nochlin’s observations remain valid and how have they influenced the discourse on art in the academy, in the museums, and in the marketplace?" ArtNews 03/03

Nice Nice Nice - The Failure Of Architecture "For centuries, the task of the architect was to build the ideal city, whether the city state of 15th-century Italy, or a Modernist backdrop for car-driving, welfare-state citizens. Naturally, they all failed." In the 60s, a group of Italians called Superstudio "had the audacity to say that after 400 years of failure we should give it a rest. Utopia? It ain’t coming." The problem is, they couldn't come up with an alternative. So "three decades after the Italians exited stage left, architecture, and especially British architecture, has fulfilled all their prophesies. It’s cursed with niceness. It’s dull. Unquestioning. Terminally polite." The Times (UK) 03/10/03

Tearing Down An Eyesore (Or Is It?) Birmingham, England's central library is only 30 years old. It has been controversial - seen either as part of an axis of architectural evil, along with the city's Rotunda and New Street station, or as a bold brutalist design. Prince Charles described it as "looking like a place where books are incinerated". Now it is to be torn down for a new library. But some worry that "although fashions of the 1970s have been reassessed and mined for information several times over, buildings of this period are still very little understood; if the library is demolished, Birmingham will lose a great building before its importance has been recognised." The Guardian (UK) 03/10/03

Guard Implicates Himself In Dali Theft A guard at New York's Riker's Island jail has implicated himself in the theft of a Salvador Dali sketch from the facility. "The officer told authorities Saturday's theft was concocted as a get-rich-quick scheme, with participants hoping to cash in on the sketch by selling it on the black market for $500,000. But the painting was discovered missing far sooner than they hoped because the officers opted to keep it in its frame and put a replica sketched by one of the guards back with another frame." New York Post 03/07/03

Moving Paris' Art Paris museums are moving art in their storerooms to a location outside the city for fear of floods. The massive transport of 100,000 artworks is disrupting museums. "The Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre, are sited right on the banks of the river, which snakes through Paris in a series of grand curves. Many others are also having to evacuate their stores: the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts and the Orangerie. The current urgency is particularly unfortunate given that huge underground galleries and stores were built under the Louvre as recently as the 1980s as part of I.M.Pei’s Grand Louvre project. At the time no one was worried about floods." The Art Newspaper 03/07/03

SF Asian Art Museum Reopening The San Francisco Asian Art Museum is one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere devoted to Asian art. Next week the museum reopens in a $160 million new home. "The museum's move to downtown will allow it to display nearly 2,500 works from its renowned collection, more than double what it could show in its old Golden Gate Park location, in a lavishly renovated landmark that is a destination on its own." Los Angeles Times 03/09/03

Repatriating Art Is Compicated Business Kenneth Baker weighs in on art repatriation issues: "The furor over Nazi looting has touched off a transnational frenzy of new and renewed demands for repatriation of artworks stolen, liquidated or otherwise lost during wartime or colonial occupation. These range from Greece's perennial demands for Britain's return of the Parthenon 'Elgin marbles' to Korean demands for the return of artifacts stolen by Japan during the Second World War and earlier. Reflecting on the weight of such claims, it is worth remembering that Hitler's cultural officers frequently looted art treasures on the pretext of repatriating them in the aftermath of the wars of centuries past." San Francisco Chronicle 03/09/03

Don't Mess With Rodin Should museums be allowed to alter works of art in their care to create other works of art? James Fenton protests. "Tate 'conservators' have conspired with the exploding-shed-monger and brass-instrument-crusher, Cornelia Parker, to wrap Rodin's marble group, 'The Kiss', in a mile of string. They should not have done this. It should be a principle of conservation that nothing unnecessary is done to an original work of art in a public collection, and I don't care what the 'conservators' say about the care they took in executing this banal intervention. They wouldn't have dared do this to Brancusi. They shouldn't have done this to Rodin." The Guardian (UK) 03/08/03

On The Trail Of A Stolen Dali Police say they're close to solving the theft of a Salvador Dali painting from New York's Riker's Island jail. The penal institution has enlisted the help of the artworl'd stolen art resources, putting it in the company of collectors and museums. "In terms of dollar value, art crime stands out among illicit industries, ranked just below narcotics and the illegal arms trade. Experts estimate that worldwide losses range from $2 billion to $6 billion a year." The New York Times 03/08/03

Scottish Parliament - An Extraordinary Building Shouldn't Be All About Money Scotland's new parliament building has been awash in controversy - almost all of it about the enormous cost. But this is missing the point, writes Duncan Macmillan. "We seem unable to lift our eyes from the cost of the building itself to see what we are getting for our money. But sheathed in scaffolding and polythene sheeting, our parliament is a chrysalis. In a month or two a marvellous butterfly is going to emerge to astonish us all. Or maybe not a butterfly. Really, it is a flower." The Scotsman 03/06/03

What To Do With Controversial Australia National Museum Review? Officials are wondering what to do with a controversial review of the National Museum of Australia. One thing they're not doing so far is making the findings public. "The review was set up against a background of debate about the presentation of indigenous history, which has pitted the celebratory 'three cheers' view of the impact of white settlement against the black-armband view so disapproved of by the Prime Minister, John Howard. It has been criticised by several historians as politically driven, a motive denied by the council's chairman." Sydney Morning Herald 03/07/03

US Prosecutors Crack Down On Art Buyers Trying To Avoid Taxes US prosecutors are going after art buyers who have made deals with galleries to avoid sales taxes. So far, "34 Manhattan families had coughed up $6 million in back taxes on art purchases since June, when former Tyco International CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski was indicted on charges he evaded sales taxes on $13 million in art in a widely publicized case. Art dealers say they believe the government is looking for quick ways to collect revenue in a weak economy." USAToday (AP) 03/06/03

Did Fire Alarm Cover Jail Art Theft? Did security guards at Riker's Island jail stage a fake fire drill las weekend to cover the theft of a Dali painting? "The rare middle-of-the-night drill was held Friday, hours before two officers noticed that the painting, last appraised at $175,000, had been replaced with a fake." New York Daily News 03/06/03

• Previously: Dali Sprung From NY Jail A Salvador Dali drawing that hung in New York's Riker's Island jail in the presence of round-the-clock guards, was stolen this weekend. "The audacious thief was apparently not only brazen enough to confiscate Dali's sketchy rendering of Christ on the cross from a locked display case in the lobby of the men's jail, but he or she also managed to leave behind a schlocky, B-rate copy that at least three correction officers were puzzled to find upon reporting to work yesterday morning." The New York Times 03/02/03

Bacon Heir's Death Leads To Speculation About The Artist's Paintings What will happen to a number of important paintings by Francis Bacon now that the painter's primary heir has died? "John Edwards, who died in Thailand on Wednesday aged 53, was Bacon's friend and muse for many years. He inherited the artist's £11m estate when Bacon died in 1992." BBC 03/06/03

A Plan To Help Museums With Insurance Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. museums have struggled to obtain works for major exhibitions from overseas due to skyrocketing insurance rates and jittery art lenders who fear losing their pieces in a terrorist strike." Now legislation has been introduced in the US Congress that "would raise the amount of indemnity coverage that can be provided at any particular time from $5 billion to $8 billion. It also increases how much coverage the program - run through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) - can provide to one exhibition, from $500 million to $750 million." The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 03/06/03

Air Force Memorial Will Tower Over Washington "The Washington skyline is due for an exhilarating lift in three years or so, when a spectacular memorial honoring men and women of the U.S. Air Force rises on a hill just west of the Pentagon. Unveiled yesterday, the memorial design by architect James Ingo Freed appropriately is a soaring thing, an airy triumvirate of stainless steel pylons ascending in gentle arcs into the Virginia sky. The highest of the spires will ascend 270 feet above a granite-paved plateau on a promontory overlooking the Pentagon and monumental Washington. A second arc comes in at 230 feet, and the third tops off at just above 200." Washington Post 03/06/03

Long Lines And Crushing Crowds - Welcome To The Art Museum! A heavily promoted 'blockbuster' exhibit of the work of Degas at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is drawing huge numbers of visitors, and that may be a problem. "On those most popular days for museum attendance, Degas devotees holding timed tickets have reported waits of up to an hour to see the critically lauded show, devoted to the great impressionist painter's lyric images of ballet dancers. And once inside, it was tough for the packed-in art lovers to see the art." Part of the crowd-control problem can be attributed to a series of crippling snowstorms in the area which prevented many ticketholders from making it to the museum during the exhibit's first two weekends. Philadelphia Inquirer 03/06/03

Fabled Ancient Library Reopens The amazing Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum's most famous building, finally opened this week, some 2000 years after it was enveloped in mud in the eruption that buried Pompeii. The "largest Roman villa ever found, it was the magnificent seafront retreat for Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Julius Caesar's father-in-law. Piso, a literate man who patronized poets and philosophers, built there one of the finest libraries of its time. Many believe that the mud filled lower terraces could hide the fabled second library, which probably contains lost plays by Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, lost dialogues of Aristotle, and Livy's History of Rome, of which more than 100 of the original 142 books are missing." Discovery 03/05/03

Tin Can Wins Sculpture Prize Gereon Krebber, who graduated last year from the Royal College of Art, won this year's Jerwood Prize with a proposal for "Tin, a 1.5-metre can with the top slightly open - or almost closed, creating uncertainty and ambivalence, the artist says. Krebber beat seven other sculptors, shortlisted from 90 proposals, for the prize, which is open to sculptors who have graduated from art school in the past 15 years." The Guardian (UK) 03/05/03

Saatchi's Gift, Part II Iraqi-born art collector Charles Saatchi, whose devotion to promoting the work of young and emerging artists is well-established, is making a second major donation to the Arts Council Collection, based in London. Saatchi is giving over control of 34 modern sculptures to the ACC, which plans to display them in touring exhibitions around the U.K. and possibly abroad as well. Saatchi had previously made a gift of more than 100 artworks to the council in 1999. BBC 03/05/03

How These Things Start - Did Picasso Hate Matisse? Did Matisse Dislike Picasso? A competition is an odd aesthetic for an art show. So how did the Matisse–Picasso opposition come about? It "was invented almost a hundred years ago by a handful of avant-garde poets and painters who had an appetite for grand pronouncements. The rivalry was also fostered by Gertrude and Leo Stein, who, in their salon, liked to put other people's neuroses in a pot and let them simmer till they boiled over. Early on, Leo Stein made a point of telling Matisse and Picasso, then freshly aware of one another, that an important Parisian art dealer had spent the large sum of 2,000 francs on new paintings by Picasso and the very slightly larger sum of 2,200 francs on new paintings by Matisse. Then came a press release by the poet Apollinaire, and the duel was officially on..." Slate 03/04/03

Australia's Booming Art Market Australians spent $100 million on fine art last year, "with a record $80 million passing through the hands of the nation's art auctioneers. Despite the uncertain economic and world political climate, that record could be broken this year as well-to-do newcomers who boosted sales last year by taking their money out of the sharemarket continue their splurge on paintings, prints and drawings. Salesroom turnover last year was up by $10 million on the previous year and four times greater than a decade earlier." Sydney Morning Herald 03/04/03

UK Churches Call On American Museums To Return Artwork Two English churches are demanding the return of three priceless tomb brasses stolen from the churches' flagstone floors in the 19th century. The brasses were discovered in the vaults of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "The churches remain scarred by the holes left in the floor where they were prised out" and officials want them restored. But a spokesman for the churches says the museums have denied the request. The Guardian (UK) 03/04/03

Bay Area Art Schools Call Off Merger The San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland have called off a previously announced merger. "The merger would have produced one of the nation's largest fully accredited, independent school of visual arts outside of New York City. Currently, the Art Institute has about 650 students and 137 faculty members; California College of Arts and Crafts has about 1,300 students and 370 teachers." The schools said that after much negotiation, "at the end of the day, out of respect for the two institutions, we concluded it just couldn't be done." San Jose Mercury-News 03/03/03

Did American Investigation Of Nazi Looted Art Fail Its Task? A Clinton commission investigating Nazi-looted art, did not do an adequate job, and overlooked solid leads, says some scholars. "Objections to the panel's work were so strong that some staff members said they contemplated writing a minority report. Their comments, and similar ones from leading experts in the field, were not publicly expressed when the commission reported its findings. Now critics say the commission was a lost opportunity to determine how much Nazi looted art flowed through America. The New York Times 03/03/03

Free Museum Admission Fails To Attract Low-Income Visitors A report says that free admission to British museums has resulted in hordes of new visitors, but that the policy had failed to attract lower-income visitors. "Its figures show the Natural History Museum in London attracted 72% more visitors last year compared with 2001, the Science Museum had 101.4% more visitors and the Victoria & Albert Museum had 111% more. However, numbers visiting the British Museum fell 4.14% last year." BBC 03/02/03

Dali Sprung From NY Jail A Salvador Dali drawing that hung in New York's Riker's Island jail in the presence of round-the-clock guards, was stolen this weekend. "The audacious thief was apparently not only brazen enough to confiscate Dali's sketchy rendering of Christ on the cross from a locked display case in the lobby of the men's jail, but he or she also managed to leave behind a schlocky, B-rate copy that at least three correction officers were puzzled to find upon reporting to work yesterday morning." The New York Times 03/02/03

• A Crafty Theft How did A Salvador Dali come to be hanging in a jail? "As the story goes, Dali was due to appear at Rikers for a talk with the prisoners, but he took ill. With reporters waiting in the lobby of his hotel, Dali, famously reluctant to disappoint the press, took India ink to paper and created a gestural evocation of the Crucifixion." The New York Times 03/03/02

Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum In Turmoil Amsterdam's Stedelijk is the city's modern art museum and once was considered "one of the most dynamic museums" in Europe. But its director left the museum in January and the general director is also leaving. Closure for building work scheduled for this year has been put off for a year, and the city council has decided to privatize the museum. And there are proposals to move the Stedelijk to a new site on the outskirts of Amsterdam... The Art Newspaper 02/28/03

Tower Of London Wall Collapses "Part of the moat wall of the Tower of London has collapsed, and hundreds of feet of Georgian cast-iron railings have been removed, during contentious building works intended to improve the setting of one of the most popular tourist attractions in Britain." The Guardian (UK) 03/03/03

Destroying Treasures Of History Is Wrong - No Matter Who's Doing It Two years ago the world stood apalled as the Taliban blasted the historic Bamiyan Buddhas into oblivion. Though the regime commited many atrocities, somehow the destruction of the centuries-old statues stirred fresh outrage. Now the US is planning to bomb Iraq, site of many historical/archaeological treasures. Is this not outrageous also? Newsday 03/02/03

Britain's Historic Buildings Are Being Looted "The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings warns that churches and historic houses have never been at so much risk as crooks target decorative fixtures and fittings to feed the home renovation boom. Such thefts have reached 'epidemic' proportions, according to the society, Britain's oldest heritage conservation group. Last year there were 3,600 thefts from churches alone, with statues, fonts and even whole altars vanishing." The Guardian (UK) 03/01/03

WTC: Protecting A Master Plan From The Gnats "Daniel Libeskind's master plan for the former World Trade Center site, selected Wednesday, is a new noble, logical diagram - one that is sure to need a shield if real estate interests try to torture it with death by a thousand 'gnat bites,' as Robert Ivy, the editor of Architectural Record, so trenchantly put it. It inevitably will be changed, as all master plans are, as the economy rises and falls, as interest groups like the victims' families make their voices heard, and as political actors enter and exit from the stage. The questions are: Will the change be for good or ill?" Chicago Tribune 03/02/03

• Starting Over With A Develpment Plan Now that a plan for the WTC site has been chosen, the real heavy lifting begins. One good first step, writes David Dillon, would be abandoning the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and Port Authority's development plans and starting over. "The Port Authority's program belongs to the 1960s, not the 21st century, and repeats many of the mistakes that made the World Trade Center a bad neighbor." Dallas Morning News 03/02/03