Public Show - Collectors On Parade Many collectors buy art and horde it away in storage. But more and more high-end contemporary art collectors are following the example of Charles Saatchi and putting their art on public display. The Observer (UK) 05/30/04

Protests Over Art Donation "German collector Friedrich Christian Flick (grandson of a Nazi-era arms-maker) has offered his collection of modern art to a Berlin museum. But Jewish groups in Germany say the exhibit is based on blood money and should be refused." BBC 05/31/04

Art Gallery Of Ontario - On The Comeback? The Art Gallery of Ontario has had a terrible year. But. "Suddenly following a year of one horror story after another, beginning with falling attendance and budget cuts, good news bulletins have been emerging from the Grange with startling regularity." Toronto Star 05/30/04

• AGO Remakes Gehry Design "The Art Gallery of Ontario has released details of architect Frank Gehry's modifications and refinements in his design for the gallery's $195 million makeover." Toronto Star 06/01/04

Libeskind - Fighting Over WTC Pay "Daniel Libeskind, the master planner for the World Trade Center site, and Larry A. Silverstein, the commercial leaseholder, are fighting over how much Mr. Libeskind should be paid for his work on the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower." The New York Times 05/30/04

SF Gallery Owner Gets Black Eye Over Painting "After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, a San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nations unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib - a black eye and bloodied brow delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to the art work." San Jose Mercury-News (AP) 06/31/04

• Supporters Demonstrate To Help SF Gallery A crowd of supporters turned up to help the San Francisco gallery-owner who has come under attack for showing a controversial painting. "The supporters had hoped to persuade Haigh, 39, to reconsider her decision to close the Capobianco Gallery, which came after she was threatened, spat upon and, most recently, punched in the face for showing Guy Colwell's painting of torture. Gathered on the sidewalk outside the small studio, her supporters talked of vigils, petitions and even providing volunteer security to help keep the gallery going." San Francisco Chronicle 05/30/04

Building Goes For Art "If art museums can benefit from ties with architects, can an architecture museum profit by partnering with artists? Officials at the National Building Museum think so." Washington Post 05/30/04

Saatchi Fire In Perspective Eric Gibson isn't ready to declare the Saatchi warehouse fire a disaster for art. "Art disasters normally have a visceral impact. Such incidents as the looting of the Baghdad Museum last year and the ravaging of Florence's art treasures by floods in 1966 set the mind reeling at the thought of pieces of man's cultural patrimony permanently lost or damaged. This time, though, I was strangely unmoved. It's not that I think incinerating art is a good thing. It's just that the work of these artists--as of all contemporary artists--is too new and untested to have acquired the cultural heft that makes it seem an indispensable part of one's existence. I regret the fire happened, but I can't quite see it as a body blow to civilization. Listen to the wailing that followed the conflagration, however, and you'd think the world had come to an end." OpinionJournal.com 05/28/04

WWII Memorial - Love To Hate? "The new National World War II Memorial in Washington DC is the latest memorial that critics love to hate. It is built in a monumental style that makes many people uncomfortable in this age of irony and ambiguity. It somehow manages to come off as both self-important and self-conscious. It treads on the hallowed National Mall. And yet, it is neither thoughtless nor bombastic, as some have argued." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/28/04

Artist Pension Fund Forming A company in New York has started a pension fund for artists. "The fund, called the Artist Pension Trust, is designed to offer some retirement security for a fairly select group of up-and-coming visual artists now in their 20s and 30s. Instead of investing money, artists will contribute their own artwork to a trust. The artwork will be held for a number of years, then sold, with the proceeds going into the trust, from which artists will draw their pensions." San Francisco Chronicle 05/28/04

How Mass MOCA Changed A Town Mass MOCA has been open five years. And the contemporary art center far away from the cities has changed its host town. "Once a sleepy, economically depressed mill town, with the state's highest unemployment rate and lowest downtown occupancy rate, North Adams has changed. According to state government figures, unemployment has declined to less than 6 percent from more than 18 percent in the late 1980's. A study conducted by the museum shows that the storefront occupancy rate, which was below 30 percent in the mid-1990's, now stands at 75 percent. In the last five years eight restaurants have opened in North Adams. About 120,000 people a year visit Mass MOCA, the center says." The New York Times 05/28/04

Bacon Painting Too Expensive - Likely To Leave UK "A major work by Francis Bacon seems fated to leave the UK after the Tate reluctantly decided yesterday that it could not afford even to contemplate the £9.5m price tag." The Guardian (UK) 05/28/04

Art Gallery Of Ontario Woos Back Patrons "The falling-out between the Art Gallery of Ontario and its longtime benefactors Joey and Toby Tanenbaum has ended, as the gallery announced Wednesday that Joey Tanenbaum will immediately rejoin its board of trustees." CBC 05/27/04

Toting Up The Saatchi Fire Loss "A warehouse fire in Leyton, east London, is estimated to have sent £50m of modern art up in smoke. More than 100 pieces owned by art mogul Charles Saatchi were among those inside. It said the fire appeared to have started in a separate building in the warehouse complex, some distance from the art storage unit." BBC 05/27/04

• Artists To Sue Storage Company "Artists and collectors are preparing to sue Momart, the art storage company, for negligence after the warehouse fire in which hundreds of works were destroyed." The Telegraph (UK) 05/27/04

Is Painting Back In Good Graces? "In the past two decades, cutting-edge galleries and museums have focused on everything but painting. The halls were chockablock with installations, photo-based work, conceptual art, new media, and digital and video art. But a fundamental shift has taken place. Suddenly painting is allowed to exist again." Christian Sciene Monitor 05/28/04

Will Trump Settle For Fourth-Tallest? Donald Trump is building a new skyscraper in Chicago, in case you haven't heard. (Yes, this is the building that will be managed by the winner of a reality TV show.) But given The Donald's famous preference for outdoing all other buildings in the area, the plans for the tower are raising some eyebrows. Specifically, where the original plan called for building the second-tallest building in the U.S., the latest version would be only the fourth-tallest skyscraper in Chicago. That's still plenty tall, of course (90 stories, in fact), but it all seems very un-Trump-like. Chicago Tribune 05/27/04

What Was Lost In Saatchi Fire (And Do We Care?) "Future generations are unlikely to mourn the lost masterpieces of the Saatchi Collection as we mourn the ancient manuscripts that perished when the library at Alexandria burned. But the point is, this generation never produced a great novelist, but it did create some striking works of art." The Guardian (UK) 05/27/04

• Fired Destroyed Work Of A Generation "One shudders to imagine what has been lost, and it is likely that major works by leading international as well as British artists will be included in the final tally. But one needs a bit of perspective here: this fire may not be comparable to a world heritage disaster like the flooding of Florence or the sacking of Rome or the grinding of Iraqi archeological sites into gravel by coalition tank-tracks. Unlike Lady Churchill's burning of Graham Sutherland's portrait of Winston, or the demolition of Buddhist statues by the Taliban, this, so far as we know, was an accident. Yet there is something horribly ironic in the likelihood that an out-of-control blaze at a nearby paint factory may have caused the damage." The Guardian (UK) 05/27/04

• Saatchi "Devastated" Over Art Lost In Fire Charles Saatchi was still assessing the damage from a warehouse fire that destroyed millions of pounds worth of his art. "A spokeswoman for Saatchi said he was 'absolutely devastated' after the works - worth millions of pounds - were lost. She said many were Mr Saatchi's 'great personal favourites' and he considered them 'irreplaceable in the history of British art'." BBC 05/26/04

Drop That Sketch Pad! The latest threat to the art world appears to be art enthusiasts armed with sketch pads. This week, a Canadian man was told to stop sketching an ancient Egyptian artifact on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, because the piece in question was on loan from the British Museum, which does not allow sketching. The rogue sketcher helpfully pointed out that the ROM is not, technically, in Great Britain, and therefore allowed to make its own rules, but to no avail. Toronto Star 05/26/04

Wynn On An Art Buying Binge Vegas casino owner and collector Steve Wynn has regained his appetite for high-end art. "Last week in New York Mr Wynn bought John Singer Sargent's 1885 portrait Robert Louis Stevenson and his Wife. for $8.8m (£4.8m). He plans to hang it in his new casino, Wynn Las Vegas, due to open next year. With a Cézanne and a Renoir, purchased last year for $40.9m and also destined for Las Vegas, it looks like Mr Wynn has recovered his appetite for blue-chip art, and that the market is recovering after disappointing sales in recent years." The Guardian (UK) 05/26/04

Court: Van Gogh Painting Is Authentic "France’s highest court ruled today that an atypical Van Gogh landscape rumoured to be fake was, in fact, real – ending an eight-year-old squabble over the sale of the painting." The Scotsman 05/26/04

Fire At Saatchi Warehouse Destroys Valuable Art A fire at the warehouse housing millions of pounds worth of Charles Saatchi's art has destroyed much of it. "Modern art classics including Tracey Emin's tent and Hell, by Jake and Dinos Chapman, may have perished in the blaze. Monday's fire swept a London warehouse of leading art storers Momart. 'Charles is absolutely devastated. We are waiting for Momart to give us final confirmation'." BBC 05/25/04

Microsoft's Art Connection When Michael Klein became the curator of Microsoft's corporate art collection five years ago, the first thing he did was give the committee that had been picking art for the company the boot. "He's not above rubbing it in. 'I took their toy away'." With a substantial budget and an eye for contemporary art, Klein has emerged as a player in the coporate art collecting world.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/24/04

Forging Gauguin (And Getting Away With It) How did New York art dealer Ely Sakhai get away with forging and selling a Gauguin? "What was perhaps most interesting was how well this hustle exploited—and exposed—the frailties of the art marketplace. It is a world in which surprisingly few people are willing to stick their neck out and call a fake a fake, so that even as Sakhai’s scheme racked up victims, virtually no one was willing to call him on it. The forger knew this secret of the art world: It is tolerant of frauds, so long as the victims are in far-off places like Tokyo and too humiliated to raise a fuss. As if delivering a judo move, he used the particular quirks of art dealers against them." New York Magazine 05/24/04

High Times Over For Irish Art Sales? What's happened to the market for Irish art? "This year, the 10th that Irish sales have been held in London, a niche market that once seemed confident and youthful looked tired and middle-aged. Beset by supply problems and Ireland's economic slowdown, these specialist auctions have lost their bounce." The Telegraph (UK) 05/24/04

(Washington) Mall Rat Paul Goldberger says the new World War II Memorial on the Capitol Mall follows the tradition of uninspired Washington architecture. "The new National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington seems to want to be majestic, but it’s really an opulent, overbuilt civic plaza. The most important thing about it isn’t the design, which is a vaguely classical set of colonnades by the architect Friedrich St. Florian, but the real estate it occupies." The New Yorker 05/24/04

Cleaning Of David Finished "The eight-month cleaning of Michelangelo's statue of David is complete, the museum which houses the Italian Renaissance masterpiece said, almost four months ahead of its 500th anniversary celebrations." Yahoo! (AP) 05/24/04

• David's New Look "The overall effect is of a glowing colossus restored to something close to its Renaissance splendour. Visitors to Florence should not expect a dramatic transformation, such as that wrought on Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome in the 1990s; but, because of the greater uniformity of colour, it is easier than before to appreciate the statue's exquisite detail - the vein that stands out ever so slightly on David's upper right arm, for example." The Guardian (UK) 05/25/04

• A History Of Cleaning David "The marks on "David" recount much of the statue's life story, starting with an 18-foot-high marble bloc from Carrara that had been exposed to the elements for 40 years before Michelangelo began transforming it. It is very poor quality marble. Even Michelangelo had to spend four months polishing the marble before it was presented in public in 1504." The New York Times 05/25/04

The Whitney's Makeover Adam Weinberg is making sweeping changes at the Whitney Museum in both its structure and direction. “The Whitney wants to have a larger international presence,” says Mr Weinberg... The Art Newspaper 05/22/04

Are NZers Ready To Support Museum? Are New Zealanders ready to pony up serious money for its museum? "Make no mistake, Aucklanders admire their art gallery. They may not go inside too often, but they like the idea that the grand old building survives, up the hill from Queen St, nestled against Albert Park. But $75 million, largely from the public purse, to restore this storehouse of (mainly) old paintings? In a city fixated on solving its traffic problems, it could be viewed as the art scam of the century." New Zealand Herald 05/23/04

Losing Art In Words Blake Gopnik argues that the addition of words almost never helps a piece of art or architecture. "In my work as an art critic, I often come across this imbalance between word and image. It's almost never put there by the artists themselves, when they're any good; it almost always comes when someone doesn't believe that art can work without the help of text. When museums don't really believe in the communicative power of a piece of art, however great and famous, they throw up words that are supposed to make it speak. The strange thing about the World War II memorial, I'd say, is that even the designers of this work of art don't trust it to communicate alone." Washington Post 05/23/04

A Radical Rethink For The Royal Academy? "What is London's Royal Academy of Arts for, exactly? The question needs to be asked, because the Royal Academy is clearly not doing quite what it was set up to do..." The Observer (UK) 05/23/04

The Art Of Partying "Art and parties are a familiar twosome, particularly in these times of a faltering economy and deep cuts in arts funding. More and more galleries and museums are renting out their spaces to help pay the bills and to draw new audiences to their exhibitions. But they wind up telling real horror stories about damaged and stolen art, broken electronic equipment and messes left for gallery directors to clean up the morning after." The Detroit News 05/21/04

Dealer Charged With Trying To Sell Fake Picassos, Chagalls An art dealer was "charged Friday with fraud in Milwaukee, accused of trying to sell fake artwork as originals by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse.Some were of such poor quality that an art expert described them as 'a joke' and 'an insult,' according to a complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court." Chicago Tribune 05/22/04

Hoping For A Building That Lets Its Contents Shine Italian architect Renzo Piano will shortly be bringing his subtle, understated style to Chicago, as designer of the Art Institute of Chicago's planned expansion. Critic Blair Kamen has visited Piano's latest triumph - Dallas's $70 million Nasher Sculpture Center - and says that, if the Nasher is any indication, Chicago can look forward to a classic building which actually seeks to serve the art it houses, rather than overwhelm it. Chicago Tribune 05/23/04

What Really Happened To The Amber Room "For two centuries, the Amber Room - a chamber entirely panelled in amber - adorned the summer palace of the tsars near St Petersburg until in 1941, when the Germans invaded, it was stolen. Since the war, thousands of treasure hunters have pursued ever wilder theories in search of 'the eighth wonder of the world'. Yet it is still missing." Now, an exhaustive three-year investigation into the fate of the Amber Room has revealed the truth: the room was indeed taken by the Nazis and stored in Germany for a time. But a fire at the castle being used for the storage destroyed the room completely in 1945. The Guardian (UK) 05/22/04

Cubism's Enduring Legacy "Many of the assumptions of the world a century ago have been so overturned that you would think the paintings Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, produced between 1907 and the first world war, would make perfect sense today, and even appear a little naive. Yet their difficulty is not of a type that recedes with familiarity. Cubism is like a maths exam at the gateway to modern art. The paintings are uniquely unyielding... Art today is made from the building blocks of ordinary life. Cubism took these building blocks, or working premises, apart. Most art confirms our sense of who we are and how we live. Cubism suggests that our real existence eludes the images and stories we constantly make of it." The Guardian (UK) 05/22/04

SF Jewish, Mexican Museums Endangered In San Francisco, "the proposed Jewish and Mexican museums, once seen as ideal ways to embody San Francisco's racial and ethnic mosaic, are in such financial trouble that City Hall and museum backers worry they may never get built." San Francisco Chronicle 05/21/04

Raphael Drawing Discovered A Raphael previously unknown drawing by Raphael has been discovered amidst a bundle of other drawings brought to Sotheby's in London for valuation. "It had apparently spent most of the 20th century tucked in a cardboard folder with the other drawings in a drawer in a private house in London. The sketch is now believed to date from 1505, and to be Raphael's first known drawing in red chalk, made soon after he arrived in Florence and fell under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci." The Guardian (UK) 05/21/04

Is The Tide Turning Against Conceptual Art? "In the last decade or so, Conceptual Art - represented by the Young British Artists - has won all the prizes, especially the Turner Prize, and occupied the commanding heights of the British art world, for example the various Tate Galleries, and grabbed all the media attention. Meanwhile the Campaign for Real Painting is in retreat, overshadowed, pushed out and buried by an art establishment who believe that the practice of painting the human figure, by hand, in oils, from life or from imagination, is thoroughly old hat and beneath consideration. And now the whole world is filled with installations, video-projections, ready-made objects, dead animals, manipulated photos and obscene model-making. But is the tide about to turn?" The Independent (UK) 05/20/04

Seattle Library - Building As Art Seattle's new Rem Koolhaas-designed central library is winning raves from the critics. "High-end architecture is often a monument to the architect. Rarely is it art. This library is rooted in its functions, blooms where it's planted, is art in itself and is going to be a huge hit with the mass audience that is its principal customer." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/20/04

• The Koolhaas Factor Architect Rem Koolhaas was a longshot to design the Seattle Public Library. He almost didn't enter the competition to design it, almost didn't win the competition. "The new Central Library is an instant landmark for Seattle, a 21st century global architecture icon and a testament to this city's futurist impulses. But for the 59-year-old architect who designed it, the new Central Library may represent even more: a major force in redemption of his reputation." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/20/04

Art: A Great Place To Park Your Money (Conspicuously) Everyone is talking about the hot art market that has seen record prices for contemporary art. "So what gives? The declining dollar and inflation fears certainly make art a decent, demand-driven place for the rich to park their money. In these faux gilded times, the wealthy use art as a Veblenite way to advertise their fortunes -- witness gaudy spreads on the Dallas scene in the current Art + Auction and on Los Angeles collectors in the new Art Review and the New York Times. There’s nothing like showing off that boob job or eye tuck in front of a Frank Stella or Cindy Sherman." Artnet.com 05/20/04

Breaking Up One Of The World's Great Museums "Now almost forgotten, the Musée Napoléon briefly contained almost all the works of art then most praised and valued by European connoisseurs at the turn of the 19th Century. All this loot had been removed from its owners by right of conquest. ‘The fate of products of genius,’ as an official declaration on the subject put it, ‘is to belong to the people who shine successively on earth by arms and by wisdom, and to follow always the wagons of the victors.’ Furthermore, obviously, Paris — being the most advanced spot on the globe — was the natural home of the world’s finest works of art." Then, in 1815, the Musée was broken up and its treasures dispersed... The Spectator 05/20/04

Picasso Stolen From Workshop A small Cubist painting by Pablo Picasso has apparently been stolen from a workshop at Paris's Pompidou Centre, where it was supposed to be restored. The disappearance was only noticed this past week, although no one has seen the painting since January 12. The still-life, entitled Nature morte à la charlotte, is valued at €2.5 million. The Globe & Mail (Agence France-Presse) 05/20/04

Court Rules Against Christie's in Urn Authenticity Case "In a decision expected to have major ramifications throughout the international art world, a British judge yesterday found the venerable auction house Christie's guilty of 'negligence' and 'misrepresentation' in the sale 10 years ago of two urns to Canadian heiress Taylor Lynne Thomson... If the complex, 71-page judgment holds, it should result in changes to the way auction houses in Britain and likely elsewhere attest to the accuracy of the information they present in their catalogues and by their staff for the objects they sell. Heretofore, auction houses have described their views on their consignments as being essentially 'opinions,' not statements of fact." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/20/04

Whitney on the Web The Whitney Biennial has a web site, of course, just like every other organization on the planet. But unlike many other attempts to merge art exhibits and websurfing, Jim Regan says that this site actually does an excellent job of complementing its real-life counterpart. "The overriding reason for visiting the site will be to view the Art and Artists section. With 108 candidates to choose from, displaying the options in an intelligible manner presents a challenge. This is what the Whitney site does so well." The Christian Science Monitor 05/20/04

Turner List Lesson: Shock Is Yesterday's News The Turner Prize jury surprises the art world with its choices for this year's shortlist. "Though the panel did not make it quite explicit yesterday, the lesson of its shortlist was clear: the not-so-Young British Artists, the shock-horror stars of the 1990s, have had their day. This is a shortlist of serious established artists who have been beavering away for decades and are now flirting with middle age." The Guardian (UK) 05/19/04

Is Success Killing UK Museums? Britain's museums are a big success both in terms of the quality of their collections and with the audiences that throng to see them, writes Nicholas Serota. "But the museum economy itself is near breaking point. The success of free entry has placed ever greater demands on resources - at Tate Modern we have even found a sponsor for lavatory paper. With art prices reaching astronomical levels, we are having difficulty in renewing the collections that are at the heart of what we do." The Guardian (UK) 05/18/04

Architecture: Not Just For Buildings Anymore In this era of superstar architects and buildings that are decidedly form-over-function, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that household objects are now popping up with names like Gehry attached to them. "The new objects of desire are consumables designed by architects to help everybody bond around design... The possibilities for invention with new materials are staggering. It takes a lot of extra sweat to get from having an idea about new manipulations with glass to putting the 'float' tea lantern on the shelf." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/19/04

A Badger Takes On City Hall A 47-year-old, radically queer homeless man named Badger is probably not many people's first vision of what an artist looks like. But to the residents of New Orleans, Gainesville, Asheville, Minneapolis, and other cities which Badger has temporarily called home who have been lucky enough to come across his work - large-scale installation pieces, usually constructed of found objects, and usually functional enough to double as a temporary shelter for anyone in need - there is very little question that the man is devoted to his work. The authorities, however, tend to take a dim view of art which they see as encouraging vagrancy, and this spring, Badger has been facing down the parks board of Minneapolis in a desperate fight to preserve what he creates. City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 05/19/04

Artists Of The Computer Underground "The idea that every hacker is an artist and every artist is a hacker isn't groundbreaking -- recent gallery and museum shows have focused on the link between art and coding -- but a new book by programmer Paul Graham gives the concept a fresh twist by advising hackers to improve their skills by borrowing creative techniques from other artists... Graham slams the artistic conceit that all art is good and taste is purely subjective, pointing out that if you aren't willing to say that some creations aren't beautiful then you'll never develop the aesthetic muscles necessary to define and develop good work." Wired 05/19/04

Whitney Back On Expansion Track "Little more than a year after the Whitney Museum of American Art scrapped its plans for a $200 million expansion designed by the Rotterdam architect Rem Koolhaas, its board has started the process all over again. A building committee has been interviewing other architects, including the Italian Renzo Piano, who is considered the favorite, people in architectural circles said." The New York Times 05/19/04

The Turner Four "The four artists shortlisted for this year's Turner prize include a pair of sculptors exploring the relationships between people and architecture, an artist who uses his west African heritage to play with cultural identity and an artist best known for his re-enactments of battles which became turning points in British history." The Guardian (UK) 05/18/04

• A Gallery Of Turner Shortlisters The Guardian (UK) 05/18/04

Seattle Public Library - Best Of A Generation More praise for Rem Koolhaas' new public library in Seattle. Paul Goldberger calls it "the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating. Koolhaas has always been a better architect than social critic, and the building conveys a sense of the possibility, even the urgency, of public space in the center of a city. The design is not so much a rejection of traditional monumentality as a reinterpretation of it, and it celebrates the culture of the book as passionately, in its way, as does the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The Seattle building is thrilling from top to bottom." The New Yorker 05/17/04

Judge Dismisses Neighbors Suit Against Met Museum A New York judge has dismissed a suit by neighbors of the Metropolitan Musem to block the museum from expanding. The judge said "she was dismissing the group's petition objecting to a 300,000-square-foot expansion, partly because some claims were made after a statute of limitations had expired and partly because the Met had already scaled back its plans." Newsday 05/18/04

Art Auction Market Soars Last week's art auctions in New York took in $186 million and set numerous records. "The record price that resonated most was for a joke painting by Canadian artist Richard Prince, which was bought by a young American hedge-fund manager for $747,000, four times its estimate. On a stark grey canvas, the artist has painted the words from a cracker joke: "I never had a penny to my name. So I changed my name." With prices like this, contemporary art cannot be a joke – surely." The Telegraph (UK) 05/18/04

Turner Prize Shortlist This year's shortlist for the Turner Prize has been announced. "The four artists on the shortlist are Kutlug Ataman, Jeremy Deller, Langlands and Bell and Yinka Shonibare. The installation of video and photos from Afghanistan by Langlands and Bell is called The House of Osama Bin Laden." BBC 05/18/04

Denver To Get New Contemporary Art Center Denver is getting a new contemporary art center. "The 15,000-square-foot art center is expected to open in late 2005 or early 2006 as part of Belmar, a $750 million retail, office and residential development. This facility, modeled after leading contemporary spaces such as P.S. 1 in New York City, will serve as a kind of artistic research center with world-class exhibitions, scholarly publications and regular symposiums. The Lab finally gives the Denver art scene what it has desperately needed - a flexible, high-level alternative art space to complement the Denver Art Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver." Denver Post 05/17/04

Uffizi To Be Greatly Expanded Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has decided that the Uffizi should be expanded to rival the size of the Louvre or British Museum. "A proposal to enlarge the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, under discussion since the end of World War II, has been fast-tracked by the Italian government. Mr Berlusconi has announced that Euros 60million ($72 million) project to double the size of the available display space from 6,000 to 13,000 square-metres is to be completed by 2006." The Art Newspaper 05/17/04

Roomful Of Turkey (Feathers) "If you stick a quarter of a million turkey feathers dyed black on all four walls of a room in a major art gallery, you are bound to get some kind of reaction from visitors - if only splutterings about taxpayers' money. Curators at Manchester Art Gallery said this week that they were delighted that the responses to Susie MacMurray's installation, Flock, have been the most intense since the gallery reopened in 2002 after being extended and refurbished." The Guardian (UK) 05/15/04

The Market For "New" Michelangelos "These days, the icon of Renaissance art is Florence's greatest single brand and the global Michelangelo market is booming. You might imagine that as the years go by, the chances of finding a long-lost Michelangelo would shrink. But no. As one expert has observed, as the price tag on the world's greatest artists keeps soaring, so, miraculously, more hidden Michelangelo gems keep being discovered." The Guardian (UK) 05/17/04

Apres Le Carbuncle - UK Architecture After Prince Charles Twenty years ago the Prince of Wales famously opened his attack on modern British architecture by comparing it to "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend." "Perhaps what he could not see at the time was that far from retreating into a cosy world of agreeable Georgian architecture, British architects would return to the fray with a forward-looking architecture that is, on the whole, far superior to what had gone before the carbuncle speech at Hampton Court." The Guardian (UK) 05/17/04

Why Do We Focus On The $ Of Art? Richard Chang wonders why magazines like ARTnews focus so much on the price of art. "Sure, folks are curious about money, and any journalist worth his or her salt should be following the buck to a certain degree. Plus, we are entering the auction season, which emanates out of New York, London and Paris. But don't articles like these reinforce a small, ultrasuccessful cadre, ignoring the majority of skilled and passionate painters, sculptors, installation, video and performance artists?" Orange County Register 05/16/04

Saving A Prehistoric Hill By Calling It A Building? Conservationists are attempting to have Silbury Hill in Wiltshire reclassified as a building to protect one of the most enigmatic prehistoric structures in Europe. The move would reclassify the largest manmade mound in Europe. "The guardians of the 4,700-year-old hill have been trying to persuade people to keep off Silbury since 1974, when it was closed to the public, without destroying its appearance with intrusive fencing. The monument came close to destruction three years ago when torrential winter rain seeped into shafts left by earlier excavation, which collapsed. Although English Heritage has carried out repairs, the whole structure is vulnerable." The Guardian (UK) 05/17/04

Barnes - Museum Or School? "Ever since trustees appointed by Lincoln University gained control of the foundation's board, the debate on how the Barnes should operate now and in the future has been skewed, either through ignorance or deliberately. The public, the media and the art community have long perceived the foundation to be a museum. On the other hand, the foundation's indenture of trust, which governs its operation, is quite specific that it's a school. Lower Merion Township agrees, because residential zoning along Latches Lane allows schools but not museums." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/16/04

Dead-ending Paint? Being a painter is tough these days, writes Blake Gopnik. "There will always be talented artists who can overcome the difficulties that painting faces. In fact, with the odds so stacked against them, the handful of truly good paintings that get turned out look that much more impressive. I'll bet that somehow, somewhere, someday -- in a decade, a century, could be a millennium or two -- a whole new kind of painted work will come along to breathe new life into the medium. Painting has dead-ended before, and each time a Titian or a Monet, a Picasso or a Pollock has hit on a way out that no critic could have guessed at in advance. Any critic who insists that can never happen again is asking to eat crow." Washington Post 05/16/04

Seattle Public Library - Setting A New Standard Next week, Seattle's new public library - designed by Rem Koolhaas - opens, and Herbert Muschamp is ecstatic: "In more than 30 years of writing about architecture, this is the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review. I could go on piling up superlatives like cars in a multiple collision, but take my word: there's going to be a whole lot of rubbernecking going on." The New York Times 05/16/04

Beaverbrook Goes To Court To Get Paintings "The British Beaverbrook Foundation, a trust established by the late Lord Beaverbrook to continue his charitable works, has filed a lawsuit in an effort to claim millions of dollars' worth of art housed at the Fredericton (New Brusnwick) Art Gallery. The gallery holds an exquisite collection of art by such masters as Turner, Botticelli, Gainsborough and Dali. However, his grandsons, Max and Timothy Aitken, who head up the British and Canadian Beaverbrook Foundations, say that 175 art works at the gallery are the property of the foundations and they want at least some of them back." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/15/04

Global Art On Demand An electronic kiosk promises art on demand. "At a touch-screen terminal called a Totem, you'd browse for a painting by its name, the artist's name, or the museum in which it is housed. Works are available from institutions like the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the National Gallery in London. Then you'd choose how many copies you'd like to print, at what size and on which medium (choose between 25 types of paper, including canvas and photographic paper). Then go pay the cashier. The Mona Lisa on canvas costs about $30, but larger prints run up to $150." Chicago Tribune 05/15/04

Contemporary Art Prices Rocket Up ("We're Scared") Auction prices for contemporary art are shooting up fast. "It's unhealthy. People don't know what they're buying." Some dealers say they have not seen "indiscriminate buying like this in ages. It's scaring people." The New York Times 05/14/04

Challenge To Archibald Portrait A challenge has been filed against the winner of this year's Archibald Prize for portraiture. The striking portrait done in graphite and charcoal of actor David Gulpilil that won the competition "has proven a crowd pleaser at the Art Gallery of NSW, also taking out the $2,500 People's Choice Award last week. The Archibald bequest, however, states the prize had to be awarded to a painting."
Adelaide Advertiser 05/13/04

Why Nazi-Looted Art Isn't Being Returned A couple of years ago, art looted by the Nazis was one of the biggest stories of the art world. "Yet, despite all the headlines, relatively little of this looted art has so far been restituted. True, it represents only a small proportion of what the Nazis stole from Jews. After World War II, hundreds of thousands of works were recovered by Allied forces and duly returned to their owners or their heirs.The issue today relates to art that was recovered but was not restituted and art that was resold during the war and ended up in museums and private collections. In theory, a structure is in place to address the problem." But the reality... International Herald Tribune 05/13/04

Architectural Frustration A combination of budget constraints and public outcry have made the Art Gallery of Ontario's expansion a shadow of what it was intended to be, says Frank Gehry, and though he's committed to seeing the project through, he's disgusted with what he sees as a Canadian unwillingness to take chances. "The thought of walking off the job at the AGO has crossed his mind. As somebody with profound childhood memories of Toronto, who first experienced art at the AGO, Gehry wants the building to be spectacular. But he shakes his head at his architectural ambition for Toronto." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/13/04

• Gehry Does Hockey Is there anything that Frank Gehry isn't designing? Hot on the heels of his newest eye-catching building on the MIT campus, the über-architect of the moment has designed the trophy for the World Cup of Hockey, to be held late this summer in Minnesota. "The trophy is essentially a thin metal cup, made from copper and nickel, contained within a thicker, outer column of subtly swirling, clear plastic. It has the effect of a vase chilled inside a column of carved ice." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/13/04

MoMA's Art Sale The Museum of Modern Art has sold more than $100 million of artwork from its collection "during the past five years, more than eight times the Metropolitan Museum of Art's proceeds of $9.23 million in the past five years. Unlike the Met, which typically sells second-tier works, MoMA, throughout its history, has unloaded important objects that would have been treasured icons at almost any other museum, and that collectors have eagerly acquired. Alfred Barr Jr., the founding director, believed that the collection should "metabolically" shed older works as it acquired new ones." The Wall Street Journal 05/13/04

A Smart Building For Geniuses Frank Gehry's new Stata Center at MIT "occupies historic, even mystical ground. It sits on the site of the former Building 20, a boxy wooden structure that was thrown up in 1943 and became known as the Magical Incubator for the breakthroughs that took place inside, including the invention of radar and Mr. Chomsky's pioneering work in linguistics. This building is on the precise site of one of the major flourishings of innovation in the 20th century." The New York Times 05/13/04

Hughes: Reconsidering deKooning Robert Hughes is unimpressed by Wilem deKooning's reputation. "De Kooning has been written about, mainly by Americans, in terms that might seem over-the-top for Rubens. More tempests than Lear and Moby-Dick put together. Hysterical weather reports from some outer galactic fringe, accessible only to Hubble telescopes and art historians - such as John Mekert, who wrote the catalogue for the 1984 retrospective: 'The creative force of eros has merged with the flux of a shapeless magma of light and unbound matter drifting towards congealment into form.' Yikes!" The Guardian (UK) 05/13/04

Kramer: A Clinic In Dumbing Down The Brooklyn Museum is trying to better connect itself with its Brooklyn community. Hilton Kramer takes offence: "All of this is a ghastly reminder, if we need one, that when arts institutions invoke "the community" rather than the public at large as their primary constituency, you can be certain that something crucial—like, say, artistic standards—is being sacrificed on the altar of identity politics, in this case the politics of race and class. What follows from this descent into political accommodation is a surrender of the institution to a mind-set guaranteed to render it innocuous, if not something worse." New York Observer 05/12/04

AGO Looks For An Image Makeover "The troubled and besieged Art Gallery of Ontario is about to get some major help fixing its tarnished image. To mastermind a turnaround, the AGO has hired Susan Bloch-Nevitte — one of the behind-the-scenes stars of the University of Toronto's [$1 billion fundraising] success story. During the past year, the AGO has endured every plague a museum could have: falling attendance; budget-slashing; labour strife; a security problem that surfaced with the theft of Ken Thomson's miniature ivories; a public uproar over the closing of the Group of Seven galleries; conflict with residents of its neighbourhood, and, most sensationally, the defection of major benefactor and board member Joey Tanenbaum over Frank Gehry's makeover design." Toronto Star 05/12/04

Art Auction Prices Spiralling Upward A Jackson Pollock painting from 1949 fetched $11.65 million at auction this week, a record for a post-World War II American artist. The total take from the auction, which also inlcuded works by Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol, was more than $102 million, also a record. BBC 05/12/04

Jencks Wins Gulbenkian Prize Charles Jencks' "wriggly earth bank set around three sinuous ponds, which transformed a flat patch of scrubby grass in front of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, has won the £100,000 Gulbenkian museums prize, the richest single prize in the arts. The £380,000 design, Landform is based on chaos theory. Loved by visitors almost to destruction in less than two years, parts have had to be returfed already. Jencks's inspiration was La Grande Jatte, Seurat's painting of a Paris park." The Guardian (UK) 05/12/04

The Power Of Pictures Why have the pictures from Abu Ghraib provoked such a big reaction? "The illusory immediacy of the medium no doubt accounts for some of its power. The event depicted may have taken place minutes or years ago; and yet each time we look at a photographic image it’s as though we are actually there at the moment the shutter was clicked. By capturing the light of the past and embedding it into the chemical fabric of its own production, photographs offer convincing, “scientific proof” that something happened or once existed. Unless we actually see a picture of a female reservist holding a naked Iraqi man on a leash, most of us would have difficulty believing that it had taken place, and those in charge would have a far easier time denying it." American Prospect 05/11/04

Hitler Statue Rattles Berlin "A Russian-made waxwork of Adolf Hitler exhibited by a survivor of the Siege of Leningrad has caused a storm of protest in Berlin, where city politicians said the figure could attract the wrong kind of visitor." Moscow Times 05/12/04

Lawsuit Filed Against New Orleans Museum A $1.9 million lawsuit against New Orleans'new museum of Southern art accuses its founder of using Louisiana taxpayer money to build a private museum on public land, sidestepping the state's conflict-of-interest laws and illegally naming it after himself. The museum opened last August and has about 2,700 paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings and pieces of pottery. Museum officials say Ogden donated more than 1,200 of the works came his personal collection. However, the suit also says Ogden uses his relationship with the museum for his own financial gain." New Orleans Times-Picayune (AP) 05/07/04

Cranach Painting Recovered In Georgia Georgian police in Tblisi have "discovered a painting by the famous German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder stolen from the Georgian State Museum of Fine Arts 10 years ago." Interfax 05/11/04

Art Beats Bonds, Stocks, Etc... The art market is hot for investors. And experts are saying that art as an investment is proving to be sound strategy. Partly this is "due to the highly variable returns of other asset classes over the last few years, Wall Street's fascination with alternative investments, and the excitement that accompanies record-setting auction prices." And, "academics and economists, armed with newly mined historical data, have demonstrated that including art in an investment portfolio can yield important diversification benefits thanks to the low correlation between art returns and those of stocks, bonds, and other traditional asset classes." Boston Globe 05/11/04

$104 Million - One Painting, OR... James Russell is having difficulty getting his head around paying $104 million for a painting. "Here’s how the Picasso auction sale fits in terms I understand: 2.6 “Boy With a Pipe” paintings will buy you one Disney Concert Hall. 1.2 will get you the Santiago Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. About 8 “Boys” will buy you the Museum of Modern Art’s addition/renovation by the renowned architect Yoshio Taniguchi that will open later this year. MoMA would probably only have to deaccession the Picasso once to complete their fundraising." Sticks & Stones (AJBlogs) 05/10/04

The $104 Million Question - Art As Commodity What makes one painting worth $104 million and another only a few thousand dollars? It's certainly not for how looks hanging on the wall. Here's a primer on the valuation of art and who plays the art acquisition game. BusinessWeek 05/11/04

The Beaverbrook Art - Gift Or Loan? The former premier of New Brunswick weighs in on the claim by descendents of Lord Beaverbrook that paintings in possession of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery were loans and should be returned. "I knew the man very well, and when he gave something he didn't lend it, he gave it. Lord Beaverbrook gave the building and its contents in perpetuity to the province and its people. It's not a loan that he made." CBC 05/10/04

The Barcelona Makeover "On Saturday, Forum Barcelona 2004 opened. It is a kind of four-month-long Expo with ambitious geopolitical themes, or, as it bills itself, a vast "meeting point for citizens of the world". At its heart is the Forum building, a cinematic tour de force designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The building is also the fulcrum of an entirely new quarter of Barcelona on the coast north-east of Barceloneta and Port Olympic, the first remodelled, the second created, to coincide with the 1992 Olympics. When Forum Barcelona 2004 closes at the end of September, the city will inherit impressive new parks, yet another cleaned-up port and beach, concert and congress halls, public walkways, a new railway station dedicated to high-speed trains, clusters of new apartment blocks, an "e-city" of shiny office buildings dedicated to dotcoms and other forms of electronic enterprise, and yet another boost to its international prestige." The Guardian (UK) 05/11/04

Natural History Museum: Where Are The Students? The director of Britain's Museum of Natural History says his institutions is threatened by the lack of students studying natural history. "Few university syllabuses cover systematics, the naming and classification of plants and organisms in which the museum excels. Potential recruits were further deterred by comparatively low salaries." London Evening Standard 05/10/04

The Warhol At 10 Pittsburgh's Warhol Museum opened 10 years ago. The museum is still trying to settle on what it's trying to be. "People in New York resent the fact this museum is in Pittsburgh. But what the museum does for Pittsburgh is of far greater value than it would have in New York City." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/09/04

Gagosian To Open London's Biggest Gallery New York dealer Larry Gagosian is building the biggest gallery in London. "The sheer scale of the new space - 1,400 sq metres of it - is a significant statement, and, crucially, will allow the exposure of a raft of monumental work never before exhibited in London.Charles Saatchi says it is 'magnificent and beautiful', and it could change the way the London art world operates for ever." The Guardian (UK) 05/10/04

Has Chicago Art Fair Lost Its Way? The Chicago art fair used to be one of the premiere art events of the year. "But in the last five years, Art Chicago, which continues through Monday at Navy Pier, has been in what several observers describe as a steady decline. Many high-profile dealers, along with the art-savvy (and deep-pocketed) collectors they serve, have abandoned Art Chicago for newer, flashier fairs in Miami, New York, London and Basel, Switzerland, that are widely perceived as fresher and more innovative." Chicago Sun-Times 05/09/04

Spanish Police Raid Private Winery Museum Full Of Stolen Antiquities Spanish police have raided a winery in southern Spain and seized more than 5,000 stolen archaeological artefacts which were on display in a clandestine museum in the cellars of the building. "The raid followed a three-month investigation dubbed “Operación Toro.”
The objects, which filled several rooms, were carefully arranged in glass cabinets and bookcases, and organised into chronological order with labels and other documentation." The Art Newspaper 05/06/04

Who Bought $104 Million Picasso? The name of the person who bought a picasso painting for a record $104 million hasn't been revealed. "Buyers identities do trickle out, however, as there are only a handful of very rich people in the world who consistently spend this kind of money and get approaches from galleries to display their wares. Unless you believe in Dr No keeping his pictures in a cave, it's going to be very hard to hide this picture. It's always secret if only because the world's very richest people are hiding from two kinds of character - thieves and burglars, and they are also hiding from the taxman."
BBC 05/07/04

David - A Refreshing Bath Michelangelo's David is being unwrapped this month after his first bath in 130 years. "The cleaning has left David's complexion a little pearlier than it has been in a very long time. It has also highlighted some of the colossal nude's less obvious imperfections, nicks and discolorations. "David" is showing his age." Chicago Tribune 05/07/04

Mona Lisa In For Treatment Leonardo da Vinci's 500-year-old Mona Lisa is heading for X-ray and a microscope for the first time in a half-century to determine what's causing it to warp. Pretoria News (AP) (South Africa) 05/07/04

Controversial Michelangelo On Show "A small but anatomically perfect wooden Christ on the cross is set to cause a stir in the art world this weekend as it appears in Florence for the first time, billed as a hitherto unknown masterpiece by the city's most famous artist, Michelangelo Buonarroti." The Guardian (UK) 05/06/04

Major Mayan City Find "An Italian archeologist said Tuesday he had uncovered ancient objects that show an unexplored site in Guatemala's Peten region to be one of the most significant preclassic Mayan cities ever found." The city he has discovered could have been home to 10,000 Mayans at its peak, he says. Discovery 05/06/04

Looting Afghanistan: Tricks Of The Trade In Afghanistan, red and white stones are used to warn people where landmines are buried. "But instead of protecting civilians, looters are using these symbols to prevent access to sites where they are systematically stealing the country's valuable artefacts. Three years after the world looked on in horror as the Taleban destroyed the giant Bamyan Buddahs, many of the nation's historic treasures continue to be destroyed, this time stolen by looters often aided by local gunmen." Institute For War & Peace Reporting 05/06/04

UK Bans Painting Export The UK government has "placed a temporary ban on the export of a painting by the 19th Century artist Richard Parkes Bonington to try and keep it in the UK." The hold will give British buyers time to find the £2.1 million price to block export.
BBC 05/06/04

The Downside Of Freeing Sculpture Sculpture can be whatever it wants these days - there's no defining aesthetic or style that has to be followed. "The down side is, if sculpture can be anything, then maybe it is not anything in particular. It loses a sense of tradition, identity and purpose. And it becomes hard for people to care very passionately about it (the way many people still care about painting), much less evaluate it. If you think that artists, like children, need limits, you may not like what has become of sculpture." The New York Times 05/07/04

Good Grief! 50 Years Of Schulz It wasn't political, it had no cultural agenda, and it never really pushed the boundaries of what was considered permissible on the comics page. So how did Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" endure for 50 years in countless American papers? Perhaps it was the simplicity of the art and the humor, or the tender way in which Schulz portrayed the most hapless characters, or maybe it was just that Charlie Brown seemed to represent a bygone era of innocence for which many Americans long. This week, the first edition of what will be a complete reprinting of every Peanuts strip ever drawn is being released, authorized by Schulz's widow against his previously expressed wishes. The New York Times 05/06/04

Is It Art Or Theft? Jon Routson creates his art by going to his local multiplex, hauling out a handheld video camera, and taping a bootleg version of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. He then shows the distorted films, complete with audience coughs and shaking camera, at art galleries as his own work. He does not sell his works, thus avoiding charges of piracy, but his days as a video artist may be numbered, nonetheless. The act of appropriating pieces of another's work is always a touchy subject in the art world, but Routson's particular method is illegal in five states, and is about to become illegal in his home state, as well. The New York Times 05/06/04

Picasso Sells For Highest Price Ever For A Painting Picasso's Garcon a la Pipe (Boy with a Pipe)sold for $104 million Wednesday night. The painting is "one of the most important early works by the artist ever to appear on the market. It was the star item in the collection of the late Mr and Mrs John Hay Whitney. The record price previously paid for a painting was $82.5m for Vincent Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet at a Christie's auction in 1990. The previous high for a Picasso was $55m." The Guardian (UK) 05/06/04

Historic Homes As Theme Parks "Until now, most of the America's 3,000 or so historic-home museums have resisted opening pop-culture exhibits and renting out galleries for corporate dinners – even as prestigious art museums have done just that. But sharp state budget cuts, stiff competition from more modern attractions and the overall tourism slide have left many of the homes with little choice. Just in time for the summer tourist rush – and to the dismay of purists – historic homes from California’s Hearst Castle to Virginia’s Mount Vernon are rolling out Broadway-style productions, opening fast-food outlets and courting party planners to combat a steep drop in financing and plummeting attendance." The Journal-Gazette (Fort Wayne) 05/04/04

Aussie Art Collector Donates Major Collection To Victoria Dr Joseph Brown, one of Australia's biggest art collectors has decided to donate his collection to the National Gallery of Victoria. "The fate of the highly-prized collection -- renowned in art circles for its quality and quantity -- has been a 20-year saga. A succession of state governments have failed to take up Dr Brown's offer of the works, which was once valued by art experts at more than $60 million. The historic value of the works, by many famous artists including Streeton, von Guerard, Drysdale and Whiteley, is immense. The collection has been in storage since 2002, at a cost of about $650-a-week insurance and $300-a-week storage." The Herald-Sun (Australia) 05/05/04

New Zealanders Building Their Own Stone Henge "The aim of the project, funded by a grant of NZ$56,500 from the Royal Society of New Zealand, is to generate interest in science among people who might not normally be keen on the subject. We came up with the idea of Stonehenge because it doesn't matter who you are -- everyone looks at the Pyramids and Stonehenge and structures like that (and asks) who built them, why did they build them?" Wired 05/05/04

A Week's Worth of Picasso A complete sketchbook, containing 26 separate works from a 1970 album of watercolors by Pablo Picasso, is going on display in New York this week. "The full book from the collection of art dealer Heinz Berggruen was carefully unbound for framing, and will be reassembled for sale at $3.5 million. Such sketchbooks are very rare, as most belong to the Picasso family." The entire album was created in a single week, and reveals a deeply personal side of Picasso's late work. Boston Globe 05/05/04

Gehry vs. The TechnoGeeks MIT's new computer science building is a thing of beauty, "a gleaming 440,000-square-foot foundry for genius created by the world's most famous designer of buildings. The Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences is the latest CAD-spun, holy-shit wonder from Frank Gehry. So all systems go? Ready for liftoff? Not exactly." The technicians, engineers, and other tech geeks who will inhabit the place seem totally nonplussed by the whole building, labeling it "silly." After all, to the technical mind, there is no real reason for a building to look the way that Gehry's mind-bending structures inevitably do. Can logic and art coexist at MIT? Wired Magazine 05/04

MoMA's Modern Museum (For The Art) While museums the world over have gone on a binge of commissioning trophy buildings by famous architects, the Museum of Modern Art is going with basic modernism (at $425 million). "A museum is not architecture, and it is not a collection. It is both. A museum, in other words, should not compete with its art. The midtown Modern, scheduled to open in late November after being closed for two and a half years, is 630,000 square feet of straight walls, floors and ceilings with no obtrusive columns or dead-end hallways. It is a building with a harmonic precision." The New York Times 05/05/04

Brooklyn Museum's New Face The Brooklyn Museum is projecting a new face to the world. "Arnold L. Lehman, the museum's waggish, enterprising director, is emphatic about wanting to 'open the museum up.' He's trying to make it more like a town square than a temple. This sounds beneficent. But remember, nowadays everywhere you go is like a town square; a museum has the singular, sometimes transporting virtue of being a place where you can leave the group and immerse yourself in the richness and mystery of the group mind. Nevertheless, to those who might think his ideas are faulty, Lehman bluntly replies, 'I don't care.' Under his leadership, the museum has increased attendance and reinstalled the collection in showily painted spaces. Sometimes the results are illuminating, other times infuriating." Village Voice 05/04/04

The Iraq Musem - One Year Later "One year after looters stole some of its most prized antiquities, the Iraq (news - web sites) Museum in Baghdad is undergoing a top-to-bottom restoration that its leaders hope will make it one of the premier museums and research centers in the world. The project is being funded by donations from around the world and is not likely to be completed for at least two years." USAToday 05/04/04

• Rebuilding Iraq Museums "The Iraq National Museum could be ready to open in a few months. Physically the building could be opened. The construction work is done. But we wouldn’t want to do that until the security contract for physical improvements and upgrades is done. It’s up to the Iraq Museum staff to decide when the security situation permits reopening, and how much time they want to put into installing the gallery. Saddam would say, ‘Have the galleries installed in one month for my birthday.’ Now they have time to think about the arrangement." The Art Newspaper 04/30/04

Are Greece's Olympic Dreams About To Become Nightmares? "The Athens Olympics were supposed to be the moment when the Greeks proved once and for all that they were an efficient European country, and when they shamed the British into handing back the Elgin Marbles. Architecture was critical to their vision, particularly the New Acropolis Museum, planned as a masterly propaganda stroke." But with the games only months away, many of the Olympics' most important buildings are nowhere ready... The Telegraph (UK) 05/04/04

Shocker: Survey Says Museum Staffs Paid Horribly "An independent survey published today by the Museums Association reveals that museum and gallery staff earn significantly less than all equivalent professions - such as librarians, university lecturers, journalists - and many earn less in real terms than they did 15 years ago. The MA report shows that starting salaries for highly trained curators and conservators can be too small to pay for all the training the job has required." The Guardian (UK) 05/04/04

Big Dig Artifacts Could Be Lost More than a million artifacts unearthed in Boston's Big Dig project are in danger of being lost. "The archeology for the Big Dig was probably the largest archeological project ever conducted in Massachusetts. But the actual discoveries -- the sites and their contents -- were even more significant because, for the most part, they predated the Revolutionary War. The farther back you go in time, the fewer written documents exist to describe what life was like. We really got an intimate look at the lives of many colonists and Native Americans." Boston Globe 05/03/04

Qatar's Amazing Museum Plans "Virtually nothing compares with the scale and ambition of the museums planned for Qatar’s capital Doha." The capital is being remade, and five museums, designed by architectural heavyweights, are in the planning. The Art Newspaper 04/30/04

MoMA: Swapping Picassos For Hirsts? The Museum of Modern Art is selling nine paintings and could raise $27 million from the sale. At the same time, "a London source close to the contemporary art market told The Art Newspaper that the museum is considering the purchase of the 13 Damien Hirsts now on show at Tate Britain in the exhibition “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” (until 31 May). Could MoMA be trading its Picassos, Légers, and Pollocks for a flock of butterfly paintings and vitrines by Mr Hirst?" The Art Newspaper 04/30/04

Oklahoma: Rebuilding A Blown-Up Building How do you rebuild the Oklahoma Federal Building that was blown up? It's not easy to make a statement. "With elegant curving walls of glass and brute masses of concrete, the three-story, $42.7 million structure is both anti-fortress and fortress, a self-consciouslessly masculine building that doesn't shy from a show of strength -- and sometimes goes too far." Chicago Tribune 05/02/04

Picasso Could Go For $100 Mil "A rare Picasso canvas from the painter's Rose period could set an art-world sales record with a hammer price of as much as $100-million when it goes up for auction on Wednesday evening at a blockbuster single-owner sale at Sotheby's in New York. The event kicks off the spring season of Impressionist and modern-art sales." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/01/04

Mies House Reopens In Illinois "Four months after spending $7.5 million to buy the Farnsworth House and keep the icon of 20th Century modernism in Illinois, preservationists will open the house for tours Saturday, hoping the public will warm to the cool, steel-and-glass masterwork by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The 53-year-old house, 58 miles southwest of Chicago, appeared to be in jeopardy until a last-minute surge of donations gave preservation groups the war chest they needed to purchase it on Dec. 12 at a Sotheby's auction in New York. The groups had feared that a wealthy bidder might move the house out of state." Chicago Tribune 04/30/04

Privatizing The Randall? "A stealthy proposal to privatize a popular public museum as a solution to San Francisco's short-term budget shortfalls has raised the hackles of museum users, who are demanding a full public airing of the agreement. The Randall Museum, home to children's art and science programs in the city since 1951, would have its operations turned over to the Randall Museum Friends, a private, nonprofit organization with about 20 members whose stated mission is to 'support the Randall Museum by providing strategic private-sector leadership, raising funds, and advocating for the museum.'" San Francisco Bay Guardian 04/21/04