Saatchi Goes Mainstream? Don't Bet On It. Charles Saatchi's infamous collection of controversial work by the so-called Young British Artists is headed for storage, and won't be back on view at the collector's London gallery until 2006. In their place, a "new show is devoted to the work of five painters, Peter Doig, Luc Tuymans, Marlene Dumas, Jörg Immendorf, and Martin Kippenberger, described by Charles Saatchi as 'key European artists'... Yet those who believe Mr Saatchi has lost his appetite for shrewd investment in the work of unknown artists should think again." The Art Newspaper 10/01/04

Libeskind Blasts Childs Over WTC Squabbles Daniel Libeskind's new book about his experience designing the tower that is to rise on the Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan is at turns catty and sincere, and takes direct aim at architect David Childs, with whom Libeskind was compelled to pair on the project. "He portrays Mr Childs as patronising and overbearing, and intent on eliminating as much of Mr Libeskind's vision as possible from the eventual design... for the majority of the time during their weekly meetings, Mr Childs would 'chatter on about where he'd just been or would lecture me on architecture'." The Guardian (UK) 10/01/04

It's Still Cheaper Than A Yankee Game How big a risk is New York's Museum of Modern Art really taking by hiking its admission price to $20? Well, if it's local competition that matters, the Empire State Building only charges $11, but seeing Scary Spice on Broadway will run you $90. MoMA is also counting its new "coffee shops, movies, and relaxation areas" to make it an all-day destination, but some observers point out that museum attendance has plateaued in recent years. The real answer? No one has any idea whether the price hike will make any difference at all to MoMA's attendance. The Guardian (UK) 09/28/04

Museum To Buy Winslow Homer's Home "The Portland Museum of Art expects to buy the Prouts Neck home and studio of Winslow Homer, the 19th century American painter known for his dramatic images of Maine's coast." Portland Press Herald (Maine) 09/30/04

The Painting ... It's Watching Me "The mystery of why eyes in certain paintings and photographs appear to move has been solved: it has to do with how we perceive two and three dimensions, a new study finds." Discovery 09/29/04

Conran May Leave Museum He Founded Sir Terence Conran, founder of London's Design Museum, has threatened to resign, worsening a problematic week that began with the resignation Monday of the museum's chairman, James Dyson. Sir Terence objected to the emphasis on "tinsel exhibitions" over more serious work at the museum, which is currently offering an exhibition on flower arrangements. The Independent (UK) 09/29/04

• Previously: Design Museum's Chairman Quits Vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson has angrily resigned from his position as board chairman of London's Design Museum, declaring that the institution is "ruining its reputation" and "betraying its purpose". Dyson had been in a years-long feud with director Alice Rawsthorn over the true mission of the museum, and his resignation letter accuses her of allowing it to "become a style showcase [when it should be] upholding its mission to encourage serious design of the manufactured object." The Guardian (UK) 09/28/04

Cleaning Up A Classic One of the finest examples of Victorian Gothic architecture in Europe is getting a £15 million makeover. The John Rylands Library in Manchester, England is being thoroughly cleaned, renovated, and modernized in an effort to lengthen its lifespan and allow the permanent display of more of the treasures in its collection. "It is hoped the new-look library will attract up to 90,000 visitors a year - three times as many as visited it before the restoration." The Guardian (UK) 09/30/04

Copyright, Or A Father's Ire, Forces A Painting's Removal A Damian Loeb painting that borrows an image from a 1990 Tina Barney photo was pulled from a University of Hartford exhibition, but why? "Was it merely a question, as the University of Hartford insists, of a painting removed from an important show because of suddenly discovered 'copyright issues'? Or did an angry, powerful university parent, incensed that images of his children were included in a work titled 'Blow Job (Three Little Boys),' demand that the painting be taken down?" Hartford Courant 09/29/04

For Blatantly Political Art, A Renaissance "From the art capital of New York City to the nation's midsection, visual artists are participating in partisan politics with a vigor not seen since the 1960s." While large institutions are generally staying above the fray, some gallery owners have risked offending wealthy clients by making their political stance (usually liberal) known. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/29/04

No Donations? Not So Fast In the midst of a legal battle over artwork with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation has said it will suspend donations to Canadian nonprofits. But under Canadian law, doing so may imperil its tax status as a charity. The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/29/04

• Previously: Beaverbrook Suspends NB Grants "The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation is suspending hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to New Brunswick institutions and using the money saved to help fund its controversial legal action to gain clear ownership of 200 art works at Fredericton's Beaverbrook Art Gallery." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/21/04

When The Kids' Pictures Stay In The Camera Digital cameras promised to make photography easier, and maybe they have. But with only 13 percent of digital photos being printed, the images aren't as permanently accessible as the old-fashioned kind that made their way into albums and picture frames. Without that tangible record of their past, are families losing an important part of their history? Philadelphia Inquirer 09/29/04

The Real Story Of The Iraq Museum Looting "Everyone knows about the looting of Iraq's museums during last year's war. What almost no one knows is that most of the museums' holdings had been stolen and sold years before—and not by mobs of Iraqis off the street... The earlier looting was carried out so systematically, and on such a large scale, that it dwarfs the thefts that occurred after the fall of Baghdad. Moreover, the April looting may have occurred in part because it would provide cover for the prior thefts." The Atlantic Monthly 11/04

When Is A Munch Only Partly A Munch? A major work by Edward Munch (no, not that one,) is being offered for sale in an online auction based in Denmark. But Munch authorities in Norway are questioning the auction house's claims that the lithograph in question was actually hand-colored by the artist himself. The piece has been appraised at over $100,000, and as a whole is unquestionably authentic, but much of its value is dependant on whether Munch can be verified as the individual who filled in the color. Aftenposten (Oslo) 09/29/04

National Gallery Embraces A Stepchild "For the first time in its 63-year history, the National Gallery of Art is permanently dedicating galleries to photography, giving prominence to the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Man Ray, Paul Strand and Ansel Adams." Washington Post 09/28/04

American Lives, Painted By Iraqis "Turning photos into paintings has long been a side business for the commercial artists of Baghdad, but it has never found more eager consumers than the Americans." Even under current conditions, Iraqi artists can do brisk business with U.S. troops -- though the artists and their subjects no longer meet because fraternization is too dangerous. Instead, they rely on go-betweens to shuttle soldiers' snapshots and the paintings they become. Chicago Tribune 09/28/04

Suburb Says It Wants Barnes To Stay Although a judge in the Barnes Foundation case has blamed some of the foundation's financial problems on the township it's trying to leave for Philadelphia, two of the suburb's commissioners testified yesterday that they want the Barnes to stay and will try to help it if it does. Philadelphia Inquirer 09/28/04

Bloomberg: MoMA's $20 Too Much? Too Bad New York City's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has an idea for those who find the Museum of Modern Art's new $20 admission fee beyond their price range: Go to a different museum. "Some things people can afford, some things people can't," he said. New York Daily News 09/28/04

• Previously: MoMA To Charge $20 Admission "When the Museum of Modern Art reopens its expanded midtown Manhattan home at 11 W. 53rd St. in November, an adult admission will cost $20, 66 percent more than the previous $12 fee. Industry experts say that's an unprecedented level for an urban museum and the highest tab in New York City." Newsday 09/22/04

With Cartoons, Anatomizing The Sense Of Humor Virtually every cartoon ever published in The New Yorker will be put to work as researchers at the University of Michigan attempt to discover why people find certain things funny. As visuals, the single-panel cartoons' uniformity and simplicity are key. The New York Times 09/28/04

Abstract Brilliance Or Child's Play? A 4-year-old painter's abstracts have earned her nearly $40,000 so far, and her most recent canvases are commanding $6,000. Grownups debate whether she is a prodigy or a typical little girl just having fun. The New York Times 09/28/04

Design Museum's Chairman Quits Vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson has angrily resigned from his position as board chairman of London's Design Museum, declaring that the institution is "ruining its reputation" and "betraying its purpose". Dyson had been in a years-long feud with director Alice Rawsthorn over the true mission of the museum, and his resignation letter accuses her of allowing it to "become a style showcase [when it should be] upholding its mission to encourage serious design of the manufactured object." The Guardian (UK) 09/28/04

Art That First Does No Harm St Bartholomew's hospital in London has been around since medieval times, and as you might imagine, it can be a dreary place to convalesce. But a major renovation of the hospital's cancer wing has transformed the place into an art-filled oasis for patients, made up of "calm, elegant spaces, flooded with daylight... The art is everywhere, included in the design from the start and taking up 3% of the £15.5m project cost." The Guardian (UK) 09/27/04

French Impressionism Impresses Australians A blockbuster exhibit of French Impressionist paintings in Melbourne has shattered Australian attendance records for an art exhibition, drawing 333,000 patrons in the three months it has been on display at the National Gallery of Victoria. The state government is touting the attendance record as evidence that it was "the right move to invest in the Winter Masterpieces exhibition - a move to be continued next winter with works of the Dutch golden age from the Netherlands' Rijksmuseum." The Age (Melbourne) 09/27/04

This Is Why You Don't Mix Football And Art A famous nude, painted in Paris in 1875 by Jules Lefebvre, was damaged over the weekend as it hung behind glass at the Melbourne hotel which has displayed it for decades. Chloe, as the painting is known, suffered scratches to its canvas when an individual attending a football rally at the hotel stumbled into the glass, shattering it. Experts say that the damage is reparable. The Age (Melbourne) 09/27/04

Norway To Overhaul Museum Structure Norway is planning a major reorganization of its national art collection as part of a modernization effort aimed at the country's museums. "At the core of the overhaul are plans to merge four existing institutions into one that will give greater prominence to contemporary art, to be called The New National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design... [But] critics of the project fear that the changes could do more harm than good," and are raising objections to the individual selected to coordinate the reorganization. The Art Newspaper 09/26/04

Has Chelsea Finally Arrived? It's taken more than seven years, but New York's Chelsea neighborhood finally seems to be making good on its claim to being the next great art neighborhood. "It now takes two full days, morning to night, to visit just the best-known Chelsea galleries. But for the first time that I can remember, doing the autumn rounds felt mostly worthwhile. There was real variety on view -- of medium, subject matter, approach, scale. More important, there were a few artists and works that didn't fit into convenient pigeonholes." Washington Post 09/26/04

Pop Art's Sticky New Medium "Inspired by graffiti, posters and the communal culture of the Web, stickers are gaining wide attention as an artistic phenomenon, academics and practitioners say. Hand-drawn, stenciled or screen-printed, the images float on the Internet, available for downloading, printing and pasting in ways that the creators could only have imagined. And as they make their way around the globe, from one e-mail in-box to the next, one cultural context to another, their meaning tends to morph." The New York Times 09/26/04

Tortured Artists Of A Different Kind Three Canadian artists will have their first UK exhibition this fall, and if they achieve anything like the success they are enjoying in their home country, it will be a truly groundbreaking moment in the annals of art history. All three come from troubled backgrounds, and were educated in a program designed to combat a lifetime of depression and to build their self-esteem through art. Oh, and all three are chimpanzees. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The Observer (UK) 09/26/04

Expert: Barnes Can Sell Its Art According to one of the many duelling art experts called to testify in the Barnes Foundation court battle, the foundation is legally and ethically free to sell pieces from its collection in order to stabilize its finances, because the foundation was established as a school and not a museum. The expert's contention is directly at odds with the stance of the foundation's directors, who have been deemphasizing the educational aspect of their mission as part of the push to move the collection to Central Philadelphia. The directors called an expert of their own last week to back up their claims that fundraising could double with the move to the urban core. Philadelphia Inquirer 09/25/04

No Love For The Handicapped Since this past February, the city of San Francisco has been deluged with dozens of five-foot fiberglass hearts decorated by area artists. Reaction has largely been positive, but now, the former head of the Mayor's Office on Disability is charging that the scultures are a distinct hazard to the blind, placed as they are in the public right-of-way. San Francisco Chronicle 09/25/04

Rembrandt Reclining, With Handguns The theft of Edvard Munch's The Scream from an Oslo gallery last month has caused museums across Scandinavia to rethink their security measures. This weekend, a Rembrandt up for auction will go on display in Stockholm flanked by armed guards, a marked departure from the usual low-key security one sees in most galleries. The asking price on the Rembrandt is upwards of $46 million. The Guardian (AP) 09/25/04

MoMA's New Cover Charge May Be A Trendsetter The Museum of Modern Art's decision to hike its single entry fee by a whopping 67% seems like a calculated attempt to play to the museum's base, even if it costs MoMA in the number of casual gawkers it draws. "The upscaling of MoMA is the clearest example of the ways that the nation's top art museums are trying to change their business model. With attendance flat in recent years and many costs, like insurance and utilities, growing, museum directors see ticket-price increases as a way both to raise funds and to push more visitors to become members." The New York Times 09/26/04

• Previously: MoMA To Charge $20 Admission "When the Museum of Modern Art reopens its expanded midtown Manhattan home at 11 W. 53rd St. in November, an adult admission will cost $20, 66 percent more than the previous $12 fee. Industry experts say that's an unprecedented level for an urban museum and the highest tab in New York City." Newsday 09/22/04

Inuit Art: The Final Frontier? "Instant communication and easier international travel have made the art world more homogeneous than ever, but isolated, overlooked pockets of offbeat creativity still exist. One of the most surprising can be found on or near Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada, where dozens if not hundreds of indigenous artists in government settlements have produced an extraordinarily original body of work." But it's only recently has Inuit art begun to garner attention outside of Canada, despite a centuries-old tradition of carved objects and a burgeoning body of work from the modern era. Denver Post 09/25/04

Barnes Debate: Long On Passion, Short On Evidence The battle over the Barnes Foundation's proposed move to Philadelphia has become so fraught with emotion that it almost resembles a religious war. Both sides are asking the judge in the case to allow a deviation from Albert Barnes's stated intentions for his collection, but "ironclad facts were hard to come by in four days of hearings" this week, despite the judge's order several months ago that ironclad facts were exactly what he expected both sides to provide more of. The New York Times 09/25/04

• Is There A Middle Ground? A third voice has entered the Barnes debate, and despite the efforts of some powerful Philadelphia interests to silence him, a Lower Merion official may find a sympathetic ear in the judge hearing the case. The new proposal: to construct a 700-foot access road to allow the Barnes to sidestep local ordinances limiting the number of visitors to its current location. Philadelphia Inquirer 09/26/04

"Nazi Art" Exhibit Attacked By Amateur Gymnast The controversial Flick family art exhibit in Berlin has suffered its first casualty at the hands of an unusually limber protester. "Yelling loudly, the 35-year-old woman attacked 'Office Baroque,' a cutout section of wall by American artist Gordon Matta-Clark, doing a series of head-over-heels flips before landing on the work in a handstand, punching both her arms through the drywall... She then ran across the large room, pushing over a section of a spray-painted truck called 'Graffiti Truck,' also by Matta-Clark." There is some question as to whether the woman was actually motivated by anti-Nazi fervor: she is apparently well-known to the Berlin police. International Herald-Tribune (AP) 09/24/04

• Previously: Collecting Great Art With Blood Money "A spectacular exhibition of contemporary art opened in Berlin yesterday, amid a picket by Jewish protesters, with its billionaire owner accused of exploiting art to redeem his family's Nazi past." The quality of the works in the collection is not in question, but the motivations of their owner, Christian Friedrich Flick, are being picked over by press and public alike. The Flick family fortune, which made the art collection possible, was built on slave labor in the explosives factories of the Third Reich. The Guardian (UK) 09/22/04

• Great Art, Sadly Compromised There is little question about the shameful history of the Flick family. But taken as a body of work, the controversial art collection now on display in Berlin is a fascinating journey through the 20th-century's artistic evolution. "Again and again, the visitor is faced with sexual symbols, violence and existential questions. Piles of objects serve as metaphors of the ephemeral and insane." Still, it is clear there is no way for many Germans to view the individual works on display without being constantly reminded of the manner in which they were acquired. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 09/24/04

Looked Like A Good Idea On Paper A new London gallery tries to spruce up its opening with the addition of technology, offering journalists from all over the world the chance to view the art (and the party) from mobile webcams and interview the artists live through instant messaging software. "But glitches and crashes turned the conversation into a rather stilted affair," and as it turns out, viewing art through a webcam is like "viewing art through the bottom of a pint glass." BBC 09/24/04

Looking For The Definition of Irony? "A portrait of Dr. David Hosack, a prominent surgeon who attended Alexander Hamilton on his deathbed after that legendary duel, has vanished from the New-York Historical Society's $5 million-plus exhibition 'Alexander Hamilton, the Man Who Made Modern America.' No, it wasn't stolen." It seems that the NYHS installed an extremely low handrail to prevent patrons from getting too close to the painting. On day one of the exhibition, someone tripped over the rail and put his hand through the painting, which has now been removed for restoration. The New York Times 09/24/04

A Grand Entrance, Leading To A Large Bill "[Britain's] National Gallery will open its new £21m front door on Sunday and hope that the splendour of the black marble staircase and the excellence of the coffee in the new cafe provokes a gush of public generosity. Although more building work starts next month, the gallery still has to raise £3m of the cost." Having appealed to the government for assistance in purchasing a priceless Raphael miniature last year, the fundraising for the remainder of the gallery's renovations will need to be done in the private sector, no small task in a nation which does not have America's tradition of private philanthropy. The Guardian (UK) 09/24/04

MoMA To Charge $20 Admission "When the Museum of Modern Art reopens its expanded midtown Manhattan home at 11 W. 53rd St. in November, an adult admission will cost $20, 66 percent more than the previous $12 fee. Industry experts say that's an unprecedented level for an urban museum and the highest tab in New York City." Newsday 09/22/04

A Second Postponement For Bellevue Museum Still short of funding after being closed for a year, Washington state's Bellevue Arts Museum won't be reopening in October after all. "The unveiling of the revamped museum has been pushed back to spring 2005, as museum leaders work to raise an estimated $2.8 million for remodeling and operations." The Seattle Times 09/23/04

The Day The Art Burned (And The World Laughed) It was late May 2004 when an arson fire swept through a London warehouse, destroying hundreds of works of art valued at £50 million. The reaction of the British people was stunning: an outpouring of bitter glee aimed squarely at the much-reviled avant-garde artists whose work had gone up in smoke, and at the prominent but reclusive collector (Charles Saatchi) who had been their champion. Several months on, the losses from the fire are still being tallied, but the disdain of the public for what was lost remains palpable. The Guardian (UK) 09/23/04

• Raising Hell Dino and Jake Chapman - the sibling artists who created the massive sculpture known as "Hell," which is considered to have been the most significant artwork lost in the fire at Charles Saatchi's warehouse last spring - will collaborate on a new version of the work, which they promise will dwarf the original. "Hell, a diorama which took the Chapmans more than two years to construct, using thousands of plastic soldiers, was bought by Charles Saatchi for £500,000. Mounted in glass cases arranged in the shape of a swastika, it showed scenes of torture and mass killing." The Guardian (UK) 09/23/04

Art Out Of Dysfunction At a reform school for juvenile offenders, you might expect that an art class could be therapeutic, but most wouldn't expect it to produce a large amount of wuality work. But at one such school in the UK, Rupert Christiansen's expectations were dashed. "One would have expected more violence and neurosis, more splurges of abstract expressionism. I saw one copy of Munch's The Scream, but otherwise the dominant aesthetic mood is oddly cheerful... I've no doubt that the persistent could earn places at art college. It is impossible not to be moved, impressed and heartened." The Telegraph (UK) 09/23/04

Michelangelo Frescoes Up For Restoration "The Vatican is hoping to raise £2m to fund the restoration of Michelangelo's last two frescos, which are hidden from the public in a chapel where the Pope prays and reads mass to private audiences. The frescos - the Crucifixion of St Peter and the Conversion of St Paul - are faded after being exposed to dust and soot over centuries of candlelit prayer in the Pauline chapel, close to the better-known Sistine chapel. As the artist's last paintings, the two six-sq-metre frescos are considered among the most important masterpieces in the Vatican's care. When they were last restored, in the 1930s, several cracks were repaired." The Guardian (UK) 09/23/04

Rosie O'Donnell Is Target of Artists' Suit "Two courtroom artists are suing former TV talk show host Rosie O'Donnell for copyright infringement, accusing her of trying to pass off photographs of their sketches of her as work she produced." O'Donnell, who denies the charge, used the images in collages she made. Yahoo! (Reuters) 09/21/04

Destination Architecture? Not In Napa, Thanks A couple who want to put a Frank Gehry-designed building on their Napa Valley wine estate are facing opposition from neighbors. They don't object to the architecture but fear the structure would draw more tourists, exacerbating traffic jams on an already congested highway. Los Angeles Times 09/21/04

High Noon For The Barnes Court is back in session for the Barnes Foundation in its attempt to move from Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, to central Philadelphia. "Among those on tap to support the Barnes' petition is Jeremy A. Sabloff, the former director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Sabloff and James N. Wood, the former director and the president of the Art Institute of Chicago, are expected to testify against the Barnes' selling any of its stored art to create a new operating endowment." But the art students opposing the move have lined up some experts of their own... Philadelphia Inquirer 09/21/04

• Previously: Where Is AAMD In The Great Barnes Debate? This week, a judge will finally rule on whether or not the Barnes Foundation may break the rules laid down by its founder, and move the famed collection to Philadelphia in an attempt to stabilize its financial situation. But isn't a key voice missing from the discussion? "[T]he move has generated a good deal of commentary. Except from the one corner of the art world that, given the issues at stake, you would have most expected to hear from: the Association of Art Museum Directors... By sitting on the sidelines in the Barnes debate, AAMD is gravely damaging its moral authority." The Wall Street Journal 09/21/04

Slightly Bonkers? London's Serpentine Gallery has garnered some attention in recent years with a series of pavilions constructed and deconstructed in less than a year's time. But this year, the gallery is upping the ante, hiring a Dutch firm to encase the entire building in a grassy mountain which will tower over Kensington Gardens. "It is a wild, thrilling, slightly bonkers idea that promises to make the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion one of the most exciting architectural events of 2005." The Telegraph (UK) 09/22/04

Woodfine Wins The Jerwood The £5,000 Jerwood Prize, which in recent years has come under attack for stretching the definition of the word "drawing" in passing out its awards, was handed out this week to Sarah Woodfine. Ms. Woodfine's winning entry is likely to please the Jerwood's critics - it's a pencil and paper drawing - but the judges insist that they intend to continue accepting entries in multiple mediums. The Guardian (UK) 09/22/04

Collecting Great Art With Blood Money "A spectacular exhibition of contemporary art opened in Berlin yesterday, amid a picket by Jewish protesters, with its billionaire owner accused of exploiting art to redeem his family's Nazi past." The quality of the works in the collection is not in question, but the motivations of their owner, Christian Friedrich Flick, are being picked over by press and public alike. The Flick family fortune, which made the art collection possible, was built on slave labor in the explosives factories of the Third Reich. The Guardian (UK) 09/22/04

MFA More Than Halfway To Expansion Goal Three years into fund-raising for a $425 million expansion project, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has hit the $245 million mark. Now it's time to widen the circle of donors. The Boston Globe 09/21/04

Phony? Rude? This Opening's Not For You "A new art gallery is shunning the usual launch party etiquette by banning guests from air-kissing and calling each other 'darling'." BBC 09/21/04

Abu Ghraib Photo Show Polarizes Patrons The photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib riveted the world, but are they worthy of a museum exhibition? The Andy Warhol Museum, where the show opened Friday, is getting vociferous responses from both sides. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/21/04

Indian Museum Architect Boycotts Its Opening Canadian architect and Blackfoot Indian Douglas Cardinal, the original designer of the Smithsonian Institution's much-hyped National Museum of the American Indian, will not attend today's opening "because he is still angry after being taken off the project in 1998 and not paid what he says he is owed." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/21/04

Beaverbrook Suspends NB Grants "The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation is suspending hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to New Brunswick institutions and using the money saved to help fund its controversial legal action to gain clear ownership of 200 art works at Fredericton's Beaverbrook Art Gallery." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/21/04

MoMA To Receive 2,500 Drawings A major New York art collector is poised to donate his trove of some 2,500 pieces of contemporary drawing to the city's Museum of Modern Art. Harvey S. Shipley Miller, who until recently collected mainly Russian avant-garde books, has served on the MoMA board since 2001, and spent only a year amassing his impressive collection of drawings, which is insured for $75 million. "The collection's focus is on artists who have emerged in the last two decades, but there are also contemporary works by artists who became prominent in the 1960's and 70's." The New York Times 09/21/04

A More Focused Biennale This year's edition of France's Biennale des Antiquaires has a noticably streamlined feel to it, and the upgrade is no accident. Christian Deydier, president of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires which puts on the Biennale, has spent the last two years correcting what he saw as the fair's descent into the ordinary. This year, the high-end jewellers who had previously been able to exhibit alongside more serious art and antiquities dealers have been effectively banished to a dank corner, and dealers who were perceived to be offering less than excellent works for sale were disinvited. The result is a decidedly more upscale art fair. The Telegraph (UK) 09/20/04

Where Is AAMD In The Great Barnes Debate? This week, a judge will finally rule on whether or not the Barnes Foundation may break the rules laid down by its founder, and move the famed collection to Philadelphia in an attempt to stabilize its financial situation. But isn't a key voice missing from the discussion? "[T]he move has generated a good deal of commentary. Except from the one corner of the art world that, given the issues at stake, you would have most expected to hear from: the Association of Art Museum Directors... By sitting on the sidelines in the Barnes debate, AAMD is gravely damaging its moral authority." The Wall Street Journal 09/21/04

Just Another Inter-Museum Loan, Minus The Drama In 2006, the British Museum will lend a priceless clay drum known as the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran for several months. It will be the second time the artifact has been lent to Iran, and hopefully, it won't be as eventful as the first: back in 1971, the British Museum found itself in the middle of some serious international intrigue when it "decided to lend the antiquity without consulting the Foreign Office, and the UK government later feared that the Iranians would refuse to return it." The real story of what occurred in the '70s has only just been declassified in Britain, and UK museum officials have been stunned by the extent to which international politics played a role. The Art Newspaper 09/20/04

Bringing The Fruited Plain To D.C. The National Museum of the American Indian doesn't look like your average Washington museum. In fact, had it not been so well-executed, it could have easily looked out of place in the nation's capital. "Bringing rude nature to the hallowed ground of the Mall takes guts, of course. But this is not rude nature. No wilderness actually looked like this. It is as calculated a built artifact in its own way as is Tomorrowland. It is nature to which human intelligence and imagination have been applied. It is an Indian's image of Eden." Washington Post 09/20/04

• Too Much Hedging, Not Enough Scholarship "The Museum of the American Indian has much to boast of... But the ambition of creating a 'museum different' - the goal of making that museum answer to the needs, tastes and traditions of perhaps 600 diverse tribes, ranging from the Tapirape of the Brazilian jungles to the Yupik of Alaska - results in so many constituencies that the museum often ends up filtering away detail rather than displaying it, and minimizing difference even while it claims to be discovering it." The New York Times 09/21/04

Imagining Denver's New MCA Architect David Adjaye's design for Denver's new Museum of Contemporary Art won't be unveiled until October, but details are trickling out slowly. Plans for the museum have expanded since Adjaye was engaged to design it, with the latest projections showing an increase in both square footage and price. It was decided early on that "the building should not contain one or two large spaces that could be partitioned and adapted to all kinds of art. Instead, they're opting for an array of distinctive galleries, each serving certain types of work better than others." Denver Post 09/19/04

China's Architectural Mood Swing "After essentially sealing the country off from foreign architects for much of the 20th century, the Chinese government kicked off the 21st by turning itself into the biggest single patron of avant-garde architecture in the world." But the government's enthusiasm is proving short-lived, as major projects by big-name foreign architects have recently been savaged in the state-controlled Chinese press, halted or delayed by the same authorities who initially gave them the green light, and generally placed on a national dart board. Call it one part nationalism, and two parts fiscal insecurity... The New York Times 09/19/04

• Beijing's Bad Buildings "The construction boom that has been remaking Beijing has attracted famous architects from around the world. But the cityscape is hardly the stuff of a glossy design magazine. For every Zaha Hadid tower in the works for the capital, there are hundreds of forgettably mediocre buildings already in place, displaying the sort of mirrored-glass facades and gilded decoration that went out of style in America sometime in the 1980's." The plague of bad architecture is so bad that a website has been launched to chronicle the worst examples. The New York Times 09/19/04

Rent-A-Pic: Museums & Ethics This past spring, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts rented out 21 Monets to a commercial art gallery operating inside a Las Vegas casino. On April 13, the casino lost power for three days, and the paintings may have been left baking in the desert heat while the juice was restored. Tough luck? You bet, and according to many in the museum world, a serious ethical lapse by the MFA as well. There are codes to which accredited museums and their directors must supposedly adhere, but according to AJ Blogger Tyler Green, those codes are frequently flouted, and rarely enforced. "Critics [have] warned about what might happen when a museum considered money-making to be more important than caring for and conserving art. When the electricity died at Bellagio, an academic debate was transformed into a real-life disaster." Modern Art Notes (AJ Blogs) 09/17/04

Staying Afloat By Selling Off The Stock Times are tough for art institutions and foundations across North America. And one of the dirty little secrets of the business is that such organizations frequently keep themselves afloat fiscally by selling off bits of their collections. But is it ethical to do so? The answer depends on whom you ask, and there doesn't seem to be any general agreement. But for foundations which refuse to give up any piece of their collections, (such as Philadelphia's notoriously strapped Barnes Foundation,) the alternative can be serious financial hardship and even insolvency. Philadelphia Inquirer 09/19/04

What A Long, Grainy Trip It's Been "Video art has come such a long way since it began nearly 40 years ago that it has already, in its purest form, been threatened with extinction. Like any 20th-century product that has an in-built obsolescence factor, the video camera has developed at such a rate that the original model has long been consigned to history. So has the art it produced; outdated but unforgotten by younger artists working today." Still, the advent of digital technology has advanced the art more than it has made past work obsolete. Indeed, the genre has developed and evolved so quickly that its 40-year history is as extensive as many centuries-old art movements. The Telegraph (UK) 09/18/04

Searching For A Scream Authorities in Norway still say they have no solid leads in the theft of Munch's The Scream from an Oslo gallery, but police have reportedly raided several addresses in the city over the last month, in the hope that the paintings will turn up in the abodes of known criminals. Drug warrants have been used as a pretext for the raids, which have so far yielded nothing of value. Aftenposten (Oslo) 09/17/04

A Connecticut Copyright Conundrum, On Canvas A provocative painting by Damien Loeb has been removed from an exhibit in Connecticut after copyright issues were raised. The painting, like much of Loeb's work, contains photographic images appropriated from other artists' work, and worked into Loeb's canvas. The artist has faced legal challenges to his appropriation before, and has vehemently defended his right to employ the technique. Hartford Courant 09/18/04

An Artist So Popular, He Can't Be Any Good "François Boucher was surely the most beguiling painter who ever lived, capable of giving the most pleasure to the client - and presumably the sitter too." And yet, Boucher's reputation lies at the bottom of a pile of more "high-minded" painters, a victim of the popularity he enjoyed in life. And while it's true that Boucher was perhaps a bit too infatuated with small, unimportant work (designing Easter eggs for a king, for example,) he was also an undeniably brilliant artist who was forever being plastered with labels he did not deserve. In the end, his greatest crime in the eyes of today's elitist art audience may have been making too many people happy. The Guardian (UK) 09/18/04

DIA Struggles For Solvency The Detroit Institute of the Arts is midway through a decade-long fundraising campaign intended to put the museum on firm fiscal ground for the foreseeable future, and many in the community had assumed that the DIA was well on its way to success. But last week, executives announced that its original goal of $331 million was not nearly enough to cope with structural issues and unforeseen costs (such as $40 million for asbestos removal.) The new goal is $410 million, to be raised within the next ten years. Detroit Free Press 09/18/04

V&A: The Spiral Is Dead It's official - the Victoria & Albert Museum has shelved plans for the dramatic £70 million Daniel Libeskind-designed expansion. "The museum's board of trustees voted to abandon the ambitious design after the Heritage Lottery Fund rejected its £15m application." BBC 09/17/04

Two New Museums Bent On Changing Perceptions This week the Nationa Museum of the American opens in DC. Last month the The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center opened in Cincinnati. "It's a particularly American irony that two groups that have struggled since our nation was formed to find their place in its cultural fabric now have national institutions that are uniquely their own. Both museums offer much more than history..." USAToday 09/17/04

DC's New Indian Museum: "Look At Me!" How successful is the building for the new Museum of the American Indian in Washington? "It is pleasing to report that the architecture is very good, and quite strange. The building rises above the elm trees of the Mall like a monumental apparition. Its curving walls shout, "Look at me!" And the more you do, the more there is to see and think about. Even more satisfying is the conclusion that, physically and philosophically, the new building creates a strong, tension-filled dialogue with its setting, and carries it off with amazing grace." Washington Post 09/17/04

Sydney Opera House Shows Off Its New Look Nearly 40 years ago, architect Jorn Utzon walked away from his most famous project, the Sydney Opera House. The interior of the building was finished by others - but not in a successful way. In 1999 Utzon was finally convinced to complete the inside in an extensive renovation. Now the first results of that work are being unveiled. The Guardian (UK) 09/17/04

Building For The Web A show of skyscrapers at the Museum of Modern Art is a rare exhibition that actually is better to see on the web than in person. "Choose a building, and the site presents a full page portrait of the subject, along with such facts as height, date-of-design (and projected date-of-completion if applicable), and links to detailed information." Christian Science Monitor 09/17/04

Art Of Stamps In A Digital World So famous your face is on a US postal stamp? Fame just got a whole lot cheaper. A new service lets you take a snapshot with a digital camera and send it by computer to a website. "Within five to seven business days, usually sooner, the stamps arrive... in the mail. But you can't take an action shot of your favorite Eagle, or an unflattering photo of your pesky next-door neighbor. No celebs, no politicians, no nudity." Philadelphia Inquirer 09/16/04

Who Owns The Philadelphia Vermeer? Who owns the rare Vermeer that's been hanging at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the past month? "The painting was lent to the museum anonymously after changing hands at a London auction early in July. A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals (an early harpsichord) was the first Vermeer to be offered at auction since 1921." And the speculation on who owns it is... Philadelphia Inquirer 09/16/04

The Smithsonian's Ocean Of Expansion The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History is to undergo the biggest renovation in its history. "Ocean Hall will cost $60 million and cover 28,000 square feet -- 3,000 more than the successful makeover of the Hall of Mammals last year. It will bring together for the first time all 50 of the museum's marine scientists and government specialists in what's being called the Smithsonian Ocean Science Initiative." Washington Post 09/16/04

There's Art In Them Thar Schools There's art in Philadelphia public schools - as much as $30 million worth of art. "The school district had commissioned a survey of school buildings over the past year to see what art existed. It expected to find a few interesting pieces in odd places, but nothing like this. There may be as many as 100 museum-quality pieces in the Philadelphia schools' collection." Washington Post 09/16/04

Lazy-Eyed Rembrandt? The New England Journal of Medicine is publishing a scientist's observation that Rembrandt might have suffered from a vision disorder known as "lazy eye." "Consequently, Rembrandt probably had little depth perception, which might have actually been an asset, since artists have to depict a three-dimensional world on a flat canvas." MSNBC (AP) 09/15/04

Shakespeare Portrait On View To celebrate its 150th birthday, London's National Portrait Gallery is planning to display a controversial portrait said to be of William Shakespeare. "The so-called Chandos portrait, which has been the subject of fierce debate over whether it really does feature Shakespeare, is set to be joined by other controversial portraits of the writer whose life is little documented." The Independent 09/16/04

20,000 American Indians To March For Museum Some 20,000 American Indians are expected to march in Washington DC next week to celebrate the openin of the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum is "the first national museum in the United States to be dedicated exclusively to Native Americans and the first to present all exhibitions from a native viewpoint. The procession, which culminates in the opening ceremony, will begin with a tropical flourish, as Hawaiian conch-shell blowers signal the start from the balcony of the Smithsonian Castle." National Geographic 09/15/04

Seattle's Big New Sculpture Park The Seattle Art Museum announces art for its ambitious new $85 million sculpture park. Works by Calder and Serra will anchor the park, on the shores of Puget Sound. The park is scheduled to open in 2006, after several years of delay. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 09/15/04

DC's National Mall: No Vacancy "Is there any space left on the Mall? With the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian Sept. 21, the officials in charge of Washington's main savanna have hoisted a "No Vacancy" sign." Washington Post 09/15/04

The One And Only? (What A Concept!) "Ever since Impressionism, we tend to associate a unique visual style with an authentic expression of some inner feeling of the soul of the artist. Then if he does it over again, you think, 'Wait, how authentic was this?' Certainly, many artistic masterpieces are singular, but the ideal of the unique, individual work of art is fairly new -- it emerged 200 or so years ago as part of the artistic movement known as Romanticism." Chicago Tribune 09/15/04

The Met's New President "For the first time, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has chosen a woman as president: Emily Kernan Rafferty, the Met's current senior vice president for external affairs. Ms. Rafferty will succeed David E. McKinney when he retires in January." The New York Times 09/15/04

Venice: Taking Architecture's Temperature The Venice Architecture Biennale take the temperature olf contemporary architecture. "Where the Victorians tried to cope with the unnerving urban explosion of the Industrial Revolution with architecture that appeared four-square, authoritative and inevitable, modern architects, or at least those highlighted at the biennale, seem to think that the way to respond to the equally unstable post-industrialised world is to create buildings that appear as if they too are in a state of constant change. This, of course, is a fallacy." The Telegraph (UK) 09/15/04

Picasso's "Secret" Painting "A 'secret' painting by the young Pablo Picasso was unveiled at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao yesterday after experts found it hidden beneath layers of paint on another of his canvasses. The 104-year-old painting was yesterday hailed as Picasso's first Paris picture, painted during a visit in 1900 when he was 19." The Guardian (UK) 09/15/04

NY Art World As Super Paradigm "Nowadays, different art worlds work differently. Glasgow, Leipzig, and Los Angeles are laboratories run by skeleton crews. London is the same, only crossed with a private club, a sparkler, and a sideshow. The New York art world has swallowed up all these paradigms and mutated into a kind of nebulous Super Paradigm. Think of it as a giant sponge: Bland on the outside, intricate within, it is extremely porous and permeable, takes advantage of any current, absorbs everything, and is capable of enormous engorgement. The Super Paradigm may be pluralism gone wild, or a giant oil spill—sprawling but not evolving. Whatever, there's no avant-garde within it because there's nothing to react against." Village Voice 09/14/04

A Closer Look At Denver's Still Deal Denver is trying to raise money to build a museum to house 2000 works from the estate of Clyfford Still. But the terms of the deal are very restrictive. "None of that art can be sold, and some question whether Still’s name will attract a wide audience. Few would question the viability of a Pollock, de Kooning, or Rothko museum, but those artists are much better known. If marketing abstraction to the masses weren’t challenge enough, the artist’s will forbids the display of work by other artists in the museum, so the institution cannot create a varied schedule of temporary exhibitions to lure return visitors." The Art Newspaper 09/14/04

A Whitney Audit "The Whitney Museum’s new chief financial officer is conducting “a vigorous review of all financial controls to ensure that the highest standards of accountability are met”. Bridget Elias was appointed in June, and her audit follows the arrest of two Whitney employees in late July, charged with embezzling nearly $1 million since January 2002." The Art Newspaper 09/14/04

Natural Watercolors "A study of the vibrant red, pink, orange, purple and yellow bands in the rocks of the Valley of Fire State Park in southern Nevada has revealed that the hues in the rocks were probably put there by a complex ebb and flow of groundwaters, faulting and raising of mountains and even the presence of now absent hydrocarbons over the last 150 to 200 million years." Discovery 09/14/04

The New Humor Is humor the New Thing in art? "A lingering tendency among critics to dismiss artists who employ humor as mere jokers hasn’t prevented such artists from turning to satire with renewed vigor. Cartoon images now seem to be everywhere—in painting and sculpture as well as video and digital animation, tacked to walls or drawn directly on them. The funniest-looking figures, however, are less Popeye than R. Crumb’s bearded Mr. Natural, fraught with anxiety, swearing, sweating, and questioning every feeling and thought." ARTnews 09/04

Cleveland Museum's Questionable Statue Is a statue that the Cleveland Museum recently bought stolen? "The museum proudly announced the purchase in June, saying the statue might be the only one among about 20 large bronzes in the world that can be linked to the ancient Greek masters. Now some prominent archaeologists and other critics say the museum should not have bought the work because of the questionable history." Ohio News Network (AP) 09/13/04

How Malcom Rogers Transformed The MFA Outside of the Guggenheim's Thomas Krens, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts director Malcom Rogers is probably the most controversial museum director in America. When Rogers took the job, he inherited an institution in considerable distress. He's made changes, big changes. "There's something so fundamentally annoying to the museum profession about the efforts to break the academy walls down and kind of rethink the role of great art museums in America. They're so concerned about these fake, institutional standards that I don't think these people ever look at Malcolm clearly. They immediately have glasses on that blind them to the end product, which I think is a healthy MFA." Boston Globe 09/12/04

• Malcom Rogers: Art Of The MFA "There have been great shows during the Rogers reign. The Gaugin and Rembrandt shows of this past season are perfect examples. You couldn't ask for more excellent exhibitions anywhere in the world. But there have also been some that seem the result of not wanting to spend the time or money to do right by the subject." Boston Globe 09/12/04

Atheneum Takes A New Track Hartford's Atheneum has seen a 27 percent drop in attendance in three years. It's dropped an expensive building expansion and is embarking on an alternative plan. Changes in the museum's focus are underway. "The idea that the Atheneum can do an important blockbuster show year in and year out is simply not true anymore. Those shows were, in my judgment, the product of an economy which no longer exists, and they are a product of a certain way of thinking about museums that I'm not so sure that in the end was productive." Hartford Courant 09/12/04

Architecture: Computers Can't Substitute For Imagination The Venice Architecture Biennale is full of plans for fancy projects made possible with the wizardry of computer design. But gadgetry doesn't make up for lack of imagination... The Guardian (UK) 09/13/04

Broadway Turned Into Sculpture Row Sculptor Tom Otterness is mounting "the biggest one-man sculpture exhibition in New York City parks since a show of Henry Moore works in 1984." Otterness is "well suited to the diversity and commercial energy of Broadway. He is both popular and populist — an artist whose sculptures are intended to work everywhere and be understood by almost everyone. The sculptures in 'Tom Otterness on Broadway' range in size from under 2 feet to over 20 feet tall." The New York Times 09/12/04

Broadway Turned Into Sculpture Row British sculptor Tom Otterness Otterness is mounting "the biggest one-man sculpture exhibition in New York City parks since a show of Henry Moore works in 1984." Otterness is "well suited to the diversity and commercial energy of Broadway. He is both popular and populist — an artist whose sculptures are intended to work everywhere and be understood by almost everyone. The sculptures in 'Tom Otterness on Broadway' range in size from under 2 feet to over 20 feet tall." The New York Times 09/12/04

On The Architectural Menu This Fall... This fall brings a number of important architecture events around America - from the opening of the Museum of Modern Art, to the opening of the Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. Blair Kamin enumerates... Chicago Tribune 09/12/04

Cuno: Museums Losing Focus Is the continuing spread of blockbuster traveling exhibitions distracting museums from what should be their primary focus? Art Institute of Chicago president James Cuno thinks so, and he's raising eyebrows by saying so in public at a time when many museums view high-profile exhibits and big, fancy in-house gift shops and restaurants as the only things keeping them afloat. In his years at Harvard, Cuno "came to espouse what has been called an 'essentialist' view. It's a view that seeks to refocus attention on the acquisition, preservation and presentation of research of museums' permanent collections." The theory works in academia, but can it fly in the open market? Chicago Tribune 09/12/04

Spiegelman's New (Personal) Holocaust Twelve years after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his Holocaust-themed comic book, Maus, artist Art Spiegelman has again put ink to paper to memorialize a great human tragedy. This time, the tragedy is 9/11, and the work is autobiographical. "In content and theme, Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers share some ground. Each of the books deals with a relatively ordinary man, a Spiegelman of one time and place, confronting mass murder (on vastly different scale and a wholly distinct nature, of course) and an arrogant, power-hungry regime (again, on a far different level). Both focus on the primacy of family and tribe to their protagonists, and both evoke the incoherence, the gruesomeness and the vainglory of war." The New York Times 09/12/04

The Forgotten Art That Won't Go Away "When it comes to swimming against the tide, Olympic gold medals should go to all representational artists. For half a century, they have been almost completely ignored by museums, boycotted by prestigious galleries and scoffed at by critics." Still, a renaissance of figure drawing has been evident for some years, led by countless amateurs and enthusiasts, and embraced by a few diehard pros. But "in a society that values quick and easy success... and when so many galleries and museums prefer to give their space to video art, conceptual art and installation art, why do so many keep struggling to master a skill that art critics insist is anachronistic and old hat? Why this continuing compulsion to draw?" The New York Times 09/12/04

Veterans Criticize Warhol Museum Plans American veterans groups are criticizing the Warhol Museum's plan to show images from the Abu Ghraib scandal. "Tom Sokolowski, the Warhol museum's director, said Friday the museum has not decided which photos will be displayed, but will choose from numerous images collected from various news outlets and Web sites." SFGate (AP) 09/10/04

Painter Gets Billion-Rupee Commission Indian painter Maqbool Fida Husain has been commissioned by a Bombay businessman to create a series of paintings called "Our Planet Called Earth" for $21 million. "It is believed to be the biggest ever art deal in India. Husain, who is almost a cult figure in the world of Indian art, says he will use the proceeds of his sale to make a mega-budget Bollywood film." BBC 09/10/04

Stolen Painting Turns Up 20 Years Later A Maxfield Parrish painting, stolen 20 years ago in San Francsico, has turned up just blocks away from the gallery where it was stolen. "Investigators have been told that somehow it wound up with the owner of a hair salon, who died and left it to the woman who had cared for her, who in turn died and left it to her son. The son was trying to sell it at the Geary Street gallery, unaware it had been stolen." San Francisco Chronicle 09/09/04

Stars Vie For Architecture Prize The Riba Stirling Architecture Prize is Britain's most prestigious. This year's finalists include some of the world's best-known architects. "The list was generally welcomed by architects yesterday for its variety, although punters showed an overwhelming early preference for the gherkin: the new London landmark took 57% of the first 4,140 votes cast in a BBC internet poll, while Libeskind got 13% and the innovative Kunsthaus in Graz, designed by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, was a whisker behind with 12%." The Guardian (UK) 09/10/04

Chicago Public Art Program Faces Lawsuit A Chicago attorney has has filed a series of complaints alleging abuses by the City's public art program, "including holding meetings without a quorum. But the judge denied the city's motion on three other counts, which accuse the program of inadequate record keeping and awarding at least $101,400 in taxpayer-funded commissions without proper authorization." Chicago Sun-Times 09/08/04

Does Politics Belong In Art? A show of political art at Arizona State University focuses on presidential democracy. But Richard Nilsen writes that it's difficult for contemporary art to not be partisan. And is that bad? "It raises in important question about politics and art: Can they be reconciled? Politics is about answers; art is about questions. Politics is about taking sides; art is about ambiguity. Politics is about making a commitment; art is about exploring all the options. Politics values simplicity; art values complexity. And, worse for the sake of visual art, politics is about words; art is about things." Arizona Republic 09/07/04

• How To Politically Balance Your Political Art Show "When New Times first reported that the exhibition was being planned and included many anti-Bush works, Aeizona State University administrators promised that the show would not go on unless it was politically balanced. More than 400 pages of e-mails and correspondence written as far back as February through July 21 between museum staff, ASU administrative officials and the artists who were asked to participate in the show reveal how this 'balance' was achieved: Anti-Bush works were eliminated; museum director Marilyn Zeitlin allowed work she called 'mediocre' to be included; and ASU administrators with no background as curators, including President Michael Crow, weighed in on the content." Phoenix New Times 08/19/04

Canada's New Painting Prize "Victoria painter Mark Neufeld is off to Berlin after winning the inaugural CAN$25,000 Joe Plaskett Foundation Award, one of the largest visual-arts awards in Canada. The new annual prize, eligible to students across Canada who are studying for their master of fine arts, or have attained an MFA this year, is designed to support a one-year residence in Europe. Most notable about the award -- besides its rich purse -- is that it is only available to painters." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/09/04

The Art Fair Sucks! Let's Make More! "The problem: An art trade fair that for 25 years has strip-mined the Midwestern collecting community, resulting in high-ticket dealers and big-spending buyers who no longer come. The solution: Next year hold three. How much does it take to see that this is not an answer?" Chicago actually tried the multiple-fair idea a decade ago, says Alan Artner, and the results were underwhelming. Yes, Art Chicago needs to reexamine itself, but the new push to become "the art fair of the people" seems doomed to failure, since the whole point of an art fair is to pander to the moneyed crowd that wants nothing to do with popular culture. Chicago Tribune 09/09/04

Tate Takes On Emin "Tracey Emin, not everybody's cup of tea, was officially declared a great artist yesterday when the Tate galleries revealed that they had bought eight of her works in a rare bulk deal." The Telegraph (UK) 09/09/04

Where's that Good Political Art? There's a long proud tradition of political protest art. But though passions are high in this political season, the quality of the little political art that is being produced makes little impact. So why?... New York Magazine 09/07/04

Who Will Control US Artist Selection For Venice Biennale? With the Pew and Rockefeller Foundations withdrawing funding for the annual American artist representation at the Benice Biennale, the selection process is in flux. "The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (BECA) has indicated that it is unprepared to take over. Consequently, it appears the Guggenheim Foundation may gain control of the selection process for the American Pavilion in 2005 by default." The Art Newspaper 09/06/04

Moving Art (Different Expectations?) "Although there has been a dialogue between film and visual art since film was invented, you can’t simply compare a feature film with static art. But put the film in an art gallery and implicitly that is what you are doing. You are inviting comparison, not with the films that struggle to survive in the hard commercial world of the cinema, but with the art forms you expect to find in the gallery. And expectation is a key part of it." The Scotsman 09/08/04

Expert: David's Bad Posture "For centuries, Michelangelo's statue of David has been regarded as the epitome of male beauty and perfection, but now it is claimed he is more an example of human frailty, a physical wreck whose poor posture would result in a bad back, a weak hip and ankles and poor flexibility." The Guardian (UK) 09/07/04

Mummy Of The Scream? "An Inca mummy kept in a Florentine museum might have been a source of inspiration for Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream," an Italian anthropologist claims." Discovery 09/07/04

In Search Of A Hot Pre-Fab Shelter Magazine runs a competition to design and build a pre-fab house that really works. "The results are in, and they are decidedly mixed." OpinionJournal.com 09/08/04

Edinburgh Museums See Big Attendance Increase Edinburgh's museums saw a huge increase in visitors this summer - a 24 percent increase... Edinburgh Evening News 09/07/04

At The Tate: Do-It-Yourself Labels Tate Britain is inviting visitors to write their own labels for art in the galleries. "The 30 most vivid contributions will go up on the walls, beside the efforts of the curators, in time for British Art Week, starting on September 20. More will be added, and may remain for as long as the paintings stay on display. This is the first time the gallery has invited members of the public to join a contentious debate about how to label art." The Guardian (UK) 09/07/04

Turkey Nixes Noah's Ark Search "A Honolulu businessman's plan to take an expedition to Mount Ararat in search of Noah's Ark ended this week when the Turkish government refused to permit it because of security concerns about the area, which borders Iran and is 150 miles from Iraq." Honolulu Star-Bulletin 09/03/04

In Hartford: A Museum Solution Across The Street Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art had ambitious plans to shut down for two years and "create a spectacular new $100 million building." But when that plan was abandoned, it opened new possibilities and a bit of reinvention of the museum's operation... Hartford Courant 09/06/04

Culture Wars Revisited Fourteen years after landing at the center of the American culture wars, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati mounts a show of controversial art from the 1980s. "Cincinnati remains a conservative redoubt in a battleground state. But the selection of paintings, sculptures, videos and photographs in this show — on view through Nov. 21 in Zaha Hadid's acclaimed new building — feels like a brave attempt by a rejuvenated institution to confront its local audience, and perhaps at the same time begin to repair the city's reputation for cultural provincialism." The New York Times 09/05/04

Munch Museum Beefs Up Security After Scream Theft After heavy criticism after "The Scream" was stolen, the Munch Museum in Oslo is installing new security measures to protect its art. "We are closed and will be closed for three weeks to install alarms, among other things." BBC 09/06/04

Ono To "Recreate" 60s Naked "Happening" Yoko Ono plans to recreate one of her most famous pieces of art at the Tate Modern, 40 years after first performing it. "The original 1964 'happening' involved Ono having clothing cut from her body by the audience until she was naked. The 71-year-old recreated the work in Paris last year in an effort to promote world peace, but left the stage in her underwear." BBC 09/06/04

A New Museum For Paris "A $265 million museum devoted to the indigenous art of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania is rising on the banks of the Seine beside the Eiffel Tower. Within a year the Musée du Quai Branly, as it is known, will begin receiving the 270,000 objects in its collection." The New York Times 09/06/04

New York Reclaiming Its Skyline Contrary to popular opinion since 9/11, the New York skyline consists of far more than the Twin Towers and whatever replaces them. In fact, the look of the insanely crowded Manhattan cityscape is currently being transformed by "a growing list of stunning residential towers designed by celebrated talents like Richard Meier, Santiago Calatrava, Christian Portzamparc and Enrique Norten." But if these residential skyscrapers represent the best of the new New York look, the worst is always just around the corner, represented by a new wave of monolithic office towers. Still, the changes are exciting, particularly following an era in which New York seemed to have lost its architectural bearing. The New York Times 09/05/04

Hopper A Hit At Tate Modern "Crowds who flocked to admire some of the loneliest paintings of the 20th century have helped to make the Edward Hopper exhibition at London's Tate Modern one of the gallery's most successful... By the time the exhibition closes tomorrow night, the Tate expects to have sold more than 420,000 tickets - a total beaten only by Matisse-Picasso two years ago. The gallery has stayed open late every night for weeks to meet the demand." The Guardian (UK) 09/04/04

Vettriano Auction Nets £2.5 Million Artist Jack Vettriano might not get respect from critics, but his work gets a big vote of priase on the auction floor. "An auction of 40 paintings by Jack Vettriano, a self-taught artist snubbed by national collections, has raised £2.5m at Sotheby's in Scotland. The highest sum paid was £330,400 for Mad Dogs - painted in 1991 when he was selling work for a few hundred pounds." The Guardian (UK) 09/03/04

Lynching The Confederate Flag An exhibition examining the Confederate flag has not yet opened at Gettysburg College, but it has already attracted the ire of a Confederate heritage group with a flag-lynching piece called "The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag"... Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/02/2004

The Aura Of Value If artistic objects like Munch's "The Scream" have monetary worth only because we agree that they do, what is it that makes us value them? "Myths develop around great artists, and objects associated with their actual physical presence become imbued, in many people's minds, with some kind of spiritual aura." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/02/2004

NY's Penn Station Revival Spins Off The Tracks On the surface all looks like a go for rebuilding New York's Penn Station within the old US Post Office across the street from Madison Square Garden. "Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the project, with its soaring glass-enclosed great hall, was originally unveiled in 1999. It has been a pet project of politicians from both sides of the aisle, including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for whom the proposed station is named, and Gov. George E. Pataki. Most of the $800 million needed to complete the project's construction has been in place since 2001. And the post office abandoned the space this summer, in part to make room for the news media covering the convention." So why has the project stalled out? The New York Times 09/02/04

The Just-Ask-Heloise Historic Restoration "Sure, there are plenty of commercial products available to clean and restore architectural treasures, but quite often, preservationists turn to items such as Ivory soap, candles, sponges, spatulas, tea, and eggs. It's simply a matter of using common sense to determine which products work best..." Christian Science Monitor 08/31/04

Native Hawaiians Protest Bishop Museum Plan Native Hawaiians are protesting the Bishop Museum's plan to "define itself as a native Hawaiian organization under the terms of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. NAGPRA was enacted to provide procedures for museums to return ancestral bones and four classes of objects to Native Americans and Hawaiians." The museum believes it can claim ownership of Hawaiian artifacts if it is considered a native organization. Critics disagree: "This is extremely colonial and paternal."
Honolulu Star-Bulletin 09/01/04