Power Play - Making Fun Of Vettriano Scottish painter Jack Vettriano made this year's list of "most powerful" people in the art world. But "Vettriano, a former miner whose popular paintings have earned record-breaking prices at auction in recent years, is given a sarcastically critical entry which begins by claiming the 53-year-old first made his living by 'copying Old Masters' and ends by noting that no major public gallery had so far chosen to invest in his work, 'thank Heaven'." The Scotsman 10/31/04

Degas' Private Life "Along with the other stars of the Impressionist movement, Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet, Degas has been one of the most recognised and popular painters in the world; and of Degas the man, we know almost nothing. But the peculiarities of his private life did not escape his contemporaries - nor were his quirks denied by the artist himself." The Guardian (UK) 10/30/04

Begging For Art "Tate Modern, one of the most popular art galleries in the world, fears for the future. Last week the Tate organisation was forced to beg 23 artists, including David Hockney and Damien Hirst, to donate works it can no longer afford. The Tate is hopelessly outgunned by big spending foreign rivals in the acquisition of important work... The Tate estimates that, given the cuts or freezing of its government funds year after year, and inflation in market prices of as much as 1,000 per cent, the organisation's buying power is now about 5 per cent of what it was 20 years ago." The Observer (UK) 10/31/04

Demolishing A Decade "In a society otherwise enamored of the styles of the 1960's, the architecture of that decade is rarely loved and frequently reviled. All over the country, 60's buildings are being torn down while much older buildings survive. Functional problems, like leaky roofs and inadequate heating systems, are often to blame. But just as often, the buildings are simply disliked by institutions that have enough money to replace them." There is a burgeoning movement afoot to save the structures, but the "so-bad-they're-good" logic doesn't seem to be attracting many supporters for the boxy, concrete buildings that dominated the '60s. The New York Times 10/31/04

U.S. Makes Venice Biennale Selection "A committee of American museum curators has selected Ed Ruscha, a leading painter, to represent the United States in June at the Venice Biennale, putting an end to a year of questions about whether the country would participate in the prestigious art festival." Washington Post 10/30/04

The New MoMA, From The Inside Out Much has been made of the new home of New York's Museum of Modern Art, but what about what's inside the building? MoMA's collection has been wholly reordered and rearranged, and the results are impressive, says Linda Hales. The museum has made use of the increased space to broaden its outlook and move beyond the Bauhaus to a much wider array of contemporary art. The idea is for MoMA to retain its commitment to featuring 20th-century art movements, even as it devotes more energy to current themes. Washington Post 10/30/04

A Museum Closes, But Does Anyone Care? When Chicago's Terra Museum of American Art shuts its doors this weekend, it will represent a major loss in the city's cultural landscape. Or will it? "The Terra Museum's failure to draw crowds even after effectively eliminating its admission charge a few years ago led to the decision to close... [but] most Chicagoans, including members of the city's art establishment, have greeted the closing with a collective shrug, even though it leaves the city with only two major art museums." The New York Times 10/30/04

Museum Clashes With eBay Over 'National Treasures' "At a news conference this week, the British Museum's head of treasure, Roger Bland, called on eBay to agree quickly to 'pull down' Web auctions of artifacts when British authorities identify them as potential national treasures, a step that eBay has been reluctant to undertake without legal proof that the items qualify as treasure... In negotiations that have stretched over a year, eBay has agreed in principle that it doesn't want illicit antiquities on its Web site and is willing to remove them provided the British authorities can state clearly which ones are illegal. But British officials have not been able to give a clear definition." The New York Times 10/30/04

How To Buy Art Without A Second Mortgage New York's Affordable Art Fair is a rarity - a major art event aimed squarely at ordinary people who have always assumed that collecting is outside their monetary means. "More than 130 galleries will offer original work by some 500 artists at the fair, and every piece is between $100 and $5,000. There will also be art demonstrations and tutorials on how to buy." New York Post 10/30/04

Adjaye Unveils Denver MoCA Design The design of the new permanent home of Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art has been unveiled, and it stands in stark contrast to the flashy, eye-catching architecture that currently dominates the museum scene. "[Architect David] Adjaye's concept puts the emphasis on dramatic interior spaces. Rather than jutting angles, the 25,000-square-foot building offers a placid interplay of light... Most of the exterior will be sheathed in glass, its color yet to be determined. About a foot inside the glass will be walls of translucent plastic, which will... allow in some diffused light during the day and radiate a glow from inside at night." Denver Post 10/30/04

"Reality" Show To Kill Buildings A new "reality" show asks viewers to name their most hated piece of architecture. At the end of the season the building will be demolished. "The show's announcement has triggered a paroxysm of designating. All over Britain, architects and civic associations have singled out for elimination buildings--generally works dating from the 1950s and 1960s--deemed "unworthy" of keeping company with the icons of modern architecture (such as Lord Foster's recent "Gherkin Building") or deemed eyesores." OpinionJournal.com 10/29/04

Ruscha In Venice Ed Ruscha has been chosen to represent the US in next summer's Venice Biennale. "Ruscha, 66, was selected by directors and curators from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art." The New York Times 10/29/04

Hughes: What MoMA Means How important is the Museum of Modern Art to America? Robert Hughes: "To put it plainly: Moma, to give it the acronym by which it is always known, made modern art mandatory in America. It did this not only by collecting it, showing it, moving big money into place behind it and evangelising for it, but by setting the prime example whereby, in the US, the function of the museum shifted from accumulation to teaching. This came to apply to almost all museums, not just those dedicated to a hitherto enigmatic or marginal 'modernism'." The Guardian (UK) 10/29/04

Alsop Slides Into Bankruptcy England's Alsop Architects has declared bankruptcy. "Alsop has been the driving force behind a plethora of media-grabbing projects, including the intended transformation of Barnsley into a semblance of a Tuscan hill town, the planned creation of a "mega-city" for 15 million people linking existing settlements across the north of England, and the rebranding of Middlesbrough with proposed blocks of flats shaped like Prada skirts." The Guardian (UK) 10/29/04

Guilty: Man Destroys Dali To Create Dali A man has been found guilty of cutting up a Salvador Dali painting and using it to create a new piece of art. "John Peter Moore, a former private secretary to the artist, cut up a stolen 1969 Dalí painting, The Double Image of Gala, and used it to create what he claimed was a new Dalí." The Guardian (UK) 10/29/04

Tennessee Museum Cancels Show Because Of Sexual Images Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts has "canceled an upcoming show featuring sexual images and containing racially charged language — a move the artist terms a 'form of censorship'." The Tennessean 10/26/04

UN Creates Culture Warriors (Peacekeepers) The United Nations is setting up an international force prepared to fly in and protect culture treasures threatened by war or natural disaster. "The cultural blue berets, as they are already being called, will initially be formed entirely of Italians and could include members of Italy's paramilitary police, the carabinieri. Yesterday's move followed international outrage over the looting of priceless antiquities during the US-led coalition's invasion of Iraq last year." The Guardian (UK) 10/28/04

Gagosian Is Art World's "Most Powerful" Who's the art world's most "powerful" figure? Art Review magazine says it's gallery owner Larry Gagosian. The annual ranking called Mr Gagosian "the world's greatest art businessman". BBC 10/28/04

D.C. Curator Fired For Bad-Mouthing Public Art "Curator Philip Barlow's policy on automatically excluding PandaMania and Party Animals participants from consideration for Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran's 2005 Options exhibition has cost him his position. The survey of emerging Washington area artists will now be curated by Libby Lumpkin, an art historian and critic who lives in California. The move came after [the Washington Post] reported Sept. 23 that Barlow did not regard the city-funded sculpture projects as art... WPA\C Executive Director Annie Adjchavanich issued a statement last week announcing Barlow's resignation and condemning his stance as a violation of 'basic ethical norms of curatorial practice.' Barlow calls the statement a 'complete distortion.'" Washington Post 10/28/04

China's New Comeback Kid Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is an unlikely hometown hero in a country famous for its purges of artists. Ai's father, a famous poet, was the victim of such a purge, and the family spent most of Weiwei's childhood in "reeducation camps" scattered across the Gobi Desert. But this year, the artist has found new fame in China for his contribution to the design of the country's new Olympic Stadium. But fierce criticism of the design has been emanating from Chinese architecture circles, largely due to the involvement of European design firms. The New York Times 10/28/04

Terra Looks For Extended Life Online When Chcago's Terra Museum of American Art closes forever this Sunday, it will represent a major loss for the city's art scene, but the Terra Foundation's extensive collection will not simply be dispersed to the winds. "The entire collection is soon to be made available on the foundation's new Web site, www.terraamericanart.org. And 50 of the major works, as well as the museum's complete collection of 350 works on paper, will be temporarily loaned to the Art Institute of Chicago in January." Chicago Sun-Times 10/28/04

British Museum Appeals To EBay The British Museum has appealed to EBay to remove potentially important archaeological items found in the UK from the auction website. "The Treasure Act of 1996 stipulates that finders have a legal obligation to report potential treasure finds such as gold and silver objects more than 300 years old. Roger Bland, the British Museum’s head of treasure, called for eBay to remove potential treasure items from its website." The Times (UK) 10/27/04

• Digging Up Buried Treasure In The UK The number of archaeological finds by citizens in the UK has greatly increased after a new law regulating so-called "treasure" finds. “Everyone’s excited by the idea of buried treasure. It also provides a unique insight into our history, and it is good that the number of finds being reported is increasing rapidly and may reach around 500 by the end of this year, representing almost a 100 per cent increase on 2002. This rise is testament to the effectiveness of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the expansion of which last year led to an average five fold increase in the reporting of Treasure." The Scotsman 10/26/04

New MoMA Aspires To Culinary Heights, Too "The better the food, the more intense the museum experience," says Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art. So it should come as no surprise that the new MoMA, reopening Nov. 20, will include restaurants that complement the art, both aesthetically (the tableware can also be seen in the design collection) and in terms of aspiration (the restaurants are created by Danny Meyer). Ideally, people will refuel in one of the dining spaces and venture back into the galleries, refreshed. The New York Times 10/27/04

U.S. Seizes Nazi-Looted Picasso "FBI agents have seized from a prominent Chicago art collector a Picasso painting that European authorities say was looted by the Nazis. The government is allowing 'Femme en blanc' ('Woman in White') to remain in the possession of the collector who bought it nearly 30 years ago until the courts can resolve questions about its legal ownership. The oil painting, valued at more than $10 million, has been in legal dispute since 2002." Chicago Tribune 10/27/04

The Tate's Giving Program A number of well-known artists is promising artwork to the Tate to help fill in the museum's gaps in contemporary work. "In all, 23 artists are committed to giving - and the gallery naturally hopes this will become a fashionable bandwagon which others will wish to scramble aboard. At the most conservative estimate the promised gifts are worth £2.5m. But if an auction house could assemble such a collection, it would certainly go for many times more." The Guardian (UK) 10/26/04

SFMoMA, Hirshhorn Team Up To Buy Hill As acquisition budgets get leaner, museums are teaming up to buy art. "The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has just announced an agreement with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington to purchase jointly a major work by Seattle video artist Gary Hill." San Francisco Chronicle 10/26/04

Worcester Museum Settles Discrimination Lawsuit The Worcester Art Museum in Massachsetts has agreed to pay $60,000 to settle an anti-discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a Muslim man who was fired after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Worcester Telegram & Gazette 10/26/04

No Progress Tracking Down "Scream" Police are no closer in the investigation to recover two paintings by Edvard Munch from the Munch Museum in Oslo. And the museum remains closed "indefinitely" while new security systems are being installed. "There haven't been any arrests in the case, nor have any charges been filed." Aftenposten 10/26/04

Iraq Explosions Causing Damage To Ancient Site Contractors exploding ordinance at an ammo dump in Iraq are causing damage to an important ancient site that is on Unesco’s World Heritage list. "Since May, controlled explosions of recovered munitions and mines are conducted at a nearby US military base. These are believed to take place twice daily. This constant seismic activity is damaging the stone arches of the main temple and the outer wall of the ancient city, which could lead to collapses." The Art Newspaper 10/25/04

Artists Give To Tate The Tate Museum is huge. But it's struggling with a collections budget that is undersized. So, some 20 artists have agreed to give pieces of their work to the Tate Britain gallery. "There are huge gaps in the Tate's collections, which in many ways inform all of us, working artists and the growing public. Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, said: 'We have to take this initiative to sustain our public collections in the face of declining public resources'." BBC 10/25/04

80 Percent Fake, 20 Percent Return... Welcome To The Russian Art Market The value of artwork in Russia appreciates at 15-20 percent per year, making it a good investment. BUT. By some estimates, 80 percent of the artwork for sale in Russia is forged, and until now it has not been possible to get insurance. But that may be changing... Novosti (Russia) 10/25/04

Degas's 40-Year Painting X-rays show that Degas worked and reworked a painting over the course of 40 years as his ideas changed. "The x-ray shows flurries of reworking, as figures become more and less distinct, the teenagers turn towards one another and then look away, the detailed background landscape is softened into a blur. At one point, Degas scrubbed out their classically handsome faces, and replaced them with Parisian urchins." The Guardian (UK) 10/25/04

The Mozart Of Painting (Or Is It Just Hype?) Meet the art world's hottest young artist: "Within a week of her most recent exhibition, she had been filmed by more than 10 TV crews, received calls from David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah, and been labelled a 'world-famous Abstract Expressionist'. But the artist herself is said to be oblivious to it all. She is, according to those closest to her, 'kind of reclusive', 'very sensitive', 'temperamental' at times, and extremely loath to talk about her work." And she is... four years old! The Observer (UK) 10/24/04

Hiding In Plain Sight A life-size statue which has stood for 500 years in a small town in Southern Italy has been identified as the work of Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna. It had been believed that none of Mantegna's sculptures were still in existence, but a staggering two decades of research by art experts uncovered the provenance of the statue, which was first noticed by a museum director in 1978. The Guardian (UK) 10/23/04

China's Architectural Revolution As China has gradually transformed itself from a closed economy to a capitalist-Marxist hybrid, the nation's urban culture has changed as well, as the architectural rebirth currently going on in Beijing and Shanghai demonstrates. "It is turning the country into the world's most boisterous architectural funhouse. Not since its birth in the Bauhaus almost a century ago has the modern revolution raged as hot as it does in China today." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/23/04

London To Blend Art, Science In New Center "An extraordinary museum collection, which includes Napoleon's tooth brush, Nelson's razor, and a small piece of the 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, will feature in a new centre for arts and science in London... The £20m centre is also to provide a permanent home for the 600,000 volume medical history library, the largest in the world outside the national medical history library in the US." The Guardian (UK) 10/23/04

Don't Forget To Make It Look Nice Like so many other American cities, Washington, D.C. has struggled to create what its former mayor called a "living downtown" with a distinct core of urban dwellers. But a new round of downtown residential construction is offering a chance at architectural revival, with the hope that a unique urban look will attract new residents. But for every great new building that goes up, it seems that four more uninspired, boxy concrete blobs rise as well. Are the city's architects abandoning creativity in order to insure that their buildings have the requisite exercise rooms, rooftop pools, and other amenities supposedly demanded by today's urban residents? Washington Post 10/23/04

MoMA's Modesty As New York prepares to welcome the Museum of Modern Art back to Manhattan, one striking architectural aspect of the museum's new home should be noted: the lack of a striking architectural aspect. "[MoMA] won't be housed in a titanium sculpture by Frank Gehry, an explosion of Daniel Libeskind shards or even one of Will Alsop's boxes on stilts; instead it will be in a simple but elegant building designed by relatively unknown Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi... In the case of MoMA, modesty makes sense. The New York skyline long ago became a cacophony of styles and intentions; the last thing it needs is another voice screaming to be heard." Toronto Star 10/23/04

Community To Barnes: We Won't Play Ball One of the sites the Barnes Foundation is considering moving to in Phiadelphia is currently accupied by community baseball fields. Community groups who use the fields have reacted with dismay to the Barnespotential move. "The ball fields - two baseball diamonds and a small children's playground along the northern part of the Parkway - are home to countless children's baseball, softball and soccer games and serve hundreds of children from several city neighborhoods." Philadelphia Inquirer 10/21/04

• Barnes Considers Two Sites If It Moves The Barnes Foundation, currently in court trying to convince a judge to allow it to break its founder's trust and move to Philadelphia, is considering two sites if it is allowed to move... Philadelphia Inquirer 10/20/04

Knight: Is Getty On The Wrong Track? What does Deborah Gribbon's resignation as director mean for the Getty Museum? Christopher Knight canvasses the museum world and finds some criticism. "For longtime museum watchers, this avalanche of public dismay from within the upper echelon of American art museum administration amounts to a stunning rebuke." Contra Costa Times 10/21/04

The Two-Sided Carr A rare double-sided painting by Emily Carr is coming up for auction in Canada. One of the images is a self-portrait that Carr presumably didn't like... Canada.com (CP) 10/21/04

The Earthquake That Rebuilt San Francisco's Museums The 1989 Bay Area earthquake the best thing to happen to the area's museums in a long time. Many museums were damaged in the quake and had to address plans to rebuild. "In the mid-1980s, nothing had happened to any of our museums in 50 years. The scene felt very retarded. Now, all these museums have reinvented themselves with new buildings and new initiatives that make people feel differently." San Francisco Chronicle 10/21/04

Serota: UK Government Breaking Museum Promises Earlier this summer the British government promised extra funding help to the country's ailing museums. But "since the summer, a mysterious silence has fallen, and Tate director Nicholas Serota now condemns what he believes is a broken promise. 'My fear is that far from it being the museums' turn, the museums will go to their traditional place - at the back of the queue'." What will get the funding? Sports. The Guardian (UK) 10/21/04

An El Greco Out Of The Envelope An old man in Spain pulls out a dirty old envelope and reveals... an El Greco. "The elderly man said The Baptism of Christ had been in his family for over a century: he had no idea where it came from before that, and was astonished at its value - estimated at up to £600,000, although it could go for more at auction in December." The Guardian (UK) 10/21/04

London's Contemporary Moves In the past decade London has emerged as a major hotspot for contemporary art. "The rise of the contemporary art market is being driven both by the age-old laws of supply and demand and by a change in taste. Collectors are finding it increasingly hard to buy great Impressionist and Old Master pictures, many of which are in museums, while living artists can feed a hungry market. Contemporary art is also more fashionable, especially among the new rich who have made their money in the past decade." The Telegraph (UK) 10/20/04

This Year's Turner: Not Good Enough For Controversy? Richard Dorment recalls a time when the Turner Prize mattered to him. "This year, the shortlisted artists don't rise to the level of being controversial. Tate Britain has mounted the Starbucks of art exhibitions: a show of almost interchangeable artists all working with film and video and all politically engaged in exactly the same, wholly predictable way." The Telegraph (UK) 10/20/04

More On The Liz Taylor Van Gogh Case A family claiming ownership of a Van Gogh painting looted by Nazis and now owned by Elizabeth Taylor, has gone to court in Los Angeles to try to get her claim on the painting voided. "If the dismissal motion is successful it could set the stage for a major legal battle between the two-time Oscar-winning actress, who purchased the van Gogh at auction in 1963, and the heirs of the German Jewish collector who first bought the landscape in 1907 and who, they claim, subsequently lost it "as a result of Nazi economic and political coercion" before the start of the Second World War." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/20/04

Turner Group Takes A Political Edge The work in this year's show of finalists' for the Turner Prize turns out to be much more political than organizers expected. "The political engagement is very striking this year. It is good to see artists looking beyond the art world and their lives." The Guardian (UK) 10/20/04

Getty Museum Director Resigns Deborah Gribbon has resigned as director of the Getty Museum, citing differences with Getty president Barry Munitz. "Barry and I have differences on a range of things. They are real differences. I think this is a very important moment for the Getty. Perhaps to a fault, I believe in the good of the institution. I think it's better to resign than let differences become a distraction." Los Angeles Times 10/19/04

• Gribbon: Leaving The Getty So why did Deborah Gribbon resign as director of the Getty Museum? "Her resignation, submitted Monday, came as no surprise to the museum world. It has been well known among directors and curators that Ms. Gribbon and [Getty president] Barry Munitz never got along." The New York Times 10/20/04

Turner Finalists Show Off This Week Work of the four artists who are finalists for this year's Turner Prize goes on display this week."Among the pieces on display is an interactive digital reconstruction of Osama Bin Laden's base in Afghanistan, created by artists Langlands and Bell. But one piece of their work has been removed because it features an alleged Afghan warlord who is currently on trial at the High Court in London." BBC 10/19/04

London's Contemporary Frieze London's Frieze Art Fair opens for its second year, and it looks like a hit. "When the so-called Young British Artists appeared in the 1990s, there was no main conduit to buy their works, but the Frieze Fair has filled the gap, giving international dealers an opportunity to sell their art in one room, under the banner of the art magazine Frieze." International Herald Tribune 10/19/04

The Logistics Behind The Art The new exhibition of paintings by Raphael at the UK's National Gallery is expected to be an illuminating look at a body of work that has rarely, if ever, been seen in one place. Tickets are already at a premium, and the National will undoubtedly clean up on the show, financially speaking. And that's good news for the exhibition's curator, who has been working on the show for a mind-boggling six years, because she has never been so exhausted in her life. The Telegraph (UK) 10/18/04

Great Picture, But Not Worth The Hassle Seeing the Mona Lisa is almost a requirement for tourists visiting Paris. But objectively speaking, the experience is a serious waste of time and energy, fighting huge crowds and long lines for a fifteen-second glimpse of a painting squirreled away behind layers of glass. "Waiting to see the Mona Lisa has all the thrill of standing in an airport check-in queue. The crowd pushes forward, cattle-like and unquestioning, performing a ritual they know they have to go through with in order to complete a pre-ordained tourist experience." The Guardian (UK) 10/19/04

The Future Of Modern Art At The Met "This summer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the establishment of a vast new department of 19th-century, Modern, and contemporary art, embracing European paintings from 1800 to the present, international 20th-century sculpture, drawings, prints, decorative arts, and design." The department's chief says that his first objective has been to mount an exhaustive study of the Met's current holdings, identify weaknesses in the collection, and develop a plan to fill in the gaps, particularly those in the 20th century collection. "The great unanswered question is the degree to which the Metropolitan will differentiate itself from New York’s other museums of Modern and contemporary art." The Art Newspaper 10/18/04

Scared Of The Daylight Office construction is on the rise in the U.S., but new studies suggest that the workers who spend an ever-increasing percentage of their lives in those concrete monoliths are suffering from a lack of daylight. "There is a striking lack of understanding by CEOs, boards and corporate real-estate executives that designing buildings with greater access to daylight saves money and improves productivity and the bottom line." Great architecture is all well and good, but why can't architects design buildings for the people inside as well as the people on the street admiring the facade? The Wall Street Journal 10/19/04

The Architect As Artist As architects continue to take their place as the new rock stars of the art world, an interesting crossover effect seems to be taking place. From Norman Foster's famous erotic pickle to Frank Gehry's trend-shattering Bilbao museum to Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, some of the best art in the world today is being done by architects, a fact which the art world has been slow to accept. "Why is architecture so much less hyped than art? The fact is that artists are more glamorous than architects. Building is a business, and even younger architects find it hard to accept that Foster, a business genius, is also an aesthetic one." The Guardian (UK) 10/18/04

It's Not A Failed Restaurant, It's Art! Buy Some! Glamorously controversial UK artist Damien Hirst has an auction all his own this week at Sotheby's in London. "This sale, which Sotheby's expects will net between £3 million and £7 million will also be an opportunity for Nigel Q. Public to buy an authentic Hirst, even if it's only an authentic eggcup." The pieces up for auction are actually the detritus from Hirst's now-defunct, clinic-themed Pharmacy Restaurant & Bar, which was conceived as part of the "Cool Brittania" movement a few years back. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/18/04

Making The MoMA List When New York's Museum of Modern Art unveils its new Manhattan home next month, a private party for the city's arts elite will kick off the festivities. Oh, sure, you can see the new MoMA ahead of time for a mere $75 membership contribution (and, truth be told, that's probably your best bet if you really care about the art,) but why visit with the plebes when, for $2 million, you can get invited to the most exclusive event of the year? The museum will tell you the guest list for that event is closed, but don't you believe it... The Observer (UK) 10/17/04

Koolhaas Reborn In many ways, Seattle is the perfect city for an architect looking to make his mark. Adventurous, forward-thinking, loaded with money, and possessed of a deep appreciation for the arts, the city has become known for its willingness to take chances with its public spaces and buildings. Of course, that kind of freedom can create the opportunity for spectacular failure as easily as great success, and many architects have fallen into the trap. But for Rem Koolhaas, Seattle may just be the city that revived his career. The Observer (UK) 10/17/04

Terra Museum Prepares For Shutdown "At 5 p.m. on Oct. 31, the Terra Museum of American Art, which has existed for almost a quarter century, will close its doors and Chicago will lose one of its cultural institutions... 50 paintings from the Terra collection and all 350 of its works on paper will go on long-term loan to the Art Institute of Chicago, where they will be shown in a new installation beginning next spring. The remaining 300 pieces will be placed in storage, shown in the Terra's sister museum in Giverny, France or be lent for exhibitions at other institutions." Chicago Tribune 10/17/04

The Art Of Voter Manipulation A new exhibit at New York's Parsons School of Design has taken a direct approach to combining politics and art: students were each given an actual Florida voting booth from the 2000 election debacle, and asked to express themselves in whatever way they chose. The range of results is a fascinating look at the varying ways in which young people view the modern political world: some of the works are hilarious with a twinge of bitterness, while some are simply bitter. Some are even cautiously optimistic about the future. Washington Post 10/16/04

Where's The Public Love For Nasher? "[Dallas's] Nasher Sculpture Center opened a year ago to nearly universal critical acclaim... Nothing has happened since to discredit those opinions. The trifecta of Renzo Piano's building, Raymond and Patsy Nasher's exemplary collection and Peter Walker's lush garden has produced a cultural attraction that actually deserves the overused acclamation 'world class.'" So why hasn't the Nasher's attendance matched its reputation? In its first year of existence, the Nasher drew 175,000 visitors, compared with 425,000 for the Dallas Museum of Art and 370,000 for Fprt Worth's Kimbell Museum. Dallas Morning News 10/15/04

You Just Can't Get Good Help These Days California artist Clinton Fein is used to getting flak for his blatantly political and often shocking artworks. But this past week, Fein found himself on the receiving end of a protest from an unlikely source: the printer he had hired to produce his giant prints. The online printing company Zazzle rejected two of the pieces Fein submitted, claiming that their ultra-provocative content violated their standards. Fein is accusing the company of censorship; Zazzle says it's a perfectly understandable business decision. San Francisco Chronicle 10/12/04

Munch Thieves May Be Identified Soon Authorities searching for Edvard Munch's stolen masterpiece, The Scream, may finally have a solid lead. The getaway car used in the robbery has been exhaustively examined, and police say that they now have knowledge of "persons with connections to criminal circles in eastern Norway" who are known to have used the car after it was seen parked on a farm last year. Aftenposten (Oslo) 10/15/04

London's Booming Art Market "London is one of the dominant forces in the world's contemporary art market, second only to New York. At least that's the conclusion suggested by the success of the Frieze art fair, which opened in the capital yesterday. At last year's inaugural event, dealers sold art works worth up to £20m, according to the organiser, Matthew Slotover. The number of exhibitors this year has risen from 125 to 150, and hopes are that business will be better still." The Guardian (UK) 10/15/04

And Next Season, The Worst Orchestra Has To Burn Its Violins A new reality TV show in the UK will ask viewers to help determine which hideous example of architecture gone awry is the country's "worst building." Viewer nominations will be accepted, and then a panel of experts will decide on the winning - or is that losing? - structure. The building will then be demolished on live TV. Somewhat surprisingly, the program is supported by the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Guardian (UK) 10/14/04

Liz Taylor Sued Over Nazi-Looted Art Actress Elizabeth Taylor is the defendant in a new lawsuit over the ownership of a Van Gogh painting seized by Nazis in World War II. "The South African and Canadian descendants of a Jewish woman who fled Germany in the late 1930s say the actress should have known when she bought the painting for $US257,600 in 1963 that it had been stolen by the Nazis." The Age (Melbourne) 10/14/04

Overpainted Raphael Discovered In Italy A previously unknown painting by Raphael has been discovered in a church in Umbria, where it had been hidden behind another work. The work's authenticity has been verified beyond doubt, and London's National Gallery is considering making a request to display it alongside a similar work it currently has on view. The painting "was only re-examined in the course of a survey of diocesan art works ordered by the present bishop of Gubbio, Pietro Bottaccioli. Restorers discovered the banner had been painted over, and decided to remove the later work, millimetre by millimetre, with scalpels." The Guardian (UK) 10/15/04

Sort Of Like The Auto Writer Who Won The Pulitzer Baseball stadium designer Joseph E. Spear is a National Design Awards architecture nominee. "The other nominees are Rick Joy, Polshek Partnership and Rafael Viñoly. While Mr. Spear's buildings are no doubt seen by more people than those of his rivals, his stadiums are far less celebrated in the architectural world, a fact that may change, given the exposure and respect generated by the nomination." The New York Times 10/14/04

Carnegie International's Friends Are Of Necessity "When the 54th Carnegie International opened last Friday, the festivities served as a reunion for 57 people whose generosity funded nearly one quarter of the exhibit's cost. Known as Friends of the 2004 Carnegie International, these 57 affluent donors contributed more than $700,000 to the $3 million exhibit once it became clear that no single local corporation would serve as lead sponsor." It was the first time in recent history that a corporation failed to fill that role. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 10/14/04

Is A Harvard Rembrandt A Fake? "In a forthcoming biography of the colorful Hollywood artist, bon vivant, and art forger John Decker, Stephen Jordan includes an account of how Decker and his friend Will Fowler forged a Rembrandt 'Bust of Christ' for actor ('Stagecoach,' 'Gone With the Wind,' 'Lost Horizon') Thomas Mitchell, an amateur art collector. 'Not long after Mitchell passed away,' Jordan writes, 'the painting fetched $35,000 as an early Rembrandt. Today, the painting hangs at Harvard University's prestigious Fogg Art Museum -- hailed as a true Rembrandt.'" Boston Globe 10/14/04

Australia To Get New Portrait Gallery Australia's National Portrait Gallery has been short on exhibition space for a long time, but this year, "arguing that 90 per cent of its 1000-plus collection was acquired without government money, the gallery successfully lobbied the Howard Government for a campaign promise of $56.5 million to build a new place to show them. At its current home in the former parliamentary library in Old Parliament House, the NPG can display only about 100 works in its permanent hang." The new building will likely be near Australia's High Court building in Canberra. Sydney Morning Herald 10/14/04

Leaving The Nest Magazines that attempt to explore the art world without confining themselves to a rigid format frequently fall prey to irrelevance or flippancy, but this autumn has seen the demise of what AJ Blogger Nancy Levinson calls "one of the strangest, smartest, most idiosyncratic and eccentric periodicals ever to maintain a quarterly publication schedule... Nest wasn't everyone's cup of oolong souchong, but it was the sort of periodical that's become increasingly rare, not to say endangered: a magazine shaped by the passions and ideas of its leading editor." Pixel Points (AJ Blogs) 10/13/04

Changing The Culture Of The CIA (Not That One) The Cleveland Institute of Art is a distinguished school, but over the decades, its leaders fear that it may have missed an artistic boat or two. "After World War II, [CIA] grew increasingly conservative and insular. It hired a lot of former graduates as faculty. It emphasized fundamental skills, such as painting and drawing, virtually to the exclusion of the theories and concepts that drive the art world today." Now, a new "academic demolition crew" has taken over the school, and is making a concerted push for change in the way that art students are educated. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/13/04

Gehry To Design Theater Center At Ground Zero "Frank Gehry, admired for his voluptuous buildings of undulating titanium and steel, is to be the architect of a new performing arts center at ground zero, his first major cultural project in Manhattan, the development corporation in charge of rebuilding the site said yesterday. The selection of Mr. Gehry for the arts center - which is to include the Joyce Theater and the Signature Theater - brings to Lower Manhattan a celebrity architect who has been notably absent from perhaps the most closely watched architectural site in the world." The New York Times 10/13/04

Training The Next Generation Of Museum Execs A new graduate program at Russia's University of St. Petersburg is offering high-level training to students interested in getting into museum administration. The curriculum is an effort to insure that the country's rich museum legacy doesn't fall victim to poor management just as museums are being forced to look to private funding sources for the first time. The Art Newspaper 10/11/04

It's Kind Of Like Watching Paint Dry The world of art restoration is a mysterious one to even the most frequent of museumgoers, but a new program launched by the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts is giving non-experts a glimpse of the processes involved in caring for great and aging artwork. "On two occasions now, the Institute has performed its magic in a public gallery, so that visitors could witness the techniques in progress and in person - and for those who may have been prevented by time or geography from following the exhibit first-hand... the entire process [is archived for public viewing] on the web." The Christian Science Monitor 10/13/04

The Munch Attraction At some point in the last twenty years, the works of Edvard Munch crossed over from being mere admired art to being symbols of contemporary culture. But what is it about the painter that so engages people, more than 50 years after his death? It may be that Munch's "landscapes and portraits of inner anguish" touch a nerve with nervous individuals in a world filled with fear and uncertainty. The Age (Melbourne) 10/13/04

Voting Gets A Redesign (Literally) In the past four years, voting has been revitalized as an issue in the United States, but usually when people talk about taking another look at the design of the system, they're not thinking about aesthetics. Frank Gehry, Christo, Robert A.M. Stern, Diane von Furstenberg and Richard Meier are some of those who are. "The Voting Booth Project, on display at Parsons School of Design in New York, features offbeat interpretations of about 50 of the Votomatic booths used in Florida during the controversial 2000 presidential election." Toronto Star 10/12/04

Copyright, Coincidence Led To Loeb Fracas A Damian Loeb painting titled "Blow Job (Three Little Boys)" that was removed from a University of Hartford exhibition does, in fact, depict the sons of a wealthy businessman with ties to the school, staff and faculty say. "And Douglas S. Cramer, the collector who lent the works for the show, said the university had informed him that the boys' family was distressed by the painting. ... But by every account, from the curator to Mr. Cramer to Mr. Loeb, the painting's removal was less a clear censorship case than it was one of copyright and surprising coincidence." The New York Times 10/12/04

• Previously: 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

Iraqi To Design Scottish Museum Iraqi architect Hadid has been tapped to design Scotland's new £50 million riverfront museum. "Glasgow, a former European city of architecture and design, is bracing itself for the arrival of one of Hadid's avante-garde designs which will occupy one of the most symbolic sites in the city." Hadid, an avowed deconstructionist, is promising that her building will be, of all things, "fun." The Herald (Glasgow) 10/12/04

Boston's ICA Breaks Ground, Defies Critics Boston's new home for the Institute of Contemporary Art is under construction on the city's riverfront, defying the expectations of critics who doubted the organization's ability to raise the necessary funds. "The new ICA is not just a museum, but a museum that aims to define a new district. Boston's waterfront is slated for billions of dollars in construction over the next few years, as land that is now parking lots and lobster shacks is turned over to housing, hotels, restaurants and shops." Still, the ICA must still overcome Boston's notorious conservatism when it comes to the arts, and convince the local populace that new art is just as good as old. Financial Times (UK) 10/11/04

New Paris Museum Set To Rival Bilbao, Tate The French billionaire François Pinault would like to build a grand new contemporary art gallery in Paris, but true to form, he doesn't see any need to do it the easy way. After all, this is a man who once bought a chapel in Brittany, dismantled it, and moved it to his home, all to house a sculpture he had just bought. The Pinault museum is slated to cost $270 million, and will be built on an island, on the site of an abandoned Renault car factory. "On the island's western tip, six machines are scraping away at the factory's concrete ruins; later this year, construction will begin to replace the derelict shell with what could become Europe's most avant-garde contemporary art museum." The Guardian (UK) 10/11/04

Guggenheim Taiwan Looking Likely Taiwan is a step closer to bringing a Guggenheim museum to the island nation after the legislature approved a first-year budget, and an economic council signed off on a plan to fund the $180 million project. The funding plan still needs to be approved by the legislature and the executive, but success appears likely by the end of the calendar year. The Guggenheim would be part of a larger cultural district in the city of Taichung, slated to include a new City Hall designed by Frank Gehry, and a Jean Nouvel opera house. The Art Newspaper 10/11/04

Louvre Prepares To Name A Franchise France is preparing to announce the site of a new branch of the Louvre, to open in 2009. The outpost would display 500 pieces from the museum's permanent collection on a rotating basis. "The project is part of a drive towards decentralisation that will bring culture and business to some of the country’s more impoverished provinces. Estimated to cost €105 million ($127 million), the new building will be 60% funded by regional government, with the remainder from the French State, European Union and municipal governments." The short list of cities in contention for the new Louvre are all in the economically depressed northern part of the country. The Art Newspaper 10/11/04

British Museum In Another Artifact Dispute A controversy is brewing over the ownership of eleven wooden tablets believed by the Orthodox Christian church of Ethiopia to be remnants of the Ark of the Covenant. The tablets are in the possession of the British Museum, which admits that it came by them under fairly shady ethical circustances and which, in deference to church beliefs that the artifacts can only be viewed by senior clergy, has locked them away in a basement. "It is, of course, somewhat pointless for a museum to hold objects that can never be seen by scholars, let alone by the general public. Delicate discussions are therefore underway for a long-term solution." The Art Newspaper 10/11/04

Who's Minding The Architectural Store? The UK's Commission for Architecture needs a new director to oversee the country's heritage and wrangle with sticky questions of future development. So why are the short-listed candidates all individuals with little to no knowledge of architecture? "This loss of nerve, which threatens to turn [the commission] from an organisation set up to nurture Britain's architectural culture into a band of all-purpose do-gooders comes when [its] income from the government has trebled to £11 million a year. Of that, it spends nearly 25 per cent on salaries for its staff of 65." The Guardian (UK) 10/10/04

New Goya Unearthed In Spain A previously unknown painting by Francisco de Goya has been discovered by an art restorer in Managa, Spain. The painting, which is massive, shows a virgin resting on a cloud, and was previously thought to have been painted by a little-known contemporary of Goya. During a restoration, hidden figures that were Goya's trademarks emerged in the work, and a lab analysis has confirmed the work's authenticity. The Guardian (UK) 10/11/04

It Always Happens So Fast Boston has a thriving new alternative gallery scene in the city's South End, with new galleries opening weekly and loft-style condos suddenly infesting a previously downscale neighborhood. "But while gallery owners wonder if the burgeoning South End neighborhood will mean business, residents wonder whether the neighborhood is going upscale too rapidly." Boston Herald 10/11/04

Iraq Torture Photos Being Used As Art "Five months after they made their first shocking appearance, the Abu Ghraib photographs have become a museum exhibition. Once ubiquitous on television and in newspapers, they now qualify as quasi-aesthetic artifacts, pictures you may choose to seek out - for edification, as a distraction, even... Placing these atrocious pictures in a sleek white room and inviting us to cogitate on their visual properties raises some interesting ethical questions. Why Abu Ghraib but not images of beheadings, which are also on the Web, floating in the digital ether, fragments from the same new photographic universe?" The New York Times 10/10/04

A Museum That Will Be All It Can Be The U.S. Army is planning a $200 million museum in Virginia, to be funded entirely by the government. "After a competition among many elite architects, the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has been chosen to design the 255,000-square-foot museum complex. Opening day is planned for June 14, 2009." The Army insists that recruitment is not the aim of the museum, although the video-game aspect of warfare will apparently have a role, with plans including "a parade ground for simulated battles and an annex for 4-D simulators like those found on the most advanced new amusement park rides." The New York Times 10/10/04

The Odd Decline Of Raphael In recent years, the art of Raphael seems to have fallen out of favor with the public. "While Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo leap out of the past as living men - their lives intense and fascinating, their works disturbingly immediate - Raphael has become remote. The recent fuss over the National Gallery's bid to buy his Madonna of the Pinks revealed just how distant we are from him. No one could say why he is so special." Could it be that Raphael's embrace of a style which attempted to impose order on chaos is so foreign to us, in an age in which chaos is the accepted norm, that we have forgotten how to view it? The Guardian (UK) 10/09/04

D.C. City Museum To Close Washington, D.C.'s City Museum, which was designed to showcase the history and heritage of the city's neighborhoods, has announced that it will close its exhibit galleries next spring, less than two years since the museum opened to the public. The materials exhibited at the space will remain available for viewing by appointment, but the museum was forced to acknowledge that it had failed to develop any sort of audience for itself. "It [had] hoped to be a gateway for tourists whose interest in the city would be whetted by the materials there and who in turn would discover areas off the Mall by themselves." Washington Post 10/09/04

The Art of Living Dangerously You don't often think of art as a physically dangerous profession, but the fact is that artists of all stripes routinely work with a wide array of exceedingly hazardous machinery and chemicals, and many are not well-trained in coping with the dangers involved. From acids to paint fumes to turpentine, artists exposed to chemicals over time are at risk for a variety of long-term illnesses. Toronto Star 10/09/04

Reinventing Government, Or At Least Its Look Architect Enric Miralles died in 2000, four years before his design for the new Scottish Parliament building was realized. And the reaction to the building from the general public has been widely negative. Still, says Christopher Hume, the complex "reverses the notion of the national legislature as a place that towers above the landscape, a beacon of state power. The Scottish Parliament reinvents the political system as a city within a city, a community set apart yet deeply connected to its surroundings." And the public distaste for the project may well have much to do with the widespread antipathy towards the government itself. Toronto Star 10/09/04

• Imperfect, Yes, But That's Politics Designing a government building is always a dicey proposition, but in Scotland, where the long march towards some measure of self-rule has been a particularly painful one, the new Parliament building seems to evoke much of that struggle. "As a composition, it is disjointed and rambling; much of its detailing is overly fussy... Yet the building, which Queen Elizabeth will formally open on Oct. 9, is mesmerizing nonetheless. Its sometimes tortured forms are able to convey, with remarkable emotional force, the sense of a first-rate creative mind struggling to come to terms with myriad ideas and practical challenges." The New York Times 10/09/04

Public vs. Expert Opinion: Who Should Judge Public Art? The massive sculpture that stands in front of Baltimore's train station is, to put it mildly, unpopular. In fact, nearly 100 locals gathered at a public forum recently to demand the removal of Male/Female, sculpted by Maine resident Jonathan Borofsky. But the forum turned out to be mainly an opportunity for art experts to tell the unhappy citizenry that they'd "get used to" the piece, and to highlight other examples of public art that were initially reviled. Baltimore Sun 10/09/04

Representational Art Back On The Radar Screen "Once photography took over the role of depicting reality in the mid-19th century, painters faced the question of what to paint. As new styles from Impressionism to Abstraction flowered, the dominant approach was to avoid anything the camera could record.
Still, artists who stuck with recognizable images continued to paint and exhibit their work - without the respect of modern art's movers and shakers... these painters of so-called representational art have finally been brought back into the fold - and that the art world has finally shed the notion that a single style defines a 'serious' artist." The Christian Science Monitor 10/08/04

Hotel's Big Budget Benefits Colorado Artists "Colorado artists are set to get a windfall worth nearly $1 million as decorators for the new $278.5 million hotel across from the Colorado Convention Center go shopping for art. ... Another $1.5 million worth of artworks will be purchased through the city's long-running percent-for-art ordinance, which requires that 1 percent of city-funded construction budgets be set aside for art." Denver Post 10/07/04

The World As One Giant Design Project "Massive Change," Bruce Mau's much-anticipated, optimistic but uneven new show on the future of design, has arrived. "The exhibition doesn't set out to map the future of design in any way one might expect.... (It) maps, instead, the often invisible design of things such as the global market economy, advances in medicine and agriculture, systems of ecological renewal and human transport. Every activity mankind engages in, everything that leaves our material stamp on the world, must be contemplated as a design project, says Mau. And we have choices." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 10/07/04

Cattelan's Hanging Child Does It Again "An exhibit depicting a hanged child at an art fair in the southern Spanish city of Seville has sparked a row between the gallery and local authorities, who yesterday demanded it be removed. The work in resin by Italian sculptor Maurizio Cattelan is on show at the Biennial of Contemporary Art but has sparked controversy -- as it did in Milan last May." The Globe and Mail (Canada) (AFP) 10/07/04

MoMA Rethinks Design: Less Tiffany, More Kevlar There will be much more to see in the Museum of Modern Art's design collection when MoMA reopens Nov. 20. Rethought during the closure, the collection now includes objects from 1821 to 2004. "But the new installation does not seize the popular moment, with respect to two important cultural developments: the arrival and establishment of virtual design and the Internet, and the remapping of the domestic landscape because of multiculturalism." The New York Times 10/07/04

In Terminal 5, Art Lovers Behaving Badly When the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to allow an art exhibition in Kennedy Airport's vacant Terminal 5, the landmark Eero Saarinen building that Steven Spielberg used in "Catch Me If You Can," it probably wasn't envisioning graffiti on the walls or vomit and broken glass on the floor. But no, artists weren't responsible for those displays. The damage was done by guests at an opening-night party that got out of hand, and now the show of installations, which was to have run through Jan. 31, has been closed. The New York Times 10/07/04

Chelsea's Guerillas "Two weekends ago, the staid art galleries of [New York's Chelsea neighborhood] got a shot of guerilla art, when the RIDER Project parked in the area. The inside of the 15-foot truck had been meticulously sheetrocked, taped and painted white, turning it into a white cube art space showcasing the work of 17 emerging artists... Some of the gallery owners were not so pleased." The New York Times 10/06/04

Preserving A Landmark, And Living In It Aficionados lust after houses designed by famous architects, but owning one isn't an easy task. The 1929 Lovell House, a Richard Neutra masterpiece, needs expensive renovations, and its elderly owner wants to do them. But she says Neutra's son is pressuring her to forbid alterations by future owners. Los Angeles Times 10/06/04

So What If It's Ugly? It's New Elbowing postmodern architecture aside, modernism has come back in vogue. As Caltrans' hulking new district headquarters in downtown Los Angeles suggests, this may mean a return to the days when architects and officials pretty much ignored city residents' vigorous opposition to the unfriendly designs they would have to live with. Slate 09/30/04

Art Rises On Taiwan-China Battlegrounds What with having to persuade the Taiwan military and get approval from China's Culture Ministry, an artist's vision for an exhibition that examines the legacy of war between Taiwan and mainland China took 13 years to be realized. But now, in the abandoned bunkers and minefields of Quemoy, Taiwan, the show has finally taken shape. The New York Times 10/05/04

Victoria & Albert Museum Robbed Thieves smashed a cabinet at London's Victoria & Albert Museum on Monday, and made off with the nine antique jade objects it contained. The pieces are estimated to be collectively worth over $100,000. The museum has launched an internal investigation into its security. BBC 10/05/04

A Troubled Museum Comes Of Age The Los Angeles museum created by billionaire Armand Hammer to house his personal art collection got off to a terrible start when it opened in 1990. First, Hammer himself died only days after the opening, and lawsuits over the money used to build the museum followed. The organization "limped on with no clear identity, serving chiefly as a venue for staid traveling shows. [But] no more. Today the Armand Hammer, on Wilshire Boulevard in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, is considered one of the city's hottest cultural attractions, with a keen eye for emerging artistic talent and a busy schedule of 'destination evenings' that routinely draw crowds to the museum for readings, concerts and films." The New York Times 10/06/04

Art That Aims To Stop A Killer Over the last decade, 380 young women have been brutally raped, tortured, murdered, and dumped along a remote stretch of the Texas-Mexico border. 800 more women are missing, with no real attempt being made to find them. "But now, a proliferation of art is emerging from the tragedies amid the blood and sand of the dusty industrial border town across from El Paso, produced by artists and performers fuelled by moral outrage and responding to what has become a human rights crisis and a bi-national scandal." The Telegraph (UK) 10/05/04

Nixon Nixed in Norway Three portraits of former U.S. President Richard Nixon have been removed from the walls of the Norwegian parliament, after MPs complained that they were inappropriate, disquieting, and generally "shocking." The head of the parliament's foreign affairs committee insists that he's all for freedom of expression, but doesn't feel that the disgraced former president is an appropriate symbol for a governmental institution. BBC 10/05/04

California Town Legislates Against Art Glut The town of Carmel, California could be considered an art mecca in miniature - four out of every ten businesses in Carmel are art galleries, with 61 having opened in the last four years. But last month, the Carmel city council decided that you can have too much of a good thing, and passed a moratorium on new galleries. "The ordinance puts an immediate halt to issuing business licenses for new art galleries that don't meet certain standards, such as being a working artist's studio or a gallery that features the work of just one artist." Monterey County Herald 09/27/04

Vermeer Mysteriously Appears In Philadelphia "Johannes Vermeer’s Young woman seated at the virginals, was sold for £16.2 million ($30 million) to an unnamed bidder at Sotheby’s in London on 7 July. Now it has quietly appeared on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (until 30 March 2005)... A spokesman for the institution would not answer questions concerning the ownership of the painting, nor would he say whether the Philadelphia Museum expects to receive more works of art on loan from the same source." The Art Newspaper 10/04/04

Kremlin Museum To Get Makeover Russia's State Kremlin Museum will be getting a major face lift over the next two years, with the federal government picking up the lion's share of the tab. "The buildings to be restored include part of the 17th-century Patriarch’s Palace which is to open as a new exhibition hall, as well as the early 16th-century Belfry of Ivan the Great that is to get a new hall for a permanent exhibition on the history of the Kremlin’s architecture. The early 16th-century Archangel Cathedral, which currently functions as a royal crypt housing the remains of Muscovite leaders from the early 1300s until the end of the 1600s, will also be renovated." The Art Newspaper 10/04/04

A Busy Fall Auction Season To Come "Sensing that a heated market may soon reach its peak, collectors have consigned hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of artworks for the November sales at New York's auction houses. Sotheby's and Christie's say the estimated sales totals are the highest in nearly 15 years. Usually it is the so-called 3-D's - death, divorce and debt - that motivate people to sell at auction. But this fall, in addition to the many millions of dollars that the auction houses are estimating people will pay to get what some in the business call 'wall power,' many collectors have simply decided that now is the moment to cash in." The New York Times 10/04/04

Is Britain Ready For Gaudi? "The surrealist architecture of Gaudi may have helped Barcelona turn itself into a magnet for tourists and one of Europe's most admired cities. But the emergence of a shop-front in north London in the anarchic style the Catalan pioneered has divided locals and led officials to order its removal. This may be a battle about architecture and commerce in one north London area, but it also reflects a concern that shopping streets across Britain are increasingly looking the same. It is also a test of how adventurous English taste has become. While Antonio Gaudi's buildings, such as the Sagrada Familia church and his other multi-coloured offerings, perk up Barcelona's streets, some say they are too radical for Britain." The Guardian (UK) 10/04/04

Is Berlin's Art World Finally Back On Track? Sales have been unexpectedly brisk at this fall's Art Forum Berlin, suggesting that the German collecting world may be coming out of a 3-year malaise touched off by the brutal recession that hit the country in 2001. The controversy surrounding the Frick collection and the decision of many vendors at the Art Forum to showcase a new generation of younger artists may also be contributing to the uptick in sales. The Art Newspaper 10/04/04

What, No Naming Rights? Michigan's Henry Ford Museum, which specializes in U.S. history, has announced a major partnership with America Online which will give the museum access to AOL's 30 million subscribers. "[The deal] comes a week after Walt Disney Imagineering of Glendale, Calif., agreed to give the Henry Ford unlimited access to artifacts from its theme parks to design a first-ever museum exhibit that examines the invention and legacy of Disneyland as a U.S. pop-cultural phenomenon." It may all sound fairly, um, corporate, but the museum is hoping that its willingness to aggressively market itself through synergy will pay off in long-term financial security. Detroit Free Press 10/04/04

Lightweight Architect, Heavyweight Award "Frei Otto, the 79-year-old German architect and structural engineer whose work continues to inspire leading British architects such as Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, has won this year's Royal Gold Medal for Architecture. Presented by the Royal Institute of British Architects, it is the world's most prestigious architectural award. Born in Siegmar, Saxony, in 1925, Otto made his mark with a number of impressive ultra-modern and super-light tent-like structures using new materials, beginning with the West German pavilion, designed with Rolf Gutbrod, for the 1967 Montreal Expo." The Guardian (UK) 10/04/04

Are de Boers Famous Fakes Actually Legit? In 1992, a group of investors paid a modest sum for the Jelle de Boer art collection, which consisted of works the Dutch collector had judged to be lost creations of van Gogh, Matisse, and Renoir. The sale didn't exactly set the art world ablaze, since de Boer's stack of paintings had long since been judged to be fakes. But now, the current owners are asking experts to reexamine the collection, saying that they believe there may be a few authentic diamonds amidst the mass of imitations. Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 10/03/04

Dyson's Crusade The dispute between resigned Design Museum chairman James Dyson and the trustees bent on updating its mission had been running continuously for years, and contrary to the noise being made by both sides, it isn't business: this argument is strictly personal. "The problem is not so much a question of whether the Design Museum exhibits engineering triumphs or Manolo Blahnik; it's a battle between three exceptionally strong-minded people for the future of an institution that they all care about deeply: Dyson, Alice Rawsthorn, the director, and Terence Conran, who established the museum 20 years ago." The Observer (UK) 10/03/04

The New, Non-Linear MoMA As New York's Museum of Modern Art looks towards the November opening of its new $858 million Manhattan home, it faces a defining moment in its history, and a moment in which it hopes to abandon the linear way in which its collection has always been strictly organized. "Defined for so long as the arbiter and guardian of progressive art, MOMA reopens... at a time when even its own curators no longer believe that art progresses like science. Narratives overlap and intertwine; instead of one big story, there are many competing stories... But complexity too often leads to incoherence. Can MOMA, the most influential voice in the modern-art establishment, still tell the story of 20th-century art in a convincing way?" The New York Times 10/03/04

A New View Of China "Though the study of Chinese art still focuses [mainly] on court life, it has broadened to include the lives of ordinary citizens. These revisions largely come from archaeology of the last hundred years, and particularly of the last three decades... Archaeology has upset and confounded the traditional linear narrative with discoveries that no one could have anticipated. What we call China is revealed as a complex world more culturally diverse, more multiethnic than previously imagined. Archaeological discoveries are redefining what it means to be Chinese." The New York Times 10/03/04

Munch Investigation At A Dead End Despite a steady flow of tips, consultations with international art experts, and a continual media focus, police in Oslo say that they have made no progress in tracking down Edvard Munch's The Scream, which was stolen at gunpoint in late August. There are currently no suspects and no leads, and the thieves have made no attempt to ransom the painting. Aftenposten (Oslo) 10/01/04

As Opposed To How We Perceive Designers Now? James Dyson's resignation from the leadership of London's Design Museum may have seemed like little more than an internal debate over direction writ large, but to hear Dyson tell it, nothing less than the future of the design industry is at stake. "If design museums shy away from explaining the guts of design, he worries, the next generation will perceive the designer as 'little more than the creator of ineffectual ornaments.' And what's left of Western industrial manufacturing will spiral into decline." Washington Post 10/02/04

• 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

AGO Pushing Major Partnership The Art Gallery of Ontario has forged an unlikely partnership with Russia's Hermitage Museum in recent years, and the AGO's Matthew Teitelbaum is determined to take it to "'the curatorial level,' which, despite its formal-sounding nature, really means more of a hands-on deal between the Hermitage's art experts and his own. In short, he wants AGO people to start arranging what the Hermitage might send our way. But put this in some perspective. Since the entire AGO, with or without Frank Gehry touch-ups, probably would fit nicely into the Hermitage's cat-infested basement, Teitelbaum's approach can be seen as remarkably progressive, pushy, or somewhere in between." Toronto Star 10/02/04

Cleveland Museum Hires One Of Its Own The Cleveland Museum of Art has filled a key curatorial post from within its existing staff. "Anita Chung, formerly an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the museum, has been appointed associate curator of Chinese art. She is assuming responsibility for the Chinese collection, overseen for the past 6½ years by Ju-hsi Chou, who retired in June." The Mellon Foundation has made a challenge grant to permanently endow the position of curator of Chinese art, which has yet to be filled. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/02/04

Art That Travels "What do you buy just before you board a plane? Most frequent fliers take what they can get: tabloids, Godiva chocolates, $5 paperbacks, duty-free liquor and cigarettes. But the brand-new Airport Gift Shop at [New York's JFK Airport] has turned shopping into an art - literally. Designed and curated by New York artist Tobias Wong, the Airport Gift Shop is part of a just-opened art installation called Terminal 5 - which uses all the space in Eero Saarinen's landmark (and defunct) TWA Terminal 5." New York Post 10/02/04

Toronto Art Fair Gains Steam The Toronto International Art Fair may not measure up to the top art bazaars of Europe, but the event has become the place to see and be seen for movers and shakers in the Canadian art world. "At capacity this year with 83 dealers from near and far, the fair appears to be cresting the summit of a long, slow climb, from an inaugural year of relative obscurity to its current status as perhaps the essential event of the year." Toronto Star 10/01/04

Barnes Case Wraps Up "The court hearing into whether the Barnes Foundation can move its one-of-a-kind art collection from its home in Merion to a new museum on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway concluded yesterday just as it began: with two starkly differing visions of the gallery's future... The decision now rests with Montgomery County Orphans' Court Judge Stanley Ott, who is not expected to rule for at least a month." Philadelphia Inquirer 10/01/04

• Barnes Offered $100,000 To Stay Put A foundation based in suburban Philadelphia has offered a $100,000 contribution to the Barnes Foundation, conditional on the organization dropping its attempt to move to the city. The move will be seen as a largely sentimental move, since three major foundations have offered to raise $150 million if the Barnes goes ahead with its move. Philadelphia Inquirer 09/30/04