Charge: New mexican Stamps Are Racist "The Mexican government has issued a series of stamps depicting a dark-skinned Jim Crow-era cartoon character with greatly exaggerated eyes and lips, infuriating black and Hispanic civil rights leaders for the second time in weeks. Mexican postal officials said the five-stamp series features Memin Pinguin, a character from a comic book created in the 1940s, because he is beloved in Mexico. A spokesman for the Mexican Embassy described the depiction as a cultural image that has no meaning and is not intended to offend." Washington Post 06/30/05

The Leonardo That Can't Be Shown London's National Gallery revealed yesterday that it owns a previously unknown work by Leonardo da Vinci but will never be able to exhibit it. Why? Because it's underneath another painting... The Guardian (UK) 07/01/05

Dealers Flex Their Muscles In New Sales Deals As the contemporary art market heats up, "several dealers of contemporary art are placing a right of first refusal in their sales documents, requiring buyers to offer the art back to the dealer before selling to anyone else. Some, including dealers, maintain that these restrictions protect artists, the market, and even collectors. However critics of these contracts disagree. While the use of such restrictions is not standard practice in the market, it is also not entirely new." The Art Newspaper 06/30/05

Berlin Museums Change Course Again Berlin's State Museums are undergoing yet another major reorganization on Museum Island... The Art Newspaper 06/30/05

ICA Development Chief Jumps To National Gallery "Paul Bessire, a key figure in the [Boston-based] Institute of Contemporary Art's new waterfront building project, will leave the museum in early August to take a senior position at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Bessire, 43, has been the ICA's director of external relations since 2000, overseeing the $62 million fund-raising campaign now underway to pay for a new museum under construction on Fan Pier... Bessire becomes the National Gallery's chief development officer in September." Boston Globe 06/30/05

Guggenheim Picks An Architect For Mexican Outpost The Guggenheim has chosen a conceptual design by Mexican architect Enrique Norten as its choice for a new outpost the museum hopes to build in Guadalajara, Mexico. Norten, a rising star in New York's architectural scene, conceived of a "largely transparent rectilinear tower consisting of a series of steel boxes of various shapes for flexible exhibition spaces." Of course, this is the Guggenheim, which means that there's no guarantee that the Guadalajara museum will ever be built at all, and the next step is a feasability study which should at least answer the question of whether the $180 million project is realistic. The New York Times 06/30/05

A Building Only A Politician Could Love The Freedom Tower has become a parody of its own name, says Nicolai Ouroussoff, and we should have seen it coming. "Somber, oppressive and clumsily conceived, the project suggests a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness. It is exactly the kind of nightmare that government officials repeatedly asserted would never happen here: an impregnable tower braced against the outside world... If this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer's architectural nightmares were fascinating: as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear." The New York Times 06/30/05

• The Design Project That Wouldn't End Don't like the latest Freedom Tower redesign? Don't fret, says Michael Goodwin: another redo is likely just around the corner. "The big reason why more changes are coming has little to do with the Freedom Tower. The issue is the growing recognition that almost every element planned for the site is a problem waiting to be discovered." New York Daily News 06/30/05

Making A Mess At The WTC The newly redesigned "Freedom Tower" is a mess, writes James Russell. "It's a monument to bureaucratic bungling and political gutlessness. [Daniel] Libeskind stood up today to endorse the design, even though the scheme ashcans everything he did that touched people. His willingness to defend the continued gutting of his plan is beginning to look pathetic." Bloomberg.com 06/29/05

• Settling For The Freedom Tower The new version of the "Freedom Tower" at the World Trade Center site is not nearly good enough after all the compromises. Instead of proclaiming "Here is what we are capable of," the new tower mutters "It's the best we could do, under the circumstances." Newsday 06/29/05

A Crisis In UK Historic Buildings The man in charge of watching over England's historic buildings says the country's significant buildings are in danger. It is, he says, "one of the biggest historic buildings crises since the Reformation". The Guardian (UK) 06/29/05

Corcoran Hikes Admission, Moves To 5-Day Schedule Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art is raising admission prices 18% and closing on Mondays in an effort to deal with an ongoing deficit problem. (The museum is also closed Tuesdays.) "The changes come weeks after an upheaval at the museum, which has been struggling with deficits for years. Fundraising problems caused the gallery to cancel an ambitious project to build a new wing, designed by the internationally known architect Frank Gehry. The project excited city leaders and museum officials, but not the necessary donors... The museum's director, David Levy, resigned as part of the shakeup. And the board announced that it was developing a series of strategic plans for the 136-year-old institution." Washington Post 06/29/05

Ground Zero, Take Two The newly redesigned Freedom Tower that New York officials are hoping to build on the ruins of the World Trade Center was unveiled this morning with a number of architectural changes and a major security upgrade. "While the original plan called for a parallelogram base, eight isosceles triangles now rise out of a cubic base to a perfect octagon in the new reinforced middle of the tower, which supports a glass parapet. The tower will be capped with a mast incorporating an antenna, meant to suggest the torch of the Statue of Liberty." The building's actual location on the lot has also been changed as part of a plan to make it more resistant to truck bombs. New York Daily News (AP) 06/29/05

The Chelsea Transformation The New York art world's migration to Chelsea continues unabated, and the formerly unfashionable neighborhood now sports twice as many galleries as SoHo had at the height of its own art boom in the 1990s. With the trendy galleries, of course, come upscale restaurants and hip nightclubs, which is exactly the fast-moving gentrification process that causes New York artists to seek out a new (and affordable) neighborhood every decade or so. But for now, Chelsea is unquestionably the place to be in the Big Apple. Dallas Morning News 06/29/05

Danish Really Modern (A New Opera House) Tobi Tobias comes back from Copenhagen's Bournonville Festival with vivid impressions of the city's new Opera House. "The Opera is masterly in its command of space and light and typically Danish in its harmonious juxtaposition of materials: glass (miles of it, it would seem), stone (in subdued shades of grey and sand that give it an eerie lightness), steely metal, and lovingly treated wood. The interior of the building continually echoes the curved shape of the façade. At the hub of the public space is a gigantic bowed form clad in glowing maple veneer. Fantasy suggests it’s the work of a violin maker operating on a Brobdingnagian scale." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 06/28/05

Art Of Corporate "Large companies have been buying art as never before, and for a very particular purpose: to make the workplace — from the smallest and most intimate of meeting rooms to the most grandiose of lobbies — a more stimulating environment in which to work. This week an exhibition opens in London that will show off some of the art acquired in recent years by some of the top corporations in the UK..." The Times (UK) 06/29/05

Russia's Imitation Contemporary Art Scene The sad state of contemporary Russian art is exemplified by the sham Moscow Biennale produced last winter, writes Viktor Misiano. "The biennale was paid for by the Russian government in a clear attempt to create a Western façade for the new Russia. The exhibition was wanted by the government and paid for by the government. It was practically imposed by the government. Some $2 million was spent on the blind reproduction of a Western biennale. Even the timing of the biennale was chosen for purely cynical reasons." The Art Newspaper 06/24/05

London's ICA Gets A New Director Guy Perricone is the new managing directod of London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. "Perricone joins the ICA from ABN AMRO of the Netherlands, one of the world's largest financial institutions, where he was chief operating officer for Global Corporate Finance. He describes his new role at the ICA as that of a "practical visionary" whose mission is to support the artistic programme and enable each discipline to flourish and develop." BBC 06/27/05

London Auctions Boost Prices Even Higher The super-heated art market climbed higher at last week's London sales. "This season's four consecutive nights of auctions left even the cognoscenti shaking their heads." The New York Times 06/27/05

The Millennium Park Effect Chicago's year-old Millennium Park has been a great success. "The joyful postindustrial playground, which has brazenly discarded the old industrial age model of the serene urban park, is blowing equally strong winds of change across the cityscape that surrounds it, altering a museum's plans, boosting real estate prospects and (perhaps) opening doors for more innovative architecture in a city whose design scene had grown stale as recently as a decade ago. It has emerged as a sparkling example, despite its widely publicized delays and cost overruns, of how big cities can get big things done. In the national conversation, Millennium Park is being hailed in some quarters as an example of how business and political leaders can pull together." Chicago Tribune 06/27/05

Art That Won't Leave You Alone Video art is hot right now, and collectors are eager to purchase innovative pieces. But what do you do with art that practically requires a major installation space and that, in many cases, never shuts up? It's an increasingly real problem for collectors, not mention their unsuspecting houseguests... The New York Times 06/26/05

How Not To Memorialize A Tragedy How do you build a memorial to a tragedy? How can you properly commemorate human deaths while also creating something enticing enough to draw spectators? New York is struggling with this problem at Ground Zero, of course, and Christopher Knight has spotted a textbook example of what not to do: Berlin's new Holocaust memorial. "Your mind knows that the place is supposed to confuse and disorient. It creates a theatrical sense of slowly enveloping claustrophobia and entrapment, meant to parallel the rising tide of Nazism 70 years ago. But you never feel it in your body. Walking among the tombstone-like shafts, there is no sense of threat. Menace is absent. Absurdity begins to loom." Los Angeles Times 06/25/05

Creating An African-American Building Baltimore's new Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture was a long time coming, and organizers struggled to insure that their vision would stand out from the crowd. "The architects' challenge was to create a building that fits into the urban context but stands out enough to convey how unusual it is. They responded with a boldly modern building that makes the most of its tight but prominent site. Then they imbued the building with layers of meaning that help tell what's inside. The design doesn't make literal references to African architecture. Its strength lies in the use of architectural symbolism - through colors, forms and materials - to create a building that avoids cliches but is undeniably African-American in spirit." Baltimore Sun 06/25/05

A Discovery Under Site Of Ethiopian Obelisk In preparing to erect an obelisk being returned from Italy to Ethioipia, workers have found at the ancient site of Axum a series of underground chambers and arcades near the original position of the obelisk, beneath an area converted into a parking lot in 1963. The Art Newspaper 06/24/05

Record Price For Francis Bacon A Francis Bacon painting has sold at auction for £4.9 million, "a new record for the artist. Portrait of George Dyer Staring into a Mirror reached the price at a Post-War and Contemporary Art auction by Christie's on Thursday. The 1967 painting, sold to a private collector from Europe, had only been expected to sell for up to £3.5m." BBC 06/24/05

UK Court Rules Hamilton Photos "Indecent" A British court has ruled that photographer David Hamilton's "multi-million-selling images of young, naked women and girls are officially branded as indecent in a landmark British ruling. Anyone owning one of his coffee-table books now risks being arrested for possession of indecent photographs, following a ruling at Guildford Crown Court.
Hamilton's photographs have long been at the forefront of the 'is it art or pornography?' debate.
The Guardian (UK) 06/24/05

After Two Years Of Looting Iraqi Art... "Archaeological sites in southern Iraq have been systematically looted for more than two years, but experts say the dig will have to go much deeper to find out where thousands of lost artefacts have ended up. The complete lack of knowledge is devastating. One article said that a billion Iraqi dinars worth of artefacts had been smuggled to Syria, but that's absurd. We just don't know what's gone." Discovery 06/23/05

Art In Musical Terms There is a relationship, but does one describe the other? "The notion was to take the novelty of abstract art, so radical before World War I that it could hardly be imagined, and justify it by comparison to music. If a Beethoven string quartet could be understood and admired on its own terms, without imagining that it painted a sonic picture of the world, visual art should have the same freedom to escape from rendering reality. The notes and timbres and structures of music could be compared to the colors and textures and forms of a painting; a talented artist could assemble them into a visual "composition" every bit as affecting, meaningful and praiseworthy as anything that goes on in a fancy concert hall." Washington Post 06/23/05

Iraq Joins "Most-Endangered" List For the first time, the World Monuments Fund has listed an entire country as endangered. It's Iraq, and the country joins other threatened sites from 55 countries that include a Modernist building in New York and a hut in Antarctica. "The list of 100 at-risk sites, issued by the privately financed World Monuments Fund every two years, is chosen from nominations made by a broad array of experts in archeology and the arts." BBC (Reuters) 06/21/05

Dissecting The Guggenheim's Empire The Guggenheim continues its expansionist appetite. But former board member Peter Lewis says there is more to expansion than met the eye. "In speeches, it was, 'We're the museum of the future.' It was sold that sort of way," he says. In fact it was driven by the need for revenue. "The rationale always was, 'We had a nongenerous, noncontributing set of trustees--therefore we had to have other sources of revenue and capital--that's why we must expand. It's not the Guggenheim--it's the Guggenheim merchandising the Bilbao effect." OpinionJournal.com 06/22/05

Manhattan's Misguided Stadium Plan Why did anyone ever think building a stadium in Manhattan was a good idea, asks Ada Louise Huxtable. "A stadium should never--repeat, never--be built on the midtown Manhattan waterfront; this is a flagrant violation of everything we know about urban land use. It is axiomatic that you do not put industrial-size blockbusters in uniquely desirable locations; they destroy an enormous potential for profit and pleasure while denying access to one of the city's most valuable amenities. Located next to the convention center, the stadium would have doubled the mass and length of the huge bunker against the river already established by that "lump of black coal"--as essayist Phillip Lopate described its dark bulk in his literary trip around the edges of Manhattan--cutting off views and access with nearly a mile of hulking wall." OpinionJournal.com 06/22/05

Hughes: Serra Is Our Greatest Artist Robert Hughes writes that Richard Serra is one of Amer'ica's three greatest sculptors. Ever. In fact, Hughes says, Serra's new installation at Guggenheim Bilbao makes Gehry's architecture seem pale by comparison. "Let's come right out with it: on the basis of his installation of one old and seven new rolled steel sculptures at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, we can call Richard Serra not only the best sculptor alive, but the only great one at work anywhere in the early 21st century." The Guardian (UK) 06/21/05

Of Venice And Basel... Two major events in the art world this month - Art Basel and the Venice Biennale. But though one's a commercial art fair and the other's an "aesthetic" exercise, they're not so different. "While Venice is about discovering and appreciating new art and is ostensibly aloof from the market, commercial interests are never too far from the surface. Reputations are made and deals are done behind the scenes that impact directly on the market. Basel, on the other hand, is unquestionably about money, but aspires more and more to be about culture and education, to be like a biennale." The Telegraph (UK) 06/20/05

Standing Up For Modernism New York's Museum of Art & Design is planning to reclad and renovate a modernist structure on Columbus Circle to serve as its new home, but the World Monuments Fund is protesting, arguing as part of its new list of endangered architectural sites that "the 1964 building represents a turning point in Modernist design. In an era of growing calls for the preservation of Modernist architecture, the 2006 watch list includes nine 20th-century sites." The New York Times 06/21/05

Dismantling Iraq A new book details the cultural history of Iraq and its pillaging. "Conceived as an educational tool and a plea for help, the book offers a history of the region and its art, as well as an account of the devastation that occurred in April 2003, when looters ran rampant through the museum in Baghdad." Los Angeles Times 06/20/05

Master Builder "The name of Arup rings through postwar architecture like a subsonic rumble. This extraordinary firm has had a largely invisible hand in many of the iconic structures of the past 50 years, from the Sydney Opera House through the Pompidou Centre, James Frazer Stirling's Stuttgart Art Gallery, Norman Foster's Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, right up to the Swiss Re Tower and the London Eye. If you've got a huge or difficult project to sort out, like a bridge or a skyscraper or an airport, Arup is one of the few companies to turn to." The Guardian (UK) 06/20/05

Contemporary Art Market Tops Out? Have prices for contemporary art peaked, after super-heating in recent months? Art Basel sales suggest they may be... "Younger art was making all the noise. Now, there's a bit of a shift to postwar art. At these price levels, collectors are becoming more conservative." Bloomberg.com 06/20/05

Chimp Paintings Sell For $25,000 An auction of paintings by Congo the chimpanzee have sold at auction in London for more than $25,000. "Congo, born in 1954, produced about 400 drawings and paintings between ages 2 and 4. He died in 1964 of tuberculosis. The three abstract, tempera paintings were auctioned at Bonhams in London alongside works by impressionist master Renoir and pop art provocateur Andy Warhol. But while Warhol's and Renoir's work didn't sell, bidders lavished attention on Congo's paintings." USAToday 06/20/05

A Regional Museum Gets An Expansion Right The Delaware Art Museum reopens after a major expansion. "The museum has been closed for three years for a complicated renovation and expansion that not only increases its capacity by two-thirds, but also dramatically reorients the building on its 11-acre site. One of the region's premier smaller museums, it generally specializes in American art and illustration, including major collections of work by illustrator Howard Pyle and realist painter John Sloan." Philadelphia Inquirer 06/19/05

A Museum Director Who Makes Way Over Scale (But Why?) How do museums set salaries for their directors? That's what Tacoma News-Tribune reporter Jen Graves wants to know after noting that the small Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art has paid its director $282,000 in salary and $34,000 in benefits. The median museum director salary in the Western United States is $188,000. "At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an operation roughly 10 times the size of MoG and with $280 million in net assets, the director makes $267,245." So what has the glass museum got for its money from its departing director? The News-Tribune (Tacoma) 06/19/05

Killing A Memorial By Committee Any chance of making something meaningful of the Ground Zero memorial in Lower Manhattan is all but faded. "As the wrangling over the nearby Freedom Tower has shown, nothing here goes smoothly. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is quietly pushing to wrap up plans for the memorial by mid-July. But after two and a half years of tinkering, the city is likely to end up with a memorial geared to tourists with short attention spans rather than to the serious contemplation of human loss. Worse, the constant revisions continue to gobble up space for the living, threatening to transform the site into a theme park haunted by death." The New York Times 06/19/05

China At The Center... (Again?) Every so often one can feel a perceptible shift in the center of the artworld. "And it is, so the received wisdom has it, about to happen all over again; for there is a country that can - and does - boast 3,000 years of culture, dizzying rates of economic growth and a long-suppressed determination to engage the outside world in its inexorable rise as a global power. Little wonder that all eyes were on China..." Financial Times 06/17/05

In Chicago - Dueling Contemporaries The Chicago Art Institute is building an enormous addition that will result in the largest museum of contemporary art in Chicago. So where does that leave the city's Museum of Contemporary Art? Chicago Tribune 06/19/05

Brit Returns Nazi-Looted Sculpture To Greece A British citizen has returned an ancient statue to the government of Greece. "Following the fate of so many antiquities during the Nazi occupation, the kouros is believed to have been looted when the Germans bombarded the island in November 1943. After winding up in the possession of a private collector in Switzerland, James Ede's antiquities firm acquired it earlier this year." The Guardian (UK) 06/19/05

Fortress Munch No one will be stealing anything from Oslo's Munch Museum again. "When the museum reopened Friday after a 10-month security overhaul, several hundred invited guests waited up to a half-hour each to pass through two airport-style metal detectors, an X-ray machine, an optical ticket reader, a turnstile and a double set of one-way security doors. Inside, all of Munch's pictures were framed behind glass and bolted to the wall. The most significant ones were further protected by an 11-foot-tall partition of thick glass panels positioned 24 inches from the wall and overseen by security cameras and guards. The online version of the newspaper Aftenposten rechristened the museum 'Fortress Munch'." The New York Times 06/18/05

Pop Grows Up "Pop got its start by making fun of the platitudes that second- and third-generation Abstract Expressionism had settled into, mocking the increasingly popular movement's increasingly shrill insistence on gestural spontaneity, existential anxiety and psychological authenticity." But Pop Art has grown up. "Pop and connoisseurship are no longer opposed. Sophistication is not limited to highbrow cultivation but encompasses enthusiasms that cut across classes, arising wherever passion has room to pursue its own ends, on its own terms." Los Angeles Times 06/19/05

Great Design... But Why Not Show It To Us? "In five years, the Cooper-Hewitt has handed trophies and honors to more than 100 of the most creative people in the country. Collectively, they have helped foster a golden age of American design. That matters because design is the new competitive edge in business. It's also one of the only aspects of modern manufacturing that China doesn't yet own." But wait - awards are nice, but shouldn't the C-H offer an annual exhibition of the best work? After all, isn't that what Smithsonian museums do? Washington Post 06/18/05

The Freud Phenomenon "In the late 1980s, not yet antique but merely old-fashioned, Lucien Freud was shunned by the museums and his practice seemed to have reached a dead end. And while there are particular circumstances that explain Freud’s resurrection—above all the simple fact of his survival which illogically confers on a career the stamp of authenticity and sincerity—it is also linked to the much remarked upon revival of painting in the last few years." The Art Newspaper 06/16/05

Looking Through Vasari At Leonardo (His Greatest Work?) Is the painting considered Leonardo's greatest work, on a wall behind another painting by Vasari? A scientist using sophisticated scanners thinks he's discovered it. "We looked through Vasari's painted walls with a low-frequency sonogram machine. On the west wall we found nothing really significant. But on the east wall, beneath the Battle of Marciano, we spotted a 16-centimeter cavity. It is very likely that Vasari created it to protect Leonardo's work. Amazingly, this hollow space is right under Vasari's hint 'seek and you shall find.' " Discovery 06/16/05

Venice's Big Step Forward The Venice Biennale seems to have taken a very real turn for the better this year, says Sarah Milroy, not least due to its inclusion of far more than the usual number of female artists. "Customarily, these shows are a real mixed bag, flabby, undisciplined affairs bloated with nepotistic inclusions... But in the two leading curated group exhibitions, there is little trace of the usual laziness. Curators Rosa Martinez (at the Arsenale) and Maria de Corral (at the Italian pavilion) have pulled together large shows that feel carefully shaped and are filled with interesting newcomers from around the world to a degree that made the show feel truly global for the first time in my 20 years of attending." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/16/05

Munch To Reopen, Minus Its Star Attraction "The Munch Museum is set to reopen, 10 months after Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream was stolen. The Oslo museum closed in August 2004 after masked thieves pulled the work and another painting, Madonna, off the wall in front of visitors. Police are yet to recover the paintings, despite a reward of two million kroner [$308,210] on offer. A pastel version of The Scream and a lithography of Madonna will be put on display at the museum instead." BBC 06/16/05

A Biennale For Adults Michael Kimmelman likes this year's Venice Biennale. "Reactions to biennales are always Rashomon-like. That the current festival is generally regarded as pensive and a bit risk-averse is partly a response to the previous biennale, a fiasco that would make nearly anything else seem prudent and sober. Call this the first fairly adult biennale in memory." The New York Times 06/16/05

The Zen Of Tut Economics With the opening here on Thursday of "Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" - a two-year, four-city American tour with the stated goals of mass appeal and mass profits - many feared this more recent curse, of abject commercialism, would rise again. Yet unless vast sums are lost, this is one time when the curse may have lost its power." The New York Times 06/16/05

Pop Culture? Sure... But Is It Art? "Cultural institutions across the United States are drawing crowds as they open exhibits featuring the likes of "The Lord of the Rings," Princess Diana, and "Star Wars." But some wonder, as they stroll among the characters, costumes, and movie memorabilia, how is this museum material?" Christian Science Monitor 06/16/05

Goya Recovered A Goya painting has been recovered in Montenegro. "The oil painting, Count Ugolino, had been lifted from a gallery in Turin, northern Italy, in December 2001. Goya's work - which evokes a gory episode from Dante's Inferno - was retrieved during a raid on a flat near the Montenegrin capital of Pogdorica." BBC 06/16/05

Germany Remembers WWII In Its Art It seems like there's a memorial to war or the Holocaust on most streets in Berlin. "The Germans are correct in asserting that no other country has ever taken such a monumental (pun intended) step toward memorializing its own crimes. That's just not what national memorials generally do. But Berlin is a city in which almost every street evokes complex historical events; Germany is a country rich with sites of its tragic past." OpinionJournal.com 06/16/05

T.O.'s Power Plant Gets A New Sparkplug "Sources close to The Power Plant, Toronto's premier non-collecting showcase for cutting-edge contemporary art, confirmed yesterday that a search committee has picked Gregory Burke to succeed Wayne Baerwaldt as the gallery's director. Baerwaldt, who came to The Power Plant in March, 2002, after running Winnipeg's Plug In Gallery for 13 years, announced his resignation in February and completed his term in Toronto June 2. Burke is currently in Venice overseeing New Zealand's participation in the city's famous Biennale. He also was curator of New Zealand's first-ever presentation at the Biennale, in 2001. For the last seven years he's been director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth on New Zealand's Northern Island." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/15/05

Venice - A Confusing Feast Adrian Searle find much to like at this year's Venice Biennale, but there's too much to get your head around. "The Venice Biennale is filled with nullities and profundities, the silly and the serious. Always, there is too much to see, things to forget and things that surprise and confuse. Confusion is good, but there's too much of it, even though this is a smaller, better biennale than the previous two editions." The Guardian (UK) 06/14/05

Shiny Musums Do Not Great Art Make "Over the past decade, as a result of a government initiative called Renaissance in the Regions and through the huge amount of investment made by the Heritage Lottery Fund, there has been the beginning of a transformation in museums and galleries throughout Britain. All of this is good news. But it has become increasingly clear that museums and galleries cannot live on capital projects alone. There is no point having beautiful, gleaming new museums and galleries with the most up-to-date facilities and cafés if they don't have the money to buy works of art." The Telegraph (UK) 06/15/05

Chicago Art Institute Steps Up To Architecture The Chicago Art Institute is expanding its commitment to architecture, "appointing a forward-looking curator and expanding and renaming the department to include modern and contemporary design." Joseph Rosa, 45, will become the curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute's newly christened Department of Architecture and Design. On Monday the museum's board of trustees approved the appointment of Rosa, who is currently in a similar position at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Chicago Sun-Times 06/14/05

Art Basel Opens The Art Basel art fair opens, and as much as $300 million in sales could be made. "Names on collectors' shopping lists include classic contemporaries, such as Andy Warhol; artists in mid-career who did well at the New York auctions, including Prince and Kippenberger, and younger ones who have waiting lists for new works, such as Kai Althoff and Neo Rauch, say collectors and dealers. It's hard to see who the promising new artists are because a rush of money into the market has pushed up prices for everyone in recent years." Bloomberg.com 06/14/05

Barnes President Steps Down Kimberly Camp, the embattled president and CEO of the Barnes Foundation since 1998, has resigned. Camp had joined the Barnes after heading the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. Philadelphia Inquirer 06/14/05

UK Museums - Show It Or Lose It UK museums are under pressure in a new report to show off their collections or get rid of the art they can't display. "Collections are potentially museums' most precious asset - but what business would allow up to 80% of its assets to go unused, while continuing to consume significant resources?" the report's authors ask. The Guardian (UK) 06/14/05

Was "Scream" Theft A Diversion? Was the theft of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from an Oslo museum last year merely a diversion for a gang of criminals on a crime spree? "The theft of The Scream was supposed to take the heat off them - and it worked. They successfully raided several banks in the weeks following the theft." The Guardian (UK) 06/14/05

What's Wrong With Art Education Time was, artists honed their craft in school and by learning from the skills of masters of the day. No more, writes Laurie Fendrich. "Art education (by which I mean the education of artists for the professional contemporary art world, as opposed to the education of high-school art teachers, which is an entirely separate matter) has become a hodgepodge of attitudes, self-expression, news bulletins from hot galleries, and an almost random selection of technical skills that cannot help but leave most art students confused about their ultimate purpose as artists. This mishmash approach has been going on for so long that it amounts to an orthodoxy..." Chronicle of Higher Education 06/03/05

Can You Afford To Work In A Museum? "The fact is that museum careers in the UK are becoming less and less affordable for anyone with even fairly modest life style expectations and a family to raise in a world of soaring cost of education, health and retirement provision. Add to this the cost of property (not just in London) and anyone starting off on a museum career today is almost guaranteed a pauper's existence. Are traditional museum jobs imperceptibly returning to be the preserve of the privately wealthy or otherwise financially independent, with a sprinkle of inveterate believers in the cause happy to ‘pay' for their careers with a garret existence?" Platform 06/05

Vennice Biennale Opens The Venice Biennale opens, this year a confirmation of what's hot in contemporary art rather than breaking new ground. "More tightly edited than in years past, this Biennale, the 51st, was organized by María de Corral and Rosa Martínez, who reduced the number of artists from some 300 two years ago to about 90." Some 300,000 people are expected to attend this summer. The New York Times 06/13/05

• Venice Biennale - First Among World's Fairs Wold's fairs were important in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for sharing information. "The Venice Biennale remains the first, the biggest, the best. More important is who goes there. And everybody goes there. Documenta may be more influential; it is certainly more coherent. But nothing brings out the art world like Venice. It's a spectacular place to go. The national pavilions are part of it, but so are the other exhibitions." Los Angeles Times 06/12/05

A Taste For Mexican Art There's a surge in interest in Mexican art - both the classics and new hotshots. "While rich collectors such as film producer Joel Silver, former HBO boss Michael Fuchs, and Daniel Filipacchi, the chairman of Hachette, favour 20th-century Mexican masters, a younger generation of collectors - mostly Latin Americans, Americans and a sprinkling of Europeans - buy work by a new generation of Mexican artists breaking new ground." The Telegraph (UK) 06/12/05

A Rich Legacy Andrea Rich has been leading the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for ten years. "The museum has stable finances, longer hours, grand plans and, yes, fully operative telephone and computer systems. With star architect Renzo Piano poised to lead an expansion and reorganization of the crowded, confusing campus, the $130-million projected cost of phase one is already in the bank. These facts alone, many museum professionals say, should qualify Rich as a triumphant turnaround artist. But the closer you look, the more complicated that picture becomes..." Los Angeles Times 06/12/05

Of Music And Architecture "There has always been a close relationship between music and architecture, experimental or otherwise, in terms of structure, pattern and aesthetics, even though sound ultimately describes immaterial space. Plainchant, for example, somehow belongs to Romanesque abbeys, even though its origins are much older, just as Bach is all but synonymous with baroque churches. For better or worse, Wagner conjures images of the fairy-tale, alpine fantasmagoria of Neuschwanstein, the Sleeping Beauty castle built by Wagner's indulgent patron, Ludwig II. The avant-garde music of the 20th century has its architectural counterparts, too>" The Guardian (UK) 06/11/05

Wildenstein Sons To Challenge Court Plan To Liquidate Collection The Wildenstein family has one of the world's biggest art collections, "worth an estimated €10 billion, and connections that have allowed them to broker some of the Louvre's biggest purchases." Now "Alec and Guy Wildenstein, whose father Daniel died four years ago, will challenge a French court ruling in favour of their 71-year-old stepmother Sylvia to break up the huge private collection, believed to include Renoirs, Monets and Manets." The Observer (UK) 06/12/05

Tate Modern At Five The Tate Modern has been a huge success, currently drawing about 4 million visitors a year. With the neighborhood around it growing up, the Tate looks at expansion. But how does the museum stay ahead with its collections? The New York Times 06/12/05

40 Sue Art Storage Company Over London Warehouse Fire Forty galleries, collectors and artists have sued the art storage company Momart over a warehouse fire in London last year that destroyed millions of dollars worth of art. "The list of litigants includes some of the most powerful figures in the industry: the artists Damien Hirst and Gillian Ayres; the sculptor Barry Flanagan; five Royal Academy of Arts trustees, including the celebrated architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw; and a host of galleries." The Independent (UK) 06/11/05

Autry And Cal Hist Team Up "The Autry National Center and the California Historical Society have entered into a 100-year partnership designed to enhance exhibitions at the Autry museum in Los Angeles and create a Southern California presence for the San Francisco-based historical society. The plan calls for joint projects that will bring the society's holdings out of storage and into the public eye." Los Angeles Times 06/10/05

New Art In Venice? (It Doesn't Bear The Titian Test) "The problem with the Biennale is that it takes place in Venice, the city in whose Frari church you can see Titian's altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, one of the world's supreme works of art. It is the consummation of Venetian art, mysterious, modest and, as you find if you visit near the feast of the Ascension, still serving a community of worshippers. It seems a futile thing, championing the new in a city that is such a great advert for the old, but in recent years the Biennale has been so atrociously curated and so pathetically managed that it would disgrace a far lesser city." The Guardian (UK) 06/09/05

Acropolis Repairs Drag On The poor Acropolis is in great disrepair, and preserving it has been problematic. "Thirty years after Greek conservationists launched the biggest restoration project in modern history, the works have become dogged by controversy, and the government in Athens has now revealed that at least 20 more years - and up to €70m (£47m) - will be needed to finish the project. The restoration is causing political ructions in Greece, not least because nobody knows where the money will come from." The Guardian (UK) 06/10/05

Mandela Sues Over Artwork Nelson Mandela is suing his former lawyer over sales of Mandela's artwork. "Mr Mandela’s side now claims that unauthorised prints are being marketed which bear false signatures. It is argued that these sales are worth millions of dollars. Mr Mandela’s prints typically sold for over $10,000 each until last month." The Art Newspaper 06/09/05

Discovered: Major Trove Of Ancient Roman Statues A site in Cyrene in Libya that has been under excavation for 150 years has recently yielded 76 intact Roman statues. “One morning, a collapsed wall in the Roman temple, which was discovered in the 1930s, revealed a marble serpent wrapped around a stone. We could not have known that this was only the first in a series of statues of every kind and size that we would pull from the ground. We just kept discovering them every day, for a month and a half, and found 76 in total.” The Art Newspaper 06/09/05

Warhol Foundation Files For Copyright Violation The Warhol Foundation has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against a website that offers "museum-quality copies of famous masterpieces painted by our Thai artists totally by hand." The site offered "oil-on-canvas copies of famous works created by a studio of artists in Thailand. Many artistic tastes were represented – from pop artists like Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to impressionists Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet – for prices ranging from $250 to $500 US." CBC 06/09/05

Milwaukee Museum's Amazing Shrinking Endowment The Milwaukee Public Museum is in financial difficulty. And its board was unaware in January when told the museum's endowment stood at $6.4 million at the end of 2004. "That was wrong - the endowment was about $2.5 million at the time, down from $4.6 million at the end of August. Now, the fund contains less than $500,000." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 06/06/05

Lesson Learned: Take Crappier Pictures With the increasing popularity of digital cameras, more and more retailers are offering top-quality printing services for those who want a hard copy of their photos. But your snapshots better not look too professional, or many retailers might refuse to print them. "There are a growing number of stories of amateur photographers being turned away by photofinishers for having photos that looked, at least in the eyes of a store clerk, too good to have been taken by anyone other than a professional. Their photos have become collateral damage in the war on digital copyright infringement." San Diego Union-Tribune 05/30/05

Investor: Art Prices Are "Fantasy" A major investor in art says that art prices for contemporary art "are in fantasy land -- they're near lunacy." "Prices for works by Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock have trebled since 1996, according to index-maker Art Market Research, and New York's $300 million of contemporary art auctions in May set more than 30 records. While some hedge funds may be putting investors at risk, buyers of contemporary art have more chance of losing money on their purchases." Bloomberg.com06/08/05

LACMA Hires A New Prez From Within The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has found half of the team it plans to install to replace departing president and director Andrea Rich. "Melody Kanschat, a 16-year administrator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will take over the museum's presidency July 1, museum officials said. The move is part of the restructuring that will make the presidency the second-ranking job in the institution." The top job will be director, and LACMA's search to fill that position is ongoing. Los Angeles Times 06/08/05

AGO 70% To Goal "The Art Gallery of Ontario announced yesterday it has raised more than 70 percent of the CAN$254-million it says it needs to bring superstar architect Frank Gehry's renovation to fruition by spring, 2008, and not coincidentally pay off 'a little bit' of the debt from the AGO's last $60-million expansion, in 1993... The gallery has earmarked CAN$30-million of the anticipated CAN$254-million for the administration and maintenance of its collections, with another $5-million going into a fund to acquire Canadian and international contemporary art." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/08/05

• Quite A Comeback AGO's fundraising triumph represents a considerable turnaround from the museum's misfortunes of a year ago. For a while, it seemed that AGO couldn't stumble out of a crisis without bumping headlong into another one. But Toronto's cultural elite rallied behind the beleaguered museum, and this week's announcement that AGO is within striking distance of having money in the bank sufficient to stabilize itself and pay for a glamorous new building goes a long way towards rehabilitating its bruised image. Toronto Star 06/08/05

Bringing A Bit Of Retailing Wisdom To The Arts How is it that American art museums are flourishing, even as orchestras, theatres, and so many other arts institutions find themselves desperate for cash and running annual deficits? The answer may be as simple as an increased focus on the customer. "Art museums have learned the lessons of successful retailers in that they allow people to visit at all times of day, including evenings and weekends, not at a prearranged time. And a visitor can go at his or her own pace in a museum, looking, reading, thinking and enjoying. Plus, a concert, dance, performance or film is often included in the price of admission." Seattle Times 06/08/05

Philadelphia Museum In Half-Billion Dollar Expansion "The Philadelphia Museum of Art is embarking on what would be the largest cultural expansion in Philadelphia history, an extremely ambitious, $500 million effort to expand and renovate its iconic building at the end of the Parkway." Philadelphia Inquirer 06/07/05

Saltz: Art Auction As Slave Market Jerry Saltz isn't a fan of art auctions: "Contemporary art auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theater, and brothel. They are rarefied entertainments where speculation, spin, and trophy hunting merge as an insular caste enacts a highly structured ritual in which the codes of consumption and peerage are manipulated in plain sight. Everyone says auctions are about "quality." In fact, auctions are altars to the disconnect between the inner life of art and the outer life of consumption, places where artists are cut off from their art. Auctions have nothing to do with quality." Village Voice 06/07/05

King Tut On Marketing Steroids The four-city tour of King Tut in the US that begins next week in Los Angeles is a marketing extravaganza. "Little about Tut II is like anything the museum world is used to, let alone the museum world of 1976-1979 when Tut virtually invented the blockbuster museum exhibit. For Tut II, museums are merely the venues, not the prime organizers, in large part because no museum could afford to insure the exhibit for its official value of $650 million. Also, Egypt has become a savvy negotiator determined to squeeze as many dollars out of Tut as possible." USAToday 06/07/05

Serra's New Masterpiece Michael Kimmelman writes that Richard Serra's new installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao is "one of the great works of the past half-century, the culmination of a remarkable fruition in Mr. Serra's career. It rejuvenates and pushes abstraction to a fresh level. And it is deeply humane, not least because it counts on individual perception, individual discovery." The New York Times 06/07/05

Statue Of Ancient Pharoah Found "A life-sized statue of the 13th Dynasty Pharaoh Neferhotep I has emerged from the ruins of ancient Thebes in Luxor. Buried for almost 3,600 years, the six-foot limestone statue shows the "beautiful and good" pharaoh — this is what Neferhotep means — wearing the royal head cloth." Discovery 06/06/05

Saving Machu Picchu Peru has unveiled a new conservation plan for Machu Picchu. The plan includes restricting the number of visitors. "With the defeat of the Shining Path terrorist movement in the 1990s, Peru has been "rediscovered" by the international tourism industry and the hordes of visitors are causing erosion and other damage to the archaeological site which extends over some 76,000 acres. In addition, mummies dating from the Inca period are being exposed to the elements and wild orchids are threatened by the increasing pollution." The Independent (UK) 06/06/05

British Art - Home To The World Where are the hot new British artists coming from? All over. The British Art Show "reflects how London's art scene is fast usurping New York and European cities as the place to be." "The final list of 49 artists unveiled today - a day before the original Young British Artist (YBA) and former enfant terrible Damien Hirst turns 40 - incorporates more than 18 different nationalities. Curators of the exhibition said its diversity was a reflection of how London had become a magnet to growing numbers of international artists who were enriching the scene and re-defining the notion of "Britishness"." The Independent (UK) 06/06/05

Bravo Piano - Chicago Plan Looks Like A Winner The Chicago Art Institute's expansion plan designed by Renzo Piano and unveiled last week, is a winner, writes Blair Kamin. "The plan calls for a $258 million wing at the southwest corner of Columbus and Monroe Drives that will concentrate the Art Institute's now-scattered modern and contemporary collections in a 264,000-square-foot temple of steel, glass and limestone. Completion is due in spring 2009. In most cities, this would be a stand-alone structure, the leading art museum. Here, it has been deftly woven into an urban composition that includes the sober classicism of the Art Institute's 1893 temple along Michigan Avenue and the baroque modernism of Gehry's Pritzker music pavilion, across Monroe in Millennium Park. That is a balancing act worthy of a circus acrobat carrying a parasol." Chicago Tribune 06/05/05

Liquidating Wildenstein? A court has said one of the biggest private art inventories may have to be sold. "Unless the sons of the late art dealer Daniel Wildenstein, Alec and Guy, reach a settlement with Daniel's widow, Sylvia Wildenstein, a significant collection of paintings and drawings will be sold at auction in early July." International Herald Tribune 06/03/05

Pollock Or Not? It looks like there will be protracted battles to determine whether a trove of paintings said to be by Jackson Pollock are authrntic or not. With lines in the dispute being drawn, "they should get the paintings out and let the sides be drawn and make some new educated observations. The thing to do is to keep an open mind until it's all sorted out." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 06/05/05

Marilyn's $78,000 Rose A painting by Marilyn Monroe has sold at auction for $78,000. "The 1962 painting of a red rose was initially inscribed to President Kennedy, but she never gave it to him." The winning bidder runs a Rhode Island gallery. BBC 06/05/05

Everyone Wants To See That Smile It's no secret that the Mona Lisa is the biggest art draw on the planet, with 90% of the Louvre's visitors coming specifically to see the famous DaVinci portrait. Now, the painting has a snazzy new home, and the crowds are bigger than ever... Toronto Star 06/04/05

Two More Leaving Walker Two more top officials at the Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center have resigned to take other jobs, leaving the museum - one of the flagships of the Twin Cities' arts scene - with something like a leadership vacuum months after opening a massive addition. "Major building programs often trigger staff turnover, experts said, but it is rare for so many important players to depart simultaneously, especially when the project has gotten national rave reviews, as the Walker has." Minneapolis Star Tribune 06/04/05

• Previously: Walker COO Resigns Abruptly Weeks after opening a major expansion, Minneapolis's Walker Art Center has accepted the resignation of its chief operating officer, who oversaw the year-long construction project. "[Ann] Bitter's surprise departure comes at an awkward moment in the Walker's development. Its addition by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron has received rave reviews, but the building's experimental architecture and mid-construction design changes forced the museum to cut costs by leaving the offices unfinished. Completing the offices and an adjacent sculpture garden are expected to cost up to $5 million more." Minneapolis Star Tribune 05/27/05

Newly Discovered Munch Work Unveiled "The Bremen Kunsthalle art museum on Friday put on display a previously unknown painting by Norwegian master Edvard Munch, depicting a naked girl appearing to be threatened by a vision of the faces of three men... The painting was discovered while restoration work was being done on the Munch painting 'The Dead Mother'... The symbolist-style painting, measuring 90 by 100 centimetres, is estimated by art experts to date to around 1898." Expatica (Netherlands) 06/03/05

Why Corcoran Turned Its Back On Gehry Why did the Corcoran abandon its Frank Gehry addition and ask for the resignation of David levy, its director? "Mr. Levy believed that there was still a way to get the Gehry building done. Its price tag had soared to about $200 million, but 'we'd raised $110 million, more money than any institution in this city has ever raised,' he says. But the board felt the task of fund raising was eating up all the institutional oxygen, so it asked for his resignaton." OpinionJournal 06/03/05

Greek Curator On Trial For Offending Church A Greek curator is on truial for offending the Eastern Orthodox church last year when he "organised a major modern art exhibition in Greece as part of a series of cultural events leading up to the Olympics. The case against him stems from a painting by Belgian artist Thierry de Cordier, which shows a penis next to a Christian cross." If found guilty he could go to jail for five years. BBC 06/03/05

Davidson: Hope For Ground Zero Justin Davidson admits that conventional wisdom says the Ground Zero rebuilding process is a mess. But. "Yes, much of what is happening downtown is lamentable, secretive, unpredictable and slow. But nearly four years after the attacks we have a plan that, for all its flaws, represents a workable compromise. We should keep prodding it toward reality." Newsday 06/01/05

Art Of The Fake Faking contemporary art is more common, but “with Old Master paintings, it’s just about over. Forgery is much more difficult because we have so many tools to discover them. (See article page 106.) It’s impossible to imagine a Picasso painting coming out of the woodwork that nobody has ever seen. It’s inconceivable that someone would get away with it.” ARTnews 06/05

• The 10 Most-Faked Artists What are the most -faked aartists? Here's a list... ARTnews 06/05

Court: Met Can Expand A New York Court has struck down a neighborhood group's challenge to a major expansion by the Metropolitan Museum. "The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court ruled 5-0 that the community group's court petition to block construction on environmental grounds was time-barred - more than two years late. The court said the group should have acted within four months." Newsday 06/02/05

Cleveland's Departing Director Getting Out Now "Katharine Reid announced in February she would retire as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art as soon as a successor could be named. This week, she sped up her schedule... Effective Friday, July 1, Reid will become consulting director of the museum. Deputy directors Charles Venable, Susan Jaros and Janet Ashe will run the museum as a team until a new director is appointed." Reid's departure comes as the museum is gearing up for a massive six-year expansion project, and the search for her successor is likely months from being completed. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 06/02/05

Turner Shortlist Takes A Turn For The Traditional For the last several years, a casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking that the overarching mission of Britain's Turner Prize was to antagonize art lovers and the general public as much as humanly possible, while simultaneously propping up the careers of artists who fit nicely into the "shock and awe" category. But this year's Turner shortlist appears to be going in quite a different direction, and includes a painter specializing in traditional still life and landscape work. The shortlist ought to go a long way towards placating the prize's harshest critics, who have accused Turner organizers of ignoring many serious young artists in favor of conceptually-based flavors of the month. BBC 06/02/05

The Pompidou Rehangs The Pompidou Museum in Paris is doing a radical rehang of its permanent collection for the first time in 28 years. The museum will "display its permanent collection in thematic sections rather than chronological order. The new hang is entitled “Big bang: destruction and creation in 20th-century art.” The Art Newspaper 06/01/05

Art - A Wild West Marketplace Art is touted as the great investment now as the market soars and stocks settle. But “the art trade is the last major unregulated market. And while it always involved large sums of money, there was never the level of trading and investing that we have now." The Art Newspaper 06/01/05

Gilbert And George In Venice Gilbert and George are no longer young. They still think of themselves as outsiders, even as they represent the UK at this summer's Venice Biennale. "They claim to have sold only two pieces to British collectors in the past 15 years. Saatchi wasn't having any. They complain that the Tate won't hang the little they've got. But in Venice, one of the most important Italian collectors will be hosting a dinner in honour of the duo." The Guardian (UK) 06/01/05

Are Skylines Killing Miami? Miami is filling in its skyline at an alarming rate, and it promises to change the very character of the city. "As of April, there were 261 development projects in motion (this is to say somewhere between preliminary application and recent completion) in the city of Miami. For Miami this means a mind-boggling 69,039 residential units, which is basically the equivalent of building a medium-sized city. Not all of this is what might be considered ''prime'' residential development, along the bay or in or near downtown, but a significant percentage is." Miami Herald 06/01/05

Viso To Direct Hirshhorn Ned Rifkin is giving up directorship of the Hirshhorn Museum to concentrate on running the Smithsonian. Taking for the Hirshhorn is deputy director Olga Viso. "Viso, 38, a Florida native whose parents emigrated from Cuba, joined the museum's curatorial department 10 years ago as an expert on contemporary Latin American art. She became curator of contemporary art five years later, and stepped up to the role of deputy director of the Hirshhorn in 2003. She previously worked for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., and holds a master's degree from Emory University." Washington Post 06/01/05