Fighting For Women Artists - Have The Guerrilla Girls Helped? Since the 80s, the Guerrilla Girls have been protesting the lack of representation of women artists. "They say it's amazing how little has changed: in 2005, they conducted some fresh research into European collections, and found that, even where museums owned significant amounts of work by female artists, it was all in the basement. To coincide with last September's Venice Biennale, they released the following statistics: of 1,238 artworks exhibited by the major Venice spaces, fewer than 40 are by women." The Guardian (UK) 06/29/06

Klimts For Another $140 Million? "Four Gustav Klimt paintings, including three landscapes and a portrait, 'Adele Bloch-Bauer II,' may be sold this year for $140 million or more, said art dealers - and auctioneers who have been competing for the job." Bloomberg.com 06/29/06

Missed Culture - Liverpool Pushes Ahead With Late Museum "Liverpool is pushing ahead with its proposed waterfront museum, despite losing Lottery money and missing the opportunity to complete it by 2008, when the city becomes European Capital of Culture." The Art Newspaper 06/28/06

There's A Fine Line Between Art And Theft "In the postmodern world it seems, one man's art can be another man's property.So it was that a member of the Vancouver Police Department strode into the ultra-cool Contemporary Art Gallery on a lovely, sunlit afternoon one day last week to inform the gallery that [a local businessman] wanted his signs back. The gallery was caught red-handed. The signs were right there, bold as brass, in the gallery's big front windows... The gallery quickly agreed to return Mr. Grandy's signs, but not without considerable bemusement and wonder at it all." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/29/06

AGO Narrowly Averts Work Stoppage "A last-minute tentative agreement has averted a strike at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union, representing 260 employees, reached a deal with AGO management at 9 p.m. Wednesday. A strike was scheduled to start at 12:01 a.m. Thursday." The Globe & Mail (CP) 06/29/06

Sometimes, You've Gotta Leave Home To Truly Appreciate It Poland has had a complicated history, and the country's artists have sometimes struggled to craft a true national identity. A new show in Chicago traces the 20th century history of Polish art, especially as it involves the migration of Polish artists to Paris. "Factors contributing to identity also changed, so that at the start of the exhibition looking to Western Europe was progressive whereas at the end it was thought to interfere with national allegiance. But this makes the show more interesting rather than less." Chicago Tribune 06/29/06

And Soon, No Eating And No Talking! Chicago's lakefront Millennium Park has drawn plenty of raves from art critics and other journalists since opening a few years back. But some in Chicago have begun to notice some strangely un-parklike (and downright unfriendly) rules in place amid the statuary. For instance, who's ever heard of a park where playing catch is banned? More to the point, what's the purpose of having a huge public park that thinks it's a museum? Chicago Tribune 06/29/06

Finding The Balance Between Art And Entertainment "Where museums were originally established with the responsibilities of, simply, housing and looking after the objects from which the public was encouraged to learn, today's museums (and their funders) want to provide an experience - and not just of the art. They want the museum to have more broad appeal. As museums become more businesslike in their efforts to appeal to the public, there is a fear that they will distance themselves from those characteristics that make them desirably different from commercial businesses: That entertainment (glitzy blockbusters) will replace study (scholarly small-scale discoveries), liveliness replace quiet contemplation, and communication replace communion." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 06/25/06

What State Restoration? Conservation of art work is a big business. But how do you conserve artworks from the 20th Century whose materials are fragile and prone to disintegration? Well, you can ask the artist... The New York Times 06/29/06

Toronto's AGO To Shut For Construction The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto will shut for 6-8 months while construction of its building is completed. "The gallery's ambitious, Frank Gehry-designed transformation and expansion, expected to cost $254-million, has already cost it almost a 30-per-cent decline in visitors. About 665,425 people strolled among the paintings and sculptures in 2004-05, but last year only 475,000 visitors found their way past the hoardings to the temporary side entrance to view art amid the occasional rattle of jackhammers." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/28/06

Why Get Excited About The High Price Of Klimts? "The truth is that applying words such as 'worth' and 'value' to art is an abuse of language. They are terms not of art but of a science, that of economics. They describe price in a market in which supply is fixed but demand exorbitant. Nobody does Klimts any more. The picture was expensive because, unless Christie's was pulling a fast one in a "negotiated" secret deal, there must have been another buyer prepared to pay nearly as much. Getting journalists to hype a work of art to legitimise its market price is playing with words." The Guardian (UK) 06/23/06

They Have Art-Hating Right-Wing Politicians In Canada, Too "You would think that the proposed Portrait Gallery of Canada would be a project that a Conservative government would love: no difficult art, no greased cones or high-concept videos -- just a stirring assemblage of Great Canadians, and those who've come under the scrutiny of Great Canadian portraitists... However, funding for the portrait gallery has been repeatedly stalled. Lately, Ottawa is buzzing with rumours that the project may be abandoned by the Harper government." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/28/06

Southwest Bait-and-switch? The Southwest Museum's deal with the Gene Autry Museum has critics screaming bait-and-switch. "The dispute illustrates a continuing issue in the museum world. When cash-poor but collection-rich institutions are forced into partnerships with their opposites, often no one is left happy." The New York Times 06/28/06

Hirst Out To Replace Shark Artist Damien Hirst is in negotiations to replace the shark in his iconic work featuring a shark in formaldehyde. "The animal suspended in formaldehyde has deteriorated dramatically to the naked eye since it was first unveiled at the Saatchi Gallery in 1992 because of the way it was preserved by the artist. The solution which surrounds it is murky, the skin of the animal is showing considerable signs of wear and tear, and the shark itself has changed shape." The Art Newspaper 06/27/06

National Palace Museum Back Online Taiwan's National Palace Museum is about to open a newly completed renovation. "The museum houses the largest collection of Chinese art and artefacts in the world, consisting mainly of holdings of the last emperor of China, Pu Yi, who was forced out of the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1925. The holdings were then moved from city to city to avoid looting by the Imperial Japanese Army. Most of the collection was transported to Taiwan in the late 1940s by Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the former Republic of China." The Art Newspaper 06/27/06

The Next Stage - Art As Home-selling Enhancement Want to sell your house? It might sell better with some great art in it, and so you hire a "home stager." "Home staging is a trend that's been around at least 10 years in the hot real-estate markets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is now keeping up to 20 different enterprises in business here in Seattle. Using original art rather than inexpensive pastoral prints is the newest twist." Seattle Weekly 06/21/06

Two Become One The Smithsonian's American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery will both reopen this weekend following six years of renovation, and where once the two institutions shared a building but not a mission, they have been redesigned to function together. "A proliferation of offices and interior walls that once narrowed viewing space are gone, giving way to floor plans that sweep visitors from one museum to the other and back again... As they collaborate to tell America's story through ideas and ideals, one conveys it thematically, the other through portraiture, each celebrating the complex forces and figures that have shaped the country since pre-Colonial times." The New York Times 06/27/06

Unconventional Beauty In designing Paris's new Musée du Quai Branly, architect Jean Nouvel didn't exactly take the easiest road to public acclaim. "Defiant, mysterious and wildly eccentric, it is not an easy building to love. Its jumble of mismatched structures, set in a lush, rambling garden on the Left Bank of the Seine in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, hardly conforms to notions of Parisian elegance... Yet for all of its flaws, Jean Nouvel's building creates a kaleidoscopic montage of urban impressions. And once you give yourself over to the experience, you may find it the greatest monument to French popular culture since the Pompidou." The New York Times 06/27/06

Southwest Museum's Makeover - A "Highjacking"? The Southwest Museum is going through a major overhaul, redefining itself. "Some of the museum's neighbors, however, say it's more like a hijacking than a redefinition. Denouncing 'cultural piracy,' the Friends of the Southwest Museum coalition contend that the people behind the move are dodging 'a moral responsibility to maintain and revitalize' the institution's original location. Los Angeles Times 06/26/06

An Abiding Interest In Whistler's Mother "Whistler's Mother is one of the world's most famous paintings... Yet in the recent edition of a prominent art history textbook, 'Whistler's Mother' was omitted for the first time." Boston Globe 06/25/06

Museums - Priced Out Of Collecting? "Museums and galleries are facing a crisis of acquisition. As the art market booms, it becomes increasingly obvious that we have pitifully meagre resources with which to buy works of art to add to, and keep up to date, our museum collections. How on earth can we increase our collections if works of art cost so much? How can we find new sources of funding?" The Observer (UK) 06/25/06

That Elusive American Thing "The whole idea of some kind of more fundamental 'Americanness,' seeping into all our art the way the landscape of Bordeaux seeps into its wines, falls apart as soon as you start testing it. What if it turned out, for instance, that all of Jackson Pollock's pictures were actually painted by a Frenchman -- a certain Jacques Saint-Paul Oc -- who got a hard-drinking young American to flog them for him? Someone would be bound to insist that only a Frenchman could have managed all that insouciant paint-dripping, with its Gallic joie de vivre and a soupcon of panache." Washington Post 06/25/06

A Kansas City Museum's New Display Idea Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum is rearranging its collection. "Typically, there are rooms for paintings, for sculpture, for silverwork, for ceramics, for furniture, etc., and never do the various media meet. That, however, has changed in Kansas City. 'It is a new museum concept. It grows out of this idea that I had that people weren’t getting enough out of it'." The Journal-Star (Lincoln, Nebraska) 06/25/06

Is The Russian-Fuelled Art Boom Due For A Fall? There's no longer any doubt that Russian collectors have been fuelling a major art boom on both sides of the Atlantic. But how long can this particular bubble last? "The last time the market hit such heights was at the end of the 1980s, followed by a crash that saw New York's SoHo, then the city's main gallery district, end up a ghost town... According to current wisdom, this boom is safer because the new globalised market means more stability. The last boom was all about one economy, Japan's, so it was snuffed out when that economy collapsed. But the new markets could be as yet too new and shallow to rely on." The Guardian (UK) 06/24/06

Art You Can See, Taste, Hear, And Smell Wassily Kandinsky may have had more than just paint in mind when he crafted his masterpieces. "Music - and the idea of music - appears everywhere in Kandinsky's work... To support his colour theories, Kandinsky appealed in his manifesto to the evidence of synaesthesia, the scientific name for the condition in which the senses are confused with one another (as when someone hears the ring of a doorbell as tasting of chicken or whatever)." The Guardian (UK) 06/24/06

All's Well At AGO (Or Is It?) "This week, even as an information picket went up around the Art Gallery of Ontario (its 266 staff represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees could strike after June 29) management told the annual meeting that all was well. Although the AGO is undergoing a major reconstruction, its annual attendance topped 475,000 visitors, and it is on budget and acquiring new works. The upbeat report communicated management's positive attitude to the picketers, but it bears scrutiny." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/23/06

Cleveland Museum Facing Construction Delay "The Cleveland Museum of Art has delayed an addition to its parking garage -- an important part of a larger, $258 million expansion and renovation -- because of a holdup with a $7.5 million federal grant. The delay could increase the cost of the garage expansion because the museum had to reject construction bids this month and will have to seek new ones... The delay also means the museum will have fewer parking spaces than it needs in February when it holds a blockbuster exhibition on the paintings of French Impressionist Claude Monet." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 06/24/06

Up Late For Michelangelo The British Museum's Michelangelo show has been so popular the museum has stayed open as late as midnight to accomodate the crowds. "Youths in black carried their skateboards, iPods playing the British rave band Arctic Monkeys shoved into pockets. Elderly people leaned on their canes. In the dim light, thousands stood in silence to focus on the artist's 90 drawings, ranging from Annunciations to Crucifixions to male figure studies." Washington Post 06/23/06

The Loan's The Thing The agreement between Italy and the Getty for longterm loans is becoming a trend. "Though long-term loans have been around for decades, the new twist is that the loan is becoming part of a resolution. That has to be a good thing, in that it allows the object still to have a very broad degree of public access in more than one country. That's what museums are all about: providing a way for people to experience great works of art directly — unmediated through their computer screens and books and other things — in the context of other great art." Los Angeles Times 06/23/06

Bacon Portait Sells For £3.8 Million "A recently discovered self-portrait by Francis Bacon has sold for £3.8m at a Christie's auction in London. The triptych, titled Three Studies, had never been seen by the public until it came to light last month." BBC 06/23/06

The Face Of Shakespeare Few figures have captivated humanity across the centuries like William Shakespeare. But as much as we know about the Bard, much remains murky. For one thing, what exactly did Shakespeare look like? "Since Shakespeare's time, eight portraits have seemed to be genuine likenesses, but today only three of them stand up, and even those are not indisputable." The New York Times 06/23/06

The Museum That Looks Like Its Benefactor Paris's new Musée du Quai Branly was supposed to be former French President Jacques Chirac's lasting cultural legacy. But Tom Dyckhoff says that Chirac doesn't have much to be proud of. "This is a building that never quite resolves itself: not fusion food, but a stew of rich, mismatched ingredients. A saviour for the city? No chance. But, eccentric, incoherent and full of unresolved doubts, it’s the perfect epitaph for Chirac." The Times (UK) 06/21/06

Germans Wish Nazi-Era Painting Could Have Stayed At Home "Germany reacted with dismay yesterday after a painting by the country's most famous living artist, revealing his family's tragic history under the Nazis, was sold to an overseas buyer. Gerhard Richter's work, Aunt Marianne, went for £2.1m at auction... to a private Asian buyer at a Sotheby's auction in London." The Guardian (UK) 06/23/06

Is Art A Good Investment? Let's Do The Numbers... According to a leading index tracking art sales, "over the last 50 years, stocks (as represented by the S&P 500) returned 10.9 percent annually, while the art index returned 10.5 percent per annum. And in the five years between 2001 and 2005, art trounced stocks. But not all art performs equally. In recent years, old masters haven't done so well, while American art before 1950 has been soaring—up 25.2 percent in the last year alone. And across categories, masterpieces (like the Klimt that Lauder just bought) tend to underperform lower-priced paintings by a substantial margin." Slate 06/22/06

Hadid - The Over-Rated Architect Zaha Hadid gets a lot of buzz these days as architect of the future. But Witold Rybczynski thinks she's over-rated. "The urbanism is slightly frightening—a vision of the city that appears unrelated to either human use or occupation. Brasilia on speed. Walter Gropius once said that an architect should be able to design a city or a teacup. Whatever the merits of such a dubious claim, even Gropius wouldn't have suggested that teacups and cities were interchangeable. In Zaha's world, they are." Slate 06/22/06

A Controversial Shakeup At The Brooklyn Museum "Beginning next month, the museum will do away with traditional departments like Egyptian art, African art and European painting and instead create two 'teams,' one for collections and one for exhibitions. Arnold L. Lehman, the museum's director, said in an interview that the changes were intended to make the museum's relatively small curatorial staff more efficient and to encourage curators to exchange ideas more freely. But some curators see the changes as a way of diminishing their traditional power to conceive, propose and organize exhibitions." The New York Times 06/22/06

Getty Will Return Art To Italy The Getty has agreed to return dozens of antiquities in its collections to Italy. As part of the proposed deal, Italy will lend the Getty objects "of comparable visual beauty and historical importance," according to a joint statement released late today. A final agreement, "which will include mutual collaboration, research and the exchange of important antiquities," is expected to be concluded in early summer, the statement added.
Los Angeles Times 06/21/06

Paris Indigenous Art Museum At Cross Purposes Paris' new museum for indigenous art has been mired in controversy for 11 years. "The Musée du Quai Branly - the biggest museum to be built in Paris since the Pompidou centre in 1977 - is Mr Chirac's attempt to cast himself as the defender of art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. A long-time fan of indigenous artefacts, he also wanted to leave Paris with an architectural imprint to rival François Mitterand's legacies, such as the glass pyramid at the Louvre." The Guardian (UK) 06/21/06

A Record Price - Why Klimt? Why Now? "Why should it be Klimt - a modest, quiet man - who set this record and not Picasso or Matisse or Hirst? Forget the cliche of Klimt - the gilded Valentine cards, the Athena posters; in short, The Kiss, the one image by this artist that we all think we know. Klimt is so often undervalued, just because of this travestied masterpiece. So tear your mind's eye away from it. The paintings by Klimt displayed on these pages are pieces of modern intellectual history to set beside a formula scrawled by Albert Einstein or a score by Arnold Schönberg." The Guardian (UK) 06/21/06

Hockney Sells For Auction Record £2.6 Million A new record has been set for sales price of a David Hockney painting. "The painting, dating from 1966, had been in a private collection in California for the past 20 years. The piece, in Hockney's minimalist style, depicts the moment someone hits the water, diving into a swimming pool." BBC 06/21/06

Minneapolis' New Guthrie Theatre Is "Poetic Exercise" "If ever a building deserved to be called sexy-ugly, it's this one. Somehow sleek and ungainly at the same time, a brooding, preening pile of geometric forms that could hardly be less photogenic, particularly on the outside, the design manages to slide naturally into its industrial riverbank context and feel utterly up-to-date. Its completion caps off a mini-boom for the city's cultural institutions, which began with a remarkable addition to the Walker Art Center by Herzog & de Meuron, which opened in April 2005, and has continued this spring with a pair of disappointing buildings: Cesar Pelli's mall-like central library and an entirely forgettable new wing for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts by Michael Graves." Los ANgeles Times 06/21/06

How A Klimt Sold For $135 Million The deal to buy a Klimt painting for $135 million this week took much negotiating between a motivated buyer and a shrewd seller. And what about the other four Klimts owned by Maria Altman? "Experts have speculated that the four Klimts, sold together or individually, could bring as much as $150 million collectively. Then again, after all the attention paid to the 'gold portrait,' they might be seen by some status-minded collectors as a consolation prize." Los Angeles Times 06/21/06

Long-Lost Schiele Painting Sells For £11.7 Million The Egon Schiele painting was missing for more than 60 years after it was stolen by the Nazis in 1938. "For decades it was feared that Wilted Sunflowers had been destroyed during World War II. The painting was last exhibited in Paris in 1937, when it was owned by Austrian art dealer Karl Grunwald. Mr Grunwald fled Vienna for Paris in 1938, but Wilted Sunflowers was among 50 paintings confiscated by the Nazis in Strasbourg. It disappeared after being sold at auction in 1942." BBC 06/21/06

MoMA Names An Architecture Curator "The Modern's director, Glenn D. Lowry, said that Bsrry Bergdoll's appointment underlined the museum's "commitment to having an interesting program in architecture and design that can deal with the historic sweep of Modernism as well as the present." The New York Times 06/21/06

How Ron Lauder Decided To Buy A $135 Million Painting "When did you become fascinated by Klimt? Lauder: I took a trip to Vienna as a teenager and saw Klimt's 'The Kiss' and 'Bloch-Bauer.' I found them absolutely stunning. Whenever I went back to Vienna, I visited them. How long did it take you to decide to buy the Klimt? Lauder: Thirty seconds." Bloomberg.com 06/20/06

Chirac Opens Tribal Art Museum The museum, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, is French president Jacques Chirac's legacy to France. "The museum displays indigenous art from Africa, Asia and Australasia. But the project has been controversial. It opens as France debates how to heal the scars of its colonial past and accept a multi-ethnic nation." BBC 06/20/06

• Jacques Chirac's Problematic New Museum "As an epitaph to a presidency, Chirac really couldn’t have chosen a more controversial subject. The new museum contains that stunning national collection of ethnographic artefacts that so entranced Modernist artists in Paris — it is Chirac’s passion, too, as the self-styled 'great defender' of global culture. But at a time of national soul-searching over the stagnant economy, the loss of the Olympics and the recent race riots, this is bold indeed. True to form, the project has been dogged with controversy — not just the usual 'will it be finished in time' (not quite), the cost (£180 million), the 'Elgin Marbles' debate, but its very purpose." The Times (UK) 06/21/06

Getty Offers To Return Art To Italy The Getty has offered to return 21 antiquities to Italy. "Getty trustees authorized the offer last week after a presentation by museum director Michael Brand, the sources said. It includes a marble statue of two mythical griffins, a statue of Apollo and a 2,600-year-old cup made by the Greek artist Euphronios, all prominently displayed at the newly renovated Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades." Los Angeles Times 06/20/06

• List Of Disputed Antiquities In Getty Collection Grows "Getty officials have been eager to put the antiquities scandal behind them and find a mutually agreeable solution with Italian authorities, but the magnitude of the case continues to grow. Since negotiations over the 52 objects started in January, Italian authorities say they have identified 15 additional items in the Getty's collection that they believe were looted and should be returned. Efforts to reach an agreement have also been complicated by the continuing criminal trial of the Getty's former antiquities curator, Marion True, on charges that she conspired to purchase looted art for the museum." Los Angeles Times 06/18/06

Beautiful Fences Make Good Neighbors? So some Americans are determined to build a fence between Mexico and the US. But what should that fence look like? "Maybe some form of backyard diplomacy is in order — Mexico is no enemy — and there are obvious suspects for the job: professional designers, whose duty it is to come up with welcome solutions that defy ugly problems; to create appeal where there might be none." The New York Times 06/18/06

In New York - Artists Are Playing The Gallery Field "Defections seem to be contagious in Chelsea these days. Long-settled artists are suddenly playing the field, ditching their dealers in favor of galleries with bigger spaces, better locations, stronger connections to museums and collectors and — perhaps most important — a star-studded roster of artists. The difference today, many dealers say, is that it's the successful artists — whose work commands dizzying sums— who are defecting." The New York Times 06/18/06

A Klimt Becomes The Most Expensive Painting Ever Sold "A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting." The New York Times 06/19/06

• Klimt Looted By Nazis Brings Record Price "There has been intense speculation about the destination of the five Klimts since they were returned to Maria Altmann earlier this year. Some believed their exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA, until 30 June) was preliminary to an offer from the museum for the works." The Art Newspaper 06/19/06

A Building Ramshackle As The Commonwealth There's an attempt to tear down London's Commonwealth Institute. "The fate of the Commonwealth Institute is one of those turning points in the history of taste... When it was new, this was as modern as official London got: a slightly shocking intrusion to the skyline against the backdrop of a Royal Park, with an interior that had something of the flavour of an expo. Of course, that fragile-looking roof leaked almost from the beginning and, as coup followed coup, the dioramas couldn't keep up with changing political and economic realities. The building's present ramshackle state, betraying brave hopes gone sour, is a pretty accurate reflection of the Commonwealth itself." The Observer (UK) 06/18/06

Revelation: 350 Getty Artifacts In Question Three hundred and fifty artifacts worth $100 million in the Getty Museum have been identified as having questionable provenance. "The newly identified objects include many of the most prestigious and striking exhibits at the trust's recently reopened Getty Villa, the only museum in the US dedicated to ancient art. Thirty-five of the museum's catalogue of 104 "masterpieces" feature on the new list of disputed artefacts. They include a sculpture of two griffins, a marble and limestone sculpture of the Greek goddess Aphrodite and a bronze known as Victorious Youth, which is displayed in its own temperature-controlled room." The Guardian (UK) 06/19/06

Zaha Hadid - Architect From A Different Time "Today, armed with a clutch of actual buildings, a Pritzker Prize and a pile of big commissions (as well as the Guggenheim show), 56-year-old Hadid has joined the select society of designers charged with keeping the future up-to-date. Her architecture is so impeccably modern - so virtuously free of reference to Greek temples or Gothic cathedrals - that it appears to belong to a time the rest of us haven't experienced yet." Newsday 06/18/06

A Graves Disappointment Much has been made of the cultural building boom going on in Minneapolis, but Blair Kamin says that not all the new stuff is worthy of attention. In particular, architect Michael Graves' new addition to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is a major disappointment. "Some neighbors of the museum liken his addition to a mausoleum or a big-box store, a not-so-veiled shot at the wing's chief sponsor, Minneapolis-based Target Corp." Chicago Tribune 06/18/06

• Functional But Flawed Cesar Pelli's newly opened Minneapolis Central Library cuts an imposing figure on the northern edge of the city's downtown. Pelli designed the building to be adaptable well into the future, and to function as a public gathering space in the city center. "But the library falters as a public presence, owing to the aesthetic gulf between its expressionistic roof and its plain-Jane wings. Pelli's attempts to elevate the mundane wings above the level of a suburban office building cannot overcome their banal geometry. [Still, the building is] light-filled and democratic in spirit, endeavoring to make people feel comfortable rather than intimidated." Chicago Tribune 06/18/06

D.C. Follies "Frank Lloyd Wright came tantalizingly close to redefining the Washington skyline. The master architect was commissioned to design a $15 million complex at the corner of Florida and Connecticut avenues. Two drawings from 1940 -- which appear in an exhibition opening today at the National Building Museum -- show how the neighborhood above Dupont Circle could have become a stunning landmark equal to New York's Rockefeller Center." So what happened? Wright's self-importance apparently rubbed the Washington bureaucracy the wrong way, and what could have been a major urban initiative died at the hands of the local zoning code. All of which explains how Wright came to build a major skyscraper in the middle of an Oklahoma prairie. Washington Post 06/17/06

Let's Make A Deal In an effort to resolve amicably a dispute over looted antiquities, Italian authorities have offered a deal to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. "If accepted, the deal would be similar to that struck earlier this year by the Italians with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Met agreed in February to return six objects --including the famous, 2,500-year-old Euphronios krater. In return, the Met will receive objects 'of equivalent beauty and importance' for as long as four years, the longest Italian law will allow. In addition, the Italians will permit the Met to conduct archeological digs in Italy, and to take out loans of works discovered." Boston Globe 06/17/06

The Met's Glass House "For eight years, curators, conservators, lighting experts and stonemasons have been methodically making small but significant improvements to the five medieval cloisters that were fashioned into [a Metropolitan Museum of Art branch operation] in 1938... The most noticeable addition by far, however, is just beginning to become visible. A wall of windows in the Early Gothic Hall that face west overlooking the Hudson has been carefully restored and given an exterior protective glazing in preparation for the addition of 14 panels of mainly 13th-and 14th-century stained-glass windows." The New York Times 06/17/06

Barnes Neighbors Protest Plans To Move residents of Merion, Pennsylvania, are organizing to try to block the Barnes Collection's move to Philadelphia. The activists say that the barnes' neighbors had proposed way to increase the number of visitors to the museum and generate more income. "We are here because the move is not a done deal. We refuse to except the theft and ruin of a treasure." The Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia) 06/16/06

Baseless Art - Royal Academy Makes A Mistake "Britain's Royal Academy of Art put a block of slate on display, topped by a small piece of wood, in the mistaken belief it was a work of art. The slate and wooden stick was actually a base meant to hold up a laughing human head made by British sculptor David Hensel." CBC 06/15/06

• How Royal Academy Mistook A Plinth For Art "On a trip to see his work in situ, he came across the slate slab and the tiny piece of wood that supported the sculpture, but the macabre countenance was nowhere to be seen. That, the Royal Academy said, was because the artist had submitted the two components separately and the judges had simply preferred the plinth to the head." The Guardian (UK) 06/15/06

How Can It Be Great If It's Not New And Expensive? Washington, D.C.'s Martin Luther King Memorial Library is the district's only building designed by acclaimed architect Mies van der Rohe, but Benjamin Forgey says you wouldn't know it from the way the landmark building is being treated as D.C. politicians push for a new central library. "The idea that the 1972 Mies building cannot be renovated into a first-class 21st-century library is absurd... The city's idea of selling the Mies building to help pay for its new toy is shameful. There is simply no other way to put it. It is to treat a significant work of architecture as if it were a trifling leftover." Washington Post 06/15/06

Binging On Blue-Chips At Basel This year's Basel Art Fair is crawling with high-end dealers and prominent collectors from around the world, all intent on snapping up the hottest pieces on view. "Many felt the offerings were more predictable than in past years, making the fair a venue for acquiring blue-chip artists rather than discovering new talent... Few buyers seemed surprised by the high prices, but many marveled at the diversity of today's players." The New York Times 06/15/06

US Museums Buying, European Museums Falling Behind US museums are buying at this year's ArtBasel. But "even the largest, state-funded European museums are expressing fears that they are being left behind in the current boom. Most do not enjoy such a rich tradition of philanthropy or such generous tax breaks as US museums, while across Europe governments are squeezing cultural budgets." The Art Newspaper 06/15/06

The Measure Of A (Very Rich) Man One of Canada's most prominent art collectors died this week, and some are saying that the loss of Kenneth Thomson will leave a gaping void in the country's art market. "Even while helping to buttress the high end of the market for the rarest major Canadian works, observers say Thomson indirectly broadened the interest for lesser known and contemporary Canadian art." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/14/06

Unesco: Stonehenge Off the List? Unesco is considering removing Stonehenge from the World Heritage list. Why? The site has "poor traffic management". The Guardian (UK) 06/13/06

Christie's Withdraws Artifact Christie's has removed an ancient Egyptian vessel from sale over concerns about how it was taken out of Egypt. "Upon receiving information which led us to believe that the object had possibly been improperly taken out of Egypt, we contacted the appropriate U.S. authorities and withdrew the item from the sale," Yahoo! (AP) 06/12/06

ArtBasel Brings Out The Buyers Collectors have been on a buying spree as ArtBasel begins. "The quality this year is very high and so are the prices. People always say great material is hard to find, but we’re seeing it here–because right now, this week in Basel, is an excellent time to sell." The Art Newspaper 06/13/06

• ArtBasel's Irrational Exuberance "With 55,000 visitors to 300 stands, the world's biggest modern- and contemporary-art fair is part of a $1.5 billion spring sale cycle, from New York's May auctions to London's this month. Early reports from dealers indicate buyers aren't yet deterred by stock-market jitters from the U.S. to Russia." Bloomberg.com 06/13/06

The Thrill Of Near-Death Experience "No one actually believes that any kind of art or painting is dead, but much work these days is either about art being dead or near death. This has caused a kind of feedback loop of infinite regress to form, along with a new batch of self-reflective critique art. Curators seem to love this hyper-self-consciousness—presumably because it's about the institutions they work for. Art that critiques the art object, the artist, the institution, or the market is lauded. Much good art has arisen from this position. So have questionable gestures." Village Voice 06/12/06

Turkey's Museum Security Problem Some high profile thefts at Turkish museums have drawn attention to lax security there. "Although 78 of the country's 93 state museums are equipped with electronic security systems, archaeologists in the field assert that those systems often malfunction or are insufficient. Thorough museum inventories, crucial to security measures, are rarely taken in Turkey's museums. And of the objects that have been documented in display cases or in warehouse storage, experts say, many were registered by unqualified workers lacking critical reference information." The New York Times 06/13/06

ArtBasel Director To Leave The opening of this year's ArtBasel has been marred by the resignation of the organization's charismatic director Sam Keller. "Keller will leave ArtBasel in 2008 to take up the helm at the Beyeler Foundation, replacing current director Christoph Vitali. The foundation, established in 1982 by the collector Ernst Beyeler on the outskirts of Basel, houses a permanent collection of modern art in a building designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano." The Guardian (UK) 06/13/06

The Critic As Museum Director Before Ralph Rugoff was a curator and museum director, he was a critic. "For more than 15 years, the new director of the Hayward Gallery in London has shaken up art audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, inspiring them to engage with the kind of puzzling, cerebral work that tends to put off all but the most dedicated of contemporary art aficionados." The Guardian (UK) 06/12/06

The New New London London is to be transformed by large buildings. "Power and money are what have made it both ugly and voraciously successful. It's a largely unplanned city, with buildings that come and go. Little or nothing stays still in London. The drive for money makes it a restless creature, forever biting off its own limbs and watching them grow back in new, bigger and shinier forms." The Guardian (UK) 06/12/06

Was Picasso Really That Great? "By general agreement, he was the best artist of the twentieth century. How good was that? His sheer significance, as the god of modernity in painting, has always beggared ultimate judgment. Now the issue is being forced, at the Prado and the Reina Sofía, by direct comparisons of his work with that of the Old Masters who, from time to time, were important to him, either as models or as goads—notably Velázquez and Goya." The New Yorker 06/12/06

Inside The Psychology Of Portraiture "The painted portrait tried to give the answer before the advent of photography (though each medium provides a different answer), but it was always constrained by the demands of the times in which it was being painted. The painter was not necessarily trying to achieve an exact likeness - the face, for centuries, was the least important part of the portrait. What mattered was giving an impression of status - it was the clothes, the jewels, the background that spoke loudest. Nevertheless, there is still something to be learned from standing and staring." The Guardian (UK) 06/11/06

Baltic Gallery Under Examination The Baltic Arts Center in Northeast England is under investigation. The gallery has "threatened legal action against conceptual artist Chris Burden in an attempt to recover costs of £100,000. Questions have also been raised about a £175,000 commission by former Turner Prize winner Antony Gormley, who now serves as a Baltic trustee. The two cases provide an unusual insight into the financial arrangements between artists and public galleries, which are usually shrouded in confidentiality." The Art Newspaper 06/11/06

Painter Of The Back Nine "An artist virtually unknown in the world of art, Linda Hartough is considered the country's most distinguished painter of golf — and yet even that distinction characterizes her work too broadly. Ms. Hartough paints golf landscapes — the azaleas of Augusta National, the tall grass of Shinnecock Hills and St. Andrews, the contours of Carmel Bay at Pebble Beach. Golf balls, putters and Phil Mickelson or a surgeon in midswing wield no interest for her." The New York Times 06/11/06

Gender Barrier Officially Down At U.S. Museums There was a time when top jobs at museums were more or less off-limits to women, but a survey of today's art world shows that the glass ceiling has long since shattered, and to good effect. "Women are especially prominent at the nation's top tier of modern and contemporary art museums... Directors point to women's long history of involvement in museum-dom, the culmination of decades of institutional advancement and greater diversity on the boards of trustees that hire directors." Los Angeles Times 06/11/06

Was Kandinsky Painting By Sound? "A new exhibition of Wassily Kandinsky's work shows how the artist used his synaesthesia - the capacity to see sound and hear colour - to create the world's first truly abstract paintings... There is still debate whether Kandinsky was himself a natural synaesthete, or merely experimenting with this confusion of senses in combination with the colour theories of Goethe, Schopenhauer and Rudolf Steiner, in order to further his vision for a new abstract art." The Telegraph (UK) 06/10/06

MIA's Grand Opening The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has unveiled a major expansion, and officials are hopeful that the ability to display a larger percentage of its collection will elevate MIA, which has always been considered a respected midsize institution, to the rank of top U.S. museums. "The new Target wing designed by Michael Graves is devoted to 20th-century art. There also are many more galleries for non-Western art, including six new Japanese galleries and one for art from the Pacific Islands." Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 06/10/06

Major Asian Collection To Have Homes In New York, Minnesota The largest privately held collection of Japanese art outside of Japan is being split up and donated after its owner's death to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Mary Griggs Burke's well-known collection is 900 pieces strong, and has long been coveted by museums around the U.S. The announcement comes as the Minneapolis museum is unveiling its new expansion, which includes a major increase in gallery space devoted to Asian art. Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 06/10/06

The Accidental Vandals The Bureau of Land Management, which manages the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, is trying to send a cautionary message to a growing number of visitors who are loving some ancient settlements to death. 'We're starting to call them the 'accidental vandals.' They lean on the walls to get a good picture. They take a corn cob with them, a pottery shard'." Yahoo! (AP) 06/09/06

A 27,000-Year-Old Human Face The drawing was discovered in France in February. "No one is ever going to put a name to this face. Its owner lived before writing, agriculture, or towns existed, before there were states that kept records, and long before a Greek man named Herodotus decided to write something called "history". The only reason we can be sure the people who painted in caves during the Ice Age were as human as we are - that is, they used their brains in the same way we do - is that they made art. No other animal makes art. And now the earliest art has a human face - literally." The Guardian (UK) 06/08/06

British Museum Burns The Midnight Oil For the first time, the British Museum is keeping its doors open until midnight to accomodate the crowds wanting to see a special exhibition. "More than 140,000 people have visited Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master, since it opened at the end of March. Now the 247-year-old museum has decided to stay open until midnight every Saturday until the show closes later this month." The Guardian (UK) 06/09/06

Australians To Investigate Aboriginal Art Biz The Australian government is launching an investigation into the business practices of selling Aboriginal art. "Once a $750,000 business in 1971, aboriginal art is now reputed to bring in at least $149 million. But many well-known aboriginal artists continue to live in third world conditions in remote communities, sometimes paid with a crate of beer or a used four-wheel drive, while their representatives are seen driving brand new Rolls Royces in downtown Sydney." Christian Science Monitor 06/07/06

Welcome To Temple-Land These days it isn't enough to open a temple and expect the people will follow. In Delhi the creators of a new temple has added a little Hollywood pizzaz. "The creators of the new Swaminarayan Akshardham temple complex that towers over east Delhi thought to include several features not commonly found in Hindu architecture, including an indoor boat ride, a large-format movie screen, a musical fountain and a hall of animatronic characters that may well remind us that, really, it's a small world after all. There are even pink (sandstone) elephants on parade." The New York Times 06/08/06

Where Architects Are Experimenting "Architects are living in one of those all-too-brief moments in which the world seems to be swimming with fat wallets — cities, Middle Eastern oil states, capitalist dictatorships — with the means and the egos to indulge in fantastical visions.Not in Britain, naturally. We prefer to get our visionary fantasies in the sale aisle at Matalan. No, it’s in China, of course, and Dubai, but also in culturally adventurous continental Europe, and even in the once architecturally cautious America, that experimentation is flourishing." The Times (UK) 06/07/06

Report: Scenario Where Art Market Could Decline "Contemporary art prices have quadrupled since 1995, according to index-maker Art Market Research. In recent years, they've been propelled by growth in the U.S. and emerging markets, where wealthy businessmen have started to buy their national art at international auctions." But a new report says art prices could collapse if there's a global economic slowdown. Bloomberg.com 06/06/06

New Website To Track Nazi-Looted Art "The year-old project offers free access to claimants, enabling them both to search the site's extensive inventory of objects believed to have been looted during World War II, and to list objects they believe had at one time belonged to their families." Jerusalem Post 06/04/06

Kimbell Returns Turner Painting To Heirs The Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth Texas is returning a JMW Turner painting to heirs of the collector from whom it was stolen by the Nazis. This "puts a big hole in our collection. This was our only Turner and we don't have a Constable either, so we're missing both of these two great British landscapists. But this is one of those cases where the evidence was very strong that it was from a forced sale under the Nazi regime, and morally there was only one thing to do, which was to give it back." Dallas Morning News 06/06/06

Buildings Made Of Dreams "Engineering Art is in part a dating agency between creatives and science, through events that Dr Miodownik organises at Tate Modern to get architects, artists and designers just to feel materials, to 'innovate through their fingers', learn their properties and get them 'out there' on buildings. Their obsession with novelty means that architects are as sensitive to trends as schoolkids." The Times (UK) 06/06/06

Gender Imbalance - Museum Director Asks For Money To Buy Art By Women The director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Lars Nittve, has asked the Swedish government for 50m Swedish crowns ($6.8m) to buy work by female artists. The museum, which houses 250,000 20th-century works, has around nine times as many pieces by men as by women in its collection The Art Newspaper 06/01/06

JMW Turner Sells For Record £5.832 Million "The Blue Rigi was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder after a 10-minute bidding battle at Christie's in London. The work, which Christie's described as "the most important watercolour to appear at auction for over 50 years", had been expected to fetch about £2m." BBC 06/05/06

Lessons Learned In Public Art "In recent years, many cities have re-evaluated their approaches to public art and are incorporating new ideas, while other cities remain stuck on the original model. Milwaukee, more or less, falls into the latter category and is serving as a case study for hundreds of arts professionals in town for the Americans for the Arts national conference." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 06/04/06

Popular Mural Painted Over In LA Without apparent warning, an iconic mural by artist Kent Twitchell depicting fellow artist Ed Ruscha was painted over Friday in Los Angeles. "It's always been such a popular piece in the art world and in Los Angeles. I had no idea it was in danger in any way. To not be notified, to have it be a fait accompli…. It will take a while for the shock to wear off. It was sort of my 'Mona Lisa'; I worked on it for nine years." Los Angeles Times 06/03/06

Steve Wynn Goes On A Buying Spree "In the past eight weeks he is believed to have spent at least £30m at auction: a world record £5.5m for a 14th century Ming vase in Hong Kong on Tuesday night, and almost certainly the world record for a Turner in April, more than £19m for a sparkling view of the Grand Canal in Venice." The Guardian (UK) 06/04/06

LACMA's New Helmsman The LA County Museum of Art's new director has a lot of balancing to do. "Inside LACMA, board members and staffers say they're counting on Michael Govan to lead growth and to build the reputation of an institution that hasn't had an art specialist at its helm in a decade. Outside the museum, arts leaders say the biggest challenge will be winning and keeping donors — the formidable Broad, for instance — without handing them the keys to the museum." Los Angles Times 06/04/06

Brand: Refiguring The Getty Michael Brand is making his mark as director of the Getty Museum. "He's haggling with Greeks. He's dickering with Italians. He's looking to fill a couple of big jobs while waiting to see who his new boss will be. And most of all, he's trying to nudge the institution toward equilibrium after the most scandal-marred, morale-sapping year since the late J.P. Getty started showing off his art collection three decades ago." Los Angeles Times 06/04/06

Reason To Forge "Accounts of art forgers tend to talk up their subject as “the greatest” swindler of all time: the most efficient, the most reckless or the one who got away with it most frequently. The forgers themselves seem to nurse a certain fatal egotism too. Some claim an almost supernatural affinity with the artist they copy." Financial Times 06/02/06

The Great Shrinking WTC Memorial As the cost of the World Trade Center memorial escalate, the question has to be asked whether it's time to scrp the project. "As the memorial has leapt in cost, its commemorative possibilities have shrunk... The very officials who are shocked at the price tag bear considerable responsibility for it. A steep cost became inevitable when politicians acceded to the early clamor to define the entire footprints of both towers as sacred ground." Bloomberg.com 06/02/06

The Day The Great Memorials Died "For a long time their architects and artists, their stone-carvers and bronze-founders got better and better. For a long time their elevated style got nobler and nobler. Then, suddenly, it died. It died a poignant death -- at the peak of its accomplishment, just when it got great. We know the date exactly. Memorial sculpture's greatness left Washington forever on the 30th of May, Memorial Day, 1922." Washington Post 06/04/06

The Architect And The Developer - Where's The Public Interest? "There was a time when government took an interest in big urban planning projects." Increasingly, though, government plays only a marginal role. "Bigger social concerns, like housing for mixed incomes, equal access to parks and transit, and vibrant communal spaces, which were once the public's purview, now increasingly fall to developers to address or not, as they see fit." The New York Times 06/04/06

Deep In The Heart of Texas, A Museum Booms Austin's new 100,000 square foot Blanton Museum is officially a hit, and it may be setting a new standard for university museums nationwide. "The sheer size of the completed building, with a huge atrium, allows the museum to show off its extensive 17,000-piece collection, including works by Durer, Rubens, Manet and Picasso... considering the small, dark gallery where its collection of Renaissance, Baroque, American and Latin American art used to hang, the new museum is a Texas-sized upgrade." Los Angeles Times 06/02/06

The Russians Are Coming Strong The Russian art market is officially white-hot, and the latest evidence is the $52.1 million take from this week's Russian art auction at Sotheby's in London. "The sale set 25 record prices, and more than half were for contemporary Russian artists." The New York Times (second item) 06/02/06

Sydney, Supersized It's Sydney Biennale time again, and if there's one word to describe this year's edition, it's "big." From "an installation of 180,000 hand-sized clay figurines" to "a cunning combination of twisted modernist aesthetics and surveillance technology" that fills a room, Sydney is awash in outsized art. Sydney Morning Herald 06/02/06

V&A Bars Sinn Fein Leader London's Victoria & Albert Museum has removed Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams from the guest list for a major exhibition of "revolutionary" art, saying that his presence would be inappropriate. The exhibit's curator, a personal friend of Adams', is reportedly furious, but the V&A is so far standing firm. Adams led the political wing of the Irish Republican Army when the IRA was regularly mounting terrorist attacks on London, and many Britons hold him responsible, despite the IRA's recent decision to lay down arms. The Guardian (UK) 06/02/06

Now That's Investigative Journalism A reporter for the BBC has returned a 16th-century portrait by Florentine painter Alessandro Allori to a Berlin museum after discovering that the work was an original looted during World War II, and not a copy, as he had previously thought. Charles Wheeler was given the painting by a German farmer in 1952, but only thought to look into its origins last year. BBC 06/02/06

Art For Free Baltimore's two largest art museums are scrapping their admission fees, an initiative made possible by a major grant from city and county governments. "The new policy, modeled on that of several other museums nationwide, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Cincinnati Art Museum, is aimed at boosting attendance, increasing visitor diversity and raising the city's profile as a tourist destination." Baltimore Sun 05/31/06

Sort Of A $3 Million Cherry On Top Of A $50 Million Sundae Just in time for the unveiling of its new $50 million expansion, the Minneapolis Insitute of Arts has acquired a pricey new piece for its collection. "The Louis XV-era painting Comtesse d'Egmont Pignatelli in Spanish Costume by Alexander Roslin was bought from the New York gallery Wildenstein & Co." for $3 million, making it the most expensive work acquired by the MIA in nearly a decade. Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St.Paul) 06/01/06

Well, It's About Time You knew it had to happen eventually. Now that "American Idol," "America's Next Top Model," "Project Runway" and "Top Chef" have all wrapped up for the season, it's finally time for serious art to take its turn on the Reality TV Tilt-A-Whirl of Fame. "'Artstar' is an eight-week reality-TV series in which eight artists, age 22 to 67, vie for an exhibition at a popular New York gallery. All involved should be ashamed of themselves, but, hey, dude, it's, like, a new age and, basically, here's something amazing that will resonate, totally and absolutely." Chicago Tribune 06/01/06

Damning Photographic Evidence At True Trial "Prosecutors at the conspiracy trial of [Marion True,] a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, presented on Wednesday photographs of a pair of ancient marble griffins — one of the glories of the Getty's collection — lying in a car trunk, encrusted with grime and loosely wrapped in newspaper... Prosecutors said that the photographs, seized in a raid on a Swiss warehouse in 1995, show that the griffins were illegally dug up and removed from Italy." The New York Times 06/01/06

Chihuly Fights For Originality Glass artist Dale Chihuly is "in the midst of a hard-edged legal fight in federal court here over the distinctiveness of his creations and, more fundamentally, who owns artistic expression in the glass art world." The New York Times 06/01/06