For The New Barnes, A New Chief Curator Judith Dolkart, currently associate curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum, joins the Foundation as it prepares to break ground on its new home in center city Philadelphia. She will, among her other duties, plan and oversee the special temporary exhibitions the Barnes will add to its program at the new building. Philadelphia Inquirer 11/06/09

Why Not? Art Under The Big Top "Paris' Pompidou Center plans to fill a colorful circus big top with Picassos, Matisses and Calders instead, creating a roving museum to take its masterpieces of modern art to France's culturally deprived rural regions and rough suburbs." Gogle (AP) 11/05/09

Dia Art Foundation To Return To Manhattan In 2003, the contemporary art hothouse opened a big new space in a converted Nabisco factory up the Hudson in Beacon, NY; not long afterwards, Dia closed its exhibition space in New York City. But now, "Dia [has] announced that it will be building a new home in Chelsea, which is now the downtown hotbed of Manhattan art galleries." Time 11/05/09

Why Are Autumn Leaves More Boring In Europe? North America is, of course, famous for the brilliant reds, oranges and yellows its trees display in the fall, and East Asia offers its own arboreal spectacular (think of all those Japanese maples). Why do the leaves of Europe offer mostly yellow and brown? The answer, it turns out, has to do with ice ages and mountain ranges. EARTH Magazine 11/03/09

Why Scots Are In The Vanguard Of 3-D Modeling "Through scanning, the [Scottish] experts can conjure up what objects looked like ages ago, in effect turning the clock back on ancient sites. They can simulate the effects of climate change, urban encroachment or other natural or man-made disasters on those same sites, peering into the future." The New York Times 11/05/09

Art School Struggles To Balance Free Classes, Resources "The Fleisher Art Memorial, home of free and low-cost art classes for its South Philadelphia community for more than a century, has been buffeted by criticism in recent months as it modifies both programs and focus." Students fear the school will be "refashioned from something unique into 'a traditional art school.'" Philadelphia Inquirer 11/05/09

In An Exhibition, Proof Of The Rose Museum's Importance An "astounding new show" at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum "makes it indisputable: Nowhere in the Boston area is it possible to get, in one gulp, a comparable sense of the excitement engendered by European and especially American modernism." If that had been better known, might the Rose's troubles have been avoided? Boston Globe 11/05/09

The Quietest Of Pritzker Prize Winners Peter Zumthor "is known to be uncompromising when it comes to his designs, and he exhibits his work rarely. He also tries to maintain an ethical orientation to design and practice, working mainly on public and institutional projects, and repeatedly turning down lucrative offers from developers and private clients." The New Republic 11/04/09

The Very Model Of A Monumental Sculptor Whether we know it or not, the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens is the basic, fundamental image most Americans have in mind when we think of public monuments. "[H]ow different … from contemporary artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, and Jeff Koons, who make public sculptures but whose art is essentially private in nature." Slate 11/04/09 (slide show)

Is Guggenheim Bilbao Getting A New Sibling? "The Museo Guggenheim Bilbao is completing feasibility studies for a satellite near the historic town of Guernica, just 40km east of Bilbao. Local and provincial authorities in the Basque Country anticipate that the new museum would extend the so-called 'Bilbao effect,'" but the government is wary of spending in this economy. The Art Newspaper 11/03/09

Leonardo's Fattest Codex Meets The Public "With 1,119 pages of drawings and notes, almost all of them in Leonardo's own hand, the Atlantic Codex is by far the largest set of works by the archetype of universal genius." Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana is putting all of it on view over the next six years, bit by bit. Wall Street Journal 11/04/09

Estate Fight Pits Heirs Vs. Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston "Alfred C. Glassell Jr., founder of Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co., intended to leave about half of his $500 million estate to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and his will should be honored, a lawyer for the museum said." Lawyers for Glassell's daughter say the museum took advantage of an old man. Bloomberg 11/03/09

Where Are The Big Bonuses For Goldman Sachs's Architects? The masters-of-the-universe firm has famously set aside $16.7 billion for its 2009 bonus pool. And what of Pei Cobb Fried, the architects designing Goldman's new skyscraper near Ground Zero? The practice's "eight principals probably make a nice living. And their pay packages would be laughed off Wall Street." Bloomberg 11/03/09

Trouble In London: An Overstock Of Artist Celebrities "There has simply never been a moment in modern history when a city so teemed with celebrated artists as London does now. There is a real sense in which to be an artist at all here confers a kind of fame on you. But is there any chance of anyone in 20 years giving a flying fondu about even 5% of our famous artists?" The Guardian (UK) 11/03/09

Defacing Banksy Mural, Vandals Trump Voters "Sutton Council asked residents to vote on whether the 'punk' mural should stay on its Beddington Farm Road site. More than 93% of the 250 voters urged the council to keep it but as the vote was taking place, the work was defaced by graffiti 'taggers'." BBC 11/02/09

Ukrainian Billionaire Pinchuk To Build Kiev Art Center Victor Pinchuk, "one of the world's leading contemporary-art collectors," said that he "envisages a multi-functional center with a permanent collection built on, though not limited to, works that he owns. Pinchuk said he's ready to provide '100 percent' financing for the center." Bloomberg 11/03/09

Lehman Art Rakes In Bucks At Auction (No, It Won't Help) "An eclectic batch of artworks that once adorned the corporate offices of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sold for $1.35 million," or "almost double the projected total," at auction Sunday. One art adviser explained part of the appeal: "This gives you a piece of financial history -- good, bad or indifferent." Bloomberg 11/02/09

Building By Building, Good Public Design Invades NYC "For decades, the trinity of quick, cheap, and ugly dominated the city's building program. Quick was always a chimera, and cheap remains sacrosanct, but ugly won't cut it anymore." New York Magazine 11/01/09

A Rare Look At Cuban Contemporary Art "To encounter contemporary Cuban art is relatively rare for U.S. citizens, who continue to risk $7500 fines for traveling to Cuba under an ongoing economic embargo." Now the largest show to come to the US since 1944 has some wondering if the travel ban to Cuba might be lifted. Adobe Airstream 10/28/09

Great Art At Rock Bottom Prices? "In the year since the worldwide recession devastated the art market, prices have tumbled, collectors have retreated and auction houses have instituted layoffs. And now Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips de Pury are tiptoeing carefully." The New York Times 11/01/09

Michelangelo, Pro Or Con "The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Young Archer is a marble Renaissance youth with an amazing backstory: Thirteen years ago, it was declared by NYU's Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt to be an early work of Michelangelo himself. Rival scholars howled, and art historians continue to pick over its anatomy and history for clues." New York Magazine 10/25/09

When MoMA Rejected A Free Warhol "So we take our hats off today to New York's Museum of Modern Art for its ability to have a chuckle at its own expense. The institution has tweeted a recent blog post featuring a rejection letter that the museum sent to Andy Warhol in 1956." Los Angeles Times 10/29/09

New PAC Isn't Enough; Dallas, Get Serious About Urban Life "The city fathers and business leaders understand the value that an exuberant arts community has for a metropolitan area, but the urban developers still have not created a vibrant life, as opposed to a lifestyle, in downtown Dallas...." Wall Street Journal 10/28/09

MoMA's Nouvel Tower Gets Green Light From NYC "The City Council put the finishing touches yesterday on the Museum of Modern Art's request to build an 82-story tower," designed by Jean Nouvel, "that would rise as high as the Chrysler Building, granting the project final approval -- and leaving Midtown neighbors seeing red." New York Post 10/29/09

Ingmar Bergman's Interiors: A Look Inside His Baltic Hideaway "Unforgiving and elemental, with its rocky beaches and weather-beaten forests of gnarled pine, Fårö epitomized Bergman's unsparing and unsettled internal world. There's a sensuality in its hardness that reveals itself only if you look closely: Fårö does its best not to charm you." W Magazine November 2009 (includes slide show)