Why Foreign Investors Like Landmark Buildings "Is New York still New York if its trophies are sold off to foreign interests? Why do peak oil investors love our landmarks? What's next? The Seagram Building? And why not the Empire State Building? Or Rockefeller Center (again)?" Bloomberg 07/23/08

How The Tate Is Beating MoMA "Arguably the Tate brand, which has gained huge international currency since the founding of Tate Modern at the turn of the millennium, has threatened to eclipse that of MoMA. The Tate has even been making audacious inroads into MoMA's home turf of New York, courting American philanthropists and holding glamorous fundraising events." The Guardian (UK) 08/24/08

Beijing's Disappearing Historic Center "The explosion of construction activity that has transformed Beijing into a modern metropolis over the past decade also turned many of its historical neighborhoods -- known for their narrow alleyways, or hutongs -- into rubble." The New York Times 07/27/08

Mayne's Challenge "It's hard to miss San Francisco's new U.S. Federal Building, a narrow 18-story office slab with a skewed, not-quite-mansard roof. Completed in March of last year, the building is a study in contradictions: an ambitious energy-conserving agenda, a tight budget, and a highly restrictive set of security concerns. How did Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne deal with this challenging mix?" Slate 07/23/08

Giant Martin Luther King Sculpture Stirs Controversy "One could argue that some controversy was inevitable no matter what. Memorial sculptures for King have long been lightning rods for racial resentments, black and white. The importance of this one --- the first representation of an African-American and nonpresident to be so honored on the National Mall --- would make it particularly fraught." Atlanta Journal-Constitution 07/20/08

Need A Loan? How About Mortgaging That Art? "Select banks and the two major auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, have been offering art financing for a long time. But in recent years, as values in the art market have risen, more and more collectors have taken advantage of it." New York Sun 07/22/08

The Man Who Forged Masters "Yesterday this picture was worth millions of guilders, and experts and art lovers would come from all over the world and pay money to see it," he declared after his exposure. "Today, it is worth nothing, and nobody would cross the street to see it for free. But the picture has not changed. What has?" Washington Post 07/20/08

As The Economy Tanks, There's Still Art "The vast majority of people don't even enter art's primary economy, the buying and selling of art, but they interact consistently with art's secondary economy, the viewing economy. We don't pay for art; we pay for the right to see it. And mostly, we pay very little." The Stranger 07/15/08

Celebrity Culture, German Style Germany has long been funny about its relationship to local stardom and to the very notion of celebrity. "It's the reverse of America. You can openly be an intellectual elitist here, but materially you must act the same as everyone else." The New York Times 07/22/08

The Computer As Art Historian? Researchers have taught computers how to "read" paintings and identify them. "A picture, after all, is more than a thousand words. It can be represented as bits of data, just like a bank account or music on a compact disc, and the researchers have sifted this information through the dispassionate filter of statistics. The authors... are quick to say that they don't want to replace art historians. Their methods aren't sophisticated enough to do so even if they wanted to." The Philadelphia Inquirer 07/21/08

Report: Guernica Has Been Damaged By Global Tours The painting is now in a "serious but stable condition", curator Jorge García Gómez Tejedor said in yesterday's El País. It does not yet need to be restored but it should not be moved, he said. The Guardian (UK) 07/21/08

Museums Push For Change In New Tax Law For Art Donations "Many of the significant gifts we've had in our history have come from fractional gifts The new law has virtually stopped new fractional gifts from being started. It's a real problem for us and other museums." Wall Street Journal 07/21/08

Should Stolen African Art Be Returned? An exhibnition of art from the Kingdom of Benin puts work on display that was plundered primarily by the British more than 100 years ago. So is this art likely to be returned to its original owners? Chicago Reader 07/17/08

Seattle's Greg Lundgren Sells "The Artistic Death" "What if 30 people got together to buy themselves space in a Jeff Koons? Cemeteries are among the last urban green spaces. They need to be sculpture parks. Forget zombies from the 'Night of the Living Dead.' I'd like to see people playing chess among the tombstones, kids skipping rope or texting their friends." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 07/18/08

Rem Koolhaas On Creative Tension Between East And West "The intellectual force of the West is still dominant, but other cultures are getting stronger. I expect that we will develop a new way of thinking in architecture and urban planning, and that less will be based on our models. There are many young, good architects in China. The unanswered question is whether our cooperation, this internationalization, will result in a common language of architecture, whether we will speak two different languages or whether there will be a mixture of the two." Der Spiegel 07/18/08

Architecture As Diplomacy (Er, Not Really) Berlin's newly-christened $143-million American embassy, "designed by the Santa Monica firm Moore Ruble Yudell, is something of an anti-monument -- a five-story, low-slung, sandstone-colored palimpsest on which is inscribed the complicated history of urbanism in Berlin, the troubled state of U.S. embassy design and the pitfalls of slavishly contextual architecture." Los Angeles Times 07/20/08

Arab World Arts Work On Their Generation Gap "Across the Arab world, new museums, funds and foundations have inadvertently exposed a glaring rift between artists of an older generation who paint and sculpt and artists of a younger generation who research and collect. Walid Raad's current exhibition in Beirut appears to be a serious attempt to make the work of a younger generation visible to an older generation that refuses to see it, and vice versa." The Naional (Abu Dhabi) 07/18/08

Brazilian Police Find Stolen Picasso "The Painter and the Model was taken in a daylight robbery in June from the state-owned Estacao Pinacoteca museum. Police said an arrested suspect had led them to the engraving, wrapped in a plastic bag and hidden in an attic, apparently in perfect condition." BBC 07/20/08

Tate Modern Expansion May Be Delayed "Tate Modern, London's riverside art museum, revised plans for the new wing that architects Herzog & de Meuron are building for it, and said the 2012 opening may be delayed because of tough fundraising conditions." Bloomberg 07/18/08

Pompeii Dying Under Neglect "Chunks of frescoes depicting life in the Roman city are missing, carried away by visitors or eroded by the elements. Graffiti is gouged into walls. Tourists ignore signs forbidding flash photography as they take pictures of erotic designs inside the Lupanare, an ancient brothel. The ancient city southeast of Naples has deteriorated so much that Italy declared a state of emergency this month." Bloomberg 07/18/08

An Art-World Project Runway? "The hourlong show has been described by the Elves team of Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz as a Project Runway-style competition series that takes on the art world. Aspiring artists compete to produce various styles of artwork (painting, sculpting, etc.), which is then judged by a panel of experts." Hollywood Reporter 07/20/08

US Museums' Assoc. Sets New Rules For Antiquities Acquisition "These new guidelines suggest no works exported from their country of origin before 1970--the date set by the Unesco convention on the illicit trade of the same year--should enter North American collections." The Art Newspaper 07/17/08

Louvre Gets A Major Hit Of Islam "The Louvre's bold new Islamic art wing had its first stone laid by Sarkozy yesterday , launching the museum's most daring project since IM Pei created the giant glass pyramid 20 years ago. The world's most visited museum will have Europe's biggest purpose-built exhibition space for an Islamic art collection, which France hopes will reconcile the secular republic with the world of Islamic heritage." The Guardian (UK) 07/17/08

Denver's Museum Of Contemporary Art Director Steps Down Cydney Payton, who led a passionate charge to construct Denver's first stand-alone museum devoted to contemporary art, has announced her resignation from MCA Denver in late October, the building's first anniversary. Rocky Mountain News 07/17/08

The Contradictions Of Corbusier Le Corbusier's own idea of the perfect space seems curiously telling. Having spent a lifetime at the cutting edge of progress, expanding his reputation and designs to maximum scale, he found his ideal home in his cabanon - a spartan, one-roomed wooden hut on the Côte d'Azur, where he spent every summer from 1952 onwards. The Guardian (UK) 07/17/08