The art world has a budding star, an 18-year-old named Lauren Mincher. Mincher is the winner of the Saatchi Gallery-Sunday Telegraph Art Prize for Schools, 2009, which I wrote about here earlier this month. Open to students around the world, more than 22,000 entered, and the British newspaper announced the winner and two runners-up in yesterday's edition. Mincher portrayed her grandfather in her entry, at right; runner-up Ghan Chansuwan, 18, made a photographic self portrait called Identity, and … [Read more...]

Provacateur artist Ai WeiWei is the subject of the Saturday profile in today's New York Times. You have read to the end to get to the money paragraph: Lately, there are indeed signs that the government is reaching its limit. His blogs on Chinese Web sites, about issues political and otherwise, have been shut down. Someone has installed two video cameras outside his studio. The police are said to be scrutinizing his finances, an ominous development in a state where other political critics have been prosecuted for what appear to be concocted … [Read more...]

Magnum: even today, with photography and photographers every where, the reputation of this 62-year-old photojournalism cooperative is magic. The agency opened a gallery on the left bank of Paris last Friday (it already has one on the right bank), and it wasn't hard to get interest from the general press here -- in this case, I did a short article on the gallery, with a slide show, for The Daily Beast. Magnum's space in Saint Germaine-des-Pres, near Brasserie Lipp and Cafe de Flore, has started out with an exhibition … [Read more...]

When the Brooklyn Museum's "What's Happening" brochure landed on my desk recently -- a close-up of Tina Turner's shining, smiling face on its cover -- it was hard not to spend a little time reading about Who Shot Rock-and-Roll, its exhibition of photographs capturing the music of the baby-boomer generation. (Which is to say, me!) Whatever you may think about the idea that rock photography is an art form, the show -- which I breezed through far too quickly last Friday afternoon -- is interesting and fun to see. … [Read more...]

Since last week, when I wrote about Art and Illusions: Masterpieces of Trompe-l'oeil From Antiquity To The Present at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, I've learned that the Center for Contemporary Culture there has a companion exhibition which is just as interesting. Maybe less amusing, though. It's called Manipulating Reality: How Images Redefine the World. The works of 23 artists, from around the world, including the U.S., are on display: Andreas Gursky, Cindy Sherman, Aernout Mik, Gregory Crewdson among them.   The show's concept is hardly … [Read more...]

The George Eastman House needs you! Maybe. Last April, it announced the creation of The Center for the Legacy of Photography, as well as Notes On Photographs, a collaborative wiki website at which curators, conservators, collectors and the general public would be able to share knowledge about photographic prints -- the camera, the process, the inscriptions, the age, and so on. I wrote about it all then, and now there's more to report. A recent Eastman House newsletter announced that the site, "dedicated to … [Read more...]

It's been a long road, but the Museum for African Art is really coming into its own: the opening of its new building, on Fifth Avenue and Central Park North in New York, a year or so from now, will be transformative. I had a chance to take a hard-hat tour of the premises the other day -- not to mention to see it from the nearby, lakeside Dana Discovery Center in Central Park, a glorious spot on that sunny fall day -- and to hear the plans of director Elsie McCabe Thompson and chief curator Enid Schildkrout. They, and their trustees … [Read more...]

A few developments that need no comment: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, can rest easy: A jury has rejected the attempt by Alfred C. Glassell Jr.'s daughter to break his will, which left half of his fortune to the MFA. Cindy Sherman won the Jewish Museum's Man Ray Award, and the JM also restored some opening hours it had cut. The New York Sun, which I wrote about here last spring, is rising again. ArtPrize set the dates for next year's contest. The Art Loss Register is seeking help in locating the owner of a group of stolen civil war … [Read more...]

Several days back, I began a post about art theft by saying that it boggles the mind in general. I just learned something even more startling -- the identity of the most stolen work of art in recorded history. The subject came up in a talk given last week (which I just learned about) at Yale University by art historian Noah Charney (right). Last spring, he taught a course there called "Art Crime," according to the Yale Daily News, and on Nov. 12, he gave a lecture entitled "Stealing the Mystic Lamb: A True Story of the World's … [Read more...]

Among the many reasons I wish I were in Italy right now is Art and Illusions: Masterpieces of Trompe-l'oeil From Antiquity To The Present, which is on view at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence until Jan. 24. (It started last month.) The poster picture (left) is a pretty good indication of why -- doesn't Pere Borrell Del Caso's Escaping Criticism make you smile? The show is reminiscent of the National Gallery of Art's Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe-l'Oeil Painting, which was on view in late 2002 and … [Read more...]