We can not let November fade into history without returning to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which last Thursday gave people the opportunity to visit its galleries, before or after their turkey dinners.   Which sure beats settling down on the couch to watch football or sitting at the computer to work, play or post on Facebook. And, let's face it, except for going to the movies or a few miscellaneous stores, there's not much else to do on Thanksgiving. It's a time when family members are supposed to enjoy each other's company, after … [Read more...]

The sprawling art extravaganza that is Art Basel Miami Beach and its satellite fairs begins on Thursday, and the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, an hour north, is responding with a new, great idea. It's planning exhibition called Now WHAT? -- put together via a kind of "Amazing Race" for the art world. The exhibit will be curated and put on display for all to see on Dec. 15, ten days after the fairs close. As the headline of the Norton's email to me put it, Take two curators, add five days, mix in tens of … [Read more...]

Lowery Stokes Sims (at right) set herself a rather impossible task when she decided to organize an exhibition called "The Global Africa Project." She wanted to illustrate the idea that African artists have had a global impact, even as they have been influenced by their colonial past -- "cultural fusion." More daunting still, she did not want to stick with design, craft and fashion -- her initial charge -- but rather broadened out her search as curator to painting, sculpture, photography and installation work too. She … [Read more...]

"Believe." That was the sign on Macy's 34th St. today (and until past Christmas, presumably), clearly visible in you watched the Thanksgiving Day parade. And that's what many people would like to believe about Rocco Landesman's campaign, from his perch as head of the National Endowment for the Arts, that creating arts districts all over the U.S. will lead to economic development.  Sadly, it's not always true, as an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal Greater New York section outlined. It's about Peekskill, N.Y., … [Read more...]

It would be pretty hard for the Guggenheim Museum* to be picky about donations nowadays. As Bloomberg (among others) recently revealed, the Gugg was deep in the red last year, yet that was an improvement: In 2009, the Guggenheim Foundation's deficit narrowed to $12.3 million in 2009 from $14.6 million in 2008, as expenses declined more than revenue. Contributions and grants fell 22 percent to $20.3 million. In the first half of 2009, the Fifth Avenue museum cut about 25 jobs, or 8 percent of its positions, after the … [Read more...]

Foreign Policy magazine is just out with a list of "ten traditions you never thought needed protecting," a riff on the latest UNESCO List of Intangible Culture -- the article poked fun at some items on the list, like "banguettes and brie" (actually, "the gastronomic meal of the French"), a wrestling festival in Turkey, and "the scissors dance" of Peru (pictured below). The roster -- 46 new items in all -- also includes such cultural treasures as Spanish Flamenco, Kumiodori -- the traditional Okinawan musical … [Read more...]

Ever walk through a museum and see a painting that just doesn't look right? I have, and it always raises questions in my mind. Is the painting a fake? Is it my eye? Has the museum been tricked, or has it simply not bothered to check on a painting that was, perhaps, donated? Once, when I mentioned a particular work in one American museum to an expert on the artist, he speculated that the work had been donated and that the museum did not want to offend the donor by investigating authenticity. If so -- and I have absolutely no proof that it … [Read more...]

It's still autumn, the leaves remain on the trees in Central Park, but some arts programmers are thinking about spring. Or maybe they are counter-programming. In addition to the New Museum's new facade sculpture, Rose II, by German artist Isa Genzken, which was installed last Saturday (below), New York City's Parks and Recreation Department, the Fund for the Park Avenue Sculpture Committee, and Paul Kasmin Gallery said the other day that they are putting Will Ryman's The Roses, a new site-specific installation, along … [Read more...]

Let's consider the "deaccessioning" situation at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. The other day, it emerged that Dean Sobel, the director, has a plan that would allow the sale of  four works -- before they are officially accessioned -- to raise money for the museum's endowment. Here's the gist: The Still Museum will soon receive 825 Still paintings from a bequest of Still's widow, Patricia, who died in 2005 -- plus more than 1,000 drawings. However, the museum has petitioned the court to release four paintings to the … [Read more...]

A quandary: In September, I wrote about an exhibition at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum called Wine and Spirit: Rituals, Remedies, and Revelry, which coupled "the histories of wine and art in a cross-disciplinary fashion" for the first time. I liked the idea, which seemed both scholarly and popular. Now comes How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, opening on Saturday. It seemed only right to weigh in. Do we applaud, for the same reasons, or think it's pandering and pop … [Read more...]