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MAY 2000
Wednesday
May 31
-
"JUST
CALL IT McMOMA": Getting your museum noticed these
days requires "surreal amounts of money" these days,
not to mention the promotional instincts of PT Barnum. The Museum
of Modern Art's Glenn Lowry has been "resculpting"
MoMA so that the museum gets its fair share (of money and attention).
He has hired a crack marketing team at private-sector salaries
and has chosen to oversee projects that include building a Philippe
Starck-meets-Amazon.com art and design Web store, and renting
part of the museum's art collection to a billionaire Japanese
real estate mogul. New
York Observer 05/31/00
-
HOW
TO SAVE VENICE ART?
Acid rain is eating
the outdoor art of Venice. "Amputated arms, graffiti, and
the black streaks caused by sulphur dioxide have marred the
appearance of much Venetian sculpture, and everywhere there
are examples such as Alessandro Vittoria’s statue of Saint Zaccaria
on the central portal of the church, which remains faceless
after its marble features disintegrated." Some want to
rescue the work by taking it inside and replacing it with copies.
The
Art Newspaper 05/31/00
-
DANCING
ON THE THAMES:
Architect Terry Farrell designed two of London’s most flamboyant
buildings on the Thames in the 1980s - the MI6 headquarters
and the redesigned Charing Cross Station - then promptly fell
out of favor without a single London commission in the 90s.
Now he’s got seven major London projects in the works, all for
prime sites along the river, and whether or not they’re loved,
they’re sure to be noticed. London
Times 05/31/00
-
REPORTS
OF OUR DEATH ARE... The Royal Canadian Academy of Art decided
to do a millennial show and made an open call to artists. The
idea might have worked 120 years ago when the Academy was formed.
"Maybe it even worked 30 years ago, when the RCA's annual
exhibition finally died off. For better or worse, however, at
the beginning of the 21st century it's simply not how things
work - as any truly vigorous arts organization would have understood
right off. Toronto
Globe and Mail 05/30/00
Tuesday
May 30
-
THE
REAL DICK:
That maybe-Richard Diebenkorn-that
wasn't in that E-Bay auction that got everybody so excited a
few weeks ago and forced a winning bid of $135,000? Well maybe
it is real after all. Though the auction was nullified, experts
are now looking at the painting to determine its patrimony.
San
Francisco Chronicle 05/30/00
Monday
May 29
-
AN
APPETITE FOR (FREE) ART:
Sydney's Museum of
Contemporary Art gets a corporate grant to abolish its $12 admission
charge. In the first four days since going free, attendance
has doubled, and twice the museum has had to temporarily close
its doors because of overcrowding.
Sydney Morning Herald 05/29/00
-
THE
STORY BEHIND THE PAINT: It's been possible to tell what
lies underneath the layers of paint of a painting for some time.
"However, new technologies such as infra-red analysis -
one of several methods used to determine the history and construction
of paintings - makes the task more precise." The technology
is helping rewrite the histories of some works of art. The
Age (Melbourne) 05/29/00
-
A
FAKE FAKE: Fifty years ago, Australia's most important painting
- thought to be by 15th-century Flemish master Jan van Eyck
- was declared a fake by experts in Brussels who ruled
it was not by van Eyck and was probably not even Flemish. The
painting was taken down from the National Gallery and put away.
But new research shows the experts might have been wrong and
now the painting may be returned to display. The
Age (Melbourne) 05/29/00
-
THE
STOLEN ART PROBLEM:
Theft of artwork has become
a major international problem. The British government wants
to do something about it. But first - just how big a problem
is it? No one seems to know for sure. The
Telegraph (London) 05/29/00
Sunday
May 28
-
ART
STARS:
Britain's hip new artists
have become glamorous celebs. "This isn't so surprising
when you consider the new wealth giving a golden glow to new
British art. It's become a nice little earner." But do
they lose some their hipness by traveling in these new circles?
Sunday Times (London) 05/28/00
-
MUSEUMS
AS ENTERTAINMENT: "Entertainment gets a bad rap as
diversionary distraction, a shallow Pied Piper ostensibly leading
us away from the serious things in life. But try telling that
to Shakespeare or Bernini, who managed to make extremely entertaining
art. Entertainment's dual responsibilities are to hold interest
and give pleasure. Why this should be considered a minor achievement
is anybody's guess - especially for art - although American
Puritanism is one likely culprit. But art is not brain surgery,
nor the answer to perennial problems like war or world hunger."
Los
Angeles Times 05/28/00
Saturday
May 27
-
MOMA
NO-NO:
Media
Mogul S.I. Newhouse has been forced to give up his priuzed seat
on the Museum of Modern Art board of directors (he's been a
member for 27 years). "One of the world's most prolific
art collectors, Newhouse stepped down to avoid being expelled
for breaking a rule barring trustees from buying a painting
from the museum. He bought a 1913 Picasso, Man with Guitar,
that the museum had decided to de-acquisition to fund new buys.
The picture, in the museum's basement, was sold to an unidentified
art dealer who sold it to Mr Newhouse for $10 million."
The
Times (London) 05/27/00
-
NYET
EXCHANGE: Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved
a law banning the return of stolen WWII artwork to Germany.
"The works in question include a rare Gutenberg Bible,
gold artifacts from the ancient site of Troy, a drawing by Rembrandt
and paintings by Claude Monet and Henri Matisse."
Washington
Post 05/27/00
-
NASA
DE MEDICI: When you think of the US space agency, you think
rockets, not art. But NASA has commissioned hundreds of artworks
about space, and a number of them are currently touring the
country. "Featured artists include Peter Max, Robert McCall,
Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol and Jamie
Wyeth. To give them creative fodder, NASA allows selected artists
wide access to events, such as shuttle launches." Discover.com
05/25/00
-
MUSEUMS
AS THEME PARK: Have
museums been caught up in an infotainment vortex? "It is
no longer enough to be the repository of objects and artifacts
stored for presentation and posterity, presented to the public
for their edification. Now museums have to engage with the public,
competing with the rest of the entertainment industry for tourist
dollars and leisure time. All the while maintaining their learning
function."
Policy.com 05/26/00
-
PUBLIC
ART PROTEST:
For two months neighbors
of the University of Massachusetts in Boston have been protesting
the pending installation of a new piece of public art. The sculpture
was due to be installed this weekend, but this week someone
took a sledgehammer to the work's support piers, forcing a postponement.
Boston
Globe 05/27/00
Friday
May 26
- LOOT
AIN’T LEGIT:
The International Council of Museums has condemned the Louvre’s
recent decision to exhibit two 2,000-year-old terracotta figures
which were looted from Nigeria and then illegally exported by
a Brussels dealer. French president Jacques Chirac has intervened
to plea with Nigeria’s president to legitimize the acquisition
which he hopes will have a permanent home in the Louvre’s new
non-European art gallery. The
Art Newspaper 05/25/00
- FINDING
FAULT:
Neil MacGregor, director of London’s National Gallery, has criticized
the UK government’s recent euphoria over much-publicized museum
and gallery openings, including the Tate Modern. Striking at the
Government's boast that it had increased access, Mr. MacGregor
said: "There may be more access; but it is access to ignorance."
The
Independent 05/26/00
- ART
IN A CAN:
Minneapolis has a
graffiti problem. Some officials charge that the city's arts institutions
are encouraging the taggers by sponsoring spray can art.
Minneapolis
Star-Tribune 05/26/00
- A
RIGHT TO BE NAKED? A university of South Florida student labored
on his art exhibition for much of the semester. He built a fiberglass
cave in which he proposed to live in naked for the duration of
the show. Uh-uh, said the gallery director - no one can stay overnight
in the museum, and besides, we don't like the nudity thing. The
artist is crying censorship.
St. Petersburg Times 05/25/00
Thursday May 25
- CORPORATE
DIVESTMENT:
Sara Lee donates 52 works of art to 40 museums. It's the
largest gift to the most museums in US corporate history. "
The 52 works are described as representing 'a concise survey of
European avant-garde painting and sculpture from 1870 to 1960.'
Not much would strike a viewer as 'avant-garde,' most of the art
having entered the mainstream years ago."
MSNBC
(Newhouse) 05/23/00
- DIRTY
LAUNDRY: UK Arts Minster Alan Howarth has selected a panel
of experts to examine ways to crack down on Britain’s growing
black market for smuggled art and antiquities. An estimated £500
million is laundered every year through the sale of looted artifacts
from the Middle East and Africa, all of which can then be legally
bought and sold in the UK. Ananova
05/24/00
- SECOND
CYBER-THOUGHTS:
The Tate Museum commissioned
a web artist known as Harwood. "He proposed to make a mock
version of the existing Tate website, to which one in three visitors
to www.tate.org.uk
would be diverted. Clicking through the various categories of
the museum's site, visitors would be dropped into Harwood's version
produced in the same structure and design, but with 'hacked' artworks"
- work changed digitally by the artist. The work was to debut
this week, but that's been postponed, perhaps to straighten out
some reservations about the concept.
The Guardian 05/25/00
- DOME
DEFENSE: Despite public outcry, shoddy attendance, and the
dissenting opinions of 64 MPs, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott
has defended the UK government's decision to pump £29m into the
Millennium Dome. BBC
05/25/00
- DESIGN
FOR LIVING: Israel’s architecture exhibit at the upcoming
Venice Biennale attempts to answer the beguiling question: What,
exactly, is a city? “In curator Hillel Schocken's view, modern
urban planning has been an utter failure; not one successful city
was created in the 20th century. He proposes a new definition
of the city, one that fulfills the idea of intimate anonymity.”
Ha’aretz
(Israel) 05/25/00
- COSMIC
SHIFT: For the first time since Washington DC's Air and Space
Museum opened in 1976, the museum is not the most popular museum
ticket in town. In the battle of Smithsonians, Natural History
is winning. "In the first four months of 2000, 2.3‚million
people visited Air and Space. In the same span, 2.8‚million have
gone through Natural History. Last month 1‚million visitors walked
through Air and Space, compared with 1.3‚million at Natural History."
Washington Post 05/25/00
- The
most-stolen work of art in the world goes on display.
Ananova
05/25/00
- BELAGIO
TO CLOSE SUNDAY: The Belagio Hotel gallery will close this
weekend and its art will be sold. The hotel plans to reopen the
gallery later with traveling exhibitions.
Las Vegas Sun 05/25/00
Wednesday May 24
- DULWICH
DOOMED? “The most architecturally venerated of London's art
galleries,” the 18th-century Dulwich Picture Gallery
has recently undergone extensive restoration thanks to £5 million
from the Heritage Lottery Fund. How did the revitalization affect
Sir John Soane’s original collection? “It's hard not to feel a
twinge of regret, as Soane's ghost has faded a little more with
this new work. It feels normal, which it never was before.” London
Evening Standard 05/24/00
- ROCK
ON THE BLOCK: New York’s art deco landmark Rockefeller Center
is up for sale for an estimated $2-2.5 billion. The property includes
12 historic buildings and is home to Christie’s and NBC. Times
of India (Reuters)
05/24/00
- PORTRAITS
TO THE STARS: In 1969, London’s National Portrait Gallery
dropped its requirement that subjects must be dead for 10 years
before being portrayed on gallery walls. Ever since, celebrities
have been vying for space among the canvases. “With a television
star preferred any day over a worthy politician, the gallery has
veered towards the voyeurist appeal of a Madame Tussaud's.” New
York Times 05/24/00
(one-time registration required for
entry)
- LOSE,
LOSE: London’s Millennium Dome has been at the center of controversy
since the day it was built. The latest stir: the Dome was given
an extra £29 million from the National Lottery this week on condition
that its chairman resign. He did, and then MPs protested the government’s
earlier promise that no further public funds would be advanced
to the Dome. The
Telegraph 05/24/00
- MARKET-MAKERS:
In 1990, the now-defunct Japanese Itoman
Corp. purchase some expensive artwork, "a move that caused
huge damage to the trading firm" in part because the prices
for the paintings were highly inflated. Last week the paintings
were sold at auction and the low prices are probably deflated.
The artmarket in Japan see its highs and lows. Daily
Yomiuri 05/24/00
Tuesday May 23
- WHERE'S
THE MODERN IN TATE MODERN? So the opening of the Tate Modern
was the art event of the century. But there are a few problems,
aren't there? "The Tate owns fewer than 700 pieces of international
art - not all that many really. It wasn't created to be a museum
of world art at all - in fact, at about the time that the Museum
of Modern Art was being established in New York, the Tate was
turning up its nose at the work of Gaudier-Brzeska, and didn't
really start buying 20th-century international art until well
after the Second World War. The consequence of this is that, although
the Tate owns 38 Picassos, it also has enormous gaps in its collection."
New Statesman
05/23/00
- WYNN
TO GET BELAGIO TAX BREAKS: Casino mogul Steve Wynnis expected
to benefit handsomely from major tax breaks when MGM sells off
Belagio Hotel's $200 million worth of fine art in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas Sun 05/23/00
- ART
JUMBLE: The new new thing is for museums to hang art out of
its traditional chronological order. This of course has some critics
and curators fuming. Not Thomas Hoving, however: I applaud the
jumble-jamble approach. A work of art is an act of magical genius
and it essentially doesn't matter if it was created in the fifth
decade of whatever century or is an example of the late middle
mature style of whatever artist or school of painting. And it
really doesn't edify the member of the viewing public if that
work is isolated within other similar works in time or space.
Artnet.com
05/23/00
Monday May 22
- WATERING
THE SPIRIT OF ART: A pair of "guerilla artists"
walked into the new Tate Modern museum and urinated in Marcel
Duchamp's "Fountain." "The pair claimed that the
purpose of their action was to 'celebrate the spirit of modern
art.' Bemused onlookers in the room applauded, thinking that they
had just seen an officially planned performance. The artists claim
that after their performance, which lasted about a minute, the
Tate closed the room to the public but made no attempt to apprehend
them." The
Guardian 05/22/00
-
FIRE
SALE: The British government is considering early plans
to sell off the fantastically costly Millennium Dome at a bargain
basement price. The Dome has been a popular and critical flop.
The
Telegraph 05/21/00
-
GOLD
MEDAL PERFORMANCE:
Toronto-born architect
Frank Gehry has won the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, "awarded
on behalf of the Queen by the Royal Institute of British Architecture,
and still, despite the big bucks attached to newer international
prizes, the most prestigious of its kind."
The Guardian 05/22/00
-
TROPHY
PICTURES:
Ireland's booming economy
has caused a surge in Ireland's art market prices.
The Telegraph (London) 05/22/00
-
ONLINE
GUGGENHEIM:
The Guggenheim World Empire
becomes the WWW Empire. The museum "has pledged the equivalent
of a real building’s budget to create the Guggenheim Virtual
Museum (GVM), launched this month, on a laptop near you. Wagering
that the New York-based architecture firm Asymptote can do for
it in virtual space what Frank Gehry’s Bilbao did in the physical
world, the Guggenheim’s commitment is not only costly but long-term:
Its design and construction will be ongoing, given the fluid
nature of the medium." Architecture
Magazine 05/00
Sunday May 21
- PICTURE
PERFECT:
Who says photography has
to record something real? In the late '70s, a number of artists
began "questioning the documentary capacity of photography.
Instead of taking pictures of extant scenes, James Casebere built
elaborate models and photographed them, presenting the prints
rather than the constructions as his art. Other artists were coming
up with similar strategies at the time, all departing from the
tradition of straight photography and its commitment to reality."
Los Angeles
Times 05/21/00
Friday May 19
- CHILD’S
P(L)AY: Damien Hirst
has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to two children’s charities
to settle a copyright suit sparked by his latest work, “Hymn,”
a 20ft bronze sculpture (which recently sold for £1m) that is
a larger-than-life replica of a well-known child’s anatomy set.
BBC
05/19/00
- WHY
WE LIKE OUR BIG McHOUSES: Everyone, it seems, decries suburban
sprawl. From the McHouse architecture to the sterile streetlife,
the 'burbs make an easy target. But "for all the scorn that's
heaped on the suburbs - and especially on subdivisions of nearly
identical houses on the fringe of metropolitan areas - people
like living there. And not just middle-class drones either."
Weekly
Standard 05/22/00
- VINTAGE
FAKES? Some of Louise
Hine's vintage master photographs appear to have been forged.
Experts are investigating.
Chicago
Tribune 05/19/00
- MAN
OH MANN: The governor of Virginia has objected to a slide
show by photographer Sally Mann given earlier this month in a
state-owned museum. In his letter to the museum's interim director
the governor wrote he was 'shocked and dismayed that this type
of exhibit occurred on state owned property.' " Fox
News (AP) 05/19/00
- HEY
- IT'S ONLY A BUILDING: "And the opening of Tate Modern.
My reaction? Stunned. Literally stunned. Suddenly, London has
become the greatest city the world has to offer, the city that
is positively buzzing with energy and optimism and sheer in-your-face
modernity."
The Guardian
05/19/00
- TOP
OF 1000 YEARS:
Four American museum curators
each have a go at picking their top ten artworks of the past 1,000
years. Two of them pick Chartres as No.1.
Christian Science Monitor 05/19/00
- I
THINK I CAN: No. 3 auctioneer Phillips comes back with another
auction - and has better luck selling it after last week's disaster.
New
York Times 05/19/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- SITTING
ON CEREMONY: Plans to erect a statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
sitting in a wheel chair stir controversy in Washington DC. Washington
Post 05/19/00
Thursday May 18
- TWO
DONUTS ON STILTS: Frank Gehry's Experience Music Project is
said to look like a cross between a spaceship and a glob of playdough
- what about his plans for the new Manhattan Guggenheim? “Take
two donuts with holes in them, and put them up on stilts.” Disney
World, say the critics. The future, say Gehry and Thomas Krens,
the Guggenheim's director. Art
Newspaper 05/18/00
- TWO
DONUTS ON STILTS: Frank Gehry's Experience Music Project is
said to look like a cross between a spaceship and a glob of playdough
- what about his plans for the new Manhattan Guggenheim? “Take
two donuts with holes in them, and put them up on stilts.” Disney
World, say the critics. The future, say Gehry and Thomas Krens,
the Guggenheim's director. Art
Newspaper 05/18/00
- "MISS
IT AND YOU'LL CURSE YOURSELF": The Royal Ontario Museum
in Toronto broke all of its attendance records this spring with
a blockbuster show of Egyptian artifacts. But popular as ancient
Egypt is, to get people through the door the museum hired a slick
ad agency to whip up interest. Toronto
Globe and Mail 05/18/00
- POP
DADDY: Richard Hamilton, whose 1956 collage “Just What Is
It That Makes Today's Homes So, So Appealing?” is considered by
many to have signaled the birth of British pop art, is still at
the top of his game - fascinated by all things modern and by his
own paintings’ iconic status. “Perhaps that is why of all living
British artists he is the one whose work gets the richest showing
in the opening displays at Tate Modern.” The
Guardian 05/18/00
- DID
ALBRIGHT'S FATHER STEAL ART?
A new biography revives
claims that US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's father
stole paintings after WWII and that the family still has them.
Prague
Post 05/17/00
- BUYING
ART WITH YOUR MILLIONS:
The newly-rich internet
crowd gets into the contemporary art market in a big way. This
week's Christie's sale of contemporary art was marked by record
prices and spirited bidding. "It was such a young audience
I thought for a moment I'd wandered into 'Gladiator.' "
New York Times 05/18/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- MALEVICH
SALE: A somewhat overlooked sald of a Malevich painting at
the Phillips auction last week signals a final end to Stalinism.
New York Observer 05/18/00
- FAILURE
TO PROTECT NATIVE ARTISTS:
Indian artists tell
Congress that the US government is not enforcing a law designed
to protect American Indian artisans from forgers said to be cutting
into a $1 billion a year business.
Baltimore
Sun (AP) 05/18/00
Wednesday May 17
- MONUMENT
TO MUSIC: Frank Gehry's swoopy droopy Experience Music Project
(please don't call it a museum) is opening soon in Seattle. Says
Gehry: "This building is supposed to be a lot of fun. That's
what Paul Allen wanted. Fun. It's supposed to be unusual. The
(Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum) in Cleveland wanted a straight-forward
corporate look. Paul didn't want that. He wanted what he called
a swoopy building. Nobody has seen this before or will see it
again. Nobody will build another one." Seattle
Post-Intelligencer 05/16/00
- A
BUILDING OR A METAPHOR? "Up close, the latest offering
from architect Frank Gehry looks like a cross between a giant
spaceship and globs of playdough." National
Post (Canada) 05/17/00
- TRACES
OF GENIUS: Scientists plan to test DNA found in smudges and
fingerprints in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and sketches to
better understand the master and distinguish his work from that
of his apprentices. “Vezzosi believes that the best traces can
be found in ink stains on the handwritten pages of Leonardo's
notebooks, as the master himself recommended using saliva to thicken
black ink.” Discovery.com
05/16/00
- PICKING
UP THE PIECES: At one
time the top spot running Sotheby's would have been considered
a real dream job. But with scandals and investigations and uncertainties,
William Ruprecht confesses that he "took a very deep breath
and had a moment of hesitation" before accepting the assignment
last February. After last week's successful spring auctions, it
appears some of the storm has passed. Financial
Times 05/16/00
- A
REAL CIRCUS: The State of Florida decides to give control
of Sarasota's Ringling Museum (with a fine collection of Old Master
paintings) to Florida State University. Now the museum's director
has resigned and the Board, University, and public are in conflict.
Sarasota
Herald-Tribune 05/15/00
Tuesday May 16
- THE
REAL PAINTING STARS OF LONDON: Curious that as the Tate Modern
opens, virtually ignoring painting from the past 20 years, London
galleries are full of it - and a lot of it is figurative and quite
interesting. This is where the enduring contemporary stars of
the painting world are hanging out.
Financial Times 05/16/00
- PIANO
PRESTO:
Renzo Piano just might be
the world's busiest architect: For Hermès he is designing a Far
East headquarters in Tokyo. In America, he is working on the Harvard
Art Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, an art campus in Atlanta
and a sculpture gallery in Dallas. There is a telecom HQ in Rotterdam,
a Paul Klee museum in Switzerland, a trio of new concert halls
in Rome, an elegant tower in Sydney nearing completion, and a
pilgrimage church in southern Italy which looks set to be the
religious masterpiece of millennium year. In Berlin his Potsdamer
Platz, a vast development spanning a blighted area on either side
of the Wall, is nearly complete. The
Times (London) 05/16/00
- SOME
STRIKING MOMA WORKERS RETURN TO WORK: About 40 percent of
the 250 workers striking against the Museum of Modern Art in New
York over poor wages and job security have crossed the picket
line, says museum management.
New York
Times 05/16/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
- ONE
SICK PUPPY: Even his admirers call Gottfried Helnwein that.
"He earned his first gallery show in the 70s by driving around
his native Vienna dressed in Nazi uniform, his head bandaged,
fake blood trickling from his mouth. It caught the eye of an art
dealer who signed him up and has remained faithful to Austria's
enfant terrible ever since." The
Guardian 05/16/00
- A
BOARD HELD ACCOUNTABLE:
Leaders of Vancouver's arts
community hold a summit with the board of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The VAG has been under attack since the murky departure of of
the museum's director and some questionable actions by the board
of directors.
Vancouver Province 05/16/00
Monday May 15
- LONG
TERM STRATEGY:
Even though last week's
auction in New York by Phillips - pushing hard to gain a toehold
on Sotheby's and Christie's - was little short of a disaster and
cost the company a great deal of money, Phillips is in to stay.
"It would be a mistake to believe that it can be done quickly.
It will take three to five years to reposition ourselves and grow
from there. This is by no means a quick fix."
The Telegraph (London) 05/15/00
- THE
WORLD'S TALLEST YACHT'S MAST: "In the very heart of Chicago,
work is about to begin on the tallest building in the world. Including
its twin 450ft lightning-conducting digital communications antennae,
7 South Dearborn will be 2,000ft tall, with 108 floors."
It will be as beautiful as it is tall, as innovative as it is
graceful. The
Guardian 05/15/00
- THE
HISTORY OF THE WOLRD:
Berlin's answer to London's
Millennium Dome is an ambitious exhibition called "Seven
Hills - Images and Signs of the 21st Century," a celebration
of humankind's future and a catalog of its past.
Die Welt
05/15/00
- MY
BODY MY ART:
A number of artists are tapping
into a vein of concern about what some see as runaway technology
in medical science. "The debate's over what we do with our
bodies - science is catalyzing these debates - but where they
play them out are culturally, personally, and legally. The artwork
becomes a corporate body to mimic what happens in reality."
Wired
05/15/00
- WILL
CLICK FOR ART? Last week's sham sale of a fake Diebenkorn
over an E-Bay auction had plenty of people scratching their heads.
Of course there was all the business about the speculation over
the painting. And yes it was peculiar how gullible some people
apparently are. But what really threw skeptics was the fact that
someone would actually pay six-figures for a piece of art by clicking
a mouse. Maybe the internet can sell online art after all.
New York
Times 05/15/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- WHEN
MARY SUED SALLE: In January New York art dealer Mary Boone
signed David Salle to her stable. Now she's suing him for $1 million.
Evidently "Boone promised to advance Salle $500,000, in return
for which he would consign work worth at least $850,000 to her
gallery. She'd pay all the promotional costs, and they'd split
the sales, 60-40 in his favor." Boone says Salle failed to
deliver on the promised work.
New York
Daily News 05/14/00
- ART
OF THE WEB?
Last week the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art gave out a big award for online art. Did
anyone care? A panel in SF talked about web art at the museum
this weekend. "Asked whether artists working on the
Net need or want the collaboration of traditional art institutions,
Webby-winner Michael Samyn - prefacing his response by remarking
he didn't understand the question because he is 'a designer, not
an artist' - said 'No.' "
Wired
05/15/00
- GUGGENHEIM
AWARD: The Council of Europe has awarded Bilbao's Guggenheim
Museum its Best Museum in Europe award.
BBC 05/15/00
- STRONG
START:
Australian art sales
have surged in the first part of this year.
Sydney Morning Herald 05/15/00
- BUT
HOW TO PAY THE TAX?
Under a new Australian tax
system, all small businesses (including artists) must have an
Australian Business Number or face having 48.5 per cent withholding
tax taken out of every payment they receive. But many aboriginal
artists on the edge of the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory
operate largely outside the formal economy. "Advocates for
the Aboriginal arts industry claim it is unrealistic to expect
most of the estimated 18,000 Aboriginal artists who derive an
income from their creative work to comply with the details of
the new tax system." Sydney
Morning Herald 05/15/00
Sunday May 14
- NEW
YORK TO ARCHITECTURE - DROP DEAD: The new zoning rule overhaul
put forward by NY mayor Rudy Giuliani amounts to a direct attack
on the creativity of architects. Just how far can a government
go with restrictions on building design before it violates constitutional
principles? New
York Times 05/14/00 (One-time
registration required for entry)
- NO
LIBEL:
A French appeals court has
ruled that art historian Hector Feliciano did not commit libel
for suggesting in his book about art stolen by the Nazis that
the late art dealer Georges Wildenstein may have collaborated
with the Nazis during World War II. Nandotimes
05/13/00
- ART
BY ANY OTHER NAME:
Why must the cards labeling
works of art be so vacuous? "Now, though, even the most venerable
institutions have succumbed to the pull of populism: exhibitions
have been dumbed down. And for this, I blame the curators and
the catalogues and wall labels they provide. It is not the artists
chosen that are at fault but rather the commentaries on them and
quality of information supplied in the galleries."
The Telegraph
(London) 05/14/00
- THE
BREAK BETWEEN ARCHITECTS AND THE REAL WORLD:
Los Angeles is booming. But
architects aren't smiling. "The reason is that once again
the profession's creative elite has been relegated to the sidelines,
designing scattered landmark residences while the majority of
new housing remains in the hands of corporate developers. The
break between the worlds of first-rate architecture and conventional
home building - never close in the first place - is now a chasm."
Los Angeles
Times 05/14/00
- NEW
IRISH ARCHITECTURE: Ireland
didn't produce much in the way of decent architecture in the 1980s.
Most of the large civic projects were roads and bridges. "Disengaged
from the infrastructural process, architects felt envious and
threatened. One prominent architect nominated for an award remarked
that he would hate his building to be 'beaten by a runway' at
Dublin airport." Now some new signs of life.
Sunday
Times (London) 05/14/00
Friday May 12
- HITLER'S
ART DEALER,
Karl Haberstock, has been a major ongoing donor of Germany’s Municipal
Art Museum in Ausburg. The museum, which has been publicly denounced
by the World Jewish Congress, has finally agreed to investigate
the provenance of the museum’s more questionable works and to
open its archives to the public over the Internet. Wired
05/11/00 (Reuters)
- THE
STARS COME OUT: The Tate Modern opens with a powerhouse collection
of high-wattage luminaries. The
Guardian 05/12/00
- WHO
GOT THE BUZZ? Artists, that's who. "It is pointless to
start flinging labels around and referring to art as the new rock
'n' roll or the new fashion or even the new film industry, since
what actually seems to have happened is that the art world has
subsumed all these things and turned them into, well, art. At
the same time, the players at the centre of all the excitement,
the artists themselves, have emerged as the absolute celebrities
of the moment, with the (now, not so) Young British Artists attaining
a kind of super-supremacy, like the super-models and rock superstars
before them."
London
Evening Standard 05/12/00
- SO
MUCH FOR THAT EXPERIMENT: MGM Grand has announced it will
sell off its part of the $400 million worth of artwork it acquired
with its purchase of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Former owner
Steve Wynn had opened a gallery in the hotel to show the art,
and charged visitors admission. MGM says it will use the money
to finance its acquisition of the hotel. Las
Vegas Sun 05/12/00
- THE
ART OF THE E-AUCTION: "The eBay con artists get all the
attention, but what about the lesser-known eBay artists? That's
right. There is a new breed of artist using the Internet auction
site as a forum for creative expression. Their work is hard to
categorize; it's a combination of conceptual art and performance
art, sort of like a digital happening in cyberspace. Where else
can an artist reach a potential audience of millions? What better
place to make a wry comment on our materialistic consumer culture?"
Boston
Globe 05/12/00
- EXPENSIVE
CHALLENGE:
Bernard Arnault is trying
to challenge Sotheby's and Christie's by pumping life (and a lot
of money) into No. 3 auctioneer Philips. The company debuted this
week's auction with an ambitious lineup with about $81 million
in art. Less than two thirds sold, however - bringing in just
$40.1 million - so Arnault will have to make up the difference
himself because of the minimum prices he guaranteed to his
sellers. New
York Post 05/12/00
- CHARITY
AUCTION OR SERIOUS ART SALE? "The auction began nearly
an hour late, and then it started with an announcement that
3 percent of the hammer prices would go to the American Foundation
for AIDS Research. Dressed in a bright orange dress with matching
lipstick, the movie star Sharon Stone, campaign chairwoman
for the charity, made a speech about AIDS. Throughout the
evening, she wandered up and down the aisles trying to drum
up excitement in the otherwise dead room."
New York Times 05/12/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- TWENTY
YEARS OF MAKEOVER:
In an era of rapid change
in the museum world, James Wood has been director of the Arts
Institute of Chicago for 20 years. "During his time, all
the museum's departments were renovated; the original beaux-arts
building was restored; a wing was built; a department of architecture
founded; a program of publications resumed; a constellation of
conservation labs established; and curators of nearly every department
were replaced." Not to mention two decades-worth of exhibitions
of art. Wood reflects on the past and future of American museums.
Chicago
Tribune 05/12/00
- POST-DESERT
STORM ART: Iraq’s national museum, which has been closed since
the Gulf War, has finally reopened to the public. More than 10,000
artifacts are on display, including rare Sumerian and Babylonian
sculpture and archeological treasure. CNN
05/11/00
- LONGA
THANKGA: The longest and largest Tibetan painting - a thankga
about six football fields long - has gone on display in the Revolutionary
Museum in Beijing.
CNN
05/12/00
- CONTEMPO-PLINTH:
A panel decided to make the vacant plinth in London's Trafalgar
Square an ongoing showcase for contemporary art. BBC
05/12/00
- E-MINIMALISM:
It's the digital equivalent of watching paint dry. An artist takes
minimalism to the net: "On the computer screen, 'Film Task'
appears to be a simple black square that, over eight hours, gradually
turns white. Since it takes about 30 minutes for the eye to discern
a change, patience is required (along with the Shockwave plug-in).
A monotonous sine wave serves as the soundtrack, the only accompaniment."
New York
Times 05/12/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
Thursday May 11
- NAKED,
NUDE, STARKERS: No, no, no - certainly no one would suggest
that Larry Gagosian's first exhibit in his new London gallery
was cynically sensation - it was art after all, featuring an artist
"who pays 23 tall, slender women to spend three hours being
stared at while naked except for stilettos. The 23 women were
chosen for their height their figures, pale skins and auburn hair,
as well as attributes best not inquired after. For three hours
they stared back dispassionately as London's art world arrived,
had a long look, and then had a free drink across the road in
a bar called Strawberry Moons." London
Evening Standard 05/11/00
- SWEAT
EQUITY:
The
Smithsonian's traveling exhibition exploring American sweatshops
- consisting of archival photos and a few historical artifacts,
including mass-produced slave workshirts, union posters from the
'20s onward and objects seized in the infamous 1995 El Monte sweatshop
raid - would have seemed to have been a natural for LA's Museum
of Tolerance. But the show wasn't even advertised or the press
notified. How come?
LA
Weekly 05/11/00
- QUEEN
ELIZABETH opens the eagerly-anticipated Tate Modern today.
Gala parties to follow. BBC
05/11/00
- THE
GLOBAL MUSEUM SWEEPSTAKES:
The cliche in art these days
is that museums are the modern cathedrals. Who cares if there
isn't enough to go inside. Increasingly visitors come to experience
the architecture - "an experiential encounter that competes
with, and often dwarfs, our encounters with the art inside."
Thus opens the new Tate Modern.
LA Weekly 05/11/00
- SUBJECTIVE
OPINION: Instead of hanging art chronologically at the
new Tate Modern, curators have taken a thematic approach,
jumbling eras and ages to trace themes.
The Art Newspaper 05/11/00
- GREAT
AT THE TATE: "I've got complaints about Tate Modern
- but because they perhaps have less to do with the museum
than my own un-grooviness, I'll save them until later. Art
is what counts; and the art at Tate Modern - much of it heaped
up and hidden away until now in the vaults of the old Tate
Gallery (now become Tate Britain) - is marvellously served."
National
Post (Canada) 05/11/00
- GOING
ONCE...AH, FORGET IT:
Ebay cancels the accounts
of a man who was selling a painting many believed was a Diebenkorn.
The online auctioeer said the man listed the work in a way that
"artificially inflated the price" and accused him of
"shill bidding" in which he entered bids on his own
items.
New
York Times 05/11/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
- RECORD
PRICE: An
Emily Carr painting
is auctioned for $1 million in Vancouver - a record for the artist,
and the most ever paid for a piece of art at auction in Western
Canada.
CBC
05/11/00
Wednesday May 10
-
CON
ARTIST:
The man who put the purported Diebenkorn painting for sale on
eBay Monday (and received a final bid of $135,805) “acknowledged
yesterday that he concocted part of the story he used to describe
the work and said he would be willing to let the buyer out of
the sale. Far from being a married homeowner who cleaned the
painting out of his garage to please his wife, he is single
and has sold a raft of paintings on eBay.” New
York Times 05/10/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
$14
MILLION AN HOUR: Christie’s 20th century art
auction Tuesday night had one blockbuster: a 1932 Picasso portrait
of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, that sold for $28.6 million.
It took Picasso just two and a half hours to paint it. New
York Times 05/10/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
AUCTIONS
AWAY FROM NEW YORK: Tonight one of Emily Carr's best paintings
goes up for auction in Vancouver. It's expected to bring the
highest price for a painting ever paid in Western Canada. How
much? Between $300,000 and $500,000. "The current
record for an Emily Carr painting sold at auction was "In
the Circle," which sold in Toronto in 1987 for $297,000.
The current record in Western Canada for a painting sold at
auction is $231,000. And the current national auction record
is Lawren Harris' "Lake Superior III," which sold
for $1.56-million." National
Post 05/10/00
-
ART
CATHEDRAL: In the time
of Frank Gehry, one may begin to think an innovative new museum
requires an innovative new structure to house it. But the new
Tate Modern has found its home in a reused power station that
has been transformed into a work of art unto its own. “With
one neat sidestep Sir Nicholas Serota avoided all the controversy
that would inevitably have raged had he commissioned a new building.
He picked a site which makes the most of that much-underused
London asset, the Thames, and has a stunningly powerful relationship
with St Paul's Cathedral.” The
Telegraph 05/10/00
-
DANGER
- 650,000 VOLTS: That pretty much describes the impact
the new Tate Modern has. "We are trying both to create
a museum of modern art and rethink what a museum of modern
art is." San
Francisco Chronicle 05/10/00
-
OR
THE LATEST BEHEMOTH?
“What are people going to say in 100 years about all these
new museums for modern art that we're building, which seem
to be getting almost as big as the Met?” New
York Times 05/10/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
Tuesday May 9
- TIME
WILL TELL: “Sinister,
bleak and elitist? Or cool, beautiful and welcoming?” London’s
new Tate Modern opens officially on Thursday, but three days of
parties and lavish preview receptions - expected to draw 10,000
people - are already underway. And no one’s without an opinion
on how the new gallery will or will not transform the city’s cultural
life. The
Telegraph 05/09/00
- "WATERSHED
OF BRITISH CULTURAL LIFE": The big bold Tate Modern "signals
the importance of the art of our times, and its centrality in
our culture." The
Guardian 05/09/00
- ONLINE
SALES FRENZY: A California
man recently put a "'great big wild abstract painting' that
he said was bought years ago at a garage sale in Berkeley and
had a small hole inflicted by a son wielding a plastic tricycle”
up for sale on eBay. Bidding started at 25 cents, and within minutes
had soared to $135,805, due to speculation that it was actually
a 1952 Diebenkorn. “A six-figure sale would not only be one of
the highest prices paid online for art, it would also be a powerful
testimony to the ability of the Internet to ignite a sales frenzy.”
New
York Times 05/09/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- AUSTRALIAN
ART BOOM: Melbourne antique
dealer John Furphy was proud to announce that the Australian art
market has experienced an unprecedented boom over the last three
years - due in part to the growing popularity of Aboriginal “dot”
paintings - with total sales doubling (to $69 million) between
1997 and 1999. The
Age (Melbourne) 05/09/00
- GENETICALLY
TESTED ART: A gallery
owner in Auckland, New Zealand is using DNA testing of a few hairs
trapped under the paint to verify if his painting is a genuine
Gauguin. CBC
05/08/00
Monday May 8
- DANCING
WITH THE TRUTH: Most writing about Marcel Duchamp focuses
on what he said or wrote. But "through most of his subsequent
career, Duchamp worked harder at burnishing his persona than he
ever did at creating art. And he certainly spent more time plotting
ways to expand an extremely limited oeuvre than he did poring
over his signature accessory, the chess board (but that's another
story)."
The Idler
05/08/00
- "PART
OF A DECEPTION?" Two men say they were hired by Georgia
O'Keeffe to do chores for her. "John Poling, a philosophy
professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and Jacobo
'Jackie' Suazo, a retired state employee in Santa Fe, each recall
being welcomed by O'Keeffe at her Albuquerque home, doing chores
and, ultimately, being allowed to paint with her." What became
of the paintings is part of a tangled legacy.
CNN 05/05/00
- MAKING
A MOVE IN THE PASSING LANE...
The spring auctions are on
this week in New York, and while Sotheby's and Christie's still
dominate, some attention is going to No. 3, Philips, recently
bought by Bernard Arnault, the "billionaire French entrepreneur
and bitter rival of Christie's proprietor François Pinault. The
works to be auctioned at the American Craft Museum, away from
Phillips's own inadequate saleroom, are impressive. The auctioneer
that has traditionally sold pictures of five- and six-figure values
has moved into a new league."
The Telegraph
(London) 05/08/00
- AWKWARD
TRANSITION: A familiar face will be absent at this week's
Sotheby's auctions. Diana Brooks was the face of Sotheby's as
its president and chief executive before she resigned amidst widening
auction house investigations in February. But "so big was
her role at Sotheby's that it was impossible for her simply to
walk away, officials at the company say." New
York Times 05/08/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- THE
VISION THING:
How could New York not
build itself Frank Gehry's new Guggenheim in Lower Manhattan?
It will have to be considered
the most important new piece of architecture to be added to the
cityscape since Frank Lloyd Wright's original spiral. "The
Guggenheim spiral is crotchety architecture that has generated
a sentimental allegiance. But the Guggenheim plan for lower Manhattan
induces dazed admiration, and a shuddering recognition of how
much is still possible in today's architecture. This is the key
concept: possibility. If New York is the new Rome, it too needs
its follies and risk-takers, its architecture of vision and vulgarity.
If we don't build this museum now, we'll never forgive ourselves.
And a hundred years hence, neither will anyone else." Feed
05/05/00
Sunday May 7
- CITY
OF MURALS: Philadelphia is mural crazy, covering every blank
wall it can with murals - some commissioned and painted by professional
artists, but many others the cheerful product of community pride.
"Last year at this time the mural count was about 1,800.
Now it is 1,900, which prompts the question, how many will be
enough? Has mural-painting become a bureaucratic cottage industry?
Has it become so important to the city's tourist promotion that
no one will ever recognize a practical limit?"
Philadelphia
Inquirer 05/07/00
-
THE
FASCINATING TATE:
"The intense interest
in this latest Tate is not just to do with the fact that it
has cost £134 million, is constructed within Sir Giles Gilbert
Scott's monumental Bankside power station by the iconoclastic
Swiss modernists Herzog and de Meuron; and is about to open
with a gruelling round of celebrity parties. Nor is it just
about the negotiation with a wealthy American collector, Kent
Logan, over the possible gift of a chunk of his £100m Saatchi-esque
stash of contemporary art. No: it is the fact that the collection
on display has been, so to speak, jumbled up."
Sunday Times 05/07/00
- TAKING
ON THE TATE:
Among the building excitement
about this week's opening of the new Tate Modern in London,
not all the critics are enthusiastic. "Tate Modern is
a graceless, gimmicky name for a building that is Britain's
best example of fascist architecture, speaking in its modern
abstract classicism of Hitler, Mussolini and Atatürk rather
than the timid aspirations of Attlee in 1947, the year of
its foundation." London
Evening Standard 05/05/00
Saturday May 6
- NO
EYE FOR ART:
A Berlin thief named Krysztof
stole a van and discovered the next day that he had pulled off
one of the city's biggest art thefts ever. Too bad. He'd gotten
rid of most of it. "Chagall and Miro he had never heard of,
so he sold them to a fence for the equivalent of a few hundred
pounds. But some of the loot, estimated to be worth DM1.6m (£500,000),
was thrown away, conscientiously sorted into the relevant bins
at the city dump. A portfolio of drawings went into the paper
recycling skip, the metal sculpture and engravings were discarded
in the box marked 'scrap'. Some paintings had to be cut up because
they would not fit. But Krysztof enjoyed the task. He never did
like post-modernism." The
Independent 05/06/00
- A
BLOODY MESS: An exhibit in London seeks to confront its audience.
The piece that provoked the strongest reaction was a punching
bag filled with pig's blood hanging in a boxing ring which, one
of the curators explained was meant as a comment on the sport.
"Unfortunately one of the guests ignored the 'Do Not Touch'
signs and punched it so hard it burst. Blood went everywhere,
spattering the floors, the walls and even the startled bystanders,
many of whom started screaming." The
Independent 05/06/00
- WOODMAN
CUSTODY:
In a memorabilia dispute,
the Detroit Institute of Arts is battling with the family of a
Connecticut pupeteer over who gets custody of the original Howdy
Doody puppet. The museum claims the puppet was promised to it,
and wants to add it to its collection of puppets. The family claims
the puppeteer made no such promise. Detroit
News 05/06/00
Friday May 5
- LOUVRE
SHUT DOWN: Security guards at the Louvre in Paris went out
on strike Thursday, forcing the museum to close. The guards struck
in sympathy with cafeteria workers who have been on strike for
four weeks. The museum attracts 16,000 visitors a day this time
of year. The
Independent 05/05/00
- MOVING
ON UP:
Though it attracts a
million visitors a year, London's National Portrait Gallery has
always been upstaged by its more prominent neighbor, the National
Gallery. But a new makeover courtesy of an £11.9 million grant
from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and another £4 million from private
donations, has transformed the gallery into somethinjg much much
more.
London Times 05/05/00
- DISCERNING
TASTE:
Noted architecture critic
Donald Trump has come out against the Guggenheim Museum's proposal
to build a new Frank Gehry-designed branch in Lower Manhattan.
"This building could potentially destroy the skyline of lower
Manhattan. There are some people that equate [the design] to a
junkyard," says The Donald. New
York Post 05/05/00
- GET
YOUR ACT TOGETHER:
A high-profile artist has
withdrawn the promise of a multi-million donation of his art collection
to the Vancouver Art Gallery in the wake of leadership turmoil.
CBC 05/05/00
- DEMOCRATIC
ART:
The German parliament has
voted to allow Hans Haacke's controversial artwork to be installed
in the Reichstag. "The work consists of a huge wooden container
sunk into the floor to be filled with earth from the constituencies
of the 660 members of the German parliament. Seeds from all over
Germany are to be planted in the earth to produce a garden that
will be left to grow wild. A neon inscription above the container
will read “Der Bevölkerung” (To the people), a deliberate subversion
of the words which were inscribed in bronze on the façade of the
Reichstag in 1915: “Dem Deutschen Volke” (To the German people)."
The Art
Newspaper 05/05/00
Thursday May 4
- UNDERSTANDING
IMPRESSIONISM: In the spring
of 1886, your opinion of impressionism seemed determined by whether
you lived in Paris or New York: "In New York, critics aligned
impressionism with cubism by emphasizing their rationalist aspects,
whereas in Paris their differences as perceptualist and structuralist
modes took priority." A 21-page pamphlet entitled "Science
and Philosophy in Art" was circulated at an exhibition in
New York and eventually made its way back the French impressionist
painters, who took it up excitedly and distributed it amongst
themselves. The writer turned out to be a 29-year-old American
woman chemist, Helen Cecilia de Silver Abbott, whose particular
defense of impressionism was before its time. American
Art Spring 2000
- FINDERS
NOT KEEPERS: Last
December, Chinese police caught seven midnight marauders digging
in an area on the outskirts of Beijing. The leader of the
seven men confessed they had long suspected there was an ancient
tomb in the area - sure enough, when "archaeologists
from the Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau continued the dig [they]
concluded that, not only were they on the brink of uncovering
a tomb, but given the initial findings it could be the resting
place of a Han dynasty king." Time
Asia 05/08/00
Wednesday May 3
- ARTFUL
BUYBACK:
Failing to convince Christie's
auction house not to sell what they consider to be looted cultural
treasures, Beijingers bid on the items in Hong Kong auctions to
keep the artwork in China. "We
spent half an hour calling our group leaders in Europe to report
the feelings of Hong Kong's people, the attitude of Christie's
and the statement of the State Bureau of Cultural Relics. Our
leaders' decision was that if Christie's insisted on going ahead
to sell the looted treasures, we would grab them . . . and the
only way was to join the bidding." South
China Morning Post 05/02/00
- LARRY
DOES LONDON:
Manhattan art dealer Larry Gagosian, known as one of the brashest
dealers on the art scene, is taking his larger-than-life gig to
London where a new branch of his gallery will open May 9. “Gagosian
has been described as "the hottest art dealer in the world,”
known for persuading people to part with art they never knew they
wanted to sell, and convincing others to buy it at prices they
never knew they were prepared to pay.” London
Evening Standard 05/03/00
- JUST
ANOTHER STATUE: Boston
has not had a good record of choosing public art. Last weekend
a symposium sought to identify ways to turn that record around.
"More artist input, and less community involvement in dictating
content and style, was a subplot that simmered without reaching
a boil. The community that asks for and gets another figurative
statue of a local hero is a community unaware of the world of
other options - the world artists know. But 'community involvement'
has become such a lightning rod that many people in the arts are
afraid to question it. Boston
Globe 05/03/00
- ART
OUTPOST: "Usually, new government buildings forage for
their furnishings and decoration after the builders have left.
Art is an afterthought. But in Moscow the British government specially
commissioned furniture, textiles and works of art by British artists
while the building was still under construction. The result is
a tribute to their foresight, for if diplomacy is the art of presenting
your country in the best possible light, the new embassy is itself
a symbol of the achievements that have made Britain so pre-eminent
in the visual arts in recent years. The
Telegraph (London) 05/03/00
- NOT
TO BE UPSTAGED: London's
Royal Academy - the good folks who brought you "Sensation"
are out to do it again. Just in case anyone thought the RA was
going to cede the contemporary turf to the about-to-open Tate
Modern, the RA announces a sure-to-shock show focused on beauty
and horror. The
Guardian 05/03/00
Tuesday May 2
- PUTTING
ON AIRS: A government report released
today by UK Arts Minster Alan Howarth concludes that “snobbery
and discrimination” by museum staffs may prevent the poor and
socially disenfranchised from visiting. The report urges cultural
institutions to combat social exclusion by urging staff to be
less intimidating and by taking steps, like putting catalogs on
the internet to reach broader, more diverse audiences. The
Independent 05/02/00
- FOR
ALL THE WORLD
TO SEE: An
impressive number of Japanese homeowners have hired avant-garde
architects to design inventive homes with no exterior walls or
made entirely from glass.
“These houses are not the work of oddball individualists, but
creative attempts by cutting-edge architects to redefine the management
of space, light, privacy and nature in the Japanese home.” Smithsonian
05/00
- THE
POLITICS OF ARTIFACTS: Honolulu's Bishop
Museum used to have an excellent reputation for the study of Polynesian
culture. But times have changed. Recently, the museum
allowed 83 ancient Hawaiian artifacts worth millions of dollars
to be turned over to a Native Hawaiian organization
as provided for by the 1990 Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act. But a dispute has
erupted over whether the artifacts will be cared for properly
and if the group that now has possession is actually
entitled to the work. Archeology
Magazine 05/00
- DESIGNER
DISCARDS:
Designer Karl Lagerfeld’s astonishing collection of 18th
century furniture and art objects fetched $21.7 million at Christie’s
- the second-biggest sale ever for the Christie’s Monaco auction
house. Times
of India 05/02/00
Monday May 1
- SELLING
HERITAGE: The Chinese government tried
to stop Christie's auction house from selling two sculptures at
auction in Hong Kong. The sale went ahead anyway, and the pieces
were bought by a Beijing man, who says he bought them for "the
Chinese people." According to China's State Bureau of Cultural
Relics, "both sculptures came from a set of 12 bronze animal
heads that adorned the Zodiac Fountain at Yuanmingyuan, or the
Old Summer Palace, which was looted by British and French troops
during the second Opium War in 1860." China
Times 05/01/00
- Chinese
angry at auction house over auction.
New York Times 05/01/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- POWER
IN KNOWLEDGE: Several projects are underway
to put online records of art sales. Once, collectors had to rely
on what dealers and auction houses told them about a painting's
history. Now, at the click of a button, they can do their own
research and perhaps establish a partial, and sometimes a complete,
provenance. The
Telegraph (London) 05/01/00
- TODAY
MELBOURNE, TOMORROW... Deutscher Menzies
controls the Melbourne auction business and has a leg up in Sydney.
"Once the saleroom is established nationally, it will take
on the big two [Sotheby's and Christie's] on their home turfs
in London and New York. In December Menzies made a bid for the
world's third oldest auction house, the London-based Phillips.
He was one of a group of shortlisted bidders but lost out to French
financier Bernard Arnault, head of the luxury products group LVMH
Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
The Age (Melbourne) 05/01/00
- SOMETHING
TO GO INSIDE: The about-to-open Tate
Modern is negotiating with San Francisco entrepreneur Kent Logan
who may be "about to give part of his £100 million art collection
- one of the world's largest in private hands - to the new museum.
The Guardian
05/01/00
- MUSEUM
WITH A PLAN: London's new Tate Modern
opens next week. "From the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris
to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, examples of museums
promoting urban renewal are plentiful. But for the Tate this angle
proved a useful marketing tool. Having picked the site for an
annex, museum officials needed to raise $214 million to convert
the abandoned power plant. And they understood that a museum that
promised economic and social benefits to the city would be an
easier sell than art for art's sake."
New York Times 05/01/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
- EARLY
ARTISTS: British archeologists
have found evidence that suggests
humans were producing art 350,000 to 400,000 years ago. The evidence
- found in a cave in Zambia - suggests the area's Stone Age inhabitants
were producing painted art before they evolved into our species.
The
Independent 05/01/00
- BOOTY
EXCHANGE:
On Saturday Germany and Russia
met in St. Petersburg to swap art they had stolen from one another
during World War II. "In exchange for the intricately inlaid
chest and glistening mosaic from Peter the Great's famed Amber
Room, Russia has agreed to return 101 artworks looted from Germany
by Soviet troops after World War II. A Russian law largely bans
repatriating booty art, seen by Russians as compensation for an
estimated several hundred thousand items destroyed or lost during
the Nazi occupation." Chicago
Tribune 05/01/00
- NO
MADAME TUSSAUD'S, BUT... London's Royal
Academy show of Monet last year raked in the visitors, making
it the eighth most-visited attraction in the UK. Visitor numbers
at the RA leapt from 912,714 in 1998 to 1.39m last year, boosting
the academy from 19th to eighth place. But before anyone gets
too excited, consider that Madame Tussaud's at No. 2 on the list
logged more than twice as many visitors.
BBC 05/01/0
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