ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

VISUAL

Translating Art, With Words, For The Blind

It’s not just description. “They started with the audio description of short films and then studied ways of translating the visual language of works of art into audio — including words, effects and music — and creating a mediation tool.” - El País

The Toddler Who Damaged A Rothko Shouldn’t Stop Museums From Welcoming Kids

“Children respond instinctively to art. They have not built up defences, or preconceptions about it, and the earlier you take them to galleries and expose them to different styles and mediums, the more open and receptive they will be.” - The Guardian (UK)

How And Why Did Guinea Bissau Decide To Host An Art Biennale?

The founding artists “could no longer sit ‘with their arms crossed and do nothing,’ about what they saw as a dire gap in their country’s art infrastructure, said Nu Barreto, the visual and plastic arts curator of the country’s first biennale.” - The New York Times

Leading Dutch Museum Worries That Lending Art To The US May No Longer Be Safe

“Martine Gosselink, the director of the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, whose collection includes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring …, said the turmoil had left her team wary of lending pieces to the US … amid the uncertainty wreaked by Donald Trump’s funding cuts and ideological impositions.” - The Guardian

Paris Museum Show Reminds Us About The Dangers Of Political Suppression Of Art

This French museum’s show offers a flashback to the era when, apart from the works including those displayed here, the artists who created them were reviled and persecuted. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

An “Epidemic” Of Mold Strikes Denmark’s Museums

“The highly resistant mold covers objects in a white coating and has been detected in 12 museums, including the National Museum of Denmark and Skagens Museum. Known as aspergillus section restricti, it belongs to a group of fungi that can survive in extreme environments such as the deep ocean or near volcanoes.” - The Guardian

In Its 25 Years, Tate Modern Has Changed Museums Far Beyond Its London Home

“It transformed, for better and worse, audience expectations at museums worldwide. … It taught curators to propound a global view of art — or perhaps no view at all. Its influence ripples through the rethought MoMA — but also the selfie stations of the Museum of Ice Cream.” - The New York Times

With No Warning, SF-MOMA Lays Off 29 Staffers

“The cuts will affect 20 full-time and nine part-time workers, and eliminate another 13 positions that were either vacant or would not be backfilled … as the museum grapples with low visitorship, loss of funding and a multimillion-dollar structural budget deficit.” - KQED (San Francisco)

Auction Of Buddha Relic Gems Suspended After India Threatens Legal Action

The Piprahwa gems were discovered on the estate of an English landowner in India in 1898; they were inside reliquaries labeled as containing the cremains of Siddhartha Gautama himself. Sotheby’s was set to auction them in Hong Kong this week — until India demanded their repatriation and threatened lawsuits. - NBC News

The Uncertain Future Of One Of The Smithsonian’s Most Popular Museums

Now it is in the cross-hairs of President Trump, who issued an executive order in March that seeks to address what he described as the Smithsonian’s promotion of “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive,” singling out the African American museum as a particular offender. - The New York Times

How LACMA’s New Building Will Change The Art Inside

The discussion offered a glimpse into the animated debate that the museum’s 45 curators have been engaged in over the last five years, reimagining how the institution should present art in its curvaceous, Peter Zumthor-designed building crossing Wilshire Boulevard. - The New York Times

The Louvre’s Leaky Roof Nearly Damaged A 13th-Century Painting

“A powerful hailstorm breached the Louvre’s roof (on Saturday) afternoon, causing water to drip into the Salle Rosa room hosting its headline exhibition, ‘A New Look at Cimabue: At the Origins of Italian Painting.’ … (The water) narrowly missed Giovanni Cimabue’s unprotected Maestà wooden panel painting (circa 1280).” - ARTnews

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Skyscraper is Sold, Ending Legal Struggle

“On April 28, a bankruptcy court ruled that the (Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma) will be sold for $1.4 million to McFarlin Building LLC. The 19-story property was to sell on May 6 in a bankruptcy auction, but despite its bankruptcy trustee approaching hundreds of potential buyers, no additional bids were submitted." - Artnet

How JMW Turner Became The Painter We Know

 A fellow painter, Benjamin Robert Haydon, thought that “Turner’s pictures always look as if painted by a man who was born without hands” who had “contrived to tie a brush to the hook at the end of his wooden stump.” - New Statesman

What Will Be On Display In The New LACMA? Four Curators Reveal Their Plans

“The discussion offered a glimpse into the animated debate that the museum’s 45 curators have been engaged in over the last five years, reimagining how the institution should present art in its curvaceous, Peter Zumthor-designed building crossing Wilshire Boulevard.” - The New York Times

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