Since the end of April, I’ve been waiting for news from Gothenburg, Sweden, about the fate of the Peruvian textiles at the Museum of World Culture there, which are owned by the city.

Discovered on the Paracas peninsula in Peru at the beginning of the 20th century and dated to 2,000 years ago, they are funereal bundles, take from ancient graves. The dead, experts say, were generally buried in a seated position, wrapped in many layers of these woven and embroidered textiles.

The Gothenburg city council was supposed to vote on Apr. 26 about whether they’d be sent back to South America, in response to Peruvian requests for its cultural patrimony. Peru attended the meeting called by Zahi Hawass in early April (one account here), and put the textiles on its wish list of things to be returned. Hawass has his own account of the meeting, which he says was attended by 25 countries, here.

But while I haven’t seen any reports in English, a couple of Peruvian news sources have reported that the textiles will be returned to Peru. Here’s one of them, which in translation includes this sentence: “‘Is a moral obligation to restore archaeological relic in the country of origin” said Mrs. Helena Nyhus, from the ranks of Swedish social democracy and president of the cultural section of the city.”

It’s possible that the decision was indeed made, but the announcement was put off until fall, when an exhibition on the textiles at the Museum of World Culture — called “A Stolen World” — closes. The show states its position pretty baldly: “This is the story of how an unscrupulous policy, the illegal commerce and hunting for antiques strip some cultures of their identity.”

It’s also possible that exactly how to return them is an issue. According to a short item last January on the website of the Museum Security Network (here), “the delicate nature of Paracas textiles makes them extremely sensitive to the environment such as light and vibrations. And to move them could mean damage beyond repair.”

As with many issues of cultural patrimony, there’s no easy answer.

And Peru’s bigger dispute is with Yale for artifacts from Machu Picchu.

  

 

Lots of little things have been happening and here are a few:

**Yinka Shonibare has won the next commission for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. It’s called Nelson’s ‘Ship in a Bottle’ and it’s the first work to actually relate to the symbolism of Trafalgar Square: a representation, to scale, of H.M.S. Victory, Admiral Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, set in an oversized, transparent receptacle.  

**Pronounced swings on Wall Street don’t seem to be slowing down the art market: 58% of the lots at recent contemporary art auctions were sold at the high-end or above the estimate, according to ArtTactic. And, “Average auction prices for the contemporary evening sales …are now standing at £2,903,583, up from £1,382,841 a year ago.” Of course, other sectors — American art for example — aren’t doing as well; sell-through rates were in the 60% range.

**The electronic publishing revolution is starting to affect the art world, but illustrated art books won’t be on your Kindle anytime soon — at least not in color. While Apple’s iPad does allow color illustrations, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos told annual-meeting attendees the other day that a color Kindle screen is “still some ways out,” says the Seattle Times.

**The European Museum Forum has given the “European Museum of the Year” prize to the Ozeaneum in Stralsund, Germany — part of the German Oceanographic Museum. The citation rewards an institution for attracting and satisfying visitors with imaginative presentations and interpretations, plus the creation of educational and social responsibility efforts. That probably puts art museums at a disadvantage. 

 

Food has long been a subject of art, and drink, too. But what are we to make of EAT LACMA?

Billed as a year-long festival in collaboration with an artists collective called Fallen Fruit, this series of shindigs is being funded by a grant from the MetLife Museum and Community Connections program, and others. The events are supposed to fuse “the richness of LACMA’s permanent collection with the ephemerality of food and the natural growth cycle.” 

That’s because food is “a common ground that explores the social role of art and ritual in community and human relationships.” The exhibition part — June 27 through Nov. 7 — is being organized by Fallen Fruit’s David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young and LACMA curator Michele Urton.

OK, I’m with you, so far — especially because of the stated emphasis on the permanent collection. I popped “apple” into a search of LACMA’s collection and found 25 works of art, including the one at right of The Holy Family, by Thomas Willeboirts.

But back to the festival, which includes these elements:

Show Us How You Eat — “a participatory online video project, 2010, and is seeking your videos of eating, up to 60 seconds in length” on YouTube, where it currently has 50 members and 29 videos. Some of them will be part of that exhibition, Fallen Fruit Presents The Fruit of LACMA.”

Plant the Perimeter Fruit Tree Giveaway, which took place in February, provided fruit trees visitors could take home to plant in their neighborhood.

Tomato Hootenany, an outdoor event that took place last Saturday, is described thusly:

Come pick up a tomato seedling plant, square dance with caller Susan Michaels and the old time string band Triple Chicken Foot, and take part in a Mortgage Lifter Tomato Workshop with artists Anne Hars and Stephanie Allespach.

The best article I found about the whole enterprise was on a website called Treehugger, which also mentions a “Fruit Foraging Tour” in February — and provides a video of it.

So what’s the bottom line here? Is it all art? No. Is it enough art for a credible museum enterprise? Or is it a waste of time and resources, meant to attract people who’ll never come back for the art alone?

I’m buying. Not everyone who attends a food-related event, and I doubt The Holy Family will be making it into the exhibition, but the connection with art is there, and seemingly strong enough to be legit.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of LACMA

 

Is this a prototype for the museum website of the future?

The Getty Museum just posted a web feature about its Augsberg Display Cabinet, made circa 1630, a centerpiece of its newly redesigned Medieval and Renaissance sculpture and decorative arts galleries. It uses “augmented reality” to allow online visitors to explore the work. A two-dimensional image would have fallen flat, so to speak, for an item described this way:

Each of the four sides of this cabinet opens to reveal an unexpectedly complex series of drawers. Collectors from the early 1600s would have used cabinets of this kind to store such rare and exotic objects as medals, gems, or shells.

The cabinet, however, was conceived as a work of art in its own right. Various masters would have executed the cabinet’s diverse decoration, although only one can be named: the Dutch carver Albert Jansz. Vickenbrinck signed several of the fruitwood reliefs on one side with his monogram, ALVB. Each drawer is richly embellished in a variety of techniques and materials showing biblical, allegorical, historical, and mythological subjects. These include the symbols of the Passion, Judith and Holofernes, the contest of Apollo and Marsyas, the deaths of Cleopatra and Lucretia, and two Renaissance-style portrait medallions. The number of subjects in which women figure prominently may have served a cautionary or moralizing function, while the religious themes express a concern for Christian virtue.

Part of the website display is traditional. Choose an image you want to see from a list of ten on the right, click on the image, and you go to a close-up view. 

The new website feature is interactive, and was developed by the Getty:

The AR feature allows users to experience the Augsburg Cabinet via a 3-D object overlay on a live video feed from the viewer’s webcam–in this case, a simulation of the cabinet. The model spins, tilts, and responds as the viewer interacts with it, creating the sense of participation. This experience is caused both by the viewer’s presence in the live video along with hand-eye engagement used to control the cabinet’s movement.

The result is a step forward, no doubt, though it feels a bit primitive to me — kind of a first step to what will be possible.

Well, the last statement there was a misfire, because despite exploring the Getty site, I hadn’t found the augmented reality link. Please see comment below. Unfortunately, when I went to try it, it appears I need a webcam, which I don’t have.

So, readers, you try it, and post your reviews as comments.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Getty Museum

Talk about exposure! Artist Molly Dilworth has just won the competition to paint Times Square — that is, the five pedestrian plazas created as a test about a year ago and now made permanent by the Bloomberg administration. 150 artists entered, according to WNYC, the public radio station.

Dilworth, whose entry is called “Cool Water, Hot Island” and is based on NASA-heat maps of Manhattan (rendering, looking north from 43rd St. is at right), also won $15,000.

Dilworth doesn’t seem to have a high profile; her website has but one image.

But in February, the New York Daily News wrote about her attempt to paint NYC rooftops with her abstract images, in hopes that they would be seen by satellites and captured by Google Earth. She’d done three buildings at the time, including the Hendershot Gallery’s W. 27th St. property. 

The News quoted her as saying: “I choose the brightest colors that can be seen from outer space, basically.” She buys leftover house paint on Craig’s List or from other organizations to keep costs low, and she uses a roller. Here’s a link to the News story.

UPDATE, 5/22: You can see Dilworth’s work as part of the upcoming Atlantic Avenue Art Walk — and perhaps equally interesting, Dilworth is making the piece with students at the Brooklyn High School of the Arts, where she has  teamed up with SPARK, a drug prevention program. Read more about that here. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the New York City Department of Transportation (top); Hendershot Gallery (bottom)