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Sunday, 7^th February 2009

In World of High-Glamour, Low-Pay Art Market Jobs (New York, New York Times)
Working in the auction houses has always been a particular New York experience, a sorority of client-advisers and appraisers who spend weekends flying to Palm Beach or the Caribbean hoping to land a big account -- and, some of them concede, perhaps a husband -- but whose paychecks put them close to the poverty line.
New York Times - United States

For Love or Money (New York, Artforum)
"IT IS A CONTEST of wit and logic and ideas and facts and argument, and most of all, persuasion." Host John Donvan, introducing Tuesday evening's debate in the Intelligence Squared US series at Rockefeller University, declined to mention another factor sometimes known to tip the balance: charisma. But the semantics of the motion--"the art market is less ethical than the stock market"--were sufficiently fuzzy that personal magnetism certainly seemed as though it might influence the outcome.
Artforum - New York,NY,USA

Obama poster artist Shepard Fairey is arrested on tagging charges (Boston, US, LA Times)

Fairey was arrested Friday night in Boston on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art to DJ at a sold-out party kicking off his first solo exhibition, "Supply and Demand." Two arrest warrants had been issued Jan. 24 after police determined that he had tagged property in two locations with his street art campaign featuring Andre the Giant and the word "obey," said Boston police officer James Kenneally.
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA

Street artist will get day in court for pasting up his art (Boston, US, Boston Globe)
Shepard Fairey is scheduled to face charges in a Boston courtroom tomorrow for allegedly pasting art without permission on two local sites that police discovered last month - one under the Boston University Bridge and the other above Storrow Drive.
Boston Globe - United States

Shepard Fairey, success (Boston, US, Boston Globe)
Tell you what. I don't know why Shepard Fairey was arrested as he was walking into a giant party at the Institute of Contemporary Art, a party he was expected to star at. I wonder why he wasn't arrested on City Hall when he was standing next to the Mayor. Or at his hotel room. Or over a latte this morning. But in a city that's been less than friendly toward public art and, some would say, to artists themselves, it's interesting to note the timing on the arrest.
Boston Globe - United States

Saturday, 7^th February 2009

Plenty of Praise for Revamped Palm Beach Fair (Palm Beach, Miami, Artinfo)
The Lesters' success this year appears to be the result of aggressive promotion and bolstering of confidence among the fair's 80-odd participating dealers, some of whom were convinced to return to the fair after dropping out during the DMG years.  The Lesters arranged for a full-color advertising supplement in last Friday's New York Times, local TV spots, and buses to import collectors from Naples, Florida. They shortened the fair from 11 days to five -- it now runs February 4 to 8.
ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Paper trail into the artist's inner being (London, Times Online)
On Wednesday, when the Watercolours & Drawings Fair opened in London, its organisers must have been hoping that history would repeat itself. Now in a new venue, the Flower Cellars, Covent Garden -- formerly the Theatre Museum -- the fair is a descendant of a series that began at the Park Lane Hotel in January 1986.

Times Online - UK

Art Rotterdam: Everything in Moderation (Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Artinfo)
ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands--"The Dutch are a moderate people. Our economy grew in a moderate way, and it will fall in a moderate way: We are not worried -- so far," said a gallerist from Amsterdam's Willem Baars Art Projects. This rosy (and refreshing) outlook reverberated throughout the 75 booths at Art Rotterdam, which celebrates its 10th edition this year, running February 5 to 8.

ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

A Gallery Goes Out in a Burst of Energy (New York, New York Times)
New York's increasing gallery closings may be cause for distress, especially for artists who suddenly find themselves without dealers. But you might consider these closings not as a loss of energy but as energy transformed, moving from one dimension to another. Cohan & Leslie, a Chelsea gallery that closed last month, implied as much in its farewell e-mail message: a post-election, pre-inauguration photograph of Barack Obama, casually dressed in a gray T-shirt and giving a smile and a wave from the back seat of a sleek automobile.
New York Times - United States

Successful sales calm jittery art market (London, Financial Times)
Predictions of an art market meltdown were confounded in London this week as six sales of impressionist, modern and contemporary art at Christie's and Sotheby's turned in solid results.  The auction houses managed to restore confidence to a jittery market with successful sales by radically shrinking the size of the catalogue and lowering estimates compared with last year. Some distress selling is, however, beginning to filter through.
Financial Times - London,England,UK

Brandeis' Attempt to Turn Art into Assets (Boston, US, TIME)
There's a Stephen Sondheim lyric that says it all: "Art isn't easy." Last week Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., stunned both the academic and art worlds when it announced that it would shut down its Rose Art Museum and sell the collection. The reason was an institutional budget crisis -- not at the museum, which is largely self-sufficient, but at the university.
TIME - USA

Friday, 6^th February 2009

Campaign Builds To Stop Brandeis Art Sale (Boston, New York Times)

The museum's board of overseers issued a statement objecting to the closing, saying it would be "a breach of faith" with its founders and with supporters who have "sustained the museum for almost 50 years based on agreements and understandings that the Rose Art Museum would be maintained on the Brandeis campus in perpetuity."

The New York Times

Thursday, 5^th February 2009

Brandeis President Apologizes For Handling Of Rose Museum Affair (Boston, Boston Globe)

 In retrospect, I wish I had handled the initial statements I made in a far more direct way. Unfortunately, those statements did not accurately reflect the Board's decision authorizing the administration to conduct "an orderly sale or other disposition of works from the university's collection." The statements gave the misleading impression that we were selling the entire collection immediately, which is not true.

Boston Globe 

Brandeis President: We'll Sell 'Minute Number' Of Artworks (Boston, Boston Globe)

The Globe's Tracy Jan interviewed Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz  about the school's financial situation and the possibility of the closing of the Rose Art Museum. Hear excerpts from the interview...

Boston Globe

Anti-Shushing Manifesto: Let Kids In Museums Make Noise (London, UK, The Guardian)

Museum attendants should be stopped from 'shushing' children and displays should be hung low enough for youngsters to see properly, according to a manifesto to make museums more family-friendly published today.

The Guardian (UK)

Shepard Fairey Is A Pretender, Cartoonist Says (Boston, Boston Globe)

Shepard Fairey is the artist who designed the now ubiquitous Obama HOPE poster, the semi-official iconic image of the candidate. A one-man show of his work opens Feb. 6 (members reception Feb. 4) at the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Boston Globe

AP Seeks Credit, Compensation For Obama's 'Hope' Poster (Boston, Boston Globe)
Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers and has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay. The AP says it owns the copyright and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.
Boston Globe (AP)

Wednesday, 4^th February 2009

In L.A., Even Renaissance Paintings Go Into Rehab (Los Angeles, US, LA Times)

After a stint in the Getty Museum's conservation labs, Francisco de Zurbarán's 1633 Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose "is even more astounding than before: Surface textures emerged from beneath varnish, slight compositional alterations made the display of fruits and vessels more weighty, newly revealed details directed the eye in surprising ways, spatial relations were brought into a new light.

Los Angeles Times

Degas Sculpture Breaks Record As Other Lots Go Unsold (London, UK, Bloomberg)

A Degas sculpture last night fetched a record 13.3 million pounds ($19.2 million), while other high- value works were rejected, at the first international auction- house test of the art market in 2009. ... This month's evening auctions of contemporary art at Sotheby's and Christie's International are estimated by the auction houses to fetch at least 31.6 million pounds, which is a decline of 78 percent.

Bloomberg

A Young Obama On Canvas, Or Just A Look-Alike? (Los Angeles, US, LA Times)

It is believed that Adams died about 10 years ago, leaving behind works that were sold off by relatives. How and when he might have met Obama remains frustratingly unknown for the oil painting's new owners. Obama aides said they were unable to run down the story of the portrait and added that it was "not likely" that Obama would have time to address it.

Los Angeles Times

NYPD Nabs Poster Boy, Unless It Isn't Him (New York, The New York Times, US)

While most other street or graffiti artists concentrate on adding their own imagery, illegally, to parts of the subway system, Poster Boy, a kind of anti-consumerist Zorro with a razor blade, a sense of humor and a talent for collage, has made his outlaw presence known all over the city by cutting and pasting the images that are already there in the form of ads.

The New York Times

Tuesday, 3^rd February 2009

Exodus From L.A. MOCA's Board (Los Angeles, LA Times)
L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art, which last week eliminated 20% of its paid staff to cut costs, is now faced with finding replacements for some of its highest-profile board members. Nine of the 35 trustees who were on the board last fall before the museum's near-collapse have since resigned.

Los Angeles Times

Settlement Reached, MoMA & Guggenheim Keep Picassos (New York, Bloomberg)
New York's Museum of Modern Art and the foundation that runs the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum can keep two Picassos, after heirs of the paintings' Weimar-era owner settled a suit to repossess them. The settlement was reached yesterday and announced as jury selection was set to begin in the suit that the three heirs filed against the museums.

Bloomberg

The Art Just Isn't Moving, So NY Galleries Are Closing (New York, Bloomberg)
Since September, four [Manhattan] galleries have shut their doors: Roebling Hall and Cohan and Leslie in Chelsea; Rivington Arms in the East Village and 31 Grand on the Lower East Side. More established galleries are hurting, too. They're firing staff, dropping out of art fairs and extending their shows for months in an attempt to cut expenses.

Bloomberg

MOCA Detroit Gets Its First Full-Time Director (Detroit, US, Detroit Free Press)

Luis Croquer was in his mid-20s and studying anthropology and communications in London when a part-time job changed his life. He worked as an art adviser's assistant, scouting galleries, auction houses and private collections in search of treasure. Croquer, the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, was unwittingly training himself as a curator.
Detroit Free Press

Turners Go To China On Tate Loan (China, BBC)
China is to get its first major exhibition of JMW Turner's work after Tate Britain agreed to lend the country 80 paintings from its collection. The loan, announced by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, includes key works The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire and Norham Castle, Sunrise.

BBC

Monday, 2^nd February 2009

'We Were Never Consulted At All,' Rose Director Says (Boston, Boston Globe, US)
The director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University has issued a scathing response to the university's plans to close the museum and sell off its $350 million art collection, saying he feels 'shame and deep regret over the shortsightedness of this decision.' 'I want you to know from me some basic facts,' Michael Rush wrote in a statement posted over the weekend on the museum's website.

Boston Globe

Brandeis's Next Problem: Angry Donors, Reluctant To Give (Boston, US, Wall Street Journal)
Few things are more poignant than a gem of a museum whose days may be numbered. So it was at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University on a visit Friday, days after the university's trustees voted unanimously to trash the institution by closing it and auctioning off the 6,000 works in its collection. The action came without consulting either the museum's own board of governors or its director, Michael Rush.

Wall Street Journal

A University That Purges Art?... Well - Not Much Of A School Then, Is It?

The Brandeis vote was an act of breathtaking stealth and presumption: a raid on a museum that supports itself, raises its own funds and has consistently planned wisely for its own future without leaning on the university. The trustees treated it nonetheless as a disposable asset.

The New York Times

Sunday, January 25, 2009

The Institute of Contemporary Art Announces Andrew Witkin as the ... (Boston, MA, US)
Boston artist Andrew Witkin is the winner of the 2008 James and Audrey Foster Prize, the Institute of Contemporary Art announced. This biennial award recognizing a Boston-area artist of exceptional promise includes a $25,000 prize and an opportunity for the finalists to present their work in an exhibition at the ICA.
Art Daily - Eastport,Maine,USA

Outlaws at the Art Museum (and Not for a Heist) (New York)
In 2005, the British artist Banksy -- then on the verge of becoming probably the world's most famous street artist -- walked into the Museum of Modern Art and three other New York museums done up in a beige raincoat and fake beard, looking more like a subway flasher than a "quality vandal," as he called himself.
New York Times - United States

Happening today (Los Angeles, CA, US)
Art LA 2009 Santa Monica's Barker Hangar is the hub of contemporary art, with 60 international and Los Angeles-based galleries showing and selling their progressive pieces. Barker Hangar, 3021 Airport Ave., Santa Monica. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. today, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun. $15 per day, $25 for a three-day pass. (800) 952-7646; www.artfairsinc.com/artla.
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA

Medieval works of art set to find new favour (Trends)
A feature of past recessions has been a retreat from the contemporary to traditional markets, where good purchases hold value, and there are indications of this now. This trend, if it develops, might counteract the resistance that many British collectors seem to show to medieval works of art, especially from Northern Europe.
Times Online - UK

Rooms with a view: £125m art collection tours UK (United Kingdom)
Ambitious plans to get contemporary art to all corners of the UK were unveiled yesterday with a scheme that would see the films of Bill Viola going to Stromness, the flowers and nudes of Robert Mapplethorpe travelling to Sheffield and the radicalism of Joseph Beuys spending the summer at Bexhill on Sea.The works are part of art dealer Anthony d'Offay's collection that was sold to the nation for £28m - as opposed to the £125m it was probably worth - last year.
guardian.co.uk - UK

Pushing film's frontiers to Venice (Canada)
Mark Lewis, who will represent Canada at the Venice Biennale, is inspired by "modest modernism". Austerity and modesty are buzzwords already circulating to describe the prospects of this year's Venice Biennale as the art market hunkers down in recession mode. This hardly makes the 53rd International Art Exhibition, from June 7 to Nov. 22, seem particularly tourist-friendly, even if a record-setting 300,000 visitors were on hand two years back.
Toronto Star - Ontario, Canada

The Princeton Packet > News > PRINCETON: Princeton University ... (US)
James Steward, a skilled arts administrator and a specialist in 18th- and 19th-century European art and culture, has been selected as director of the Princeton University Art Museum. Mr. Steward, director of the Museum of Art and a faculty member at the University of Michigan since 1998, will begin his work at Princeton in late April. "James Steward is a distinguished scholar, a gifted manager and a proven leader in the museum world," said Princeton Provost Christopher Eisgruber, to whom he will report.
Central Jersey

The New South Ferry Terminal: See It Split, See It Change (Manhattan, New York)
Sometime by the end of the month the public will get its first view of See It Split, See It Change. A 250 foot-long curved wall of fused glass panels and mosaics by Doug and Mike Starn, it snakes along the new South Ferry subway station. It's a stunner, and an unusually engaging piece for a city that already takes public art seriously. At first See It Split, See It Change seems simply bold and graphic, a striking backdrop for your dash to the 1 train.
Cool Hunting - New York,NY,USA

Museum directors from across the country are coming to San Diego ... (San Diego, US)
Bad economic times can be the stuff of a good meeting for America's museum directors. "It can be a lonely job," says Derrick Cartwright, the director of the San Diego Museum of Art. "And being among other directors can provide professional and emotional support." In an economic crisis, this kind of support can be even more welcome. And Cartwright is not alone in this reasoning, while considering the importance of the semi-annual get-together of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) - coming to San Diego for the first time in 10 years.
San Diego Union Tribune - San Diego,CA,USA

Seen for the very first time: Faltering art market given a boost (London, UK)
For 90 years this exquisite and rare work by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani has graced the home of one wealthy family. The image of two young girls was painted in the south of France in 1918 as the artist avoided the ravages of the end of the First World War. Now, for the first time, it is to go under the hammer. Purchased from the artist by the collector Jonas Netter, who helped to established Modigliani's reputation, the work - one of only five double portraits the artist created - has been the heirloom of a single family for nearly a century.
Independent - London,England,UK

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Beleaguered Bank Still in the Art Business (Hong Kong, China)
Started in April 2005, Fortis Art Bank allows reputable galleries in Asia to display artworks in the private bank's offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. The paintings, sculptures, and installations provide décor for meeting rooms and, perhaps more important, go on view before the bank's wealthy clients. Exhibits change every quarter
ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Pieces that put wind in their sales (Art Market)
When the "biggest art deal of all time" went through last year, it seemed an astonishing coup. The heirs of the legendary art dealer Ileana Sonnabend, who died in 2007, sold some of her art collection privately for $600m. The deal was reported to have involved New York's mega-gallerist Gagosian, who brokered the $200m sale of about 10 Warhol paintings, including two of Elizabeth Taylor.
Financial Times - London,England,UK

HMO pioneer, FHP founder Robert Gumbiner dies (Obituary, US)
Gumbiner also was an avid collector of Latin American art. Using the millions he made from FHP, Gumbiner and a foundation bearing his name created the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. Opened in 1996, it now houses about 1,000 pieces from 20 countries. Gumbiner also founded the Ethnic Art Institute of Micronesia in 1994 on the island of Yap to preserve and revitalize traditional arts.
San Francisco Chronicle - CA, USA

Lorenzo Rudolf Leaves ShContemporary; Colin Chinnery Steps In (Princeton, US)
James Steward will succeed Susan Taylor as director of the Princeton University Art Museum. A specialist in 18th- and 19th-century European art and culture, Steward was the director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) and a faculty member at the university since 1998. At UMMA, Steward organized and oversaw the planning, fund-raising, and construction of a $42 million expansion and restoration project.
ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Museum will turn into hot night spot for Art After Dark (Trends)
Opening museum doors for after-hours events is a trend that is gaining momentum across the country. The Guggenheim in New York hosts First Friday events with gallery tours, drinks and music. The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego's Thursday Night Thing, on the first Thursday of each month, features artist talks, live music and poetry readings.  "It transforms the museum into something fun and playful," Susalla said.
San Diego Union Tribune - San Diego,CA,USA

Art and Culture in Jordan and Dubai (California, US)
The Oakland Museum of California's Art Guild, in partnership with the tourism company Distant Horizons, is offering a new art-themed trip to Jordan and Dubai from March 10 to 22. New York Times - United States

Cultural Politics and Contemporary Art at The Ackland Art Museum (Chapel Hill, NC, US)
Assistant professor of Art History Cary Levine gives his students all the credit for the special collection installation Cultural Politics and Contemporary Art. "It's really their show," he says, and he isn't just being modest. The fourteen students in his fall class "Cultural Politics and Contemporary Art" selected every image included in the exhibition, laid out the installation, and wrote the accompanying catalogue.
Art Daily - Eastport,Maine,USA

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis Presents Gedi Sibony: My Arms ... (St. Louis, MO, US)
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis presents the first monographic museum exhibition with New York-based artist Gedi Sibony: My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms. Along with a selection of the artist's recent pieces, including the carefully balanced Partly Me Manners (2008) and the multipart Probably Eight or Half of Each (2007), the exhibition features major new works in a site-specific installation for the Contemporary's Main Galleries.
Art Daily - Eastport,Maine,USA

An introduction to MUAC, Mexico's new modern art museum (Mexico City)
A modern monstrosity out of place amid a dated aesthetic, or a much-needed injection of fresh, voguish design? Whichever side you come down on, Mexico City's brand new temple to modern art is well worth a visit.  The Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (University Museum of Contemporary Art), also known by its initials MUAC, opened its misted-glass doors to the Mexican public at the end of November 2008.
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA

£125M National Art Collection to Tour the UK (London, UK)
British art dealer and philanthropist Anthony D'Offay, along with the Tate Modern, has announced a traveling exhibition of nearly all of the 725-piece contemporary collection that D'Offay donated to the Tate and National Galleries of Scotland last year, the Independent reports. D'Offay, who was lauded by Prime Minister Gordon Brown for his gift, donated the £125 million ($170.8 million) collection with the solitary condition that it be displayed to the public.
ARTINFO - New York,NY,USA

Accused art dealer cancels exhibition (Sydney, Australia)
His website claims he specialises in works by the likes of Tom Roberts, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Norman Lindsay and D'Arcy W Doyle. In recent months, several members of the public have made complaints about the dealership, claiming they never received payment for the sale of their investments.
Sydney Morning Herald - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia

January 23, 2009

More American Museum Cutbacks: A Roundup (New York, US)
As reported last month (The Art Newspaper, January 2008), a number of museums have announced that they are cutting back on operating costs in the face of a continuing global recession. On New Year's Eve, the Austin Museum of Art shelved plans to build a new $23m branch in downtown Austin after Houston-based developer Hines Interests withdrew its plans to purchase land from the museum.

The Art Newspaper

Design Finalists Picked For New Broad Collection Museum (Beverley Hills, LA, US)
Last month AN reported on philanthropist Eli Broad's new plan for a museum in Beverly Hills, on the western edge of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards. If approved, the five-story building would contain 118,500 square feet of office space on four levels and 68,000 square feet of museum gallery space, archives, and street-level retail. Now AN has learned from a source that the shortlist for an invited competition to design the museum includes Thom Mayne, Jean Nouvel, Shigeru Ban, Rafael Viñoly, and Christian de Portzamparc.
The Architect's Newspaper

January 22, 2009

Star-Studded £125M Contemporary Art Collection To Make UK-Wide Tour (London, UK)
The travelling exhibition, announced at Tate Modern yesterday, will include many of the 725 cutting-edge artworks given by... Anthony D'Offay to Tate and National Galleries of Scotland last year, on proviso that [they]... be displayed across the nation rather than hidden away in the vaults... and occasionally wheeled out for an urbane London audience.
The Independent (UK)

In Lawsuit, Artist Richard Prince Accused Of Lifting Images (New York)
French photographer Patrick Cariou has launched a lawsuit against Richard Prince, claiming that the artist improperly lifted images from Cariou's photographic survey of Rastafarian culture for a recent series of paintings. The suit, filed in New York, also names as defendants Larry Gagosian, Prince's dealer who displayed the series in a recent show titled 'Canal Zone', and publishing house Rizzoli, which co-produced the catalogue.
The Art Newspaper

Cheap, Imported Pictures Threaten Paris Street Painters (Paris, France)
Street painters are part of the romantic lure of Montmartre. ... Today, some 300 officially licensed artists work here. Almost all of their customers are tourists. They may not produce great art but they are skilled painters. And now they say their livelihoods are at risk because many of the souvenir shops in the area are selling cheap, mass-produced paintings from China and Eastern Europe.
BBC

Portrait Of Firth As Mr. Darcy Fetches £12,000 At Auction (London)
A portrait of actor Colin Firth as Mr Darcy has fetched £12,000 at Bonhams in London, double its estimated price. The oil painting, a prop from the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, received a number of advance bids. The painting was accompanied by a signed letter from Firth, in which the 48-year-old star claimed Mr Darcy 'has weathered better than most of us'.
BBC

When Art Doesn't Age Well, Does The Artist Owe The Buyer? (Issues)
Art is long and life is short, according to the old Roman saying, but sometimes art doesn't hold up its end of the bargain. The canvas warps, the metal bends, the paper turns brown.... [I]t's not fully clear what responsibility artists bear to their completed work, especially after it has been sold.
Wall Street Journal

At The Scene Of The Crime: The Bergen-Belsen Memorial (Berlin, Germany)
Nothing about [the new Bergen-Belsen Memorial] dramatizes information for visitors the way, say, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington apparently feels it needs to. Divorced as it is from the sites of persecution, it turns relics of genocide like a Zyklon B canister and a cattle car that transported Jews to Auschwitz into props. Bergen-Belsen has the camp as evidence, or what's left of it.
The New York Times

It's Time America Rethinks Its Approach To Infrastructure (United States)
So much is made of the nation's neglect of infrastructure, yet the U.S. actually is spending record sums on it. We don't make progress because the nation fails to lay out new communities so they can be efficiently served by means other than the auto. A start would be to group people-intensive colleges and commercial centers as hubs along corridors served by transit and walkable streets.
Bloomberg

A Treasure Trove Of Ancient Egyptian Painting (London, UK)

It is only January, but I don't expect to see an exhibition in the next 12 months more moving than what is on view in the British Museum's new gallery of ancient Egyptian art. Beautifully designed, lit and labelled, it is devoted to one of the best-loved works of art in the British Museum - the wall paintings from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun, an obscure accountant attached to the Temple of Amun in Thebes who died around 1350 BC.

The Daily Telegraph (UK)

Making Tropical Landscaping Into An Art (Brazil)
Brazil teems with jungles, forests and all sorts of exotic plants, flowers and trees. But until the Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx came along to tame and shape his country's exuberant flora, his countrymen had mostly disdained the natural riches that, often literally, flourished in their own backyards.
New York Times

Something Useful To Do With Those Publishers' Clearing House Thingies (Austan, TX, US)

When junk mail arrives in the mail, most either throw it in their recycle bin or toss it in the garbage, but one woman sees it as art. "I was a bit bothered by the amount of paper that came into my home," said artist Annette Lawrence. Instead of tossing it in the recycle bin, Lawrence decided to save every piece of it. "It is a year's worth of junk mail torn into two inch wide strips and stacked and bound," said Lawrence. "It is intended to show how much junk mail comes into a one-person household in one year."
Austin News

Cerny's EU Sculpture, Now With Toilet Discreetly Veiled (United Nations)
A depiction of Bulgaria as a toilet in an artwork at the European Union headquarters in Brussels was covered up following a complaint by the government in Sofia. The section of the 'Entropa' avant-garde installation showing Bulgaria as a Roman or 'Turkish' toilet was draped with a black cloth last night, said Jan Vytopil, a spokesman for the Czech presidency of the EU."
Bloomberg

How A Symbol Of Freed Slaves Didn't End Up On DC Statue (Washington, US)
When Barack Obama takes the oath of office as president of the United States, Thomas Crawford's 'Statue of Freedom' will preside over the event from its exalted perch atop the Capitol dome. Metaphorically, at least, the nation's first African American president will complete something the statue's artist originally planned to evoke.
Los Angeles Times

The Getty Grows Up (Los Angeles, US)
That was the state of affairs at the world's richest museum some six years after its namesake died in June 1976, leaving $1.2 billion (about $2.7 billion in today's dollars) to "a museum, library and gallery of art for the diffusion of artistic and general knowledge." The bounty came as a surprise. Getty had implied that the Malibu museum he'd opened in 1954, modeled on a first-century Roman villa, would inherit little.
Wall Street Journal

Survey: Contemporary Art Market Recovery 3-5+ Years Away (Art Market)
Confidence levels in the contemporary-art market have fallen 81 percent since May 2008 and may take between three and five years to recover, according to a survey by research company ArtTactic Ltd. ArtTactic's Western Art Market Confidence Indicator dropped to 10.5 from 56, the lowest level reached since the survey was first conducted in May 2005....
Bloomberg

American Owns Posters Taken By Nazis, Court Rules (Germany)
A German court today declared a retired U.S. airline pilot to be the rightful owner of his father's poster collection, which was seized by the Gestapo in 1938 and is currently housed in a Berlin museum." This decision contradicts an earlier judgment.
Bloomberg

Help Wanted: Money Manager For A Louvre Endowment (Paris, France)
Eighteen banks, including UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are competing for money-management business from an elderly, refined first-time client -- the Louvre. The Paris museum, which opened to the public in 1793, says it is starting a U.S.-style endowment next month with the 175 million euros ($230 million) it received to set up an Abu Dhabi offshoot. Bloomberg

January 19, 2009

Posters Seized By Nazis Are Target Of American's Suit (Berlin, Germany)
When Peter Sachs was only a year old in 1938, the Nazis seized his father's collection of 12,500 rare posters on the orders of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. ... Today, some 4,000 of the posters, worth at least euro4.5 million ($5.9 million), are in the possession of the German Historical Museum in Berlin, largely in storage. Peter Sachs goes to court Tuesday to try to get them back.
Associated Press

Putin Painting Fetches $1.14M (At Least It Was For Charity) (St. Petersberg, Russia)

Vladimir Putin's first painting fetched 37 million rubles ($1.14 million) at a charity auction in his native St. Petersburg last night. The Russian prime minister's picture of a frosty window made the highest price of 30 works on offer.

Bloomberg

Indian Artists Opens Show, Discovers Most Works In It Are Fakes (India)
India's art world is reeling from one of its most embarrassing forgery cases today after S.H. Raza, one of the country's foremost artists, inaugurated an exhibition of his paintings in Delhi - only to discover that most were fakes.
The Times (UK)

What Will The Art Market Do In 2009? (Global)

Supply presents an ambiguous picture. On the one hand, vendors are holding back from selling, for fear of "burning" their pictures by seeing them unsold; the auction houses are struggling to bring in good material for next month's sales. On the other hand, forced sales by cash-strapped collectors may bring desirable works onto the market. Dealers claim that it is a great time to buy, and a number were acquiring inventory at Art Basel Miami Beach last month.

The Art Newspaper

Downturn Having Big Effect On Australia's Aboriginal Artists (Australia)
The past, high-growth decade proved a golden time for the sale and promotion of indigenous culture. Today, though, in the face of the looming international downturn, an ominous calm has descended.
The Australian

Sunday, 18^th January 2009

Jasper Johns: Light Bulb Opens at Museum of Contemporary Art in ... (San Diego, US)
On view January 18 through May 10, 2009. A traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Jasper Johns: Light Bulb focuses on Johns's first sculpture, Light Bulb I (1958), a recent gift to MCASD. The exhibition will bring together for the first time Johns' light bulb sculptures and related drawings and prints, including several drawings and modified prints from the artist's collection that have never before been exhibited.
Art Daily

Hugely popular painter Andrew Wyeth dies at 91 (Chadds Ford, Philadelphia, US)
Wyeth's watercolor and tempera landscapes and portraits made him one of America's best loved artists. He remained a figurative painter who prospered even in times when the genre was deemed passe. Andrew Wyeth, whose realistic yet often melancholy paintings of rural Pennsylvania and Maine made him one of America's most popular living artists, and whose 1948 landscape "Christina's World" was one of the 20th century's most famous artworks, died Friday. He was 91.
Los Angeles Times

For Wyeth, Both Praise and Doubt (Chadds Ford, Philadelphia, US)
Many in the art world rushed to praise Wyeth, who died on Friday at 91, as one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century. But as ever, plenty of others lumped him with Norman Rockwell as a mere illustrator, and dismissed his most famous painting, "Christina's World," as a "mandatory dorm room poster." Kathleen A. Foster, the senior curator of American art and director of the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said, "There is no question that there has been a polarization of opinion" about Wyeth and his work.
New York Times - United States

The art market: A tent, a rollercoaster and a merry-go-round (Global)
The fashion-art overlap that was such a feature of the contemporary art boom has come to a screeching halt, at least chez Chanel, the French fashion house. The firm sank a vast sum (millions of euros, said the French press; "no comment" said Chanel) into Mobile Art, a huge Zaha Hadid-designed futuristic bubble-tent to show artworks inspired by the Chanel quilted bag. Among the creators were Yoko Ono, the Russian Blue Noses, Korean Lee Bul, Indian Subodh Gupta and Japanese Nobuyoshi Araki.
Financial Times - London,England,UK

LACMA Presents First US Exhibition of Contemporary Korean Art in ... (Los Angeles, US)
Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea features a generation of artists who have emerged since the mid-1980s--some well-known and others on the brink of such recognition--all of whom work on the cutting-edge of international art trends and within a distinctly Korean context: Bahc Yiso, Choi Jeong-Hwa, Gimhongsok, Jeon Joonho, Kim Beom, Kimsooja, Koo Jeong-A, Minouk Lim, Jooyeon Park, Do Ho Suh, Haegue Yang and the collaborative, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (family names are in bold). 
Art Daily

Saturday, 17^th January 2009

ARTNET GOSSIP (Global)
Art market doldrums: Almost 25 galleries have pulled out of ARCO, a birdie says, and other upcoming art shows are sending out plenty of "wait list" letters, so they'll be sure to have enough applicants to fill any suddenly vacant spots. Spain's big art fair kicks off Feb. 11-16, 2009. . . "Sales" were okay at Art Basel Miami Beach and other fairs in December, but collecting the money is turning out to be harder than usual. "Sales are one thing," said one dealer, wryly. "Getting paid is another."
Artnet - New York,NY,USA

High returns for high art are swept away (London, UK)
This is not economising as most people would recognise it. Once-in-a-generation works can still expect to command spectacular prices. Sotheby's have a Degas bronze of a ballet dancer estimated at £9million to £12 million, Christie's a Monet at £15million. Jussi Pylkkanen, Christie's European president, said: "The art market has never been directly comparable to the global economy. Many of our clients who buy major pictures live in a slightly different world and while some have been affected by the downturn others haven't."
Times Online - UK

Weighing Andrew Wyeth (New York, US)
Most people -- critics included -- look at paintings and see reputations. Andrew Wyeth disappeared behind his reputation many years ago, and since then it has been all but impossible to sweep away the haze of words that hides his paintings from view. Pay a visit to New York's Museum of Modern Art and look at "Christina's World," his best-known canvas, and what do you see?
Wall Street Journal - USA

Friday, 16^th January 2009

Cerny Promises To Return Govt. Money For Sculpture (European Union)
David Cerny vowed yesterday to hand back all the public money he received for his EU sculpture although he was vague about the bulk £350,000 purse he was attempting to raise from private donors. Mr Cerny, 41, apologised for hoodwinking his government and said that he would not take the 50,000 Euros which the Czech Government agreed to pay to rent the sculpture for six months.
The Times (UK)

Czechs To Bulgarians: Really Sorry About That Toilet Thing (European Union)
The Czech EU presidency has apologised for an art installation it commissioned that lampoons national stereotypes. Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra apologised directly to Bulgaria, which has formally complained over its depiction as a toilet in the art work. He said the image, at the European Council building in Brussels, would be removed if Sofia insisted.

BBC

Reactions To Cerny's Joke More Entertaining Than The Art (European Union)
Whether 'Entropa,' Czech artist David Cerny's hoax representation of the 27 European states, was a good work of art, it certainly was a good joke. It also caused a certain amount of embarrassment to Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra when it was switched on.

Bloomberg

Uh, Czechs? Maybe Cerny Wasn't The Artist For The Job. (European Union)
The poor Czechs. Their turn at leading the EU already had provoked deep skepticism, and Cerny's 9-ton diss -- hanging at the entrance to the European Council building in Brussels -- doesn't help. But what did they expect?

Los Angeles Times

Kimbell Museum Names A Director: Cincinnati's Eric Lee (Fort Worth, US)
Eric Lee, who distinguished himself for two years as director of the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, is the new director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Kay Fortson, president of the Kimbell Art Foundation, said the board voted unanimously to pick Lee, 42, after spending 18 months interviewing 'many, many, many candidates from all over the world.'
Dallas Morning News

Thursday, 15^th January 2009

Dealer Arrested Over Alleged Smuggling Of Egyptian Artifacts (Bulgaria)
A wanted Lebanese antiquities dealer has been arrested in Bulgaria over accusations he stole ancient Egyptian artifacts and slipped them out of the country in recent years, Egypt's Culture Ministry said on Thursday.

Reuters

Vladimir Putin, Art Prodigy (Russia)
Vladimir Putin, Russia's macho prime minister, has given his people a glimpse of his sensitive side by painting a delicate water colour. Keen to burnish his legend of virility, Russia's political mandarins have released images of Mr Putin pursuing a range of manly interests. He has been shown as a consummate horseman, a bare-chested hunter and fisherman (acquiring gay icon status in the process), a skillful skier and, when pictured at the helm of a fighter jet, a noble warrior leader.

The Daily Telegraph (UK)

An Art Critic Appraises Putin's Work (Russia)
Notice the confidence with which those curtains are drawn - how with each long stroke Putin never loses contact with the canvas until his loaded brush is dry. There isn't a wasted or unnecessary brushstroke and nothing childish or naïve about this picture.

Putin gives us all the information we need but nothing more.

The Daily Telegraph (UK)

Architecture Revival in Coventry (Coventry, UK)
Nearly 70 years on, resurrection is still on the agenda here. This time it's called urban regeneration, in a metropolis where postwar experiments in city planning produced Britain's first shopping precinct, and the infamously hazardous switchback ride otherwise known as the inner ring road. The opening of the new £11.5m extension to the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, designed by architects Pringle Richards Sharratt, is the latest chapter in the transformation of key sites in the city centre.

The Independent (UK)

London Auctions To Be A Shadow Of Their 2008 Selves (London, UK)

Works by Lucio Fontana, Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons will fail to lift the total estimate of London's contemporary-art sales next month above a quarter of 2008's level. The evening auctions by Sotheby's, Christie's International and Phillips de Pury carry a total low estimate of 38.4 million pounds ($55.9 million), according to Bloomberg calculations. This is 23 percent of the 164.3 million pounds in equivalent sales estimates in 2008.

Bloomberg

In Australia, New Legal Protection For Aboriginal Artists (Australia)

Australia has launched a draft code regulating the sale of Aboriginal art, worth as much as A$500 million ($330 million) per year. It aims to outlaw so-called carpetbagging, when dealers exploit artists and buy their work cheaply for alcohol or drugs. Australia has launched a draft code regulating the sale of Aboriginal art, worth as much as A$500 million ($330 million) per year. It aims to outlaw so-called carpetbagging, when dealers exploit artists and buy their work cheaply for alcohol or drugs.

Bloomberg