Category: visual

“The British Museum and other UK institutions with Benin bronzes in their collections are facing growing pressure to return them to Africa. Now, the Guardian newspaper has increased the heat by launching a public appeal to map the location of sculptures looted by the British in the late 19th century.” – artnet

“Hong Kong police deployed tear gas during a protest yesterday that took place close to the city’s Museum of Art just one day after it reopened its doors to the public. The use of tear gas at the museum, which re-opened after a three-year renovation with a travelling show from the Tate, prompted concerns over whether the police’s wide use of the substance is putting important works and museum visitors at risk.” – The Art Newspaper

The Art Basel Miami Beach fair features 269 exhibiting galleries. Nearly two dozen satellite fairs have also sprouted around Miami. Add in pop-up shows, celebrity-studded product rollouts, as well as Miami’s own galleries and museums all putting on their best faces, and you have the circus that local boosters have taken to calling “Miami Art Week.” – The New York Times

The stock photo business is highly competitive, with Getty and its rivals, such as Adobe and Shutterstock, steadily cutting prices to keep market share. Last month, for example, Getty announced plans to move entirely to a “royalty-free” pricing model that would make stock images even cheaper for clients. But if lower prices have benefited Getty’s customers, they’ve also meant less money for stock photographers. – Seattle Times

Denes, who has a new show up at the (oft-maligned) Hudson Shed, says that “Environmental art spreads like wildfire and now everybody wants to partake in its production. It’s okay, but do some good, make people think and act effectively. … We are becoming robots. I would like to make people think and feel good about themselves. Inside, even in a misguided fool, lurks a good person. My art touches on that secret spot.” – Fast Company

Do you remember ‘Cool Britannia’? If you don’t, or if the idea makes you cringe, that might partly be because of the PR disaster of the Millennium Dome’s opening night. “For a government famed for its supposed mastery of spin, it was about as bad as it could get. It crystallised the doubts that floated around the New Labour project: this spectacular container of not very much made an easy emblem of the government’s preference for style over content, its attachment to vacuous statements of modernity, its use of messaging and focus groups to deliver meaningless platitudes, its tokenistic approach to regeneration.” – The Guardian (UK)

As the monument “Rumors of War” prepares to leave Times Square for its permanent home in Richmond, some security officers talk about their time as special “art ambassadors” slash security guards for the work. “The ambassador training was minimal. Some preparation centered on the artist and how the statue was created, but a lot focused on anticipating what questions visitors would ask.” – The New York Times

The Cuban artist has been making important work first in Cuba and then in Puerto Rico for decades. “But outside the Caribbean archipelago, she has been largely ignored. Until the mid-80s, major art institutions in Europe and the United States rarely granted exhibitions, let alone solo shows, to Latina artists, and Sánchez’s identity as a gay Cuban woman rendered her especially invisible.” Until now. – The New York Times

And a very merry apocalypse to you too. Artist Anne Hardy got the Tate Britain commission this year, and she says she worked back from the Winter Solstice, “creating what could be a ransacked temple with tattered banners and tangled cables of lights. On the stairs are pools of ice and sculptural patches of river mud and broken columns. … Something has happened and whatever it is, it’s not good.” – The Guardian (UK)

One of the ideas of Les Arcs was to make skiing holidays easier and more affordable for French holidaygoers. “This huge block of holiday apartments is cantilevered into the hillside, one side tilting outwards so that each floor gets the same amount of sunshine bouncing off the snow. The balconies are on the other side – again each set so that no apartment has more light than another.” – The Guardian (UK)