Category: visual

In 2016, Rinder led the move of the museum from its original home, an architecturally significant but seismically challenged structure, to an acclaimed new building. The $112 million project, designed by New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, relocated BAMPFA from the southeast periphery of the Berkeley campus to a lively corner of Center Street. In the process, art and film became a much-needed linchpin between the university and the downtown of its host city. – San Francisco Chronicle

A nonagenarian in the French town of Compiègne had had the painting hanging on the wall above her hot plate for decades, thinking it was a common Greek icon. The 8-by-10-inch image turns out to be Christ Mocked, part of a multi-panel work from about 1280 by the Italian painter Cimabue, and it’s expected to sell for more than €6 million at auction next month. – CNN

Researchers in Copenhagen have scanned and examined an unusually well-preserved half-length tomb sculpture, discovered in 1928 and dubbed The Beauty of Palmyra, and analyzed the surviving fragments of pigment — red and yellow ochre, Egyptian blue, madder lake — to create a full digital reconstruction. – The Art Newspaper

This is a textbook example of how a narrow viewpoint and blind devotion to procedure can lead you to bad ends. It’s the permanent-collection equivalent of following a navigation app’s directions deeper and deeper into a known wildfire just because you know for certain the route happens to be free of traffic. – artnet

“We are used to seeing a museum as a building, a precinct, an institution and a collection. Museums are indeed spaces of particular kinds, but these kinds of international visits, exhibition loans and research projects suggest that, even more fundamentally, museums are networks.” – Apollo

A deteriorated oil sketch that Albert B. Roberts bought for $600 at an upstate New York auction in 2002 has turned out to be a study from circa 1620 for Van Dyck’s Saint Jerome with an Angel. The sketch — in as-is condition (including bird poop on the back) — is currently on view at the Albany (NY) Institute of History and Art. – artnet

“The disruption in the art world is not going to come from the Internet, it’s not going to come from business-people. It’s coming from the artists. The artists are going to change the model of how they engage with the public. Changes are coming.” – The Daily Beast

“In 32 years of annual “most endangered” designations from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Thompson Center is the youngest building ever to make the list. It’s also a prominent presence on the endangered lists of local activist groups Preservation Chicago and Landmarks Illinois (which, looking at the environmental impact, estimates that demolishing the center would create 145 million pounds of waste).” – Chicago Reader

These photographers have the covers of (American) Vogue or (British) Vogue, gain access to their subjects for portraits on social media, and change the way the people they photograph are thought about – and maybe treated. “It is easy to point to magazine covers as markers of changing times, but many of these photographers didn’t wait for the old-guard titles to bestow approval, forging partnerships with brands such as Nike, Apple and Tiffany & Co.” And, of course, “platforms such as Instagram have helped democratise the creative industries.” – The Guardian (UK)

The New Museum planned a whole festival about climate change. ” IdeasCity Bronx … was supposed to feature a series of discussion panels, artist talks, performances, and workshops,” but it ended an hour in after activists disrupted the very first panel. – Hyperallergic