Category: visual

Can Protesting The Donors And Board Members Of Museums Really Right The World’s Wrongs?

Sebastian Smee: “Let’s be clear: the idea of moral purity in the arts is a fantasy. We are not going to return to innocence by hanging out with like-minded people at the Whitney as we contemplate a biennial where some of the works are poignantly missing. … I hope the drama at the Whitney has positive outcomes. But it is not a revolution. It is a spectacle.” – The Washington Post

Can Las Vegas Finally Get A Proper Museum Of Art Open And Running?

“It would follow an era of hope that fizzled even as casinos hosted megawatt art collections from the Guggenheim and the Smithsonian to draw tourists to the Las Vegas Strip. … There’s funding in the state budget, a matching grant of downtown land and cash from the city, a search for an architect is underway … and a newly arrived, well-connected director is gearing up a fund-raising effort that will involve naming rights.” – ARTnews

What Defines An Ugly Building?

Over time, arguments and judgments about what constitutes ugliness in architecture – whether it be incompleteness, incongruity or incorrectness – have leached out beyond the profession. Staged in courtrooms, parliamentary committees and public inquiries, strident debates about ugly buildings have influenced the development of technology, the letter of the law, church teaching, the context of criticism, the role of the state and even monarchical privilege. – The Guardian

Museum Workers Are Beginning To Organize For Better Pay

“Working in a museum can sometimes seem like a service industry for the wealthy. Middle people in museums used to think they were part of the top bracket. Now they’re part of the bottom bracket, or at least don’t have anywhere to go. You have this kind of perfect storm,” he added: “stagnated wages, working within an environment of great wealth inequality, job insecurity.” – The New York Times

Artists Withdraw From Whitney Biennial And A Revolution Begins

Jerry Saltz: This saga is much bigger than Kanders or the Whitney. All museums are 100 percent awash in toxic philanthropy — that is the nature of the plutocracy in which we live. Kanders is no isolated case; dirty money is in the woodwork of every American museum. In fact, because it’s been so in the spotlight since its successful downtown move in 2015, is so open to change and also poorer than similar institutions, the Whitney is much more structurally fragile than other large museums.  – New York Magazine

Sometimes Our Most Important Architecture Is Ordinary

“Architectural preservation is often an issue of grandeur, both in a sense of size and richness, and decay. When we think of buildings that already been lost, they are almost always imposing structures—cathedrals, skyscrapers, temples. Yet the places where we enact our daily lives, and which reflect them even more than grand architectural statements, are smaller, more seemingly trivial and thus more vulnerable.” – CityLab