Category: visual

Three tall twin-panel stained-glass windows unveiled at Tholey Abbey, Germany’s oldest surviving monastery building, constitute what the 88-year-old artist says will “certainly” be his last numbered opus. (He plans to limit himself to drawings and sketched from now on.) – Artnet

Instead of occupying a sealed, monolithic glass office tower, Second Home inhabits a converted community center where the majority of the work spaces are housed in individual studios (there are 60) in a lush garden that was once a vast parking lot. – Los Angeles Times

I visited four galleries, three by appointment and one as a drop-in. It wasn’t the old normal, of course, but neither was it the hassle nor the heartbreaker I dreaded. At the end of the day, I felt invigorated, quenched — and reassured. – Los Angeles Times

“It is the kind of sale that once would have engendered criticism, perhaps even sanctions: The Brooklyn Museum is putting 12 works up for auction at Christie’s next month — including paintings by Cranach, Courbet and Corot — to raise funds for the care of its collection. But it is now completely within the parameters of loosened regulations, which are themselves a measure of just how financially damaging the coronavirus pandemic has been for cultural institutions.” – The New York Times

“Design is one of our most powerful tools in the COVID-19 crisis. The ingenuity, resourcefulness, and generosity of designers and their collaborators worldwide has produced innovations that are helping to protect us from the pandemic, to improve its treatment and to prepare for the radical changes it will introduce to our lives in the future.” – Fast Company

The page has published dozens of accounts of alleged abuses of power in the art trade since it was started in July, amid similar calls by accounts such as @changethemuseum and @abetterguggenheim, which accuse institutions of discriminatory practices. – The Art Newspaper

The fair went ahead on September 10 through 13, offering a model of what a socially distanced art fair could look like, with controlled crowd flow and attendees capped at 3,000 at a time in the main thoroughfare under the cavernous glass roof. Nonetheless, it welcomed some 56,931 visitors, just 10 percent fewer than last year. – Artnet

The move is part of the Italian government’s drive to recruit so-called “super-directors” with experience of fundraising as well as scholarly credentials. Crucially this shift, which gave museums greater autonomy, was set in motion in 2015 under culture minister Dario Franceschini when the centrist government hoped to overturn the image of outdated bureaucracy associated with Italian institutions by appointing foreign museum chiefs. – The Art Newspaper

“The museum was meant to showcase the arms, art and fashion of the Mughals, Muslim rulers who reigned over [much of] the Indian subcontinent from the 16th to the 18th centuries. But officials this week in Agra, home to the Taj Mahal — the world’s most famous example of Mughal-era architecture and India’s best-known building — had another idea: a complete overhaul of the museum so that it would instead celebrate India’s Hindu majority, leaders and history.” – The New York Times

When we speak of monuments in America, we’re often talking about structures such as statues, obelisks, and memorials that celebrate a relatively narrow band of our history: the Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, the civil-rights era. Our monumental landscape preserves a sense that we are an exceptional, upstart nation. (American civilization may not boast standing stones that date back to the prehistoric era, but we do have Carhenge.) – The New Yorker