“Instagram was one of the first apps to fully exploit our relationship with our phones, compelling us to experience life through a camera for the reward of digital validation.” – New Statesman
Category: visual
ArtPrize 2020 Is Cancelled As Entire Staff Is Furloughed
What’s more, says artistic director Kevin Buist, “It’s not clear if there will be an event in 2021, and if there is, it’s not clear who will run it.” The largest contemporary art exhibition in the U.S., which takes place over three weeks in 160 spaces in Grand Rapids, Mich. and features two $200,000 grand prizes (one given by a jury, the other by public vote), ArtPrize typically draws about half a million visitors. – Artnet
Rodin Museum In Paris Will Sell Bronze Casts To See Itself Through COVID Crisis
“A measure of relief may come from a century-old system set up by Rodin himself allowing the museum to sell up to 12 replicas of select sculptures every year. The bronzes are cast in special workshops in a process overseen by the museum and bought by art galleries, private collectors or other museums. Rodin’s priceless originals are mainly carved out of marble.” – Yahoo! (AP)
How Will The Art Market Realign? It Is
With wealthy collectors no longer travelling, most art business is now conducted online. Art dealers are typically reporting a 70% drop in sales, according to a recent survey conducted by The Art Newspaper and Pownall. Up to a third of galleries are expected to fold, with smaller ones particularly vulnerable. The shift to online auctions has seen an equally dramatic slump in secondary market revenues at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips. – The Art Newspaper
Our Public Monuments Don’t Preserve History, They Rewrite It
Celebrating Mount Rushmore isn’t remembering history; instead it requires spectacular acts of forgetting. How could we honestly claim to see in this anything worth defending? – Chicago Tribune
An Art Critic Visits The Newly-Socially-Distanced National Gallery In London
Adrian Searle: “Visitors … have to follow one of three designated routes through the galleries, all of which are signposted, with arrows on the floor pointing up the prescribed flow. Quite how this will work, and how much one can deviate or jump between Route A, which begins in the Sainsbury Wing, and routes B and C in the main galleries, … defeated me on my press preview visit on Saturday. I get the feeling the few dozen of us wandering the galleries were guinea pigs for a system that needs to evolve in practice.” – The Guardian
For The Second Time In Two Years, Fire Shatters A Brazilian Museum
“In September 2018, a devastating fire ravaged Brazil’s National Museum [in Rio de Janeiro]. Now, yet another Brazilian cultural institution — the Federal University of Minas Gerais’ Natural History Museum and Botanical Garden (MHNJB) in Belo Horizonte — has fallen victim to an inferno.” This is, in fact, the sixth museum fire in the country in the past decade. – Smithsonian Magazine
Sides Line Up After Students Demand Removal Of A WPA Mural
“An alumnus has filed a suit to save a fresco at the University of Kentucky that depicts enslaved people; a Black artist whose work is shown with it also wants the mural to stay.” – The New York Times
More Goodbye, Columbus, In Baltimore This Time
Protesters pulled down the status and dragged it to Inner Harbor, where they dumped it. “The Columbus statue was dragged down as people marched across the city Saturday demanding reallocation of funds from the police department to social services, a reassessment of the public education system, reparations for Black people, housing for the homeless, and the removal of all statues ‘honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers.'” – Baltimore Sun
A Van Gogh Drive-In
The “immersive” show had to be adjusted from a walk-in experience in Paris for Covid-19 safety in Toronto. – BBC