Category: visual

“By the time the eight-week course was over, I was the wretch I am now: an unhinged woman vehemently obsessed with oil painting who wrestles with it like a feral person for hours every day. I had earth-moving revelations as I graduated from using makeup brushes to real sable, and switched from canvas to linen panels. My formerly adorable kitchen now looks as though Francis Bacon had assaulted a pope in it. I know things about linseed oil its own mother doesn’t know.” – New York Review of Books

“A Border Force officer at Heathrow Airport discovered the hundreds of clay figurines, pots, and tablets covered in cuneiform script in a pair of metal trunks last July. Intercepted en route from Bahrain to a private address in the UK, the objects were sent to the British Museum for inspection. There, they were discovered to be fakes. The striking thing about the discovery, says St John Simpson, a curator at the British Museum, is not the number of counterfeit relics. It’s the type.” – Artnet

“The jury said Knight’s work demonstrated ‘extraordinary community service by a critic’ through the application of ‘his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.’ … [The other finalists were] Justin Davidson of New York magazine, nominated in part for his writing on the Hudson Yards development in New York, and Soraya Nadia McDonald of The Undefeated, honored for her work exploring the intersection of film, theater, and race.” (Davidson has already won the criticism Pulitzer, in 2002 for classical music writing at Newsday.) – Artnet

Howard Silverman helped found Bristol’s Spike Island nearly 50 years ago – and now a new board has told him he must pack up his studio and go, in the middle of the coronavirus lockdown. “Fellow studio holders and artists from around the world are backing Silverman’s fight to overturn the decision, with some suggesting the organisation is intent on squeezing out older, established tenants in favour of younger ones.” – The Guardian (UK)

Let’s start with graph paper (and an emphasis on making work instead of the reception of work). – Hyperallergic

The George N’Namdi galleries were sometimes the only game in the country for Black artists in the 1980s. According to a recent lawsuit, “Discrimination in the art world prevented the recognition that these artists deserved until the last several years.” But the lawsuit also alleges that “the N’Namdis took advantage of this situation by egregiously and systematically breaching their fiduciary obligations to [the plaintiff] and others.” – The New York Times

Photographer Robin Schwartz is used to quarantine, having dealt with being isolated during cancer treatments, but it’s only intensified lately. Luckily, her subjects are the same as ever: Her daughter, and her pets. – Wired

Streetscapes aren’t looking too great right now in many cities. And “museums and galleries around the world have locked their doors as people wait out the coronavirus pandemic in isolation. But works of street art, cropping up on bare walls and boarded-up storefronts across urban landscapes, are offering images of beauty and hope to those venturing out for exercise.” – The New York Times

Closing a museum is not just a matter of shutting the doors and turning off the lights. Institutions with significant collections have ethical and sometimes legal obligations to make sure that their objects are transferred elsewhere. The process can be both costly and time-consuming, experts say. – The New York Times

Yes, the COVID lockdown has deprived most museums of nearly all their income, which is why the Association of Art Museum Directors has given qualified approval for members to “use the proceeds from deaccessioned works of art … to support the direct care” of a museum’s collections as a whole. Sebastian Smee points out the problems (and there are several) that this might create. – The Washington Post