Category: visual

“By 1515, after Pope Julius II famously commissioned Michelangelo to repaint the chapel’s ceiling (1508–1515), the chapel had become decidedly top-heavy in its decoration. Then-Pope Leo X (born Giovanni de’ Medici) commissioned a series of designs for tapestries from the artist who was already decorating the papal apartment, Raffaello Sanzio, known to many as Raphael. The Medici crest features prominently in the woven frames of the tapestries’ scenes.” – Hyperallergic

The panel said it had worked for months to draw up a list of works that should never be moved from the Florentine gallery, and the portrait of Pope Leo X was one of them. The famed portrait was specially restored for the show in the capital by the experts at Florence’s restoration works Opificio delle Pietre Dure. – Ansa

A new study published recently in the journal Geoarchaeology shows that there was more than political intrigue at play. A water reservoir critical for large-scale agriculture in the Koh Ker area collapsed around the time the capital moved back to Angkor. – Smithsonian

“Barcelona’s city council has refused to greenlight a planning application for an outpost of [St. Petersburg’s] State Hermitage Museum. The council took issue with the site chosen for the project … and traffic congestion in the area as well as unanswered questions about the new institution’s staffing, projected visitor numbers, and admission prices.” – Artforum

Having spent 50 years theorizing about cities, he grew annoyed by how much time his fellow urbanists spend theorizing about cities. So he pulled on his wellies and went tromping out into the sticks with a mixture of wistfulness and obstinate naïvete. The countryside “is largely off (our) radar,” he writes, making that parenthetical our do a lot of heavy lifting. You’d have to be a pretty serious indoorsman to be startled by some of the changes he chronicles, or to believe that the world beyond cities was ever an “ignored realm,” as he calls it. – New York Magazine

“The Ahmanson’s gift program, which has paid for 114 paintings and 15 sculptures, is the backbone of the museum’s widely admired European art collection.” And why is that program being ended? Because director Michael Govan’s plans (including the new building) mean that “Ahmanson gifts acquired over decades at LACMA curators’ specific request will end up in storage for unknown periods of time — even though they were bought for permanent display.” – Los Angeles Times

It is hard now to recapture the shock of 1962 when the iterations of Campbell’s soup went on display at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles (New York wasn’t interested). But the cumulative effect of their pristine forms, their tromp l’oeil construction, their obsessive reiteration (there were 32 prints, one for each flavour), luminous banality and, above all, their thereness, was to blast apart everything that we thought – and think – we know about art. – The Guardian

“There has long been concern over the ease with which suspect funds can be laundered through the buying and selling of art. Now, at last, we are seeing a concerted attempt to get to grips with the issue, which — even if welcomed by most — has sparked resentment and wariness. This almost unregulated sector doesn’t take easily or kindly to attempts to legislate it.” – Financial Times