“No corporation will tell you it buys art as an investment. Art isn’t liquid enough for most companies, and there’s no real tax advantage to collecting. What really happens is that the nature of physical space calls for you to put things on the wall. But if you can put things up that increase in value, that’s a good financial investment. Why put up hotel art when, for relatively little more, you can invest in your community and in a point of view?” – Chicago Tribune
Tag: 03.19.00
FAUX SAVINGS
Until it closed last month, the 84-year-old Universal Studios Research Library was the oldest and largest collection of its sort in Hollywood – a remarkable resource for screenwriters, producers, art directors and set designers who relied on its books, magazines and indexed images to give their projects factual and atmospheric credibility. Now the library has been closed to save money, and its users worry about the fate of its collections. – San Francisco Chronicle
WHAT’S IN THE CLOSET
British museums – like those in most countries – have only a fraction of their collections on display. But some treasures haven’t been out of storage in decades. Now a British government initiative to get more of the art out to be seen. – The Independent (UK)
A CAR-PARK FOR ICE-CREAM VANS
“Modern Trafalgar Square is a dump: Hayling Island with statues, cut off from the rest of London by the four-ring motorway that encircles it. The pigeons are right to deposit their opinions of it.” The now-famous Fourth Plinth project is “the smartest example of sculptural hype I can remember in London. I cannot imagine a more prominent urban showcase for new public sculpture than an empty platform in Trafalgar Square, opposite the National Gallery, and the wheeze of rotating the solutions on a regular basis means that nobody need ever worry unduly about the permanent impact of the results.” – The Sunday Times (UK)