Recent News in the Art World
The New Orleans Art Museum has cut its staff from 86 employees to just 16 in an effort to balance its budget in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Excerpt:
The city-financed museum, which has been shut since the day before Katrina hit in late August, was instructed by the municipal government to keep only a minimal staff needed to administer the institution in its current closed state.
"I have put in 23 years of service and have been a donor," said John Keefe, the museum's decorative arts curator and one of those laid off. "This has all been done in a very callous manner. I feel the board and the director should have done something. They're hanging on to their endowment at the expense of the staff."
But Stewart Farnet, chairman of the museum's board, said the layoffs were unavoidable. "It would have been irresponsible to keep paying those salaries," he said in a telephone interview. "As tough as it is, there was no alternative."
MoMA to receive 174 works from LA real estate developer Edward R. Broida.
Excerpt:
The entire gift is worth about $50 million, said a museum official who requested anonymity because it is a policy not to disclose the financial value of gifts.
These works not only help fill many gaps in the Modern's contemporary art collection, but also enlarge its previous holdings of certain artists. For example, Mr. Broida is giving the museum 36 works by Guston, including 12 paintings, 16 drawings and 8 prints dating from 1938 to 1980. Ann Temkin, a curator in the Modern's department of painting and sculpture, said that while the museum already had 12 paintings by Guston, "the extraordinary quality of Mr. Broida's gift transforms the collection, making it the greatest holdings of Guston in the world."
Mr. Broida's decision to give the Modern first choice was easy, he said. "Ever since I was old enough to come to New York by myself from Cleveland, where I grew up, I went to MoMA," he said. "It was like a beacon. The fact that the museum is weak in some areas where my collection is strong is coincidental."
151 countries voted yesterday to create an international convention on cultural diversity - Only the U.S. and Israel oppose.
Excerpt:
Commission IV of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which has been meeting in Paris, voted 151 to 2 in favour of the Canadian initiative, with only the United States and Israel voting against.
The international agreement — formally the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions — reaffirms the right of sovereign states to "maintain, adopt and implement" policies that protect and promote cultural expression, and exempt certain cultural products from free-trade agreements.
The impetus behind the convention was the Chrétien government's 1999 attempt to protect the magazine industry in the face of pressure from the U.S., which successfully argued that the magazine law was in breach of the World Trade Organization's subsidy rules.
David attacker strikes again in Florence - Italian officials concerned about public art and cultural heritage safety.
Excerpt:
Curators and guardians of Italy's artistic heritage, much of it on open display, will be on high alert this week following the discovery that the country's most persistent art vandal is back in action.
Piero Cannata, who earned worldwide notoriety by taking a hammer to Michelangelo's David, confessed to local newspapers in Tuscany that he had struck again in the very centre of Florence. It was discovered that somebody had sprayed a thick black "x" on a plaque, set into the paving of Piazza della Signoria, commemorating the burning to death of the 15th-century preacher and reformer Girolamo Savonarola.
Mr Cannata said that he had tried to cover it up "because it has a sentence that doesn't make any sense".
The plaque has no intrinsic artistic merit and the damage was speedily put right by local authority contractors. But the incident has highlighted the vulnerability of more valuable works and reignited a debate over how best to protect them from thieves, vandals and people who are mentally disturbed.
Excerpt:
The city-financed museum, which has been shut since the day before Katrina hit in late August, was instructed by the municipal government to keep only a minimal staff needed to administer the institution in its current closed state.
"I have put in 23 years of service and have been a donor," said John Keefe, the museum's decorative arts curator and one of those laid off. "This has all been done in a very callous manner. I feel the board and the director should have done something. They're hanging on to their endowment at the expense of the staff."
But Stewart Farnet, chairman of the museum's board, said the layoffs were unavoidable. "It would have been irresponsible to keep paying those salaries," he said in a telephone interview. "As tough as it is, there was no alternative."
MoMA to receive 174 works from LA real estate developer Edward R. Broida.
Excerpt:
The entire gift is worth about $50 million, said a museum official who requested anonymity because it is a policy not to disclose the financial value of gifts.
These works not only help fill many gaps in the Modern's contemporary art collection, but also enlarge its previous holdings of certain artists. For example, Mr. Broida is giving the museum 36 works by Guston, including 12 paintings, 16 drawings and 8 prints dating from 1938 to 1980. Ann Temkin, a curator in the Modern's department of painting and sculpture, said that while the museum already had 12 paintings by Guston, "the extraordinary quality of Mr. Broida's gift transforms the collection, making it the greatest holdings of Guston in the world."
Mr. Broida's decision to give the Modern first choice was easy, he said. "Ever since I was old enough to come to New York by myself from Cleveland, where I grew up, I went to MoMA," he said. "It was like a beacon. The fact that the museum is weak in some areas where my collection is strong is coincidental."
151 countries voted yesterday to create an international convention on cultural diversity - Only the U.S. and Israel oppose.
Excerpt:
Commission IV of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which has been meeting in Paris, voted 151 to 2 in favour of the Canadian initiative, with only the United States and Israel voting against.
The international agreement — formally the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions — reaffirms the right of sovereign states to "maintain, adopt and implement" policies that protect and promote cultural expression, and exempt certain cultural products from free-trade agreements.
The impetus behind the convention was the Chrétien government's 1999 attempt to protect the magazine industry in the face of pressure from the U.S., which successfully argued that the magazine law was in breach of the World Trade Organization's subsidy rules.
David attacker strikes again in Florence - Italian officials concerned about public art and cultural heritage safety.
Excerpt:
Curators and guardians of Italy's artistic heritage, much of it on open display, will be on high alert this week following the discovery that the country's most persistent art vandal is back in action.
Piero Cannata, who earned worldwide notoriety by taking a hammer to Michelangelo's David, confessed to local newspapers in Tuscany that he had struck again in the very centre of Florence. It was discovered that somebody had sprayed a thick black "x" on a plaque, set into the paving of Piazza della Signoria, commemorating the burning to death of the 15th-century preacher and reformer Girolamo Savonarola.
Mr Cannata said that he had tried to cover it up "because it has a sentence that doesn't make any sense".
The plaque has no intrinsic artistic merit and the damage was speedily put right by local authority contractors. But the incident has highlighted the vulnerability of more valuable works and reignited a debate over how best to protect them from thieves, vandals and people who are mentally disturbed.
posted by Corey Wyckoff at 1:19 PM
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