Last month we learned what artworks the Obamas had chosen for the family quarters of the White House and the West and East Wing offices. One of the pictures that caught everybody’s attention was Watusi (Hard Edge) by Alma Thomas, a lesser known Washington, D.C. area artist who died in 1978. But now that picture has been handed back …
Looking Around
Richard Moe is Leaving the National Trust
Richard Moe announced his intention today to retire as president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 17 years in that job Moe really transformed it. He worked wonders to give vitality to the effort to save great old buildings and places.
The Lehman Brothers Art Auction
When I first heard a few weeks ago that the art collection that once hung in the hallways and offices of Lehman Brothers was going up for auction, I wondered if it could make enough money to at least partly compensate Lehman creditors, who are owed something in the neighborhood of $250 billion by the disastrously defunct investment firm.
Gorky in Philly
Arshile Gorky had one of the most singular careers in American art — a decades-long, almost self-annihilating immersion in the work of a few painters he revered, and then an explosion in the early 1940s into an art that was entirely his own. From now through January 10 there’s a terrific new Gorky retrospective at the Philadelphia …
Roy DeCarava: 1919-2009
The photographer Roy DeCarava has died. The great chronicler of 20th century African-American life, especially in New York, DeCarava had a sophisticated aesthetic and a capacious sense of life.
Ansel Adams in Color
I’ve been looking through a new edition of Ansel Adams in Color, a book first published in 1993, nine years after his death, that’s been re-issued this year with 20 additional photographs. It’s a book full of subtle, long-deliberated pictures, which is pretty much what you would expect of Adams, and it led me to think about Adams and …
More on Terry Riley’s Resignation in Miami
The big surprise on Monday was the announcement by the Miami Art Museum that MAM Director Terry Riley, who came to the museum just three and a half years ago, will step down immediately as director just one week after the museum unveiled the design for its new building. On Monday night Riley sent out a “Dear Friends” e-mail to clarify …
Terry Riley Leaving the Miami Art Museum
That was fast. I mentioned a few weeks ago that it’s not unusual for a museum director to step down after seeing through a major new building or addition at the museum. But it is a bit unusual for them to leave immediately after the architect’s plan has been unveiled, especially if they haven’t been in the job that long to begin …
Fat City
This weekend, on October 25, CBS News Sunday Morning, with Charles Osgood, will have a special edition focusing on the problem of obesity in America. That’s not the kind of news that ordinarily makes it into an art blog, but part of the show will be a segment on how the human body has been represented in art from prehistory to the …
Big Names in the Big “D”
Dallas has spent more than three decades piecing together an ambitious downtown “arts district” in the area around the Dallas Museum of Art. Last weekend the city opened two of the last big parts of the project, an opera house by Norman Foster and a theater by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus.
Shepard Fairey vs. AP: The Plot Thickens
I was intrigued by a position the Associated Press took yesterday when it filed new court papers in its countersuit against Shepard Fairey over his unauthorized use of an AP photo as the basis for his Obama “Hope” poster. Basically, they said: “You lie — some more”.
Richard Rogers vs. Prince Charles: Again
The British architect recently won the Stirling Prize, Britain’s highest architectural honor. But was the prize meant as a way for U.K. modern architects to give the finger to Rogers’ prime antagonist — and theirs — Prince Charles? Sort of like an Obama Peace Prize that’s a shot at George Bush? Rogers won’t hear of it, but it’s …
Shepard Fairey: Hopeless
Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the ubiquitous Obama “Hope” poster, admitted over the weekend that he had lied about which photo he used as the basis for the image. Ouch.