The next few years are going to have the art world’s focus zooming in more and more on West Asia, or at least that’s the expectation of mammoth museums like the Louvre and Guggenheim which both plan to open shiny new outposts in Abu Dhabi. As something of a lead up to this era of eastern art expansion, Walid Raad is collaborating with the Louvre on a project taking place over three years, which began with the opening of the Louvre’s new wing for Islamic Arts in Paris and will continue to their opening in Abu Dhabi in 2015.
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Tens of thousands of the visitors who mob the Louvre each day drawn by those sirens the slightly smiling Mona Lisa, the amputated beauty the Venus de Milo, and the windswept Winged Victory of Samothrace had their hopes dashed like ships against the rocks by a staff strike in response to pickpocketing. Adding to France’s storied history of disruptive strikes of questionable impact, the Paris museum was shut down Wednesday with a 200 member staff walkout.
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What is it with art vandalism these days? First there was the Picasso at the Menil Collection last summer, then the Rothko at the Tate Modern. Now a woman has defaced Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” at an outpost of the Louvre. Is this some kind of weird, terrible trend?
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The Dallas Art Museum announced today that it has named Sabiha Al Khemir as its first Senior Advisor of Islamic Art. The move comes at a time when many museums the world over are making a push to support Islamic art’s place in the historical canon.
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The Behance Network is hosting two projects that blend classical and contemporary in clever, playful ways.
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Don’t you love attending a high profile art opening on a Friday night and instead of getting a nice big glass of vino, being handed a plastic cup of imported mineral water? Forget about TGIF. Obviously, we all have to suffer if the artist is in recovery and the legendary bad girl photographer Nan Goldin, now 58 years old, is trying to stay off the stuff.
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I admit to being a voyeur when I travel to museums. I love to watch people looking at art, trying to figure out what they are seeing, responding to or connecting with when confronted with the objects and ideas in art museums.
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This month marks the 100th anniversary of the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, and the Financial Times observes the occasion with a fascinating feature article that tells the tale of the theft of what was (then as now) the world’s most famous work of art
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Paris — I’m traveling today, so there may be less posts than usual but I couldn’t resist sharing one of the games I love to play in museums. I choose a theme, topic, color or some other attribute and walk through finding it in the collection.
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Inspired by our image-saturated culture, French artist Leo Caillard has reimagined the Louvre as a digital library, while James Elkins has compiled some real stats about how long people actually look at art in museums.
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