Required Reading
This week, New York Times opens its photo archive to Tumblr, what's going on in Qatar, Facebook's image policy, Ai Weiwei speaks, a vintage interview with Warhol goes online, a Titian stays in the UK, newspapers on Pinterest and more.
This week, New York Times opens its photo archive to Tumblr, what’s going on in Qatar, Facebook’s image policy, Ai Weiwei speaks, a vintage interview with Warhol goes online, a Titian stays in the UK, newspapers on Pinterest and more.
The New York Times has started a fantastic new tumblelog that posts images from its extensive photo archive and allows you to look at the back of the images for editorial markings (just click on the photos). They’ve also posted a great guide to understand what all the notations mean here.
The New York Times takes a look — 1, 2 — at the State of Qatar’s new art rush, as the small island nation builds massive museums and fills them with some of the world’s most expensive art works, including the Paul Cézanne that is reputedly the most ever paid for one painting. As the Times writes:
Given the general disregard of many Middle East leaders for human rights and the environment, critics say, it is hard to gauge the Qatar royal family’s motives when the sheika says that art is big business. Whether the country is truly opening up to new ideas by being “a global leader in the world of art and museums,” as the Qatar Museums Authority puts it, remains to be seen.
A leaked document explains the image guidelines on Facebook. In case you were wondering … bodily fluids are ok, blantant (or obvious) depictions of camel toes are not ok, crushed heads or limbs are ok as long as the insides are not shown, you can’t show a map of Kurdistan (since Turkey hates that) … and more.
Last week, the Financial Times had the rare opportunity to interview Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who had the following to say:
“They follow me in cars and take photos of me from bushes and when I go eat in a restaurant they book the table next to me and try to record everything I’m saying,” Ai says.
ART Magazine San Antonio has published an audio video with Andy Warhol that was conducted by David Rubin, current Brown Foundation Curator of Contemporary Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art, in 1978 during his show at the Ace Gallery in Venice, California. The interview focuses on the Torso series, which Warhol was exhibiting at the time.
76+ newspapers are now on Pinterest, which doesn’t seem like a natural fit to me but more power to them.
A forgotten mural by famed Dadaist Marcel Janco has been discovered at his house museum in Israel.
Britain’s National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland have managed to raise £45 million ($72 million) to buy Titian’s “Diana and Callisto” (1556–59), a Renaissance masterpiece that has been in the UK for two centuries.
The Queens Museum of Art is finally updating sections of its aging panorama of the city of New York, like adding in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Though the institution won’t be removing the Twin Towers until the new WTC complex is complete.
And finally, did you know that high school students can now apply for summer camp at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House? Almost makes me wish I were a teenager again.
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning-ish, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.
