22 March 2006 | Modern, Museums
Artnet reports that the Whitney Museum “has announced plans for ‘Picasso and American Art,’ Sept. 28, 2006-Jan. 28, 2007. Organized by Michael FitzGerald, a professor at Trinity College in Connecticut and coordinated by Whitney associate curator Dana Miller, the show includes nearly 40 works by Picasso and another 130 works by American artists, largely focusing [...]
22 March 2006 | Conferences
Simeon Solomon & Marginality (New Haven 5-6 May 06) Photography & the American West (Princeton 29 April 06) Images/Maps (Oxford 12-13 May 06) Refiguring Modernism – Maritain (Brussels 12-13 May 06) (via H-Arthist)
22 March 2006 | Ancient
As was widely reported today, Leon Levy, long a benefactor of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, announced that he will donate about $200 million to NYU for the creation of an Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. In the words of Jossip.com, “The new center … will focus on research and teaching of [...]
21 March 2006 | Books
For a testament to the tremendous energy and range of Stanislaus von Moos’ scholarship, consider the breadth of topics found in the recent star-studded, handsomely bound festschrift devoted to him, which includes contributions from Denise Scott Brown, Jean-Louis Cohen, Thomas Hirschhorn and Jacques Herzog. So writes reviewer Bernadette Fülscher in the NZZ. Topics include globalization, [...]
21 March 2006 | Renaissance
Aaron De Groft thinks that the portrait of the Duke of Mantua once attributed to Titian, de-attributed in 1938 by August Mayer, should once again be ascribed to him. “Mayer wrote … that the Duke of Mantua died only 11 days after he wrote the letter proposing to have Titian paint his portrait. The timing [...]
21 March 2006 | Teaching
Want to win points with students who seem to love nothing so much as basketball? In the Albany Times-Union, a University of Albany sophomore reports that her “art history professor put a ‘Go Great Danes!’ slide in the middle of her Power Point presentation.”
20 March 2006 | Architecture, Books
Anna Minta’s profound study of architecture, town planning and monument building in Israel doesn’t dwell on familiar high points such as Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus “white city”, writes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung‘s reviewer Roman Hollenstein. Instead, it incorporates a thorough consideration of planning and policy. Minta takes a particularly detailed look at Jerusalem, including the history [...]
20 March 2006 | Islamic, Museums
Art historian Rebecca Smith comments on the recent New York Times article, “Southeast Asia, Too, Is on Map of Islamic Art“: “I’ve realized what really gets me about [Met curator Stefano] Carboni’s statement [that the Met's exhibit of Southeast Asian Islamic art was probably more a cultural experience than an artistic one]. Western Islamic art [...]
17 March 2006 | Books, Contemporary, Museums
Independent curator Harald Szeemann was no mere administrator / catalogue-foreword-writer, but rather an art-world Macher, a creative author of exhibitions, and he practically invented the role. So writes Hans-Joachim Müller in his new book-length overview of Szeemann’s career. In the view of the Frankfurter Rundschau‘s Mirja Rosenau, one could go so far as to say [...]
17 March 2006 | Renaissance
Blogger “Bild Wissenschaftler” notes that “According to the web page of the journal Art History, “Bernini’s Light” by Frank Fehrenbach was its most accessed article online in 2005. This is the only easily accessible online work by Fehrenbach (PDF CV), who was hired as Harvard’s senior Italian Renaissance scholar last year (Gazette; Crimson).”
17 March 2006 | Museums
Why did the Nazis allow the museum to continue its operations and even undertake an historic expansion? According to the Prague Daily Monitor, “There are several theories attempting to explain it, but none of them is supported by historical evidence. According to the most frequently used explanation in the post-war era, Nazis planned to establish [...]
16 March 2006 | Americas
Should the 28-foot mural made by Marion Greenwood for the University of Tennessee be allowed to see the light of day? “The west end of the painting in the early 1970s caused controversy among students because some saw Greenwood’s representation of blacks as stereotypical” and so it’s been covered by wood paneling ever since. Blogger [...]
16 March 2006 | Asia, Islamic, Museums
From the New York Times: “What is Islamic art? Can it embrace art and artifacts from Southeast Asia, where Islam has been a dominant religion since the 15th century but whose lush tropical lands were largely cut off from the inspirations of the Ottoman, Persian and Mughal empires? … Absolutely, say the curators of a [...]
16 March 2006 | Theory
In his new book Vom Bild zum Kunstsystem, Beat Wyss combines semiotics, systems theory and classical psychoanalysis into a model of artistic meaning, writes Niklas Maak in the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Wyss historicizes C. S. Peirce’s semiotic system, arguing that image structure is affected by local forms of knowledge and communication. For example, when Marc Bloch [...]
15 March 2006 | Renaissance
Westmont College professor Lisa DeBoer “enjoy[ed]” the book, she writes in an online essay for Sony Pictures (makers of the film version) but “I for one am willing to stake my reputation as an art historian, as a Christian, and as a feminist on the traditional, accepted reading of Leonardo’s Last Supper.”
15 March 2006 | Career
Blogger abbyg writes about leaving the profession: “I had been a wild asshole, an emotional wreck and a raging alcoholic, but I was also a very good art historian. For years it was something that came naturally, it was a gift and I was being groomed to go great places. I did go great places. [...]
15 March 2006 | Conferences
Telling Stories (Loughborough Feb, Apr, Sep 07) 18th Century Consumption (CAA/NY Feb 07) Building America (Dresden 16 Jun 2006) Assemblage, Bricolage & the Obsolete (Leeds 18 Nov 06) (via H-Arthist)
Donald Kuspit is publishing his “Critical History of 20th-Century Art” entirely online (in installments). Is this because, as Doug Harvey wrote a year ago, it’s become “difficult to imagine a position more alienated from the mainstream canon of contemporary art theory [than Kuspit's]“? Kuspit’s opening lines: “‘The real problem of modernity is the problem of [...]
14 March 2006 | Books, Islamic
Of Oliver Leaman’s Islamic Aesthetics: An Introduction, Yasser Tabbaa writes: “For a book that claims to be introductory and foundational, [its] oppositional, even antagonistic, stance against nearly all the scholars it discusses is a serious problem. I have encountered nearly two dozen places where Leaman disparages other approaches and conclusions as ‘wrong,’ ‘just wrong,’ ‘entirely [...]
14 March 2006 | Architecture, Islamic
The 24-year restoration of Yemen’s Amiriya Palace is finally complete. “It was built in 1504, but abandoned 13 years later and left to crumble.”
