Monthly Archive for September, 2011

As Folk Art Museum Teeters, a Huge Loss Looms

Published on September 26, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

Photo by Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

By Roberta Smith from The New York Times

Please. Someone, everyone, do something to save the American Folk Art Museum from dissolution and dispersal. Or at least slow down the process, so that all options can be thoroughly considered. New York’s contemporary artists, and New York as a whole, need the creative energy of this stubborn, single-minded little institution, its outstanding exhibition program and its wondrous collection, an unparalleled mixture of classic American folk art and 20th-century outsider geniuses.

At the moment it almost seems that the museum’s trustees can’t wait to end their flawed stewardship of this great but historically fragile institution. Last spring, having defaulted on a $31.2 million construction bond, they sold the museum’s 10-year-old building to its neighbor, the Museum of Modern Art, and retreated to its small, rather grim Lincoln Square branch.

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Stolen Rubens Recovered By Greek Police

Published on September 21, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From the Huffington Post

Greek police recovered a 17th century painting by Flemish master Pieter Paul Rubens stolen from a museum in Belgium a decade ago, authorities said Thursday.Two people, both Greeks, were arrested in the operation, he said. Neither the police nor the Culture Ministry would give further information on the raid, the painting or which Belgian museum it was stolen from, saying investigations were still ongoing into the case.

The artwork, dating from 1618 and stolen in 2001, was “a particularly important painting,” the ministry said. The artwork had been examined by experts from the ministry and determined to be genuine and “of priceless value,” Greek police spokesman Panagiotis Papapetropoulos said.

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The 9/11 Memorial: Connecting With Lost Loved Ones, if Only by the Tips of Fingers

Published on September 15, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Pool photo by Timothy A. Clary

By Anemona Hartocollis from The New York Times

They clutched slips of paper bearing letters and numbers, trying to navigate a strange new map created by computer algorithm that was designed to place people next to other people whom, in life, they had cared about. The visitors looked hopeful, dazed, afraid.

One family made a beeline for Mark Louis Rosenberg, Tablet 7 of the north pool, or N-7 for short. The three teenage Berry brothers searched for their father, David Shelby Berry, at S-36. They touched the sharp edges of his name, carved into the cool metal in austere capital letters. They left their fingerprints and became connected to the families of 2,982 others in a way that they had not felt before.

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The Last Column Hal Foster on the 9/11 Museum

Published on September 12, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Hal Foster from The London Review of Books

There is a hangar at JFK Airport – Hangar 17 – where, until recently, about 1200 pieces of steel and other objects from the World Trade Center site were warehoused. In the frenetic days after the attacks, these remains were selected as tokens of 9/11, so that they might be dispersed to memorials around the US, foremost among them the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero, which opens on the tenth anniversary of the event. The clean-up of the site was as torturous – it lasted nine months – as the sorting at Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island was meticulous. In all, 1.8 million tons of rubble and debris were removed, of which the objects at the hangar comprise only a fraction of one per cent. Much of the tonnage consisted of steel columns and beams, and several of these, buckled and bent, were taken to the hangar – graphic evidence of the sheer force of the strike and subsequent collapse. Most of the material was pulverised, and no human trace is left of more than 40 per cent of the nearly 3000 victims.

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Climate Change Museum in Bremerhaven, Germany

Published on September 8, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Everyone talks about the weather. But what factors determine the climate? The Klimahaus® Bremerhaven 8° Ost gives answers that are both scientifically supported and fascinating. Join us on the great journey into the world of the climate in this new and unique world of knowledge and adventure.

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Backlog in Baghdad: Staff struggle to finish Iraq museum inventory, at current rate project could take a century

Published on September 1, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Martin Bailey from The Art Newspaper

The staff of Iraq’s National Museum are struggling to create an inventory of its war-torn collection, so far documenting 20,000 antiquities, less than 10% of its approximately 240,000-strong holdings. These figures have been revealed by Lamia al-Gailani Werr, a London-based scholar who used to work at the museum and recently returned from a visit to Baghdad. At this rate it will take the museum nearly a century to catch up on the backlog .Planning the digitised inventory began after the coalition invasion of 2003, when the Baghdad museum was looted. Half of the 15,000 stolen items have yet to be recovered.

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