Category: Articles

  • Redundant Commonwealth Centre with Potential

    The Commonwealth Arts Centre in South Kensington is still under threat of early demolition. The official reason given is that it leaks. The fact is that it doesn’t do so. Three years ago, that was all put right by architect,…

  • Rogers on a roll, no butter

    The wine is flowing at the River Café. Since it appears that notwithstanding assurances by partner architect Marco Goldschmied (anxious to take his stake out and move off with the proceeds), the practice-owned café may not be so easy to…

  • Tracey\’s Star

    2007 will be Tracey Emin’s year. She will represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in June, competing with other nations for the Golden Lion trophy (sounds made for Tracey) and making the most of the Palladian British Pavilion, up whose…

  • Tales of two cities: Berlin, Dresden

    These are stirring times for architecture ‘watchers’ in Germany’s two famous cities; Berlin, the capital, and Dresden, culture capital of the south-east. The re-opening of the neo-Baroque and now restored Bode Museum in Berlin, sitting on its island and commanding…

  • Silence and Connection

    A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster Jr American Folk Art Museum, New York 4 October 2006-7 January 2007 The experience of being deaf was integral to the poignant portraits painted by John Brewster Jr. In…

  • David Hockney Portraits

    National Portrait Gallery, London 12 October 2006-21 January 2007 ‘What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing: you wouldn’t be an artist unless you wanted to…

  • Beijing’s 798 Art District

    A decade ago, setting up radical art studios in the workshops of a largely abandoned military electronics complex on the fringe of Beijing was considered to be intriguing and provocative. Today, Factory 798 is a warren of contemporary art galleries,…

  • Simply Artful, Simply Functional, Simply Droog

    Museum of Arts and Design, New York Simply Droog: 10+3 years of Creating Innovation and Discussion 21 September 2006-14 January 2007

  • Bargain basement futures

    Florence is still struggling to overcome the colossal damage created by the Arno flood of 4 November 1966. One of the greatest projects is the restoration of Giorgio Vasari’s ‘Ultima Cena’ (‘Last Supper’), a five-panelled masterpiece. The painting had been…

  • Papering the walls

    Shock, horror! Fake Damien Hirst prints alert at Sotheby’s. The so-called spot prints are much easier to copy than Leonardo’s work. It is thought that this scam may ‘kill Hirst’s market’, since both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have been conned by…

  • Ratatat ra

    Cartavaggio The Royal Collection has been doing a bit of early spring cleaning in the vaults, in time for the Queen’s Gallery’s planned exhibition, ‘The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque’. Wow, look what fell out…

  • Grand duchy adopts pole position

    Who knows which city is to be the European Capital of Culture in 2007? Deadly silence. Of course, someone prompts – it’s Luxembourg. Luxembourg is the greatest beneficiary of the accident of being at the centre of cultural crosscurrents ever…

  • A gate too far?

    The National Gallery has laid its plans well for 2007. In February, it will open a new blockbuster entitled simply ‘Renoir’s Landscapes 1865-1883’. The exhibition follows 20 years of Renoir’s output from about 1865 when he completed a canvas entitled…

  • Koestler\’s special legacy

    The Koestler Trust, founded by the late Arthur Koestler, provided great sanctuary for numerous prisoners over a period of 45 years, giving hope through encouraging the creative force of art. Many artists received a call, in his time, from the…

  • Dark humour with Mona’s likeness

    Poor Sir Joshua Reynolds (or is it lucky Josh?). A selective collector, the painter acquired a work from the Duke of Leeds around 1790, it is thought in a swap for a Reynolds self-portrait. The painting Reynolds acquired seems to…

  • Magisterial Vico

    The passing of the Italian industrialist Vico Magistretti in mid-September at the age of 85 shocked his many peers, colleagues, friends and former students. Magistretti, proud to designate himself as a designer rather than an architect, was actually the son…

  • Architecture in Scotland 2004-2006: Defining Place

    The Lighthouse, Glasgow 1 April-5 June 2006

  • Robert Rauschenberg: Combines

    Centre Pompidou, Paris 11 October 2006-15 January 2007

  • Boom or clunk?

    The latest press speculation that the National Lottery will be expected to transfer massive funding to bail out the 2012 Olympic Games has ramifications that extend far and wide in the sponsorship field, not least to the Heritage Lottery Fund

  • Treasures of the Ming Dynasty are Unearthed in Jingdezhen

    In its recent exhibit of Ming Dynasty porcelains, the Arthur M Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University displayed more than 100 works discovered in imperial kilns in Jingdezhen, China. Not only was this a chance to see…

  • Holbein in England

    Tate Britain, London 28 September 2006-7 January 2007 Hans Holbein the Younger was an artist and painter by profession, and a humanist intellectual by inclination and persuasion. He grew up in Augsburg in southern Germany where the Italian Renaissance was…

  • Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction

    Tate Modern, London 22 June-1 October 2006 Kunstmuseum, Basel 21 October 2006-4 February 2007 For decades, art history taught us that Kandinsky was the greatest pioneer of abstract art, the artist who removed the subject matter from painting. The great…

  • MoMA Sets An Eye On Europe

    Eye On Europe: Prints, Books & Multiples/1960 to Now Museum of Modern Art, New York 15 October 2006-1 January 2007

  • In the Playground of a Master Alchemist

    András Böröcz Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York 18 October-25 November 2006