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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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Forgery and Fiction

VELÁSQUEZ’ ROKEBY VENUS SUFFERED VANDALISM IN 1914, when suffragette Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to it in London’s National Gallery. (In a 1952 interview she conceded that she “didn’t like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long.”) Known also as The Toilet of Venus or La Venus del espejo, painted between 1647 and 1651, it is the only surviving Velásquez nude. ””This pearl of great price is the motive force behind Michael Gruber’s tour de force of psychological suspense and up-market fraud, The Forgery of Venus.  Continue Reading

CAA & The Death of Art

INFLATION IN THE ARTS IS OF A PIECE WITH INFLATION IN ACADEMIA. The upcoming College Art Association, in New York this year, has just mailed out its conference information. Scheduled for the first day of the conference are workshops on the important things: finding a job, keeping it, and getting grants. One of them aims at all the newly minted MFA’s: Job Hunt 101: Essential Steps in Securing a Job in the Arts. As night follows day, the next morning brings: Grant Writing for Artists. Continue Reading

Ron Milewicz at Elizabeth Harris

RON MILEWICZ HAS BECOME A FORMIDABLE PRESENCE among painters of the urban landscape. This, his second exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, establishes his place as a painter to be reckoned with. No small part of his achievement derives from his understanding of architecture as a vital part of the tissue of our lives. His interest is less in particular structures than in the way those structures reveal something about the tenor of the city which houses them. The distinction of Milewicz’s work affirms John Ruskin’s assertion that “Architecture is an art for all men to learn because all men are concerned with it.” Continue Reading

Welfare for Art?

NPR’S FIRING OF JUAN WILLIAMS has reignited examination of the larger issue of taxpaper funding for the arts. It was John Sloan, I believe, who welcomed public money, official award committees and the whole apparatus of state largess on the grounds that, by following the money, artists would know who their enemies are. With the country over $13 trillion—trillion—in debt, suddenly talk of defunding the arts does not seem like the mean-spirited, philistine, conservative plot it has traditionally been considered. Both the artists’ listserve to which I belong and AICA, the critic’s association to which I belong, howl at the thought. Continue Reading

Anish Kapoor in Jerusalem

By Heddy Breuer Abramowitz Having outgrown the starter apartment of its youth, the Israel Museum has re-opened after a three year makeover.  The vision of Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem’s legendary mayor, it was built in 1965 before there was a collection to house. Teddy’s own “Field of Dreams” proved true, he built it and they came. So many works of art, archaeological finds from the world over, Judaic artifacts,  bequests and visitors jammed the galleries and storerooms of the museum that it simply overran itself.  Continue Reading
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