Looking Around

The Dia Comes Home to New York

Richard Lacayo — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:02:34 +0000

The Dia Art Foundation is a unique thing, a non-profit that collects a limited roster of artists in depth, especially Minimalists and Conceptual artists, and gives them the kind of long term exhibition space their work requires. This can get tricky when you're talking about something like Walter de Maria's New York Earth Room, [...]

The Obamas Return a Painting

Richard Lacayo — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:24:50 +0000

Last month we learned what artworks the Obamas had chosen for the family quarters of the White House and the West and East Wing offices. One of the pictures that caught everybody's attention was Watusi (Hard Edge) by Alma Thomas, a lesser known Washington, D.C. area artist who died in 1978. But now [...]

Richard Moe is Leaving the National Trust

Richard Lacayo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:49:25 +0000

Richard Moe announced his intention today to retire as president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 17 years in that job Moe really transformed it. He worked wonders to give vitality to the effort to save great old buildings and places. Moe was crucial to the effort to [...]

The Lehman Brothers Art Auction

Richard Lacayo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:18:18 +0000

When I first heard a few weeks ago that the art collection that once hung in the hallways and offices of Lehman Brothers was going up for auction, I wondered if it could make enough money to at least partly compensate Lehman creditors, who are owed something in the neighborhood of $250 billion by the [...]

Gorky in Philly

Richard Lacayo — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:58:08 +0000

Arshile Gorky had one of the most singular careers in American art — a decades-long, almost self-annihilating immersion in the work of a few painters he revered, and then an explosion in the early 1940s into an art that was entirely his own. From now through January 10 there's a terrific new Gorky retrospective [...]

Roy DeCarava: 1919-2009

Richard Lacayo — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:17:38 +0000

The photographer Roy DeCarava has died. The great chronicler of 20th century African-American life, especially in New York, DeCarava had a sophisticated aesthetic and a capacious sense of life. As one example of just how sophisticated, check out this picture, which I would say is the work of a man who had thought [...]

Ansel Adams in Color

Richard Lacayo — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:22:11 +0000

I've been looking through a new edition of Ansel Adams in Color, a book first published in 1993, nine years after his death, that's been re-issued this year with 20 additional photographs. It's a book full of subtle, long-deliberated pictures, which is pretty much what you would expect of Adams, and it led me [...]

More on Terry Riley's Resignation in Miami

Richard Lacayo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:25:56 +0000

The big surprise on Monday was the announcement by the Miami Art Museum that MAM Director Terry Riley, who came to the museum just three and a half years ago, will step down immediately as director just one week after the museum unveiled the design for its new building. On Monday night Riley sent [...]

Terry Riley Leaving the Miami Art Museum

Richard Lacayo — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:07:07 +0000

That was fast. I mentioned a few weeks ago that it's not unusual for a museum director to step down after seeing through a major new building or addition at the museum. But it is a bit unusual for them to leave immediately after the architect's plan has been unveiled, especially if they [...]

Fat City

Richard Lacayo — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:19:48 +0000

This weekend, on October 25, CBS News Sunday Morning, with Charles Osgood, will have a special edition focusing on the problem of obesity in America. That's not the kind of news that ordinarily makes it into an art blog, but part of the show will be a segment on how the human body [...]