Doubts Over Australian Sale Of Picasso "Why sell the painting in Australia and not, say, New York or London? And why auction a work valued at between $5million and $7million at a time of international art market uncertainty and local nervousness about the economy?" The Australian 05/100/08

America's New Embassy In China To Feature A-List Art "When the new American embassy opens in Beijing just before the start of the summer Olympics in August, it will display work by at least 18 American and Chinese contemporary artists, including Jeff Koons, Cai Guo-Qiang, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Rausch-enberg, Betty Woodman, Martin Puryear, Maya Lin, Yun-Fei Ji, and Hai Bo." The Art Newspaper 05/08/08

American Buyers Active At Sotheby's "Sotheby's sale of Impressionist and modern art on Wednesday proved to be a solid if unexciting evening... Unlike at [Tuesday's] Christie's sale, which was dominated by European buyers, at Sotheby's Americans took home 67 percent of the work, and Europeans bought 27 percent." The New York Times 05/08/08

Obscenity Charges Dropped Against Indian Artist "A court in the India has dropped legal proceedings in three cases against one of the country's best-known and controversial artists. MF Husain has been accused of obscenity in at least seven cases filed against him in a number of Indian states... In dropping criminal proceedings against the painter, the Delhi court said the painting was not obscene." BBC 05/08/08

GG Architecture Prizes Announced Canada's Governor General's Medals for excellence in architecture were announced this week, with structures in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and east Toronto being recognized. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/08/08

Russia To Spend $177 Million To Restore Pushkin Museum The Russian government says it will spend more than $177 million US to restore the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow's largest museum of European art. CBC 05/07/08

Five Finalists Chosen For Oversized Sculpture Project (A Horse?) "Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger is among internationally-acclaimed artists shortlisted for the Ebbsfleet Landmark. He is proposing a white horse, 33 times life-size, which would look out over the Ebbsfleet Valley and mark the new Ebbsfleet International station." BBC 05/07/08

Have We Lost Our Sense For Good New Painting? "The art world is in a terrific fizz about painting at the moment. It has suddenly decided that painting is not dead any more but very much alive. And like somebody startled from sleep, it can't quite tell the difference between anything." The Independent (UK) 05/08/08

The Oldest Photograph? It's the image of a leaf. "Experts will spend months poring over Leaf and looking at documentation from Wedgwood's time to try to pin down whether it is his work. The image originally came from the collection of Henry Bright, whose prominent Bristol family was connected to the scientific community in and around 1800." The Guardian (UK) 05/07/08

Good Numbers For Carnegie Int'l Pittsburgh's Carnegie International art festival is booming, "as visitors packed parties, filled galleries, and plumped the bottom line of cafes and gift shops. The Carnegie drew 1,377 to its Friday night gala, 933 for the Strolling Dinner with 444 more joining the festivities during the Late Night Event... The weekend museum attendance [was] 2,677." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/07/08

Ups And Downs At Christie's "Fears that the Christie's sale of Impressionist and modern art would usher in a market meltdown were assuaged early Tuesday evening when everything from a Monet landscape to a monumental sculpture by Rodin brought record prices. But the sale also had its bumps, as 14 out of 58 works failed to sell because they were considered either too expensive or second-rate examples by first-rate artists." The New York Times 05/07/08

Artists Not Pleased By Quick Art Flip Many artists and curators are angry over the recent sale of some 200 works of Chinese art at auction in New York. "As the collection was being formed, they were duped into thinking that a rich Westerner was putting together a permanent collection and would eventually donate some of the works to leading museums. Instead, they say, the buyers were a group of investors who quickly cashed in..." The New York Times 05/07/08

Record Auction Price For Monet An 1873 canvas by Monet of a riverbank landscape with two trains atop a railway bridge sold for $41.4 million Tuesday night at Christie's. It was a record price for the artist. The New York Times 05/06/08

The "Michelangelo Of Graffiti"? "Banksy is not to be dismissed lightly. If nothing else, the work of the other graffiti artists made Banksy look like the Michelangelo of the medium. Even more unexpectedly, several of his three-dimensional installations could have held their own in any show in the land. Next stop the Turner Prize." The Telegraph (UK) 05/06/08

Smithsonian Decides To Go It Alone In Restoring Historic Mall Building "Last November the Smithsonian solicited ideas for a public-private partnership to save the building. It also conducted a staff survey about how the building could be used. The public submitted 11 proposals and the staff came up with 2,000 ideas." Washington Post 05/06/08

Art-As-Currency: The Global Test "Think of it as the art world's 'new math.' A new generation of collectors, dealers and financiers have come to treat art as a highly sophisticated financial instrument: tradable, globally recognizable, in demand and liquid around the world. Suddenly, some of the most prized names in contemporary art are the more prolific ones, those with signature images (like Damien Hirst's ubiquitous "spin art" paintings), since inventories can be traded much like currency." Wall Street Journal 05/06/08

National Gallery Names New Chief Curator Franklin Kelly, who is 54 and holds a PhD in art history from the University of Delaware, has been a curator at the National Gallery for 21 years. Washington Post 05/04/08

Chicago's Artropolis Makes Progress "It was so big that several exhibitors who were disappointed in their sales speculated that the fair's giganticism meant that the pie of the collector's spending power was cut into too many slices." Chicago Sun-Times 05/04/08

How To Make Your City Hip: Big Art All around downtown Orlando, art is turning up in public places -- baroque statues in front of the Plaza, an abstract aluminum sculpture next to City Hall, a series of narrow aluminum panels in blocks of mustard, orange and red... Orlando Sentinel 05/03/08

Can P.S.1 Survive Its Founder? Over 32 years, Alanna Heiss built P.S. 1 into one of the city's most refreshingly unpredictable venues for contemporary art, drawing crowds of young, aggressively hip visitors to see its exhibitions and join in its boozy summer dance parties. But when P.S. 1 was merged into the Museum of Modern Art in 2000, it became an open question how long its idiosyncratic impresario would remain at the helm. Now she's leaving... New York Magazine 05/05/08

Artists Lament Passing Of Polaroid "Several weeks ago, the diminished Polaroid Corporation announced it will, in 2009, quit the instant-film business. Of course, it's hard to argue with the ease of digital for the lion's share of see-it-now picture-taking. Nevertheless, a lot of photographers are vehement about what they're losing." New York Magazine 05/04/08

A New Class Of Installation Artist "Olafur Eliasson, the Danish-Icelandic inventor and engineer of minimalist spectacle, is so much better than anyone else in today's ranks of crowd-pleasing installational artists that there should be a nice, clean, special word other than "art" for what he does, to set him apart. There won't be." The New Yorker 05/05/08

Where Is the Creativity In Today's Visual Arts? "Although there is a great deal of discussion about the concept of creativity, and about intellectual property as an exploitable resource, surprisingly the role of the visual arts in advancing this has been marginalised during the past decade. While other disciplines and professions have adopted the concepts of creativity and innovation, and used those words with tedious frequency, the visual arts sector has stepped back from the plate with the result that others have taken guardianship of these concepts." The Australian 05/03/08

Record-Setting Rothko Goes To Qatar "Qatar's ruling Al-Thani family is the mystery buyer of Mark Rothko's White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), 1950, which sold at Sotheby's New York on 15 May 2007 for $72.8m--setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a work of post-war art at auction. The painting was consigned by David Rockefeller." The Art Newspaper 05/02/08

Reinventing The Photo In The 21st Century "Photography, the family historian, court painter, official scribe and crusading journalist of the 20th century, has penetrated the 21st century in ways that Kodak founder George Eastman himself could hardly have dreamed." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/03/08