Art News
Art News For The Week Of May 6th, 2012
Architect Santiago Calatrava accused of ‘bleeding Valencia dry’
Architect Santiago Calatrava is facing heavy criticism for his dealings with the local government in his home region of Valencia.
Santiago, who designed the roof of the Athens Olympic stadium, is under fire from political opponents of the conservative-run authority. A website highlighting fees paid to him by Spanish taxpayers has been launched.
Calatrava has charged some €100m (£81m) to the Valencia government, according to the website, established by the leftwing Esquerra Unida party. The party says it has managed to see copies of bills paid by the People’s party regional government to the architect, who is now based in Zurich.
Esquerra Unida says contracts were given to him via “an unpublicised negotiating system establishing his payments as a percentage of the final cost of each project, which doubled or tripled in respect to the original budgets”.
The criticism comes as Spain’s regional governments struggle to justify a series of architectural white elephants, including museums and empty airports, built during a decade-long economic boom.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/08/architect-santiago-calatrava-valencia
How the war on terror could solve art’s most enduring mysteries
There may be a new way to discover the identify of people in portraits. Software developed to recognise terrorist faces is being adapted to solve the mystery.
In some cases, cutting-edge “face recognition” technology could identify faces from digital images, detecting similarities in facial constructs. The data will come from scans of known features of individuals, such as in a death mask or identified sculpture.
A feasibility study is being conducted by two art historians and an electronic engineer at the University of California. They describe FACES (Faces, Art and Computerised Evaluation Systems) as a “new tool for art historians”. The project has received a $25,000 government grant.
Conrad Rudolph, professor of art history at the university, said: “Before the advent of photography, portraits were, almost by definition, depictions of people who were important in their own worlds. But, as a walk through almost any major museum will show, a large number of these unidentified portraits from before the 19th century have lost the identities of their subjects.”
Frans Hals’ The Laughing Cavalier, the 1624 masterpiece in the Wallace Collection, London, is among famous portraits whose sitters remain unknown. The picture’s title was coined in the 19th century.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/how-the-war-on-terror-could-solve-arts-most-enduring-mysteries-7720688.html
Teen points out inaccurate map to NYC’s Met museum
Leave it to a teenager to point the way. A Connecticut seventh-grader says workers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City didn’t believe him when he pointed out an inaccuracy with a map that was on exhibit. The map purported to show the Byzantine Empire at its largest size in the 6th century, but he noticed that Spain and part of Africa were missing from the depiction.
Benjamin Lerman Coady, 13, knew he was right, because he had just studied the empire in school before last summer’s trip to the museum with his mother. He was told to fill out a form.
He filled out the form and never expected a response, but a museum official wrote him in September saying his comments were under review. Then came an email in January from Helen Evans, the museum’s curator for Byzantine art.
“You are, of course, correct about the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire under Justinian,” Evans wrote, and she invited Benjamin to return to the museum.
Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_20547628/teen-points-out-inaccurate-map-nycs-met-museum
Photo Credit
Image via Image: Tina Phillips
About Brittany O'Donnell
As the founder of Artistically Connected I am passionate about art and business. I enjoy working with artists at all stages of their craft and learning along the way.
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