CONTENTS December 2008
EDITORIAL
The best things in life...
The art world's frenetic emphasis on money and fashion is taking a big knock from the global credit crisis – but that provides opportunity to celebrate some unfashionable virtues.
CONTEMPORARY ART
Refreshing the scars
Polish artists evoke their country's war-time past to ask painful questions about its present.
ARCHITECTURE
Lost Lululaund
Henry Hobson Richardson's one building outside of America was a house in England, for the celebrated Victorian painter Hubert von Herkomer.
Collectors' Focus
Stringent export controls have reduced the size of this market in recent years, but a number of major collections formed in the 1960s are beginning to appear in the salerooms, writes Lucian Harris.
Asian Art Market
Hong Kong’s December sales offer spectacular Chinese works, and Phillips de Pury take Indian contemporary art to London and New York, writes Susan Moore.
Around the Galleries
London has a fine selection of Christmas shows to tempt collectors, and major 20th-century works are on offer in Barcelona and New York.
Market Preview
Art Basel Miami Beach offers stellar attractions, and a gorgeous Tiepolo goes on sale in London.
Market Review
Sales at London’s art fairs were steady if not stratospheric, but October’s auction-house results reflected fears of recession.
Art Business
Fear of recession in the west has prompted traditional centres for art and culture to turn to the Middle East as a source of revenue.
Museum opening of the year
The unveiling of the new home of the Museum of Arts & Design has aroused intense debate in New York. Whatever you think about Brad Cloepfil’s remodelling of a celebrated Manhattan building, there is no doubt that the museum itself is a great success, writes Vincent Katz.
Exhibition of the year
Philippe de Montebello’s final year as director of the Metropolitan Museum was marked by an exhibition on pietre dure that characteristically fused scholarship with showmanship, writes Christopher Rowell.
Book of the year
Arthur MacGregor’s account of the origin of public museums is a triumph, writes Philippa Glanville.
Museum acquisition of the year
Tate’s purchase of Rubens’s preliminary sketch for his ceiling of the Whitehall Banqueting House was a race, won at the very last minute, writes Michael Hall.
Creating a scene
Eugenio López Alonso is the creator of Colección Jumex in Mexico City, probably the most influential collection of contemporary art in Latin America. He talks to Louise Nicholson. Portrait by Laura Cohen.
Museum acquisitions
The gifts and purchases made in 2008 reveal how successful museums have been in acquiring many extraordinary works of art. Can they now hope that the next few years will bring a welcome if temporary respite in the ever-rising prices fetched by the best?
Personality of the Year
A distinguished dealer as well as a major collector, Eugene V. Thaw has immeasurably enriched the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, with his gifts. Louise Nicholson visits him at home. Portrait by Lanola Stone.
Artist's home under offer
The film director Michael Winner has lovingly restored his Victorian artist’s house in London as a setting for his collection. He plans to give both to the nation – if it will let him – as he tells Louise Nicholson. Photographs by Derry Moore.
Renaissance portraiture & the art of remembrance
As the exhibition ‘Renaissance Faces’ at the National Gallery in London reveals, the renaissance elevated portraiture to a central role in western art, for reasons investigated by James R. Lindow of AXA Art Insurance.
Tributes to a golden age
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the opening in 1983 of the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, Robert Wenley discusses Sir William Burrell’s enthusiastic pursuit of Dutch Old Masters. The paintings that he bought – which include a celebrated masterpiece by Rembrandt – reflect this great shipping magnate’s admiration for the Protestant, mercantile values of the Dutch ‘Golden Age’.
A giant in miniature
Riccio’s small bronzes magically evoke classical antiquity by fusing creative intuition with masterly skill, writes Timothy J. Standring.
Faces and spaces
An ambitious but unsatisfactory survey of renaissance portraits reveals glaring problems with the exhibition galleries at both the Prado and the National Gallery, London, writes Andrew Hopkins.
Mantegna unfrozen
The Louvre’s comprehensive and compelling exhibition challenges preconceptions about Mantegna’s art, writes Tom Henry.
Life & loves of a Pre-Raphaelite
Simon Poë finds Holman Hunt’s portraits to be an unexpected relief from the laboured works for which he is best remembered.
Picasso and his masters
An exhibition juxtaposing Picasso with the artists who influenced him is an almost overwhelmingly rich experience, writes David Platzer.
New light on old books
Hugh Buchanan’s watercolours transform books and libraries into subjects of mysterious romance, writes Eileen Harris.
Lines of succession
Gert-Rudolph Flick has assembled a ‘lineage’ of European painters that thought-provokingly mingles famous and obscure names, writes Thomas Tuohy.
Storms over Stonehenge
Rosemary Hill has written an incisive, witty account of Stonehenge’s place in the landscape of ideas, says Graham Parry.
Venetians in vogue
Simon P. Oakes applauds Nicholas Penny’s catalogue of the National Gallery’s later 16th-century Venetian paintings.
'Rothschilds of the East'
The home of a great French 19th-century collector is justly celebrated in a sumptuous book, writes Pippa Shirley.