CONTENTS November 2009
EDITORIAL
Patching up the palace
Calls for the Queen to fund repairs to Buckingham Palace by more public opening miss the point: this is an opportunity for the restoration that the palace deserves.
CONTEMPORARY ART
Manhattan yards
Two major artists came under the spotlight with the opening of a museum by Maya Lin and three new versions of Alan Kaprow's 'Yard'.
ARCHITECTURE
Dreaming Towers
George Oatley's monumental Wills Tower for Bristol University was the final flowering of secular Gothic in England – a tradition that lasted longer in the USA.
Collectors' Focus
The recession is fuelling interest in silver but dealers and auction houses are having to adjust to changing interests, writes Isabel Andrews.
Art Business
Judging by Tate’s recent financial report, the UK's national museums are badly short of cash.
Market Review
Asian sales did better than expected and London’s LAPADA fair was a hit in its new location.
Market Preview
Imperial Fabergé and paintings from the collections of Paul Durand- Ruel and Lord and Lady Attenborough are highlights this month.
‘Like a poet’s dreams’
Filming of Pride & Prejudice at Chatsworth in 2004 revealed the original ‘glow of beauty’ of the 6th Duke of Devonshire’s sculpture gallery. This has helped prompt the return of the gallery to its appearance in the mid-19th century, as Charles Noble and Alison Yarrington explain.
Calder’s legacy
Alexander S.C. Rower, a grandson of Alexander Calder, is president and chairman of the Calder Foundation. A major centre for research, it has ambitiously embarked on the definitive catalogue raisonné, as Clare Finn discovers. Portrait by Gilles Bensimon.
Collectors & Collecting
Robert H. Smith and his wife, Clarice, have formed one of the world’s finest private collections of renaissance bronzes. At home in Washington, DC, he talks to Louise Nicholson about his decision to bequeath the collection to the National Gallery of Art. Photographs by Brian Smale.
The Ashmolean Transformed
On 7 November the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford unveils its new building. Designed by Rick Mather, its 39 galleries break down the curatorial boundaries in England’s oldest public museum, writes Philippa Glanville.
Idol of the Islands
In 2002 the J. Paul Getty Museum bought an extraordinary sculpture by Gauguin that had been lost for over a century. Martin Bailey investigates the many mysteries surrounding this wooden horned head. The greatest puzzle of all is whether it really is by Gauguin.
Mint Condition
A beautiful park in the heart of the city’s museum and fashion district is the new setting for Milan’s MINT fair, writes Annie Blinkhorn.
Altars Refurnished
In a remarkable exhibition, paintings long dispersed from Antwerp Cathedral have been returned to their original setting, writes Robert Oresko.
Picturing Britain
Timothy Wilcox applauds an unmissable exhibition on the neglected watercolour art of Paul Sandby.
Master of Light
An exhibition now in Los Angeles goes to the heart of a great genius of still life, writes Jonathan Lopez.
What news on the Rialto?
At last Marin Sanudo’s extraordinary diary of renaissance Venice is accessible to an English-speaking audience, writes Simon P. Oakes.
A Bed in the Parlour
Tim Mowl welcomes a major account of the history of house design in Britain and Ireland – but do its authors know too much?
Refined Life
Kay Dian Kriz’s analysis of the way that slavery is implicated in all depictions of the British West Indies before emancipation is persuasive and enlightening, writes David Bindman.