Hrag Vartanian

This Armenian newspaper is reporting that a new Gorky museum (which has been in the works for a while) will open up this fall in the Armenian city of Etchmiadzin (which is the Armenian Apostolic Church’s equivalent of the Vatican). From what I know most of the works on display will be items left to the Armenian Apostolic Church by the artist’s sister after her death. The majority of these items are many early paintings, some small late paintings, lovely drawings from all periods, and the rare Gorky sculptures (the bulk of which will be in this museum). The works are currently owned by the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern) in New York City.

Picasso’s “The Actor” is back in the galleries (this time under plexiglass) after conservators repaired a 6-inch tear caused by someone who accidentally fell into the canvas.

Since the October 22, 2009 article by Richard Dorment, titled “What Is an Andy Warhol?,” appeared in the NY Review of Books, there was been a stream of letters to discuss & refute points made by the author. The latest is quite interesting and comes from a former lawyer of the estate:

“ … the foundation, whenever criticized, resorts to ad hominem attacks. Such attacks are intended to deflect the legitimate criticism of the foundation. I am sure its leadership will do the same against me now. History supports my estimation of the value of Warhol’s art contained in his estate—not theirs. Twenty years later the facts speak for themselves. The public has lost millions of dollars in taxes and is getting so little in return.”

Becki Fuller takes some good photos of the street art event that was Fairey’s Deitch show mural.

This is a show I’m excited to see. As time goes on the brilliant of Golub becomes more obvious.

This is pre-tag and I can’t wait for the other tags to follow.

“My main interest was in finding out if copyeditors and editors had a consensus on whether it’s fine to use blog to mean a single, dated, first-person post on a web site instead of using blog to mean an entire site of such posts.” It’s always interesting to see what netizens thing of Internet terminology but in this case it is particularly fascinating since the audience is literary professionals.