1. Ukranian Billionaire Selects Art-Prize Nominees
Victor Punchuk's PinchukArtCentre announced the nominees for his $100,000 Generation Art Prize. He funds the award, which goes to an emerging artist up to age 35. Whitney Biennial exhibitor (2008) Ruben Ochoa is the only American on the short list.

Our take: We're so glad the oligarchs are back. And points for a diverse group—the 21 finalists hail from 18 different countries and include 13 men and 8 women.

2. BP Corporate Art Sponsorship Backlash
In the UK, debate rages over BP's sponsorship of British cultural institutions. Vigilante groups have staged protests at partner museums-one group filled the Tate's grand hall with dead fish hanging from black balloons. Bloggers take their corners: Culturegrrl argues that museums shouldn't reject the money, while Edward Winkelman feels the BP backlash is too little, too late.

Our take: Why get angry at cultural institutions supported by BP when you could get angry at BP itself?
[The Guardian, Artnet, Culturegrrl, Edward Winkelman]

3. Louis Vuitton Demands Removal of Copycat Sculptures
Louis Vuitton demanded the removal of nine sculptures of locusts made out of fake designer purses that were on view at the Kobe Fashion Museum in Japan. The fashion house argued that the sculptures endorsed the illegal trade of counterfeit goods.

Our take: Murakami can install an entire LV boutique in the Brooklyn Museum, but artist Mitsuhiro Okamoto can't even use the designer's logo. Who's really getting ripped off here?
[Pinktentakle]

4. Yale Finds Velazquez Painting in Basement
In what may be Yale's most exciting basement cleaning session ever, University art gallery employees happened upon a painting of the Virgin Mary that they have officially attributed to Velazquez after years of research.

Our take: We were cynical, but it looks like the real deal. All we find when we clean out our basements are yellowed family photos and old boxes of Pringles.
[Bloomberg]

5. Charles Saatchi to Donate Collection and Gallery to Britain
Gallery impresario Charles Saatchi announced over the weekend that he would donate his collection, valued (very conservatively) at more than $37.5 million, and his London gallery to the nation of Britain upon his retirement. The Guardian isn't too impressed.

Our take: Looks like the Tate didn't schmooze over its contentious relationship with Saatchi in time to cash in.
[The Guardian]

6. Marilyn Manson and David Lynch Exhibition Opens
What do you get when you combine Marilyn Manson, David Lynch, watercolors, and a short film titled "The Amputee"? The Manson/Lynch exhibition "Geneaologies of Pain," which opened in Vienna on June 30. According to a press release, "Marilyn Manson's career as an artist started in 1999 when he produced conceptual five-minute watercolors which he sold to drug dealers."

Our take: "Pain" gives a new and unwelcome meaning to "cutting-edge art."

7. Guggenheim Expansion Provokes Protest
The Guggenheim Foundation announced interest in building a museum in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, 25 miles from Frank Gehry's iconic Guggenheim Bilbao. The regional Basque government and many local people fiercely oppose the expansion, arguing it will irreparably damage the nature reserve.  

Our take: If authorities in the Basque regional government were given more of a voice in the proceedings, the two parties might be able to make this happen.
[The Guardian]

8. Artist Gao Yu to Design Bottle for Absolut Vodka  
This week in corporate artist partnerships: Absolut Vodka has commissioned Chinese Pop artist Gao Yu to design a limited-edition bottle in honor of this year's Shanghai Expo.

Our take: Andy Warhol designed a bottle for Absolut 25 years ago. Is there any corporate collaboration that man didn't do first?

9. Sarah Palin is Rendered in Porn
British artist Jonathan Yeo's latest exhibition includes a portrait of Sarah Palin made entirely from clippings from pornography magazines. (All the better, the image has been placed in a furry moose head frame.) Other celebrities given Yeo's pornographic treatment include Tiger Woods, Sigmund Freud, and Paris Hilton, whose portrait-in-porn was bought by Damien Hirst.

Our take: When a politician headlines a controversy dubbed "Boobgate," isn't it only a matter of time until Playboy gets involved?
[Artinfo]
 
10. Art Market Heats Up for Summer
Artnet rounds up results from the summer's hottest sales, which include the highly anticipated Impressionist and modern auctions as well as contemporary art sales at Sotheby's and Christie's. In June, about 230 artists achieved record sale prices above $100,000 (up from 120 for the same price bracket in May).

Our take: We'll take any signs of recovery we can get, but we know deep down it's not all coming up records and roses.
[Artnet, Transom, ArtObserved]

Admittedly, my self-appointed task was equally attributable to a dearth of credible exhibitions to write about. The Whitney’s retrospective of Robert Smithson—an artist famed for piling rocks into the Great Salt Lake—holds no fascination for me. The fabled collection of the Hispanic Society, on the other hand, held out the promise of riches well worth a trip far uptown, so with curiosity and excitement, I hopped on the No. 1 train.

I arrived at a place seemingly abandoned by time. The Hispanic Society opened its doors in January 1908. It was founded by Archer Milton Huntington, a railroad magnate’s son who realized his dream of a “Spanish Museum” with money culled from his inheritance. A plaza with a red cobblestone walkway and portentous, large-scale sculptures of El Cid and Don Quixote surrounds the museum. It must have once provided a grand entrance, but now weeds dot the walkway, threatening to overtake it. Located on Audubon Terrace at 155th Street and Broadway, the museum and its neighboring institutions—the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Boricua College—are victims of haphazard urban planning. Hemmed in ungraciously by a pack of surrounding buildings, they’ve been robbed of any architectural sweep.

A step inside, though, reveals a still-magnificent Beaux-Arts structure. Admission to the museum is free. On the day I went, the only others there were a handful of tourists and a trio of security guards. Perfect conditions for looking at art, you might think, yet guests might need to adjust to the peculiarities of the building itself. The sterile white box has, for better or worse, become the norm for venues dedicated to displaying art. The Hispanic Society, with its predominant palette of rich, sandy red, makes a visitor slow down and ponder not only the ornamental detail typical of its age, but the status of art at different points in history. The décor here suggests that art need not be a near-sacred object independent of experience, but could be a vital component of that untidy thing called life.

As if to confirm that notion, the Hispanic Society is literally crowded with stuff. The museum began primarily as a library, but came to include art and artifacts that encompass almost the entirety of human history. You’ll find within its walls and inside its myriad wooden display cases 3,000-year-old Bell-Beaker vessels; the milky tones of 18th-century Hispano-Moresque luster plates; a stunning vargueño (an elaborately decorated drop-front secretary desk), circa 1575-1600; and a bizarre wooden relief of the Resurrection, wherein Jesus surfs his way to the viewer atop a sarcophagus.

Alas, you’ll also find a gallery devoted to a huge commission by Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, a 19th-century Spanish “protomodernist” whose painterly flourishes will strike contemporary eyes as undeservingly flashy and dull. But Huntington’s enthusiasm for Sorolla’s art shouldn’t scare away devotees of painting. Among the defining treasures of the Hispanic Society are top-of-the-line canvases by El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán and Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. Is there a museum in this world that wouldn’t kill for these artworks? The Velázquez paintings, in particular, display the great—perhaps the greatest—painter at the height of his powers.

Gaspar de Guzman, Conde-Duque de Olivares (ca. 1625-26) is the tour-de-force—Velázquez’s handling of the title figure’s black vestments is a miracle of painterly representation. But Portrait of a Little Girl (ca. 1638-44) is the sweetheart. The artist bestowed upon this irresistibly soulful child the same ample dignity he divined from his slave, Juan de Pareja (1650), a masterpiece by any definition and a gem of the Met’s collection. The Hispanic Society’s Cardinal Camillo Astalli Pamphili (ca. 1650), its third Velázquez canvas, is no less incisive in its pictorial form but considerably less endearing in terms of character. Am I alone in thinking that this was one shifty cardinal?

It’s not a slight upon the Hispanic Society’s collection to say that paintings as curt and startling as Goya’s The Duchess of Alba (1797), as suffused with awe as Zurbarán’s Saint Lucy (ca. 1630) or as intriguingly sloppy as El Greco’s The Holy Family (ca. 1590) can’t match the visual splendor of the works by Velázquez. They are, in fact, well worth savoring, as are the innumerable objects that I haven’t detailed. (Did I mention the nook of the museum dedicated to tomb sculpture?) More than anything else, however, it’s the Velázquez pictures that make a jaunt to the Hispanic Society a necessity. His art is one of those things that makes you happy to be on the planet, not to mention the upper reaches of Harlem.