News From Around the Art World: December 4, 2018
Google is building digital art galleries you can step into
Google wants to help you take a closer look at the art world. The company’s Arts & Culture app has long been one of the company’s cooler niche apps and one that I often feel guilty about overlooking every time I rediscover it. Today, the company has added another experience into the mix focused on collecting the known works of Dutch master artist Johannes Vermeer and curating them in a single place.
By Lucas Matney, Tech Crunch
Meet The Chicago Woman Taking Balloon Art To Incredible New Heights
When people ask Elaine Frei what she does for a living, the 39-year-old tends to answer, sheepishly, “I have this balloon business.” Which is technically true — Frei is the founder/owner of Luft Balloons, based in Logan Square — but her response is also a bit like Coco Chanel saying, “I sell clothes.” What Frei actually does is take the humble balloon and elevate it into a medium for sophisticated works of art.
By Patti Wetli, Block Club Chicago
Chicago’s Framing Master Celebrates 40 Years
When Jay Goltz decided to start a picture framing business right out of college, his family and friends thought he was wasting his degree. “In 1978, if you called someone an entrepreneur, it was an insult, like a hustler,” Goltz says. In hindsight, he thinks the disdain prepared him for the challenges that lay ahead.
Forty years later, Artists Frame Service is the largest framing store in the country and one of a few keeping the art of framing alive. Clybourn Avenue, where Artists Frame Service is headquartered, has even been named Honorary Jay Goltz Way by the city of Chicago.
By Amber Gibson, Architectural Digest
How Far Would You Go to Get the Perfect Artwork? We Asked Young Art Collectors How They Landed Their Most Elusive Trophies
As any art collector will tell you, once you catch the collecting bug, it doesn’t leave you. But a new generation of collectors is taking a variety of novel approaches to track down the works they want, often going to wildly impractical or time-consuming lengths to land elusive trophies.
By Henri Neuendorf, artnet news