News
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01/05/2012
The Duchess of Cambridge has become the patron of four charities, accepting honorary positions with Action on Addiction, East Anglia's Children's Hospices, the Art Room and the National Portrait Gallery.
from the BBC: "Kate will also become a volunteer in the Scout Association, mostly working near her North Wales home. St James's Palace said the choices reflected her interests in the arts, promotion of outdoor activity and supporting people in need of all ages...The Art Room, which uses art therapy to help children with issues like low self-esteem and Asperger's syndrome at centres in Oxford and London, said it would make a great difference."
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01/04/2012
In an essay recently published in the Communist Party policy magazine Seeking Truth, Chinese President Hu Jintao argued for greater state control over the arts and entertainment industries.
from the New York Times: "The essay, which was signed by Mr. Hu and based on a speech he gave in October, drew a sharp line between the cultures of the West and China and effectively said the two sides were engaged in an escalating war...'We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration,' Mr. Hu said, according to a translation by Reuters."
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01/04/2012
The Joan Mitchell Foundation, established after the artist’s death to support individual artists, has announced the 25 recipients of the 2011 painters and sculptors grant program.
from ARTINFO: "Each grantee, selected by a jury of artists, curators, and arts educators, will receive $25,000. The award strives to assist under-recognized artists and sculptors, including, this year, Nicole Awai, William Cardova, and Liz Miller." Click here for a full list of grantees.
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01/03/2012
The Museum of Fine Arts was dismayed to learn that the city of Boston is requesting a payment of $250,000 this year under new rules for the amount that not-for-profit organisations have to pay in lieu of taxes.
from The Art Newspaper: "The steep rise in contributions is a result of the Mayor of Boston Thomas Menino’s revised Payment in Lieu of Taxes scheme, known as Pilot. The art museums, and the city’s other not-for-profit organisations owning property that is worth more than $15m, face paying a fee that is based on 25% of what they would have to pay if they were charged the city’s commercial tax."
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01/03/2012
The Louvre cemented its position as the world's most-visited museum with a record 8.8 million visitors last year to the Paris home of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and other masterpieces.
from Agence France-Presse:"The Louvre saw a five percent increase in visitors in 2011, after three years in a row in which about 8.5 million people had visited the museum, it said in a statement. The museum said it enjoyed "a strong return of American visits and a more and more marked presence of visitors from emerging countries." Visitors from abroad accounted for 66 percent of the museum's attendees, led by tourists from the United States, followed by Brazil, Italy, Australia and China."
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01/03/2012
John Buchanan, the ebullient and controversial director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since 2006, died Friday at his San Francisco home of cancer. He was 58.
from the San Francisco Chronicle: "During his six years at the Fine Arts Museums, comprising the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, Mr. Buchanan presided over impressive growth in attendance and a 70 percent increase in membership.Combined attendance at the Fine Arts Museums in 2010 ranked fourth among museums in the United States and 16th in the world. The 2010 "Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces From the Musée d'Orsay" brought the de Young more than 4,600 visitors daily."
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12/28/2011
Two long-time staff members of the Chicago Art Institute Prints and Drawings department have been appointed to important new positions within the department.
from the Examiner: "Suzanne Folds McCullagh, with the department since 1975 as a curator will become the Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Chair and Curator of Prints and Drawings. McCullagh succeeds Douglas Druick, who is now the current President of the museum as the head of the department. Martha Tedeschi, with the museum since 1982 will become the new Prince Trust Curator in Prints and Drawing, the curatorship previously held by Druick."
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12/27/2011
Approximately a half-dozen major museums and organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution and the New York Historical Society, have been “avidly” collecting artifacts from the Occupy Wall Street movement.
from the Chicago Tribune: "Occupy Wall Street may still be working to shake the notion it represents a passing outburst of rage, but some establishment institutions have already decided the movement's artifacts are worthy of historic preservation. Staffers have been sent to occupied parks to rummage for buttons, signs, posters and documents. Websites and tweets have been archived for digital eternity. And museums have approached individual protesters directly to obtain posters and other ephemera."
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12/27/2011
Helen Frankenthaler, the lyrically abstract painter whose technique of staining pigment into raw canvas helped shape an influential art movement in the mid-20th century died on Tuesday at her home in Darien, Conn. She was 83.
from the New York Times: "Known as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist, Ms. Frankenthaler was married during the movement’s heyday to the painter Robert Motherwell, a leading first-generation member of the group. But she departed from the first generation’s romantic search for the “sublime” to pursue her own path. Refining a technique, developed by Jackson Pollock, of pouring pigment directly onto canvas laid on the floor, Ms. Frankenthaler, heavily influencing the colorists Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, developed a method of painting best known as Color Field — although Clement Greenberg, the critic most identified with it, called it Post-Painterly Abstraction."
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12/23/2011
A Swiss art prize worth 25,000 euros has been cancelled amid controversy the organizers censored one of the nominees for being too Palestinian.
from the BBC: "Jerusalem-born artist Larissa Sansour claims she was taken off the shortlist for being "too pro-Palestinian". The Elysee Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland said it was the prize's sponsors, clothing company Lacoste, who decided to exclude Sansour. Lacoste denied the accusation and withdrew their sponsorship."
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12/22/2011
The Whitney Museum of Art in New York has announced artists for the upcoming Biennial.
from the New York Times: "The museum announced an eclectic lineup for the 76th edition of its survey of contemporary American art, which opens March 1. The list includes Dennis Cooper, who plans to install a speaking “robot”; Andrea Fraser, who once posed as a museum tour guide as part of a performance piece; Kate Levant, who will have a hanging-fabric sculpture on display; and Nick Mauss, who is installing a velvet room. Also represented will be the experimental theatrical director and playwright Richard Maxwell; the filmmakers Vincent Gallo, Werner Herzog and Frederick Wiseman; the dancer and choreographer Michael Clark; and the rock band Red Krayola."
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12/21/2011
Jacob Kassay, JR, Aurel Schmidt, and Matthew Brandt are among those who made Forbes magazine’s list of top artists and designers under 30.
from Forbes: "As we did our reporting, we learned that in the fine arts, 20-something is awfully young. So we searched for artists who had been recognized by museums, collectors and the market. In one case, we found a 27-year-old, painter, Jacob Kassay, who made art press headlines this spring when one of his monochrome silver canvases fetched nearly $300,000 at auction. Kassay just had his first solo museum show in London. Though neither Chuck Close nor Jeffrey Deitch was enthusiastic about Kassay, we thought his market success merited inclusion on our list."
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12/21/2011
The National Gallery in London is mounting a memorial exhibition of the father of British pop art Richard Hamilton featuring portraits by other artists. The tribute was originally planned as a celebration of Hamilton's 90th birthday before his death in September.
from The Guardian: "The gallery has assembled 10 portraits of Hamilton by artists and photographers including David Hockney's etching from 1971 – made from life in the year both artists joined the protest against the introduction of admission charges to national museums – and Lord Snowdon's photographs from 1963. Hamilton was born in London in 1922, studied at St Martin's and the Royal Academy – from which he was expelled for refusing to obey instructions in painting classes – and finally the Slade."
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12/20/2011
A new military medical facility called the National Intrepid Center for Excellence offers holistic healing, including art, writing, and music therapies, for brain trauma and other invisible wounds of war.
from the BBC: "The results could give doctors new insight into how arts therapies help patients with traumatic brain injuries and psychological conditions. The writing project is an extension of the award-winning programme Operation Homecoming, which was created by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to encourage US troops and their families to write about life on the front lines."
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12/20/2011
Forty-six artists, including Shepard Fairey, have contributed black-and-white artwork to the Police Brutality Coloring Book, a 48-page DIY publication inspired by incidents of violent police action against Occupy Wall Street activists.
from Wired: "The Police Brutality Coloring Book was put together inside of a week, just as artists were preparing for Art Basel Miami Beach and other fairs. Joe "Heaps" Nelson borrowed money for a plane ticket from his sister, and walked around Miami with a backpack selling the books for $10 a piece at art fairs and on the street, selling about 65 copies. The result is a photocopied, saddle-stitched book, with artwork ranging from crude sketches to fine illustrative art — most of which is conducive to coloring, some of which isn’t. Nelson describes it as 'basically a punk-rock ‘zine, like what I used to do in the ’80s.'"
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12/19/2011
BP has pledged another $15.5 million to British art institutions, including the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and Tate Britain, despite an 8,000-name petition earlier this month asking the Tate to end the corporate sponsorship.
from the BBC: "The company announced the 'renewal and expansion' of its support for the institutions at a British Museum event. The announcement follows controversy over BP's backing for the Tate after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. Last year molasses were poured during demonstrations outside Tate Britain. Earlier this month an 8,000-strong petition was handed to the Tate calling for an end to the sponsorship."
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12/19/2011
The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities each will see a 5.6% budget reduction in fiscal 2012 under a spending bill passed Friday in the House.
from the Los Angeles Times: "Under the bill, each agency would have $146.3 million to spend during the budget year that began in October, down from $155 million. It's the second cut this year for the two grant-making agencies, which began 2011 with budgets of $167.5 million. The combined cuts now total 12.7%."
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12/16/2011
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is said to be close to suing the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation over hundreds of millions of dollars in disputed costs.
from the Wall Street Journal: "The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is "on the verge" of suing the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation over hundreds of millions of dollars in disputed costs related to redeveloping the World Trade Center site, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday. His comments, and a response by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, marked the first time the two men have spoken publicly about the fight, which has delayed the planned 2012 opening of the Sept. 11 museum."
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12/16/2011
Banksy has installed the piece "Cardinal Sin," a response to the paedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church, at Liverpool's Walker Gallery.
from the BBC: "Cardinal Sin is a bust with its face sawn off and replaced by blank tiles, designed as a response to the child abuse scandal in the Catholic church. In a statement, Banksy said: "I'm never sure who deserves to be put on a pedestal or crushed under one." The sculpture was unveiled at the Walker Art Gallery, where it is sitting alongside 17th Century religious art. The bathroom tiles have been put in place of the priest's face to create a pixelated effect."
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12/15/2011
The Tate Galleries in Britain may not renew a sponsorship deal with BP following environmental protests.
from The Guardian: "Tate's director, Sir Nicholas Serota, has said it will decide whether to renew the contract with BP "quite soon". This month he was presented with a petition from 8,000 Tate members and visitors organised by the pressure groups Platform, Liberate Tate and Art Not Oil. Serota said: 'You'll not be surprised to learn that the whole question of the support from BP has exercised trustees quite seriously over the past two years. Both the trustees as a board, but also the trustees through their ethics committee, which was instituted about four years ago, have looked very carefully at the question.'"
