News
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01/10/2012
The world's first online contemporary-art fair, VIP Art Fair, is planning to expand with three new events in 2012.
from Bloomberg: "The first edition of the VIP Art Fair, held last January, was billed as an unprecedented event where collectors were able to access 2,000 works and connect with more than 130 dealers from 30 countries. The debut suffered from teething problems such as a jammed chat system. VIP will also be holding events devoted to works on paper and photography running from April 20-22 and July 13-15 respectively. A three-day “Vernissage” (preview) will be held from Sept. 7-9."
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01/10/2012
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on Tuesday proposed building a museum in the Finnish capital after a yearlong feasibility study.
from the Washington Post: "The total area of the museum, to be built on the waterfront in central Helsinki, would be about 129,000 square feet with 42,000 square feet for exhibition galleries. The organization has several museums worldwide, including in Germany, Italy, Spain and one under construction in Abu Dhabi."
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01/09/2012
An appeals court upheld Fisk University's right to sell a $30 million share in its extensive Stieglitz art collection to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. But Tennessee's attorney general, who opposes the collection leaving the state, may challenge the ruling.
from The Tennessean: "Fisk and Crystal Bridges officials say they remain committed to each other, even as the court fight over the collection enters its seventh year. The museum, a vision of Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, opened in November to accolades from art critics. It is the only U.S. location in Travel and Leisuremagazine’s 'Hottest Travel Destinations of 2012.'"
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01/09/2012
Three works of art, including one by Pablo Picasso and another by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, were stolen from Greece's National Gallery early Monday morning.
from Reuters: "Thieves broke into the gallery in the early hours and snatched Picasso's 1939 painting "Woman's head," donated to the Greeks by the artist in 1949, and Mondrian's "Mill" dated 1905, police said. They also took a sketch by Italian painter Guglielmo Caccia, which was donated to the gallery in 1907. "It all happened in seven minutes," said a police official who declined to be named."
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01/06/2012
Philadelphia-born photographer Eve Arnold, best known for her shots of Marilyn Monroe, died yesterday at 99.
from the Guardian: "Eve Arnold, one of the most distinctive and admired photographers of the 20th century, equally renowned for portraits, fashion and photojournalism, and her long working relationship with Marilyn Monroe, has died aged 99, just short of her 100th birthday in April. Her agency Magnum – where she became the first woman member in 1957 – announced her death "with great sadness", adding that she "passed away peacefully" on Wednesday."
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01/06/2012
In a possible softening of their stance toward a leading dissident, Chinese authorities are allowing artist Ai Weiwei to appeal a fine for tax evasion, Ai’s representatives said on Friday.
from the Los Angeles Times: "Fake Cultural Development Ltd., the company founded by Ai but registered under his wife’s name, received notice on Wednesday that their appeal on the fine had been accepted, according to Ai’s lawyers. The attorneys had submitted a lengthy appeal last month, arguing that police had behaved improperly in detaining him for tax evasion."
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01/05/2012
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has selected Marc Bamuthi Joseph, a leading Bay Area performing artist, activist and educator, as its director of performing arts.
from the press release: "Since 1999, Joseph has been the founding program director and artistic director of Youth Speaks, Inc. in San Francisco, the leading nonprofit presenter of spoken-word education and youth development programs in the country ... Joseph, who is currently performing with his production of Word Becomes Flesh at The Public Theater in New York, will start at YBCA in February. He replaces Angela Mattox, who recently joined the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) as their artistic director."
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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."
