News
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02/09/2012
The Merchandise Mart has pulled the plug on the latest incarnation of Art Chicago, ending the three-decade run of what was once considered one of the world's most important art exhibitions.
from the Chicago Tribune: "Founded at Navy Pier in 1980 as the Chicago International Art Exposition and passing through other incarnations before being redubbed Next Art Chicago last year to mark its official merger with the younger Next exhibition, the fair had been facing increased competition from other national and international fairs while struggling to maintain a lineup of high-end dealers. It was scheduled to run April 27-29."
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02/09/2012
Exit Art, the New York alternative art space, which previously announced plans to close after the death of its cofounder Jeanette Ingberman, will mount its final exhibition on March 23.
from NY Daily News: "In the 1970s, curator Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo, an ambitious Puerto Rico-born artist, fell in love. A few years later, they founded an art gallery together...“Exit Art will be remembered for its crazy, cacophonous shows,” says Rachel Gugelberger, who’s curating the final exhibit, a 30-year retrospective, “Every Exit is an Entrance. It runs from March 23 to May 25 at Exit Art, 475 Tenth Ave. A final benefit gala and silent auction will happen March 6."
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02/08/2012
The Bay Citizen and the Center for Investigative Reporting have signed a formal letter of intent to merge the two award-winning Bay Area nonprofit news organizations.
from The Bay Citizen: "Under terms of a memorandum of understanding approved by both boards, management of The Bay Citizen will be handed over to the existing leadership of the Berkeley-based CIR within 30 days. Phil Bronstein, the chairman of CIR’s board of directors, will become the executive chairman of the combined companies."
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02/08/2012
An ambitious plan is in the works to transform the plaza in front of the Metropolitan Museum into a more efficient and environmentally friendly space, with new fountains, greenery, and seating areas.
from the New York Times: "David H. Koch, a Met trustee and the philanthropist who in 2008 pledged $100 million to renovate the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center — which was renamed for him — is providing $60 million to finance it. But the plaza will not be named after him...When the plaza was last redesigned, in 1968, attention was paid to vehicular access, leaving sidewalks wide enough for cars, but now, with the Met’s attendance having more than doubled and with it the amount of foot traffic around the plaza, the aim is to make the space more people-friendly."
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02/07/2012
To encourage Singapore's fledgling art scene, a government task force has proposed establishing "no-censorship zones."
from the Wall Street Journal: "The Arts and Culture Strategic Review...released a report Monday that offered a hundred or so recommendations aimed at improving the vibrancy of the city-state’s growing arts scene...the report explored the idea of setting up “no censorship zones” for the arts, which could result in the creation of areas similar to Singapore’s famous Speakers Corner, the only place where protests are allowed in the state. The idea would be to create areas where censorship is abandoned in favor of creativity and free expression."
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02/06/2012
An unofficial grassroots monument to Mike Kelley, who died last week at age 57, sprang up in an abandoned driveway blocks from his home in Los Angeles.
from ARTINFO: "Paying homage to "More Love Hours" and "Wages of Sin," two installations Kelley exhibited at the 1989 Whitney Biennial, the memorial is a spontaneous expression of fans, and "doesn't feel like it's for the artists who were Kelley's peers or mentors as much as for those who came to L.A.'s art scene because he was a part of it."
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02/06/2012
The most generous members of the 1% devoted more than 2% of their charitable giving last year to arts and culture.
from the Los Angeles Times: "Reporters for the Chronicle [of Philanthropy] found specific donations of at least $1 million to arts and cultural institutions by 12 of the 50, totaling $213.4 million. The Philanthropy 50, as the Chronicle calls them, gave $10.4 billion in total charitable donations in 2011, more than three times the $3.3 billion they donated in 2010."
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02/03/2012
Qatar has purchased Cézanne’s The Card Players for more than $250 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of art.
from Vanity Fair: "If the price seems insane, it may well be, since it more than doubles the current auction record for a work of art. And this is no epic van Gogh landscape or Vermeer portrait, but an angular, moody representation of two Aix-en-Provence peasants in a card game. But, for its $250 million, Qatar gets more than a post-Impressionist masterpiece; it wins entry into an exclusive club. There are four other Cézanne Card Players in the series; and they are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d’Orsay, the Courtauld, and the Barnes Foundation. For a nation in the midst of building a museum empire, it’s instant cred."
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02/02/2012
The artist Christo wants to stretch fabric over the Arkansas River as part of a massive art exhibition. But now a group of University of Denver law students are joining in on the fight to put a stop to it before it ever starts.
from CBS: "The critics call themselves “ROAR,” or Rags Over The Arkansas River. They’ve filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming the project is as risky as mineral development...Christo says he doesn’t mind hearing the opposition to his project, and there was plenty of discussion on both sides...'I say in the very beginning it’s incredible gratification to see the people talking so much about my work of art,' Christo said."
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02/02/2012
Dorothea Tanning, a leading Surrealist painter of the 1930s whose path had led her from the small town of Galesburg, Ill., to a whirlwind life in the international art world, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 101.
from the New York Times: "Married for 30 years to the Surrealist painter and sculptor Max Ernst, Ms. Tanning became well known in her own right for her vivid renderings of dream imagery. Much later in life, after she had reached 80, she gained a different kind of attention when she began to concentrate on writing, producing a novel, an autobiography and poems that appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Review and The Paris Review."
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02/01/2012
Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker and incognito street artist JR are among the artists whose works will be given as trophies to the filmmakers of winning pics in the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival's jury competitions.
from the Chicago Tribune: "Eleven artists are contributing one work each, ranging from paintings to photos to sculptures. Tribeca's link to the art world comes in part through fest co-founder Robert De Niro, whose late father was an abstract expressionist painter. Peter Dayton, Stephen Hannock, Clifford Ross, Walton Ford, Kim Keever, Nathan Sawaya, Hugo Tillman and Stanley Whitney round out the contributing creatives, whose pieces will be awarded to filmmakers in competish categories including narrative feature and doc for both world cinema and New York-centric pics."
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02/01/2012
Museums in Israel, France, and the U.K. have jointly acquired one of six copies of Christian Marclay’s 24-hour film “The Clock."
from Bloomberg: "Israel Museum in Jerusalem spent a low six-figure sum to jointly acquire the video collage with the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Tate in London. “The Clock,” which is composed of thousands of film images that include clocks, watches or announcements that illuminate the passage of time, premiered in London in October 2010. The work drew about 3,500 visitors in the two days it ran for a full 24 hours in Jerusalem and overall it attracted 50,000 visitors."
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01/31/2012
The Rhode Island School of Design launched a partnership with the U.S. Department of State to promote cross-cultural exchange.
from Market Watch: "Visiting artist Jim Drain is leading Art in Embassies: Morocco, a 2012 studio course at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), as the first phase of a multiyear partnership between RISD and the U.S. Department of State's Office of ART in Embassies...This collaborative project has been designed to promote cross-cultural exchange, and to recognize and nurture the talents of the next generation of professional artists. Ultimately, the collaboration will yield a large-scale outdoor work of art for the U.S. Embassy building currently in the design phase for Rabat, Morocco."
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01/31/2012
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is one of four U.S. organizations singled out by the Wallace Foundation as exemplars of how to attract new audiences for the arts.
from the Boston Globe: "The Wallace Foundation, a national foundation concerned with building arts audiences, studied the strategies of the museum and the [Boston Lyric Opera], along with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, in an effort to analyze what approaches work. The Gardner Museum was praised for its “Art After Hours’’ initiative, which set aside Thursday nights for a bar, live musicians, DJs - and access to the galleries. The initiative has proved popular with the 18-35-year-old age group."
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01/30/2012
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has announced the recipients of its new Artistic Innovation and Collaboration grant program (AIC).
from ARTINFO: The recipients of the foundation's Artistic Innovation and Collaboration grants, designed to advance "the values promoted by artist and activist Robert Rauschenberg during his lifetime and career," include, among others, New York's The Drawing Center, Los Angeles's Machine Project, the North Dakota Museum of Art, and New York's STREB. [press release]
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01/30/2012
The Art Institute of Chicago has formed a partnership with the government of India. The four-year collaboration fosters exchange programs for Institute curators and staff members at Indian museums.
from the Associated Press: "The Art Institute will host an Indian delegation on Saturday to sign an agreement for the Vivekananda Memorial Program for Museum Excellence. The $500,000 grant honors Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda, who spoke in 1893 at the Art Institute during the World's Columbian Exposition. The Art Institute says it's the first U.S. museum to receive a grant from India."
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01/27/2012
Britain's main state art funding body has granted £3,000 ($4,705) to Manchester's second "Artists' Bonfire," an event that gives artists a chance to set their creations alight in public.
from the BBC: "Arts Council England has given £3,000 of National Lottery money to a project allowing artists to burn their work. Organisers said it was 'a research project into art and activism' that allowed local artists to collaborate and to discuss art in a direct way. Arts Council England said the project would support emerging talent and stimulate debate. Organiser Rosanne Robertson said it was 'beneficial to supporting artists and discussing art in a new way - in a more direct way with an audience.'"
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01/27/2012
A New York art dealer has been charged in a $4 million fraud for selling works by Picasso, Matisse and others without informing the owner or giving him the proceeds.
from the Associated Press: "The charges in a criminal complaint in Manhattan accuse Robert Scott Cook of selling 16 works of art without the owner/collector's knowledge. The artwork included watercolors, drawings, photographs, and other works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, among others."
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01/26/2012
The Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi announced that the satellite Louvre art gallery will open its doors in 2015 and the Guggenheim museum in 2017, about three years later than expected.
from AFP: "The museums were originally scheduled to open between 2013 and 2014, but delays were announced in October. At the time, local media reported that Abu Dhabi projects valued at $30 billion were frozen pending review, in a bid to scale back spending in difficult economic conditions."
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01/26/2012
John Ahearn, Uri Aran, Latifa Echakhch, Joel Kyack, Rick Moody, Virginia Overton, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., and Ulla von Brandenburg have been selected for Frieze Projects, the non-profit commissioning program curated by Cecilia Alemani that will run alongside Frieze New York next May.
from e-flux: "Frieze New York will be located in the unique setting of Randall’s Island Park, overlooking the East River. The majority of the commissioned projects are situated outdoors and are located throughout Randall’s Island. Artists have been invited to respond to the island’s unique geography. The projects have been conceived as not only interactions with the existing architecture of the site but also participatory platforms for the fair’s visitors and existing local communities."
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