News
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04/18/2013
Boston Bruins fans took over the national anthem in an emotional moment at the city's first sporting event since the Boston Marathon bombings.
From CBS Boston: "Security was tight at the TD Garden for the first major sporting event since the Boston Marathon Bombing. The 17,500 fans who came to Wednesday night’s Bruins game were proud to be Americans and prouder still tonight to be Bostonians.
Following a slideshow set to the song “Home” by Phillip Phillips, Garden legend Rene Rancourt took his usual spot in the corner of the rink for the national anthem.
Fans wiped tears from their eyes as they sang the anthem. The rendition was loud and stirring, so much so that Rancourt put his microphone down."
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04/18/2013
Ed Ruscha has been named to Time Magazine's 100 most influential people. He is the only visual artist to make the cut.
From Gallerist NY: "The artist Ed Ruscha has made Timemagazine’s 100 most influential people list. He shares the honor with the likes of Jay-Z, Steven Spielberg, Kim Jong Un, Justin Timberlake and Lebron James. Mazel!
Mr. Ruscha currently has an excellent show on view in New York at Gagosian Gallery’s Madison Avenue location. Of his work, Time writes, 'But even if Ruscha never met a word he couldn’t unsettle, let’s hang on to the one we need sometimes to describe him: genius.'
He’s the only visual artist on the list, though the architect Wang Shu also made the cut." See the full 100 here.
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04/16/2013
President Obama's new budget would increase federal funding for the arts by 10 percent– to $1.58 billion.
From the LA Times: "President Obama’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year would boost federal arts spending 10% above where it stands at the moment, lifting it to $1.58 billion for the 2013-14 budget year that begins Oct. 1 and more than compensating for cuts from the 'budget sequestration' bill that went into effect last month.
Those reductions sliced 5% across the board from three federal cultural grant-making agencies as well as the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, lowering their combined spending from $1.51 billion to about $1.44 billion for fiscal 2012-13.
The budget proposal Obama presented last week for 2013-14 would restore those cuts and provide an additional 4.5% increase above pre-sequestration funding."
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04/15/2013
MoMA says it will tear down its American Folk Art Museum building –which was built in 2001– after it bought the building next door.
From the NY Times: "When a new home for the American Folk Art Museum opened on West 53d Street in Manhattan in 2001 it was hailed as a harbinger of hope for the city after the Sept. 11 attacks and praised for its bold architecture.
'Its heart is in the right time as well as the right place,' Herbert Muschamp wrote in his architecture review in The New York Times, calling the museum’s sculptural bronze facade 'already a Midtown icon.'
Now, a mere 12 years later, the building is going to be demolished."
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04/13/2013
The Guggenheim Foundation has announced its fellows for 2013– including SF-based artist Chris Sollars.
From the Guggenheim press release: "In its eighty-ninth annual competition for the United States and Canada, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and scientists. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants."
Click here for a full list of fellows
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04/10/2013
The Met has received a gift of cubist paintings valued at more than $1 billion from philanthropist Leonard A. Lauder.
From the NY Times: "In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder has promised the institution his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures.
The trove of signature works, which includes 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, 14 Légers and 14 works by Gris, is valued at more than $1 billion. It puts Mr. Lauder, who for years has been one of the city’s most influential art patrons, in a class with cornerstone contributors to the museum like Michael C. Rockefeller, Walter Annenberg, Henry Osborne Havemeyer and Robert Lehman."
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04/09/2013
The British government has placed a ban on the export of a rare manuscript purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum last year. The move is seen as an attempt to buy time while raising enough funds to get the book back.
From ARTINFO: "A rare Flemish manuscript from the 15th century that the J.Paul Getty Museum bought last year has been barred from leaving the U.K. while the country tries to raise enough money to acquire it. The British government’s practice of placing temporary export bans on artworks that have long been sitting in the nation’s collections in hopes of raising the money to buy them back has become increasingly common in recent years, most recently being deployed in an effort to prevent the departure of the record-setting Raphael drawing, 'Head Of A Young Apostle' (1519-20)."
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04/08/2013
The Carnegie Museum of Art has announced the artists for the 2013 Carnegie International, the longest-running international survey of contemporary art at any museum.
From the Carnegie Museum of Art: "Lynn Zelevansky, the Henry Heinz II Director of Carnegie Museum of Art, announced today the artists participating in the 2013 Carnegie International, which opens with a weekend of events and celebrations, October 4–6, 2013. The 2013 Carnegie International, curated by Daniel Baumann, Dan Byers, and Tina Kukielski, will feature: Ei Arakawa/Henning Bohl, Phyllida Barlow, Yael Bartana, Sadie Benning, Bidoun Library, The Collection, Nicole Eisenman, Lara Favaretto, Vincent Fecteau, Rodney Graham, Guo Fengyi, Wade Guyton, Rokni Haerizadeh, He An, Amar Kanwar, Dinh Q. Lê, Mark Leckey, Pierre Leguillon, Sarah Lucas, Tobias Madison, Zanele Muholi, Paulina Olowska, The Playground Project, Pedro Reyes, Kamran Shirdel, Gabriel Sierra, Taryn Simon, Frances Stark, Joel Sternfeld, Mladen Stilinović, Zoe Strauss, Henry Taylor, Tezuka Architects, Transformazium, Erika Verzutti, and Joseph Yoakum."
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04/08/2013
Anthony Huberman, recently appointed Director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, will co-curate the eighth Liverpool Biennial with Mai Abu ElDahab.
From Artforum: "The Liverpool Biennial has appointed Mai Abu ElDahab and Anthony Huberman as curators of its eighth edition, which will take place from July 5 to the end of October 2014. Prior to the appointment, Brussels-based Mai Abu ElDahab was the director of Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp from 2007 to 2012, curating solo exhibitions with many artists including Guy Ben-Ner, Mariana Castillo-Deball, Michael Stevenson, Hassan Khan, Michael Portnoy, Norma Jeane, Tim Etchells, Patricia Esquivias, and Barbara Visser. New York–based Anthony Huberman is the founding director of the Artist’s Institute and previously served as chief curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, curator of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and curator of SculptureCenter, New York."
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04/04/2013
Roger Ebert, perhaps the most famous American movie critic, has passed away at the age of 70 after a battle with cancer.
From the NY Times: "Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who along with his fellow reviewer and sometime sparring partner Gene Siskel could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 70.
His death was announced by The Chicago Sun-Times, where he had worked for more than 40 years. No cause was specified, but he had suffered from cancer and related health problems since 2002. It would not be a stretch to say that Mr. Ebert was the best-known film reviewer of his generation, and one of the most trusted. The force and grace of his opinions propelled film criticism into the mainstream of American culture. Not only did he advise moviegoers about what to see, but also how to think about what they saw."
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04/03/2013
Calling all Bay Area artists with wanderlust: A1 Travel Grants is offering the chance to get $1000/month for a year to travel somewhere.
From SFMOMA Open Space: "In 2010 I wrote for Open Space about the need for travel grants for Bay Area artists. I’m writing today, almost three years later, to announce a new year-long travel grant program that offers an award of $1,000 once-per-month to any Bay Area artist who needs to go somewhere. The review process is as free of bureaucracy as possible. Send a one paragraph description of where you want to go and why to a1travelgrants@gmail.com, and attach 3-5 images of your work. Submissions remain open from the 1st through the 20th of each month. No submissions received after the 20th will be considered. Names of winners will be posted at the end of each month in the comments below. The only thing asked of awardees is that they send a postcard from their travel destination."
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04/02/2013
The Paula Cooper Gallery in New York was the victim of accidental graffiti after street artist KATSU sprayed gold paint all over the building next door (with permission).
From ARTINFO: "In preparation for last night’s opening of “F.A.T. GOLD,” the Lindsay Howard-curated survey of the Free Art and Technology Lab’s (F.A.T. Lab) first years at the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, street artist KATSU spent part of yesterday afternoon spraying the façade of the West 21st Street building with gold paint using his trademark fire extinguisher hack. Yesterday afternoon, you may recall, was also quite windy and some of the paint blew onto the façade of Eyebeam’s neighbor, Paula Cooper Gallery, precipitating the appearance of an unhappy gallery representative who was none too happy with the accidental paint job, an encounter that was captured on video."
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04/02/2013
The Atlantic covers San Francisco in its series exploring the class divide in major U.S. cities and metro areas. No surprises: the creative class dominates and the working class is nearly invisible.
From the Atlantic: "Most of the city proper is purple, reflecting a large creative class concentration in some of the most sought-after neighborhoods such as Pacific Heights and Russian Hill. SoMa or South of Market, which stretches below Market Street along the eastern part of the city south of the Bay Bridge, is an area of mixed-use and warehouse buildings that are now home to the city's tech scene, including lots of start-up companies as well as big names like Twitter, Zynga, and Airbnb. SoMa bleeds south into Dogpatch, an enclave along Third Street where artists are being priced out by techies and entrepreneurs. The dark purple cluster in the center of the city runs from the Haight down to the Castro, Twin Peaks, and Noe Valley. The creative class makes up more than 60 percent of residents in the Presidio, the former military base where Lucasfilm as well as Industrial Light & Magic are located. There is a strong relationship between creative class neighborhoods and the accessibility of public transit."
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04/01/2013
Brian Gross Fine Art and Catharine Clark Gallery are moving to Potrero Hill Design District this summer, into one location.
From a Catharine Clark Gallery press release: "Brian Gross Fine Art and Catharine Clark Galley are please to announce their upcoming relocation to 248 Utah Street in the Portero Hill/Showplace Square area of San Francisco. The move marks a major transition for the gallery community and the San Francisco art scene: Brian Gross has been a dealer in the Union Square area for the past 30 years and Catharine Clark Gallery has been located in San Francisco for the last 18 years. The new location will open to the public Summer 2013."
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04/01/2013
SFMOMA is screening George Bolling's "Newport Beach Revisted" through June 1st.
From SFMOMA: "Traveling with a group of San Francisco artist friends in a 15-passenger airport limousine, video curator and videographer George Bolling recorded their 1972 road trip to show at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. Organized by Tom Marioni, director of the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco, the trip itself and its documentation (by Bolling and Larry Fox) were considered to be works in Marioni's exhibition 'The San Francisco Performance,' which included Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, Mel Henderson, Sam's Cafe, and Bonnie Sherk. Several of the artists drove down together, making stops along the way to Baldasare Forestierre's Underground Garden in Fresno and Chris Burden's 'Bed Piece' in Venice, California. One sequence features Henderson talking to the police about his intervention of spelling out ATTICA in Christmas lights on a ravine hillside. Art critic Charles Shere narrates the film, discussing key aspects of the significant work being made in Northern California at that time. Bolling produced this documentary in 1979 on the occasion of SFMOMA's 'Space / Time / Sound-1970s: A Decade in the Bay Area,' the first major museum survey of Bay Area Conceptual art and performance."
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04/01/2013
Online retailer Art.com has agreed to compensate street artists for photographs of their work, and remove photographs of street art that were being sold without the artists' knowledge.
From ARTINFO: "The massive online art store Art.com has a plethora of graffiti and street art offerings — many of them featuring Banksy murals and stencils — though proceeds from their sales have only ever benefited the photographers who shot the urban artworks, until now. Mark and Sara Schiller, aka the Wooster Collective, have brokered a deal with the largest online retailer of high-quality wall art to remove images of works by street artists whose work is being sold without their knowledge, and to compensate the others."
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03/29/2013
The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco has announced that Colin B. Bailey will be its new director, after 15 months without a leader.
From the NY Times: "After 15 months without a director, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announced Wednesday that the board has chosen Colin B. Bailey, a deputy director at the Frick Collection in New York, as the new chief. Mr. Bailey said in an interview that he is excited about his new position and unfazed about the turmoil among the staff that the museums have been experiencing.
In the past year, the museums have gone through bitter labor negotiations, a string of dismissals of senior staff, and pointed criticism of the board president, Diane Wilsey, who has been accused of exercising too much control over daily operations."
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03/27/2013
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) and Art Practical are thrilled to announce that Chris E. Vargas is the YBCA Community Engagement Artist in Residence 2013.
Selected by a panel of jurors comprised of YBCA Department of Community Engagement staff, Art Practical contributors, and community stakeholders, Vargas was among a pool of 125 applicants and was one of three finalists; Xandra Ibarra and Carrie Leilam Love were the other two finalists. The residency will begin on April 1 and culminate on June 30, 2013; Vargas, who receives a $10,000 grant as part of the residency, will work with the Department of Community Engagement throughout the spring to produce programs that will reach both YBCA’s constituencies and new audiences. The residency will also include a feature-length profile and an artist project on Art Practical.
Vargas is a film and video maker based in Oakland, CA, whose thematic interests include queer radicalism, transgender hirstory, and imperfect role models. He earned his MFA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011. Since 2008, he has been making, in collaboration with Greg Youmans, the web-based trans/cisgender sitcom Falling In Love...with Chris and Greg. Episodes of the series have screened at numerous film festivals and art venues, including MIX NYC, SF Camerawork, and the Tate Modern. With Eric Stanley, Vargas co-directed the movie Homotopia (2006) and its feature-length sequel Criminal Queers (2012), which have been screened at Palais de Tokyo, LACE, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, and the New Museum, among other venues. -
03/27/2013
After over a year and a half without a leader, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit has appointed Elysia Borowy-Reeder as its executive director.
From the NY Times: "Detroit might not be doing so well – it was placed this month under the control of an emergency manager as it tries to stave off financial default. But its contemporary-art scene is thriving and on Tuesday the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit announced that it had selected a new director after more than a year and a half without a permanent leader. Elysia Borowy-Reeder, who was most recently the director of the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, N.C., where she focused on strengthening that museum’s education programs, will take over in early April."
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03/26/2013
Today was the first day of oral arguments for the landmark gay marriage case in the Supreme Court.
From the NY Times: "As the Supreme Court on Tuesday weighed the very meaning of marriage, several justices seemed to have developed a case of buyer’s remorse about the case before them. Some wondered aloud if the court had moved too fast to address whether gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry.
'I just wonder if this case was properly granted,' said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who probably holds the decisive vote."
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