News
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01/25/2012
Union art handlers and the Whitney Museum are in protracted negotiations over a contract that expires Jan. 31—just before preparation for March’s Whitney Biennial kicks into high gear.
from ARTINFO: "The discussions “have been cordial but difficult,” said Teamsters Local 966 manager James Anderson, who is negotiating on behalf of the art handlers. Unable to settle on a new contract, the museum has twice extended the old one, which expired in October...Anderson hopes to bring an offer to the union members within the week — then, it’ll be up to them to accept or reject the proposal. If the art handlers reject it, 'the Whitney could lock us out, we could go on strike, or the employer may agree to sit down and make some modifications,' he said."
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01/25/2012
Photographer Annie Leibovitz says she has come back from some dark days and revived her creativity with a new project now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that marks a departure from her popular celebrity portraits.
from the Washington Post: "Two years ago, Leibovitz was facing millions in debt and a mismanaged fortune that nearly cost her the legal rights to her own work, which includes some of pop culture’s most memorable images. The ordeal was a good lesson in managing her business, Leibovitz said, but left her “emotionally and mentally depleted." On Tuesday, she led a tour through the photographs she says renewed her inspiration with a few road trips through U.S. history."
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01/24/2012
Ruba Katrib, associate curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, has been tapped by Long Island City’s SculptureCenter as its new curator.
from GalleristNY: "Ms. Katrib replaces Fionn Meade, whose tenure ended last year; she starts work Feb. 15. (Artists, begin lobbying for studio visits now.) At MOCA, North Miami, Ms. Katrib organized solo exhibitions with Cory Arcangel and French duo Claire Fontaine, as well as starting “performance and workshop programs.” She’s now at work on a conference to toast the 20th anniversary of Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, from which she holds a master’s."
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01/23/2012
We are pleased to announce the Art Practical Mail Art Subscription project. Subscribers will receive a piece of correspondence from each of six artists, starting in March 2012.
We invite you to subscribe to Art Practical’s Mail Art Subscription, which will be produced in a limited edition of 150 offset prints for each artist; subscribers will receive a print, a copy of the referenced article, and an addressed postcard once a month for six months, (March to August 2012) for a total of six installments of Mail Art.
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01/23/2012
"Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival's Library Center Theatre and inspired a rare standing ovation and a general activist fervor at the Utah film gathering.
from the Los Angeles Times: "Directed by newcomer Alison Klayman, a freelance journalist in her 20s who spent years with the artist, the movie is a hybrid talking-head/fly-on-the-wall documentary that draws a portrait of a surprisingly accessible political icon...In one of the film’s numerous scenes of defiance, Ai describes his motivation for his art and his statements. 'If you don't publicize it, it's like it never happened,' he said."
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01/20/2012
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has launched the first phase of a digital archive of materials relating to twentieth-century Latino art.
from the Associated Press: "The archive launched by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Thursday evening is made up of artists' writings, letters, and other unpublished materials, in addition to texts published in newspapers and period journals. By Friday, the archive will be available for free to the public. The phased launch over several years begins with 2,500 documents from Argentina, Mexico and the American Midwest. It will eventually include 10,000 materials."
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01/20/2012
Larry Gagosian is being sued for more than $14 million for allegedly selling two works of art that some claim he had no right to sell.
from the New York Post: "Gagosian has paid British collector Robert Wylde a $4.4 million settlement for selling him Mark Tansey’s $2.5 million “The Innocent Eye Test” in 2009, which Wylde later discovered was owned by Jan Cowles and had been promised to the Met. Now Gagosian is being sued by Cowles, 93."
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01/19/2012
Sandra Percival, Executive Director of YU Contemporary Art Center in Portland, has resigned.
from PortlandArt.net: "YU just announced that, "We, Curtis Knapp and Flint Jamison, Co-founders, announce that Director Sandra Percival will leave YU. Curtis Knapp will become Acting Director, effective January 20. There will be complete continuity in the day-to-day functioning of YU and in the assumption of strategic and programmatic planning imperatives at the director level."
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01/19/2012
Pacific Standard Time's performance and public art festival begins today, and the 11-day event will revisit and recreate a number of famous postwar performance works done in the L.A. area.
from the Los Angeles Times: "Some artists are nearly exactly replicating early performances, as with James Turrell using road flares and metal reflectors to virtually set a Pomona College auditorium on fire, a repeat of a 1971 performance. Other artists such as Suzanne Lacy are adapting performances — in her case a multi-faceted anti-rape campaign from 1977 — for a new time and place."
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01/19/2012
Gregory Lind Gallery has announced that Sarah Walker has won a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant of $25,000 for her numerous accomplishments in painting.
from the press release: "Sarah Walker has been continuously recognized for her artistic excellence through museum exhibitions and acquisitions, important artist residencies, solo gallery exhibitions, articles, interviews, and reviews in major art publications over the past decade...The Painters & Sculptors Grant Program was established in 1993 to assist individual artists. The grants are given to acknowledge painters and sculptors creating work of exceptional quality."
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01/18/2012
Wikipedia and other sites are blacked out today to protest legislation currently before Congress that would build a framework for restrictions and suppression of online content.
from Wikipedia: "SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively. SOPA is short for the "Stop Online Piracy Act," and PIPA is an acronym for the "Protect IP Act." ("IP" stands for "intellectual property.") In short, these bills are efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, but, in our opinion, they do so in a way that actually infringes free expression while harming the Internet."
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01/17/2012
The museum at Scripps College in Claremont enlisted a Los Angeles art dealer as co-curator of a Getty-funded Pacific Standard Time exhibition, violating a prominent ethics code.
from the Los Angeles Times: "'Clay's Tectonic Shift: John Mason, Ken Price and Peter Voulkos, 1956-1968' focuses on three artists credited with breakthroughs that transformed pottery from a studio craft to a sculptural form widely appreciated as fine art...Frank Lloyd, a ceramics dealer and the show's co-curator, is a well-known expert in the field who has worked closely with all three artists while mounting 12 shows of their work since 1998 at his Frank Lloyd Gallery in Santa Monica's Bergamot Station...The museum's decision to name a dealer as guest curator goes against the 2009 Ethics Code for Curators published by the American Assn. of Museums (AAM), a leading national professional organization."
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01/17/2012
Artist Dustin Yellin has purchased a 24,000-square-foot Civil War-era warehouse in Brooklyn that he plans to turn into a kind of utopian art center, complete with exhibition hall, artist residencies, and a sculpture garden.
from the New York Times: "'My crazy dream is to create a kind of utopian art center here,' he said last month while standing in the building’s courtyard, where a glittering Airstream trailer sat amid newly planted fig and crabapple trees. Mr. Yellin’s vision includes a large-scale exhibition hall, an artists’ residency program, a sculpture garden and hosts of visitors for symposiums and public programs."
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01/16/2012
Ronald Coles, formerly one of Australia's leading art dealers, faces up to 10 years in jail after being charged with 87 offenses.
from the Sydney Morning Herald: "For more than 30 years, Mr Coles specialised in fine art by some of Australia's most celebrated artists, including Sir Arthur Streeton, Eugene von Guerard, Brett Whiteley and Norman Lyndsay. Advertising on national radio and television, he offered clients an opportunity to boost their life savings through the purchase of investment art, which he bought and sold on their behalf, using their superannuation funds... [An investigation] unearthed dozens of investors who were missing millions of dollars in lost art and money, all allegedly retained by Mr Coles."
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01/16/2012
Ukranian-born photographer Boris Mikhailov was awarded the 8th Spectrum Photo Prize by an international jury on Monday in Hanover.
from ARTINFO: "The award, given every three years, carries with it a prize of €15,000 that is sponsored by the Foundation of Lower Saxony and an exhibition at the Sprengel Museum (Mikhailov's will be in 2013). Previous winners have included Martha Rosler, Sophie Calle, and Robert Adams. 'I became a photographer because I couldn’t talk,' Mikhailov, now 73 years old, said upon winning the prize, a reference to the oppression he faced during Soviet rule of his home country."
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01/13/2012
Steve Cohen, the billionaire financier and art collector, has joined the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) board.
from the Los Angeles Times: "Cohen is one of the world's top collectors of modern art and has made numerous loans to institutions and exhibitions. Cohen currently serves as the head of S.A.C. Capital Advisors, an investment firm headquartered in Connecticut, with offices around the world. His addition to the MOCA board brings the number of trustees to 45, with six officers. In September, the museum announced that philanthropist Wallis Annenberg had joined the board."
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01/13/2012
New York real estate broker and amateur art dealer Richard Silver pleaded guilty to forgery in the third degree for selling several fake "Spot" prints purportedly by Damien Hirst on eBay.
from the Wall Street Journal: "Richard Silver, 50 years old, bought the trademark dot pattern prints on eBay in 2006. He maintains he didn't know they were fakes when he subsequently resold them on the same auction website to six people in Britain, Canada and the U.S. for about $84,000. But, for "expediency purposes," Mr. Silver forged letters bearing the name of Hamburg Kennedy Photographs, a Manhattan art advisory firm."
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01/12/2012
Attendance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York dropped 11% last season, while the Metropolitan Museum of Art saw an increase in visitors.
from Bloomberg: "Attendance at the Museum of Modern Art dropped 11 percent last season to 2.8 million, as the previous year’s marathon motionlessness of Marina Abramovic and designs from movie director Tim Burton proved to be hard acts to follow. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, admissions rose to a record 5.6 million last season, buoyed by the wild outfits and accessories of the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen. Both museums have released annual reports and financial statements for the year ending in June 2011."
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01/11/2012
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has hired Tate Modern chief curator Sheena Wagstaff to head up a new department devoted to 20th and 21st century art.
from the New York Times: "Sending a signal that it intends to become a serious competitor in the field of contemporary art for the first time in half a century, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has recruited a prominent London curator to oversee a new department devoted to art of the 20th and 21st centuries. She is Sheena Wagstaff, chief curator of Tate Modern since 2001, who has been responsible for programming there and for helping to organize exhibitions devoted to artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, Jeff Wall and Eva Hesse."
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01/11/2012
Current San Francisco Arts Commission president P.J. Johnston will step down after eight years at the post. A successor has not yet been appointed.
from the San Francisco Chronicle: "P.J. Johnston announced he was stepping down as the commission’s president at its Monday meeting. After spending eight years with the agency, seven of them as president, the new year is “a good time to step aside and let other leadership step in,” said Johnston, a spokesman for several prominent citywide projects, including a series of luxury condos at 8 Washington and the Parkmerced development. He was also ex-Mayor Willie Brown’s spokesman and former executive director of the city’s Film Commission."
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