Category: visual

Since the 80s, the Guerrilla Girls have been protesting the lack of representation of women artists. “They say it’s amazing how little has changed: in 2005, they conducted some fresh research into European collections, and found that, even where museums owned significant amounts of work by female artists, it was all in the basement. To coincide with last September’s Venice Biennale, they released the following statistics: of 1,238 artworks exhibited by the major Venice spaces, fewer than 40 are by women.”

“Four Gustav Klimt paintings, including three landscapes and a portrait, ‘Adele Bloch-Bauer II,’ may be sold this year for $140 million or more, said art dealers – and auctioneers who have been competing for the job.”

“Liverpool is pushing ahead with its proposed waterfront museum, despite losing Lottery money and missing the opportunity to complete it by 2008, when the city becomes European Capital of Culture.”

“In the postmodern world it seems, one man’s art can be another man’s property.So it was that a member of the Vancouver Police Department strode into the ultra-cool Contemporary Art Gallery on a lovely, sunlit afternoon one day last week to inform the gallery that [a local businessman] wanted his signs back. The gallery was caught red-handed. The signs were right there, bold as brass, in the gallery’s big front windows… The gallery quickly agreed to return Mr. Grandy’s signs, but not without considerable bemusement and wonder at it all.”

“A last-minute tentative agreement has averted a strike at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union, representing 260 employees, reached a deal with AGO management at 9 p.m. Wednesday. A strike was scheduled to start at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.”

Poland has had a complicated history, and the country’s artists have sometimes struggled to craft a true national identity. A new show in Chicago traces the 20th century history of Polish art, especially as it involves the migration of Polish artists to Paris. “Factors contributing to identity also changed, so that at the start of the exhibition looking to Western Europe was progressive whereas at the end it was thought to interfere with national allegiance. But this makes the show more interesting rather than less.”

Chicago’s lakefront Millennium Park has drawn plenty of raves from art critics and other journalists since opening a few years back. But some in Chicago have begun to notice some strangely un-parklike (and downright unfriendly) rules in place amid the statuary. For instance, who’s ever heard of a park where playing catch is banned? More to the point, what’s the purpose of having a huge public park that thinks it’s a museum?

“Where museums were originally established with the responsibilities of, simply, housing and looking after the objects from which the public was encouraged to learn, today’s museums (and their funders) want to provide an experience – and not just of the art. They want the museum to have more broad appeal. As museums become more businesslike in their efforts to appeal to the public, there is a fear that they will distance themselves from those characteristics that make them desirably different from commercial businesses: That entertainment (glitzy blockbusters) will replace study (scholarly small-scale discoveries), liveliness replace quiet contemplation, and communication replace communion.”

Conservation of art work is a big business. But how do you conserve artworks from the 20th Century whose materials are fragile and prone to disintegration? Well, you can ask the artist…

“You would think that the proposed Portrait Gallery of Canada would be a project that a Conservative government would love: no difficult art, no greased cones or high-concept videos — just a stirring assemblage of Great Canadians, and those who’ve come under the scrutiny of Great Canadian portraitists… However, funding for the portrait gallery has been repeatedly stalled. Lately, Ottawa is buzzing with rumours that the project may be abandoned by the Harper government.”