Category: visual

“A disused Welsh coal mine which reopened as a working museum has won a prestigious UK arts award. Big Pit, in Blaenavon, south Wales, beat three other shortlisted attractions to scoop the £100,000 Gulbenkian Prize. The museum, also known as the National Mining Museum of Wales, opened in 1983 – three years after closing as a working coal mine. Ex-miners work as guides, taking visitors on tours underground. Big Pit was nominated for the Gulbenkian Prize following a £7.1m refurbishment programme, completed in February 2004.”

Weeks after opening a major expansion, Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center has accepted the resignation of its chief operating officer, who oversaw the year-long construction project. “[Ann] Bitter’s surprise departure comes at an awkward moment in the Walker’s development. Its addition by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron has received rave reviews, but the building’s experimental architecture and mid-construction design changes forced the museum to cut costs by leaving the offices unfinished. Completing the offices and an adjacent sculpture garden are expected to cost up to $5 million more.”

Nicolai Ouroussoff is unimpressed by New York’s preservation board decision to save two brownstones next to the Whitney Museum. “Essentially, for the sake of preserving a humdrum brownstone facade on Madison Avenue, the commission embraced a substitute design for the museum that transforms a generously proportioned public entrance into a more confining experience. The architect, Renzo Piano, drafted the alternative – which would save that brownstone, while demolishing another – when the museum realized that the addition was in danger of being voted down by the commission. Aside from weakening a promising design, the commission’s stubbornness proves that it is unable to distinguish between preserving the city’s architectural legacy and embalming it.”

The Tate gets a £400,000 grant towards purchase of an important Joshua Reynolds painting. “It is the centrepiece of a forthcoming exhibition of his work at Tate Britain. The Tate has until July to raise the extra £3.2m needed to save the work from being sold, possibly abroad.”

“The major anticipation over this spring’s auctions of high-end Canadian fine art is less about the sale of a specific work (or three) and more about whether the market will continue to show the unprecedented buoyancy it’s had in the last nine or 10 years. Over the next seven days, the three major auction houses — Vancouver’s Heffel Fine Arts tonight, Toronto-based Sotheby’s (in association with Ritchie’s) on Monday and Joyner Waddington’s of Toronto next Tuesday and Wednesday — are putting almost 1,000 lots, worth a total estimated at CAN$12.5 to CAN$16-million, under the hammer… In a sense, this spring’s auctions will be a test of the maturity of the market.”

Princeton University has unveiled a new exhibit of the kind of art rarely seen by average museumgoers. “The 55 pieces in the exhibit are all the products of scientific research, or works of art that incorporate the ideas or tools of science… The art includes a neon image of a virus infecting human cells; multicolored, magnified ants; an image of colliding galaxies; and a close-up of the genitalia of a spider. There’s even a line drawing of Albert Einstein in a bustier.”

The American Textile History Museum in Lowell Mass. is reducing hours and selling its building. “The museum, which draws about 50,000 visitors a year and has an annual budget of $2.2 million, originally opened as the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum in North Andover in 1960. It spent about $8 million to renovate a former manufacturing building in Lowell and, after being renamed, opened in the 160,000-square-foot space on Dutton Street. But it didn’t raise enough for the move to offset the increased costs. That has forced the museum to draw regularly from its endowment, which has plummeted from $7 million in 1999 to its current $2.8 million.”

The Venice Biennale’s new director has big changes planned in an attempt to bring some order to the event. “Bringing a touch of rigorous business thinking to proceedings, he has announced a programme for the next three years, starting with next month’s edition of the festival, which he hopes will present “a clearer picture of where we are, and how we got there” to the world. This year’s 51st Biennale, directed by two Spanish curators, María de Corral and Rosa Martínez, (the first co-curatorship, and the first women to do the job), is already much slimmed down in terms of artists involved: just 91 contenders will bring their work to the city.”

New York’s Landmarks Commission has approved a modified expansion plan for the Whitney Museum. “The vote, which was unanimous, was a mixed victory of sorts for the architect, Renzo Piano. After heated arguments from preservationists in previous hearings, he submitted an alternative plan halving the size of a proposed new entrance for the museum so he could spare the brownstone and win the commission’s approval.”

The Cincinnati Art Museum wants to make its biggest renovation and expansion in its 119 years. The museum hasn’t raised any money yet, and doesn’t have an architect chosen, but “envisions more galleries to show off rare collections. More gathering spaces for more than 270,000 visitors a year. High-tech, multimedia educational facilities. A modern library open to the public. And a virtual museum that is as accessible as the real thing.”