Category: visual

Three Canadian artists will have their first UK exhibition this fall, and if they achieve anything like the success they are enjoying in their home country, it will be a truly groundbreaking moment in the annals of art history. All three come from troubled backgrounds, and were educated in a program designed to combat a lifetime of depression and to build their self-esteem through art. Oh, and all three are chimpanzees. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

According to one of the many duelling art experts called to testify in the Barnes Foundation court battle, the foundation is legally and ethically free to sell pieces from its collection in order to stabilize its finances, because the foundation was established as a school and not a museum. The expert’s contention is directly at odds with the stance of the foundation’s directors, who have been deemphasizing the educational aspect of their mission as part of the push to move the collection to Central Philadelphia. The directors called an expert of their own last week to back up their claims that fundraising could double with the move to the urban core.

Since this past February, the city of San Francisco has been deluged with dozens of five-foot fiberglass hearts decorated by area artists. Reaction has largely been positive, but now, the former head of the Mayor’s Office on Disability is charging that the scultures are a distinct hazard to the blind, placed as they are in the public right-of-way.

The controversial Flick family art exhibit in Berlin has suffered its first casualty at the hands of an unusually limber protester. “Yelling loudly, the 35-year-old woman attacked ‘Office Baroque,’ a cutout section of wall by American artist Gordon Matta-Clark, doing a series of head-over-heels flips before landing on the work in a handstand, punching both her arms through the drywall… She then ran across the large room, pushing over a section of a spray-painted truck called ‘Graffiti Truck,’ also by Matta-Clark.” There is some question as to whether the woman was actually motivated by anti-Nazi fervor: she is apparently well-known to the Berlin police.

There is little question about the shameful history of the Flick family. But taken as a body of work, the controversial art collection now on display in Berlin is a fascinating journey through the 20th-century’s artistic evolution. “Again and again, the visitor is faced with sexual symbols, violence and existential questions. Piles of objects serve as metaphors of the ephemeral and insane.” Still, it is clear there is no way for many Germans to view the individual works on display without being constantly reminded of the manner in which they were acquired.

A new London gallery tries to spruce up its opening with the addition of technology, offering journalists from all over the world the chance to view the art (and the party) from mobile webcams and interview the artists live through instant messaging software. “But glitches and crashes turned the conversation into a rather stilted affair,” and as it turns out, viewing art through a webcam is like “viewing art through the bottom of a pint glass.”

“A portrait of Dr. David Hosack, a prominent surgeon who attended Alexander Hamilton on his deathbed after that legendary duel, has vanished from the New-York Historical Society’s $5 million-plus exhibition ‘Alexander Hamilton, the Man Who Made Modern America.’ No, it wasn’t stolen.” It seems that the NYHS installed an extremely low handrail to prevent patrons from getting too close to the painting. On day one of the exhibition, someone tripped over the rail and put his hand through the painting, which has now been removed for restoration.

“[Britain’s] National Gallery will open its new £21m front door on Sunday and hope that the splendour of the black marble staircase and the excellence of the coffee in the new cafe provokes a gush of public generosity. Although more building work starts next month, the gallery still has to raise £3m of the cost.” Having appealed to the government for assistance in purchasing a priceless Raphael miniature last year, the fundraising for the remainder of the gallery’s renovations will need to be done in the private sector, no small task in a nation which does not have America’s tradition of private philanthropy.

“When the Museum of Modern Art reopens its expanded midtown Manhattan home at 11 W. 53rd St. in November, an adult admission will cost $20, 66 percent more than the previous $12 fee. Industry experts say that’s an unprecedented level for an urban museum and the highest tab in New York City.”

Still short of funding after being closed for a year, Washington state’s Bellevue Arts Museum won’t be reopening in October after all. “The unveiling of the revamped museum has been pushed back to spring 2005, as museum leaders work to raise an estimated $2.8 million for remodeling and operations.”