Category: visual

The estate of the late artist Jean-Paul Riopelle is “putting 40 of the abstract painter’s works up for sale at an auction in Montreal in November, and some art historians are concerned about the impact of the sale on the international reputation of the Montreal painter.”

The Smithsonian’s Arts & Industries building, which long fuctioned as the institution’s main museum, will be closing for repairs several months ahead of schedule, and may not reopen until the end of the decade. “Constructed between 1879 and 1881, the building has a leaky and decaying roof, as well as other structural problems. A series of canopies in the main public areas now catch peeling paint and chips from the ceiling and roof.” Funds for the renovation have yet to be authorized by Congress, and no one seems quite sure when the money will be forthcoming.

“The predictable affectations of horror are already being expressed. But this year’s exhibition is one of the best Turner displays I have seen,” writes Adrian Searle. “There is an air of calm and seriousness, almost a terseness about the show – however volatile some of the subject matter and content.”

A group of central Australian Aboriginal artists who were brought to Melbourne for a month by a gallery, where they “produced an estimated 62 paintings said to be worth about $134,000, have been asked to accept $7000 or less each as payment for their work” by the gallery. When they refused, the artists were asked to sign a statement which reads in part: “We regret telling the media lies and apologise to Alexis and Tony Hesseen for the problems we caused them”.

“Brad Cloepfil’s Allied Works Architecture based in Portland, Oregon, has been chosen for the $35 million expansion and renovation of the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor. The project will include a 55,000-square-foot addition to the museum, which is housed in Alumni Memorial Hall, a Beaux-Arts landmark, located in the heart of the main campus. The hall itself will undergo a complete renovation. When everything is complete, the museum will more than double in size from 41,676 square feet to 95,396. Construction will begin when a fund-raising campaign winds down next year.”

Unable to gain traction in New York galleries, artist Patricia Cronin created a sculpture for a cemetary north of Manhattan. “At Woodlawn, often called ‘America’s Père Lachaise,’ or ‘our most prestigious cemetery for men and women of accomplishment,’ Cronin’s strategy of not fitting in turns fascinating. Cronin’s is now the third most visited grave site at Woodlawn, behind only Miles Davis and Duke Ellington.”

“The Museum of North Arizona has elected a new board of trustees and named an acting director after revelations that the former director and trustees had sold 21 weavings and paintings from the permanent collection to help pay for the institution’s operating expenses caused an uproar among museum members.” Worse, the sale of the objects netted the museum far less than what the objects were actually worth, according to a museum donor who spearheaded the protest against the board’s actions. The new acting director of the museum is Max Oelschlaeger, who says that his top two priorities will be to shore up the museum’s finances, and find a permanent director.

An exhibition of “saved” art in London is a tedious self-congratulatory affair, writes Jonathan Jones. “Quite what art needs to be saved from is not made clear but, as this exhibition documents a century of the National Art Collections Fund, whose mission is to purchase for British galleries “treasures” that would otherwise be sold abroad, I think we all know that the villain of the piece smokes a big cigar, wears a Stetson and waves a bunch of dollars about. Thank God, we are supposed to say, that Titian’s Venus Anadyomene never ended up in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Te argument is plain enough.”

This year’s Turner finalists (surprise, surprise) are out to shock again. The Chapman Brothers’ entry depicts oral sex and incorporates decaying bodies. “The controversy threatens to dwarf even the rows that have engulfed the Turner Prize over its past 20 years when Death goes on display on Tuesday. Grayson Perry, one of the other nominees for the award, said the Chapman brothers ‘are going for the shock horror jugular’.”

The Turner Prize always seems to find new ways of being controversial. “It ought to be impossible, in this, the 19th year of its art world stranglehold, to create controversy by any means at all, short of eating a human baby. Whereas in fact, the Chapman brothers, shortlisted this year for their piece Death, are already at the centre of a storm over some garden-variety oral sex. The Turner prize does feel gimmicky and hollow – and there is a reason for this.”