Category: visual

The first Art Basel Miami was a big success. Though “visitor sophistication may not have been high” and expenses were more than expected, there were plenty of sales. So much as to prompt the following speculation: “If Art Chicago is clearly doomed in the next decade, the real fight is now between the Armory Show of New York and Art Basel Miami Beach. Which of these cities, both packed with very different pleasures, will prove more lastingly tempting?”

Architects proposing ideas for the World Trade Center site meet in a public forum to talk about their plans. How do you reconcile the ideas? Maybe collage the best of each and come up with something collaborative? “I came expecting a fight. Instead, everyone is so warm and fuzzy and self-congratulatory it distresses me.”

“In an effort to trim its 2003 budget, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is eliminating its film and video section and permanently laying off 17 full-time and four part-time employees. In addition, six employees have resigned voluntarily and 22 vacant positions will not be filled. The loss of 49 total full-time and four part-time positions is expected to save the parent corporation $4 million this year.”

In an era when museum buildings are asked to be works of art themselves (and the art inside can seem like an afterthought), Munich’s new Pinakothek der Moderne is a white rextangle in which art is the star…

This week, London’s Guardian newspaper asked five artists to produce cover art for the paper’s features section. To illustrate a story on the nastiness of reality TV, Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing produced a graffiti-like three words which would be considered rude in most newspapers. Here’s the cover…

“While a handful of callers were supportive, the vast majority complained about the cover, which was designed to accompany a feature about the increasing nastiness of TV entertainment. Although the cover was designed to provoke debate about the coarseness of TV and of modern language, several readers took issue with the notion the cover design constituted art.”

Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing was one of several artists invited to design a cover this week for the front page of The Guardian’s tabloid section. “To illustrate an article on the new reality game shows, her front cover consisted merely of the three words “Fuck Cilla Black” [Black hosts a reality show] in black felt tip pen surrounded by white space. The cover provoked more than 200 complaints,” and today Wearing apologized.

“Some more cynical readers have suggested the outcry over the cover was just what we were after. ‘Shock tactics designed to outrage people so you can belittle their ideas about art,’ was how one reader saw it. But if we knew an image like Wearing’s was bound to offend some of our readers, I can assure you there was absolutely nothing satisfying about the wave of anger and dismay that rolled into the paper yesterday.”

The heir to a Nazi arms supplier has canceled plans to build a museum in Zurich to display his large art collection after protests there. Instead, it will be shown in Berlin next year. “The 2,500-piece collection was assembled by Friedrich-Christian Flick, a grandson of an industrial baron who helped arm Nazi Germany’s war machine. The collection includes works by contemporary artists such as Bruce Nauman, On Kawara and Nam June Paik. It is to go on display in 2004 for seven years in a downtown Berlin exhibition space.”

Smithsonian Museum attendance was down 16 percent in 2002, continuing a post 9/11 slump. But, says the museum, things might be getting better – attendance increased by 53 percent in November and December compared with the same months a year earlier.