Museu de Arte de São Paulo
There was no lavish reception last Friday, when the most important museum in the southern hemisphere opened its latest exhibition. The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) has decided to go quiet now it tries to survive yet another scandal. Seven months after the theft of a Picasso and a piece by Candido Portinari (both already recovered by local police), the Brazilian department of public prosecution finished an investigation of the museum’s accounting balances and concluded that the institution has been technically bankrupt since 2006. Its current debt amounts to US$13 million,…
by Silas Martí on 29/07/08 | No responses | Read More
Postcards from Manifesta
Thursday 17th July: Part 1
Just got back to my hotel room after attending the opening of Adam Budak’s ‘Principle Hope’ in Rovereto – one of the four exhibitions that combine to form Manifesta 7, this year being held in Italy’s South Tyrol region.
First things first. The four towns in which Manifesta is sited (to be precise, three towns and a fortress) are strung through the Adige valley, which stretches from the Austrian border near Innsbruck down to Lake Garda in the south. We flew to…
by Jonathan Griffin on 17/07/08 | No responses | Read More
The New Museion
For the South Tyrol, cultural separateness has been a blessing and a curse ever since the region was given to Italy following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1919. Having been subject to a re-Italianification programme under Mussolini, during which Sicilians and Neapolitans were relocated to the area in order to counter its distinctly Germanic flavour (even now the population is largely bilingual), today the province enjoys administrative autonomy and a wealthy local government. Its new museum, in the town of Bolzano, owes its economically comfortable circumstances to the fact that it is funded by the provincial government, rather…
by Jonathan Griffin on 03/06/08 | No responses | Read More
Controversy in Sydney
It’s not often that the prime minister of Australia makes a public statement evaluating art. It’s even more unusual for that assessment to be that an artist’s work is ‘revolting’ and devoid of artistic merit. It is positively striking when the artist involved is perhaps the most prominent the nation has produced, a figure who had previously represented the country at the Venice Biennale and whose work is in the collections of the Guggenheim, the National Gallery of Australia, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and, ironically, the Australian High Court. So what precisely is going on around Bill Henson?
…by Adam Jasper on 29/05/08 | 1 response | Read More
The Joyous Wake and Burial of Patrick Ireland
In 1972, in response to the tragic events of Bloody Sunday in Derry, Ireland, when 26 unarmed civil rights protesters were shot and 14 killed by members of the British Parachute Regiment, Irish/American artist, novelist, theorist and critic, Brian O’Doherty, undertook to sign his artworks Patrick Ireland, ‘until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights.’
As these conditions have now been fulfilled, after 36 years of making art as Patrick Ireland, O’Doherty joyfully reclaimed his birth name – a gesture to celebrate the restoration of…
by Jennifer Higgie on 22/05/08 | No responses | Read More
2008 Turner Prize Shortlist Announced
Nominees:
Runa Islam
Mark Leckey
Goshka Macuga
Cathy Wilkes
Although 1997’s shortlist - won by Gillian Wearing - comprised four female artists, Tomma Abts (who won in 2006) is the only woman to have won the prize in the last decade. The exhibition opens on 30 September 2008, returning to Tate Britain after a year at Tate Liverpool for which it coincided with the city’s stint as European capital of culture.
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by Sam Thorne on 13/05/08 | No responses | Read More
How Japanese is it?
101 Tokyo, a new art fair held in the Japanese capital earlier this month, has given the city’s contemporary art world a chance to scratch its collective head and ask some pertinent questions about a pocket-sized contemporary art scene Business Week recently estimated to be one-hundredth the size of London’s or New York’s.
Is there a revitalization going on in the city’s tiny art scene? Are there now collectors in Tokyo interested in buying contemporary? What cultural obstacles prevent contemporary art from flourishing in Japan? What role do foreigners play in the…
by Nick Currie on 24/04/08 | No responses | Read More
Brazil’s Newest Museum
On a warm spring evening last November ugly plywood boards came down to unveil a public space that brought fresh air to Maria Antonia, a historic street in the heart of São Paulo. Cocktail glasses in hand, guests marveled at the open space, where an Amilcar de Castro sculpture, alone in the middle of an ample courtyard, welcomed visitors to Brazil’s newest museum, the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea (IAC).
Though realized over the last two years, the project’s roots go back more than a decade. In 1991, Raquel Arnaud, one of São Paulo’s most prominent art dealers, decided…
by Silas Martí on 24/01/08 | No responses | Read More
Karriere Bar
Logging onto the Karriere Bar’s website and clicking the link ‘i’m a voyeur baby’, fragments of real-time conversations and ambient sound enter my study, picked up from an ashtray-shaped microphone on a table at the Copenhagen venue. This bar/home interface is the work of Janet Cardiff & Georges Bures Miller, one of the 32 artworks showing at Danish artist Jeppe Hein’s newly-opened bar and restaurant in Copenhagen (promising ‘contemporary art & social life’), co-run with his sister Lærke.
The Internet affords a kind of convivial voyeurism that is sometimes more appealing than being at…
by Staffan Boije on 12/12/07 | No responses | Read More
Turner Prize 2007
As has been widely reported across the UK press, the Tate awarded its annual £25,000 Turner Prize at a ceremony in Liverpool on Monday. From a shortlist of four artists – Zarina Bhimji, Nathan Coley, Mike Nelson and Mark Wallinger – the jury selected Wallinger as the 23rd recipient of the prize, awarded for the best exhibition by a British or UK-based artist in the 12 months preceding the May nominations.
Wallinger was nominated on the basis of State Britain (2007), shown at Tate Britain earlier this year – a painstakingly…
by Dan Fox on 06/12/07 | 4 responses | Read More
2008 Whitney Biennial
81 artists have been selected for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, which runs from March 6 to June 1. In addition to the usual museum venue, the biennial extends to the Seventh Regiment Armory, where a series of performances and installations will take place from March 4 to March 22.
The selection was made by Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin, two members of the Whitney’s curatorial staff, and overseen by Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s Chief Curator and Associate Director of Programs. Three advisors will also join: Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum, Harlem;…
by Sam Thorne on 03/12/07 | No responses | Read More
A Void in São Paulo
On November 7th, the São Paulo Bienal Foundation announced the appointment of Ivo Mesquita as curator of the 28th edition of its show, less than one year before its opening in October 2008. Mesquita’s proposal has fuelled an ongoing controversy and sharply divided the Brazilian art scene.
Instead of a traditional exhibition, the 28th São Paulo Bienal – to be titled ‘Em Vivo Contato’ (‘Live Contact’) – will not contain any art objects: the 2nd floor of Oscar Niemeyer’s Bienal pavilion will be completely empty; the basement will become a place for performances and film screenings, while the…
by Fabio Cypriano on 20/11/07 | 1 response | Read More
The Art Institution on Trial
The recent trial between the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) and Swiss artist Christoph Büchel, heard on 21 September 2007 at the Springfield District Court, Massachusetts, raises troubling questions about the rights of artists to control the display of their work and the responsibilities of curators to protect artistic vision. Though this high profile dispute has been played out within the inappropriate context of litigation, the questions raised are as much ethical as they are legal and go to the core of future collaborations between artists and curators.
The issue in the summary trial was whether…
by Daniel McClean on 15/10/07 | No responses | Read More
Oh, Vienna (Redux)
Vienna’s internationally renowned mid-scale art centres – Secession, Generali Foundation, Bawag Foundation, and Atelier Augarten – are all simultaneously, for different reasons, going through a major crisis. The BAWAG Bank has been suffering from financial scandal for the past year, during which time its foundation, a Kunsthalle-type art centre which has previously hosted exhibitions by Asger Jorn and Rodney Graham, has seemed under threat. The exhibition that I was curating there‚ ‘Romantic Conceptualism’, went as planned, and yet it is to be the last in the current space. The press conference was hijacked by the heads of BAWAG and Generali…
by Jörg Heiser on 13/07/07 | 3 responses | Read More
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