Dia Foundation Announces Plan to Open a New Space in Chelsea
11.06.09
Philippe Vergne, the director of the Dia Art Foundation, announced today that the foundation will construct a new building in Chelsea for “a reinvigorated New York City program.” The building will be located at 545 West Twenty-second Street, on the footprint of the building that Dia currently owns. A press release from Dia notes, “In keeping with the organization’s historical commitment to in-depth support of ambitious projects, the space will provide a New York City location for commissioned artworks.” It will also house long-term exhibitions, performances, and public programs––including readings, lectures, and symposia.
The decision to open a new site follows Dia’s closing of its former New York City space, which was in need of “substantial renovation and was found to be inadequate for Dia’s programming needs.” Early planning for the building has begun, and the architecture and scale of the edifice––which “will provide a utilitarian space designed for the experience of art”––are being determined. The project represents the first time in its thirty-five year history that Dia has elected to construct a new building, rather than to reuse an existing one.
Vergne, working in collaboration with Dia’s staff and in dialogue with its board, is conceptualizing the artistic and architectural program for the new space, which “will provide flexible conditions in which artists across generations, disciplines, and cultures and experiment and produce new works.” In the press release, he states, “By establishing this site in Chelsea, Dia reaffirms and deepens its commitment to artists and their vision, as well as to New York City. Dia:Chelsea will facilitate the creation and presentation of new works, new ideas, and new discourse.” Dia chairman Nathalie de Gunzburg states, “The vision that Philippe has articulated for Dia’s New York City space has galvanized the board of trustees, and we have embraced this major initiative with enthusiasm. We are thrilled to support Dia in providing artists with a new platform for in-depth exploration and innovation.”
Pompidou Center Plans Mobile Museum
11.06.09
The Pompidou Center plans to fill a colorful circus big top with works by Picasso, Matisse, and Calder, creating a roving museum to take its masterpieces of modern art to France’s culturally deprived rural regions and rough suburbs, reports Jenny Barchfield for the Associated Press. The so-called “Pompidou Mobile” aims to be just as avant-garde in its design as the original Pompidou Center––the audacious, tube-covered structure that houses the city's premier contemporary art museum and caused a furor when it opened in 1977.
Only part of the necessary funding has been raised and no itinerary has yet been drawn up. Visiting the roving Pompidou will be free, and the project’s priorities are rural regions and the poor, crime-ridden suburbs that ring France’s cities but are often largely cut off from the cultural offerings there. “It's about bringing art to the people to awaken their desire to go toward the art,” the Pompidou's president, Alain Seban, said in a statement. “It's a sign of our openness.”
Architect Patrick Bouchain, whose firm specializes in circus tents and other collapsable structures, showed sketches of his design for the new Pompidou structure at a presentation Thursday: several triangle-shaped modules that can be fitted together to create different structures fitted to the different environments in which the museum will pitch its tent. “It has to be adaptable anywhere, from a parking lot at a suburban shopping center to maybe a country lot or field,” Bouchain said. Inside the high-tech canvas structure, solid glass and plastic encasements will protect the artwork from vandalism and theft and keep the temperature and humidity constant, Bouchain said.
The total cost of the 10,700-square foot structure is estimated at $4.43 million, Seban said. Provided they get the money, the mobile museum will hit the road starting at the end of next year, Seban said. The ten-fifteen works from the Pompidou’s extensive permanent collection that are likely to go on display include Pablo Picasso’s Femme en Bleu (Women in Blue), a 1944 post-Cubist painting in shades of indigo, and a primary-colored mobile by American artist Alexander Calder. Henri Matisse’s 1941 painting Nature morte au magnolia (Magnolia Still Life) could rub proverbial shoulders with America, America, a 1964 neon sculpture of fingers snapping, by Martial Raysse.
Donald Judd Catalogue Raisonné Announced; Jewish Museum Restores Hours
11.06.09
Although it has been fifteen years since the Minimalist sculptor Donald Judd died, only now are plans under way to compile and publish a catalogue raisonné of his work, reports Carol Vogel for the New York Times. This week his foundation announced the appointment of a committee headed by Katy Rogers, who is finishing the Robert Motherwell catalogue raisonné, a seven-year project overseen by the Dedalus Foundation. Other committee members include Flavin Judd, the artist’s son, as well as scholars, curators and former studio assistants.
“It’s long overdue,” said Barbara Hunt McLanahan, executive director of the Donald Judd Foundation. “It’s taken a while for the foundation to be fully operational. McLanahan said she estimated the work would take seven to ten years to complete. The foundation is putting up the seed money, but how much it will cost, how many volumes it will be and whether it will be available in a digital format are all open questions, McLanahan said. In 1975 a catalogue raisonné of Judd’s paintings, objects, and woodblocks was published, but it covered work only created between 1960 and 1974.
In other news, The Jewish Museum will soon restore all of the hours that it was forced to cut in July because of the economy, thanks to a $500,000 grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Vogel also reports for the New York Times. Instead of closing at 5:45 PM on Thursday evenings, it will once again stay open until 8 PM. The late hours begin on November 19, a few days after the opening of “Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention,” a major survey of his work.
The grant also means that the galleries containing “Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey,” a permanent exhibition of more than 800 works from its holdings, will be open six days a week, instead of the four days they were cut to in July. (The museum is closed on Wednesdays.) The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Trust, which was established in 1999, started a new grant program in April.
Barnes Foundation Announces New Chief Curator
11.05.09
Derek Gillman, executive director and president of the Barnes Foundation, announced today in a press release the appointment of Judith F. Dolkart, an expert on the art and culture of nineteenth-century France, to serve as chief curator of the foundation.
Dolkart currently serves as associate curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum, which she joined in 2000 as assistant curator. She will take up her post at the Barnes Foundation in January.
While at the Brooklyn Museum, Dolkart organized major reinstallations of the European paintings in the Beaux-Arts Court in 2003 and 2008. She originated “Michelangelo of the Menagerie: Bronzes by Antoine-Louise Barye” in 2005 and “James Tissot: The Life of Christ” in 2009. Dolkart also serves as treasurer and trustee of the Association of Art Museum Curators.
California Institute of the Arts Launches New Art and Technology Degree Program
11.05.09
The California Institute of the Arts in Valencia is revving up a new program and a new degree—master of fine arts in art and technology, reports the Los Angeles Times.
When the school launched its Center for Integrated Media about fifteen years ago, as “a place to investigate artmaking with computers . . . we were pretty far ahead of the curve,” says Tom Leeser, who has directed that center for eight years and will head the new master’s-degree program that’s branching off from it. “All the other institutions have caught up with us. . . . Now it’s evaluating these new technologies critically” that seems to be the next step forward.
Leeser said students in the two-year program will get plenty of the how-to's of applying whatever the world’s tech genies come up with next to visual art, performance art, and art that intersects with the Internet’s social-networking possibilities. But, writes the Times's Mike Boehm, the plan is to interweave the making of art very closely with the critical thinking that goes into art theory, so that graduates will know not only what they’re doing but also how it fits into the world of ideas about art and society.
ATM and Freight + Volume Will Share Gallery
11.05.09
According to an e-mail announcement sent by ATM Gallery’s owner, Bill Brady, Freight + Volume and ATM Gallery are forming an alliance under one roof at 542 West Twenty-fourth Street, the current home of Freight + Volume. ATM Gallery will be moving from its previous address several blocks away at 621 West Twenty-seventh Street. In the e-mail, Brady notes, “The galleries will continue to provide exhibitions that are unique; which we expect will be twice as unusual and inspirational as before.” ATM currently represents artists Huma Bhabha, Anne Eastman, and Peter Sutherland, among others; Freight + Volume has had recent solo exhibitions by Kim Dorland, Ali Smith, and Jim Lee.
New Director for Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine
11.05.09
Christopher Brownawell has been appointed the new director for the Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine. Richard Aroneau, president of the board of trustees of the Farnsworth, announced the appointment yesterday.
Brownawell received a bachelor's degree in art with emphasis in art history from Wilkes College and a master's degree in museum education from George Washington University. Before joining the Academy Art Museum as curator in 1988, he held positions with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the Commonwealth Conservation Center during undergraduate and graduate internships.
Aroneau said that, under Brownawell's leadership, "the Academy Art Museum, which serves a community with many parallels to Rockland, significantly grew its collections, education programs, audiences, facilities, and endowment. Chris directed two successful capital-expansion programs adding twenty-eight thousand square feet of program space and raised over twenty-five million dollars in support for the museum over his tenure."
Brownawell succeeds Michael Komanecky, who has served as the museum's interim director since January, when Lora Urbanelli, then the Farnsworth's director, became director of the Montclair Art Museum.
Louisville's 21c Museum Hotel to Expand to Cincinnati
11.05.09
21c Museum Hotels, currently based in Louisville, has announced that it will expand to Cincinnati. The former Metropole Hotel—an historic landmark in downtown Cincinnati—will be renovated to offer an eight-thousand-square-foot contemporary art museum open to the public free of charge, along with 160 hotel rooms, a restaurant, and bar, according to Reuters. 21c Museum Hotels was launched in 2006 by philanthropists and arts patrons Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson.
The new 21c Museum Hotel in Cincinnati will be located adjacent to the Contemporary Arts Center and across the street from the Aronoff Center for the Arts. 21c Museum Hotels is working with the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation on the restoration, scheduled to begin next fall. The total expected cost for the project is forty-five million dollars.