HOUSTON MUSEUMS SUSTAIN DAMAGE IN FLOODS
In June, tropical storm Allison pummeled Houston, Texas, flooding more than 27,000 homes, killing twenty-two people, and prompting stories in local and national media fearing that valuable art had been destroyed in the city’s major museums, which were reported to have been “flooded.” While these stories may have been somewhat exaggerated, many of the city's major museums did sustain water damage and were forced to close.
The worst hit was the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (CAMH, www.camh.org), which shut its doors on June 10 and will reopen July 13, in time for its members' preview of the retrospective exhibition “YES Yoko Ono.” "Ghada Amer: Pleasure," previously scheduled to open on June 28, however, will be postponed until July 27. The show was to occupy the museum's lower-level gallery, which, along with its shop and administrative offices, were flooded with three feet of water (and where it will be on view in July). No artwork, however, was destroyed. CAMH director Marti Mayo compared Allison's damage to that of the 1976 Houston flood, which filled the museum's lower levels with nine feet of water, destroying gallery and office spaces, but also artwork on display and in storage, as well as the museum’s collection records. "It's clear that we are most fortunate that physical improvements made subsequent to the 1976 flood have been successful at preventing another major catastrophe," says Mayo. A drainage system with pumps has been added, among other flood-relief devices.
Meanwhile, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (www.mfah.org), was closed for two days, June 9 and 10, due to minor flooding that affected air conditioning and telephone service. The institution's Bayou Bend Collection, a museum of American decorative arts and paintings located in a separate building, however, will remain closed until September due to flooding in its visitor reception area. The Menil Collection (www.menil.org) was closed for "a few days" after the June 8 flood, according to spokesman Vance Muse, to remove excess water that had collected on the galleries' rooftops. "The Cy Twomblys are fine, the Mark Rothkos are fine, and so are the Dan Flavins," says Muse. "We're in a Renzo Piano building. This storm has proven that we've got truly great architecture."
— Reena Jana
STAFF STRIKE AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA
You would think that the dozens of pairs of red pumps and sneakers lined up in the plaza in front of the National Gallery of Canada (national.gallery.ca) are an art installation. But they're nothing of the sort. Rather, they form a symbolic picket line set up by 200 of the museum's staff members, who have been on strike since May 10.
Administrative and technical staff members have been without a contract for about a year. The museum is offering a five-year contract that entails a 2.25 percent wage increase in each of the first four years, with salary renegotiation in the fifth year. The strikers, however, want a three-year deal with 3 percent raises in the first and third years and 2.5 percent raises in the second. Charette confirms that both sides are working with mediators, but there seems to be no compromise in sight.
The museum, located in Canada's capital, Ottawa, Ontario, has now taken the strikers to court, alleging that they have breached an injunction barring pickets from visitor entrances. Besides the creative use of red shoes, some strikers have also been carrying signs. It has also decided to postpone indefinitely an exhibition of work by Montreal photographer Pierre Boogaerts at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (part of the National Gallery). "Attendance to our permanent collections has been down," admits Joanne Charette, the National Gallery's public-affairs director. "We've had to cancel educational tours for students, which usually adds to our figures in May and June."
The strike was in full force when the museum's Gustav Klimt exhibition opened on June 15. Charette says that attendance for the show, at 18,500 visitors in June, is actually above the projected figure of 18,000. The show cost Can. $1.8 million and required three years to organize. To compensate for the postponement of the Boogaerts show, the current exhibitions of work by Larry Towell and Diana Thorneycroft have been extended until September 3.
— Reena Jana
NATIONAL NEWS ROUNDUP
FEDERAL ARTS AGENCIES’ BUDGETS TO BE INCREASED: In June, House supporters of the National Endowment for the Arts proposed adding $10 million to the Bush administration’s budget for the federal agency. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) offered the amendment, which also calls for an additional $3 million to the National Endowment for the Humanities and $2 million to the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The debate was unusually tame, and the $15 million increase for the three agencies was approved 221 to 193 on June 21.
NATIONAL PERSONNEL CHANGES ANNOUNCED: In New York last week, Christie’s announced its new head of contemporary art: Amy Cappellazzo, a curator at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, where she most recently curated a solo show of work by Fred Tomaselli. Leaving Christie’s on the West Coast is Laura King Pfaff, a former senior VP, who has been named chairman of Butterfields, the California auction house owned by eBay. Also, the National Academy of Design in Manhattan has named artist and Columbia University art professor Gregory Amenoff as its new president.
FINALISTS CHOSEN TO DESIGN DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: Architecture firms Diller + Scofidio and Leeser Architecture, both of New York City, and MVRDV of Rotterdam, were chosen as finalists for the design commission of the future, as-yet-unnamed digital-art museum arm of Eyebeam Atelier, a Manhattan-based new-media organization. The winning firm is set to be named in October. Construction on the 90,000-square-foot museum, to be located at 540-548 West 21st Street in Chelsea, is set to start in 2002 and is expected to cost $40-60 million. Scheduled to open in 2005, the museum is already being hyped as New York’s first exhibition space dedicated solely to digital art.
— Reena Jana
GERMANY ESTABLISHES FEDERAL CULTURE FOUNDATION
Julian Nida-Rümelin, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s adviser for culture and media, has finally succeeded in establishing a national-level cultural foundation for Germany. Despite a tight budget, Finance Minister Hans Eichel recently approved DM25 million for the fiscal year 2002, a start-up amount that Nida-Rümelin hopes will eventually increase to DM75 million annually. The project, which dates back to the 1970s, has faced resistance from federal states that fear a loss of power and from those who mistrust any centralization of culture in the wake of Fascism. But the lack of a national culture foundation—and a single federal culture minister—has posed administrative problems for Germany in recent years. The national government, to offer one telling example, has had to negotiate European Community policies with each of its sixteen states individually.
The chancellor’s first appointed adviser for culture and media, Michael Naumann, reinitiated the project last year but left his post before a fund could be established. Unlike Naumann, who favored the restitution of national treasures lost in World War II, Julian Nida-Rümelin wants to promote "contemporary art in an international context.” In contrast to the standard way of funding art and culture in the US and Europe, the new foundation will support individual projects instead of subsidizing established institutions. Funds will be allotted to new-media pilot projects, international exchanges involving German and foreign artists, and even project proposals coming from outside the country.
— Jennifer Allen
TAIPEI ICA OPEN FOR BUSINESS
The first Taiwan museum devoted solely to contemporary art, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Taipei, opened its doors in May. Funded by the Taiwanese government, the seed for its development was first planted in 1994 when its current location, a historic building that was once Taipei City Hall, was earmarked to house a museum.
While the rise and popularity of Asian contemporary art in the past decade makes it tempting to restrict the museum to Asian or Taiwanese art, Lai Ying-Ying, senior curator and a spokesperson for the museum, insists that its program “will not be restricted to nation.” The inaugural show, “The Gravity of the Immaterial,” features a roster of twenty-six artists hailing from Taiwan, Japan, Holland, and America, including Chen Cheng-tsai, Yamaguchi Katsuhio, Bert Schutter, Alan Rath, and Catherine Chalmers.
Previously a curator in the collections department at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Lai has recently become a highly visible curator of Taiwanese contemporary art. In addition to exhibitions at TFAM, she curated the internationally traveling show “CLOSE-UP: Contemporary Art from Taiwan,” which opened at the Emily Carr Institute of Art, Vancouver, last year. Exhibitions at the ICA Taipei are, according to Lai, likely to travel. “The ICA will support internationally touring programs, both importing and exporting work.” However, Lai wouldn’t answer questions about the state-funded museum’s budget.