Arts news

• Last chance to see: Walid Raad’s magical realist performance at MoMA

  28-01-2016 23:58
  
  Before its closes on Sunday 31 January, visitors to Walid Raad’s solo show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art can still claim a few spots to join the Lebanese-American artist in his 55-minute performance, Scratching on things I could disavow: Walkthrough.
  The museum’s second floor atrium is taken over by an installation that also serves as the stage for the piece, in which Raad guides visitors through his meandering thoughts on the strange mechanics of the art market, the boom
  
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• ‘Jan De Cock: Abstract Capitalism’ at Office Baroque

  28-01-2016 23:03 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.Today’s show: “Jan De Cock: Abstract Capitalism” is on view at Office Baroque in Brussels. The exhibition features 18 new “Abstract Capitalist” sculptures as well as 9 “Memorial” drawings. It is … Read More
  
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• The Imaginary Friend Collection: Rankin has photographed children with 'real' versions of invented companions

  28-01-2016 22:10
  
  The children's imaginary friends have been transformed into physical characters by leading creative artists including the Japanese artist Tsuneo Goda and the Bristol-based studio Aardman, makers of Wallace & Gromit, reports Ian Burrell (friend of 'Nobody')
  
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• Welcome to the virtual world

  28-01-2016 22:00
  
  At the Zabludowicz Collection in London last autumn, the Canadian artist Jon Rafman created Sculpture Garden (Hedge Maze) (2015), an artificial labyrinth dotted with strange primal sculptures. At its centre was the Oculus Rift, the headset attracting giddy anticipation ahead of it hitting the general market later this year. It is easy to understand why. Putting it on, you were swept upwards into a the canopy of trees surrounding an immersive, imaginary sculpture park; as you glided upwards, you
  
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• The Buck Stopped Here: everything is rosy in the Royal Academy garden but it looks like it could be a nuclear summer

  28-01-2016 22:00
  
  Everything was blooming at the opening of the Royal Academy’s Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse (30 January-20 April) show. The general consensus was that it was very thoughtful of the denizens of Burlington House to provide a glimmer of floral optimism as the remnants of Storm Jonas delivered the bleakest of bleak midwinter evenings. There were also some smiles at the wall text in the first gallery quoting the anarchist writer Octave Mirbeau’s—ahem—earthy dec
  
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• Tate director backs Art Fund’s call for UK export licence reform after Rembrandt fiasco

  28-01-2016 22:00
  
  The Art Fund is set to halt all public fundraising campaigns to save works that are under threat of export from the UK. Stephen Deuchar, its director, tells The Art Newspaper: “If no changes to the present system are made, we do not see how we can, in all conscience, launch fundraising campaigns to save export-stopped works.” He adds: “People will only donate to a campaign if they know a work can actually be purchased at the end of it.”
  Deuchar is deeply disturbed by wha
  
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• Selling a different kind of ‘organic’

  28-01-2016 22:00
  
  What makes design “organic”? In 1941, at the competition and exhibition Organic Design in Home Furnishings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the curator Eliot Noyes referred to it as the “harmonious organisation of the parts within the whole, according to structure, material, and purpose”. Today, however, it is mostly thought of as “something that evokes the natural world”, says James Zemaitis, the former director of 20th-century design at Sotheby&rsqu
  
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• Reina Sofía to mark 80th anniversary of Picasso’s Guernica

  28-01-2016 22:00
  
  The Reina Sofía museum in Madrid is planning an exhibition in 2017 for the 80th anniversary of Picasso’s great mural Guernica. The show will present new aspects of the famous work, which was painted in 1937 in response to the aerial bombing of the town of the same name in the Basque country by German and Italian forces allied to the Nationalists led by General Franco.
  The show will examine the making of the black-and-white mural, which is 11ft tall and 26ft wide, as well as its cri
  
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• Italy unveils €300m protection programme

  28-01-2016 22:00
  Dario Franceschini, Italy’s minister of culture, has announced a three-year plan to invest €300m in protecting the country’s cultural heritage. Around €50m, or 17% of the €300m, has been earmarked for increasing security at cultural sites. Funds will be distributed to 241 museums, libraries and heritage sites between 2016 and 2018 for various initiatives, including much-needed restoration work. The Lazio region, which encompasses Rome, will receive the lion’s sha
  
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• Artists journey down the electronic superhighway

  28-01-2016 22:00
  An exhibition opening this month at the Whitechapel Gallery explores the impact of computer and internet technologies on artists over the past 50 years. The exhibition of more than 70 artists, including Amalia Ulman and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, is inevitably weighted towards the present, reflecting “a set of technologies that have really come into their own in the 21st century”, says the curator, Omar Kholeif. He says that the exhibition focuses on artists who critically engage “
  
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• Advice from John Akomfrah

  28-01-2016 22:00
  In this clip, the artist John Akomfrah, who is currently showing work at Arnolfini in Bristol, discuses why there are no mistakes. See our interview with the artist from our January issue.
  
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• A tale fit for Homer: the decade-long odyssey of Athens’s National Museum of Contemporary Art

  28-01-2016 22:00
  
  This is a shortened version of an article originally published by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. The writer is a freelance journalist who also worked at the museum in the communications department, from November 2012 through 2014.Athenians were taken by surprise one sunny September day when the scaffolding around a former brewery building came down to reveal the façade of Greece’s new contemporary art museum. This was more than two years ago, but the building remains c
  
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• Drawing, then and now

  28-01-2016 21:39
  
  Forty years ago, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York opened Drawing Now: 1955-75 (23 January-19 March 1976), a show that explored the shift of drawing from “a minor ‘support’ medium” to “a major and independent medium with distinctive expressive possibilities altogether its own”, as outlined by the curator Bernice Rose in the exhibition’s catalogue. This week Dominique Lévy Gallery in New York opened Drawing Then: Innovation and Influence
  
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• The really white cube: New York’s culture groups less diverse than they think

  28-01-2016 21:11
  
  Cultural organisations in New York City are more diverse than their peers nationwide but still do not reflect the diversity of the local population, according to data released today by the city’s cultural affairs department.
  New York City’s cultural workforce—nearly 120,000 strong—is 61.8% white, 35.4% people of colour and 53.1% female, a survey of nearly 1,000 non-profit organisations that receive city funding found. By contrast, New York City residents are 33% white, 6
  
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• Little Sun king Olafur Eliasson to show at Versailles this spring

  28-01-2016 20:55
  
  The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will be the next contemporary artist to show his work at the Château of Versailles, from June to November 2016, following Anish Kapoor’s controversy-riddled presentation in 2015.In an interview in Le Figaro, Eliasson, whose work often deals with environmental issues, said he plans to make use of water and light in his presentation in the palace’s gardens. “I like the idea of the sun and that the king of France claimed it in his
  
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• Tauba Auerbach at Paula Cooper

  28-01-2016 19:20 via artnews.com
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• Olafur Eliasson Named Guest Artist at the Palace of Versailles for Summer 2016

  28-01-2016 18:34 via artnews.com
  Olafur Eliasson, the Danish Icelandic conceptual artist, was named this summer’s guest artist for the Palace of Versailles. Since 2008, the palace has invited artists, including Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Giuseppe Penone, and Lee Ufan, to create and exhibit works … Read More
  
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• Top US collector takes the stand in Knoedler trial

  28-01-2016 18:24
  
  One of the key issues in the Knoedler fakes trial—whether buyers have the obligation to perform due diligence—was brought to the fore when Domenico De Sole took the stand Wednesday afternoon to tell the jury about his and his wife’s purchase of a fake Mark Rothko from Knoedler in 2004 for $8.3m.
  Testifying with the fake Rothko on an easel to his left, De Sole described how he and his wife had gone to the Knoedler Gallery on their friends’ recommendations, with the aim of
  
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• Contemporary art space springs up on the Caribbean isle of Martinique

  28-01-2016 17:53
  
  A new 900 sq. m contemporary art gallery backed by the French entrepreneur Bernard Hayot, who runs a car retail and rental empire, opened earlier this week (24 January) on the Caribbean island of Martinique. The inaugural exhibition, organised by curators at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, features 53 works by the Haiti-born artist Hervé Télémaque (until 17 April).The new gallery, which comprises three separate spaces including a “nave” for monumental works, was d
  
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• Long-time curator James Rondeau named director of Art Institute of Chicago

  28-01-2016 17:21
  
  The Art Institute of Chicago has found a new director—and it did not have to look far. The museum has appointed James Rondeau, an 18-year veteran of the institution, to succeed Douglas Druick, who plans to retire after more than four years as director of the encyclopaedic museum.
  Rondeau, aged 46, is currently the museum’s curator of Modern and contemporary art. He was instrumental in securing the largest gift of art in the museum’s history last year. The plastics manufacturer
  
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• John Akomfrah, artist and film-maker: 'The studio is large and calm, with comfy sofas to sit on. Space is important'

  28-01-2016 17:11
  
  Karen Wright meets the film-maker at his studio in Dalston, north-east London
  
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• 'Hackney, I lost you': the London creatives priced out of their studios

  28-01-2016 17:03
  
  Photographer Jenny Lewis started her Hackney Studio project to highlight the area’s creativity – but many of her subjects have since been forced to move out of their workspaces by rising costs and the pace of east London’s redevelopment Related: Gentrification X: how an academic argument became the people's protestContinue reading...
  
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• Morning People: Jens Hoffmann’s Salon for Early Risers

  28-01-2016 17:00 via artnews.com
  On a recent morning at 8:20 a.m., Jens Hoffmann and Rachel Rose were talking about David Foster Wallace. The two were at Think Coffee to discuss Rose’s video installation Everything and More, which is currently on view at the Whitney, … Read More
  
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• Egan’s pizza the action at the Zabludowicz Collection

  28-01-2016 16:56
  
  London-based artist Jemma Egan’s new video and sculptural works, on show at the Zabludowicz Collection in north London (until 6 March), shine a light on the world of Domino’s Pizza (the restaurant and take-away chain where “pizza is the hero” according to the company website). Egan explores “competitive pizza making, corporate mascots, and the dedicated [so-called] ‘Dominoid’ employee”, says a statement. This fascinating fast food focus
  
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• From goddesses to bulls: Sicily comes to the British Museum

  28-01-2016 16:50
  
  The British Museum will present an exhibition on Sicily, opening in April, with major loans from the island’s museums. The show, with 200 objects, will focus on two key periods: the arrival of the Greeks in the late seventh century BC and Norman rule from 1100-1250 AD. Loans include a painted terracotta altar with three fertility goddesses (around 500 BC), which was excavated in 1999 and is now at Gela’s Museo Archeologico Regionale. Nearly half the loans will be from Sicily, with m
  
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• Art Institute of Chicago Names James Rondeau President and Director

  28-01-2016 16:42 via artnews.com
  The Art Institute of Chicago has tapped James Rondeau to be its new president and director. The news comes after Douglas Druick, who had been the director for five years, announced his retirement in October of last year.Rondeau has been a curator of … Read More
  
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• V-A-C Foundation unveils plans for Renzo Piano-designed museum for Moscow

  28-01-2016 15:58
  
  The V-A-C Foundation has unveiled the first designs for its planned Moscow contemporary art centre in a former power station. The foundation, established in 2009 by the Russian gas billionaire Leonid Mikhelson, commissioned the Italian architect Renzo Piano to develop the two-hectare site last year. Construction is due to start next January and is estimated to cost around €150m, says Antonio Belvedere, a partner at the firm.The foundation will preserve the name and industrial architecture
  
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• Record crowds brave Moscow cold for blockbuster show

  28-01-2016 15:23
  
  Although little known in the West, Valentin Serov—a Russian fin-de-siècle artist famous for his portraits of artists, aristocrats and tsars—is beloved in Russia. The artist’s exhibition at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery marking the 150th anniversary of his birth has been drawing crowds ever since it opened in October. But even the most die-hard Serov fans will have been surprised at the passion the show inspired in Moscow museum-goers who stood in line for hours
  
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• Domenico De Sole, Who Paid $8.3 M. for Fake Rothko, Takes the Stand in Knoedler Trial

  28-01-2016 15:03 via artnews.com
  Domenico De Sole took the stand in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday, testifying in front of the fake Rothko that he purchased at the Knoedler Gallery in 2004 for $8.3 million. De Sole, along with his wife, is … Read More
  
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• Morning Links: One Minute Sculptures Edition

  28-01-2016 14:40 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
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• Art Basel Hong Kong Announces Artists Featured in Its Encounters Sector

  28-01-2016 13:30 via artnews.com
  Once again, Art Basel Hong Kong will feature large-scale works in its Encounters sector, which will run in conjunction with the fair when it opens March 24. Today, they’ve released the list of everyone involved, which includes 16 artists from 12 countries.So, … Read More
  
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• Anthony Lister found guilty of wilful damage over graffiti artworks

  28-01-2016 08:48
  
  Court sentences ‘Brisbane’s Banksy’ to five hours’ community service with council’s graffiti removal service after he planted unauthorised artworks around the cityBrisbane installation and street artist Anthony Lister has been found guilty of one count of wilful damage by graffiti after planting a series of unauthorised artworks around the city between 2009 and 2014. Anthony Lister did a portrait of the magistrate in court and just handed it to him @7NewsQueensland
  
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• Untitled(she has on black leather boots. it should be a group decision like we did last year, she said. they like to hear themselves talk. the three young adults started a non profit. there are many like it in portland. i lost another molar. i have t

  28-01-2016 00:50 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  she has on black leather boots.it should be a group decision like we did last year, she said.they like to hear themselves talk. the three young adults started a non profit.there are many like it in portland.i lost another molar. i have two missing molars. i don’t know why i feel proud about it. i think it’s an accomplishment.i don’t get why i listen to some things a person says that offend me deeply and not to other things the same person says that doesn’t offend. i don&r
  
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