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NEWS

British Museum to Digitize Collection

October 18th, 2023

Following a string of controversial thefts, the British Museum has announced ambitious plans to digitize its collection. “Following the discovery that objects have been stolen from the collection, we have taken steps to improve security and are now confident that a theft of this kind can never happen again,” says interim director Mark Jones. “It is my belief that the single most important response to the thefts is to increase access, because the better a collection is known – and the more it is used – the sooner any absences are noticed.”
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Ann Philbin, Hammer Museum Head, To Retire

October 18th, 2023

Ann Philbin, director of UCLA’s Hammer Museum, has announced plans to retire. She will step down from the post in fall of 2024.
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Arthur Brand Recovers Series of Works Stolen from Dutch Town of Medemblik

October 18th, 2023

Art sleuth Arthur Brand has recovered a bundle of six paintings, stolen from the Dutch town of Medemblik this month. The works were delivered to Brand’s home after a statement that the thieves would have a hard time selling the pieces. “I’m very thankful that they decided to do the right thing. Stealing is wrong, but if you return it, at least you do something right,” he said. 
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REFERENCE LIBRARY

Jeff Wall

b. 1946
Lives and works in:

Vancouver, Canada

Represented by:

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York & Paris

Education includes:

University of British Columbia BA, Vancouver
Courtauld Institute, University of London, England

Wall is a photographer known for creating back-lit narrative photographs. Though appearing straightforward, he does sometimes experiment with photo-manipulation and elaborate production. His work ranges from pieces rich in implication, like compassion in A Woman with a Covered Tray (2003) and desperation in Insomnia (1994) to others that resemble well-worked theatrical productions of Gregory Crewdson, like his 1992 piece The Giant and After the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the Preface, created in 1999.

Other photographs manage to dodge the focus of humans and enter a realm that is more abstract, like the putrid and bland room captured in the 2003 photograph A Wall in a Former Bakery and the near-indecipherable darkly splattered mess of a corner of an art studio in Staining Bench, Furniture Manufacturer’s, Vancouver taken in 2003.

Awards include The Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Art Photography, the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography as well as the Roswitha Haftmann Prize for Visual Arts. He has extensive teaching experience having taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Simon Frasier University in British Columbia, and the University of British Columbia. He is an established author and critic as well.

Grosenic, Uta. Art Now: Vol 2. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2006.

Jeff Wall at Marion Goodman New York, February 23 – March 22, 2008 [ArtObserved]

Artist Homepage

Wikipedia Entry