At the entrance to the Biennale’s Central Pavilion, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

The Central Pavilion in Venice’s Giardini is the second site for All the World’s Futures, the main curatorial project around which the Biennale centers itself.  Featuring another series of artists spread out inside the exhibition space’s remarkable white facade, the exhibition continues its investigation of debris and late capitalism through a more playful, yet equally critical set of works from its counterpart at the Arsenale. (more…)

Two separate directors for major UK museums have spoken out this week in the run-up to the country’s general elections, condemning current cultural funding cuts, and its effects, describing them as “severe.”  “Austerity is killing many local museums,” says David Anderson, director general of National Museum Wales.  “There is an urgent need for additional funding. The cultural funding model we have is failing.” (more…)

Robert Gober, Untitled (2003-2005), via Art Observed

The long-awaited MoMA retrospective for Robert Gober begins in fitting fashiom. An immense, stripped-bare wall runs the length of the museum’s second floor outcropping, blocking off any view of the expansive installations inside, and capped with a single work near the entrance to the exhibition, the artist’s X-Pipe Playpen.  The viewer never realizes, passing through the exhibition, that at one point they have found themselves on the inside of this imposing structure, staring at the camouflaged wallpaper and sink sculptures that define the artist’s ouvre.  Ominous and surreal, the structure works perfectly in conjunction with the works on view, and offers a concise summary of the exhibition as a whole: a look at the full length of the artist’s prolific career, from his early paintings and sinks to his most demanding, complex environments, constantly examining and readdressing his emotionally potent take on abstraction. (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (Macro) is reportedly facing a financial crisis, after government officials slashed the museum budget from from €350,000 in 2013 to €61,000 this year.  “The exhibitions are programmed, and funded, until spring 2015… We spend very little on the shows as we have several sponsors,” says former president Alberta Campitelli. (more…)

Keith Haring, Moses and the Burning Bush (1985), via Art Observed

On view at Gladstone Gallery is an exhibition of large-scale works by Keith Haring, including canvases and tarps painted in the artist’s immediately recognizable style, which has since become part of a widely reproduced visual language of the late 20th century. The display will remain on view through June 14, 2014.

(more…)

A group of Detroit’s creditors are pushed for an independent valuation of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection, marking a tense escalation between the city and its debt collectors, with the embattled museum caught in the middle.  “This motion doesn’t compel a sale,” said Derek Donnelly of Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. “It just establishes a communal framework for addressing value maximization of the artwork.” (more…)

Emphasizing the recent vote by Michigan’s Oakland County to withdraw support for the museum if any works were to be sold, DIA Director Graham W. J. Beal has stated in the September museum newsletter that “selling any art would be tantamount to closing the museum.”  Beal continues by questioning the valuation of the museum’s assets, particularly the Tintoretto ceiling painting in its lobby.  “You may have read in the Detroit Free Pressthat an expert valued the painting at $100 million. This came as a surprise to us as, a couple of years ago, for insurance purposes, a different expert assessed the painting at $2 to $3 million.”  He writes.
(more…)