Since opening in 2012, Shanghai’s Power Station of Art has become a central player in the rapidly expanding Chinese contemporary arts scene, as evidenced by the success of its recently opened 10th Shanghai Biennale. “We want the Shanghai Biennale to be more international,” says Li Xu, deputy director of the Power Station. “This is a new kind of cultural confidence.” (more…)
The Smithsonian is reportedly receiving an additional $14.5 million in government funding next year, bringing the total funding received for 2015 to $819.5 million. Most of the funding will go to maintenance and salaries for the Institution’s various outposts and services, while some has been set aside for an ambitious renovation project for the Smithsonian’s South Mall. (more…)
The LA Times sits down with Broad Museum Curator Joanne Heyeler to discuss the completion of city’s new art museum, set to open in late 2015. “I have to say, living and breathing with these renderings and plans for almost five years now,” Heyeler says, “I am absolutely thrilled to see it finally revealed as a whole exterior.” (more…)
Amid charges of plagiarism, Jeff Koons’s work Fait d’Hiver has been pulled from exhibition at the artist’s expansive Centre Pompidou retrospective. The work’s owner made the request for its removal, while the museum made a point of expressing its desire to leave the work in the show. “It is essential that museums be able to continue to give an account of these artistic endeavors,” said president Alain Seban. (more…)
Michael Anthony, the executive chef of Gramercy Tavern, has been named as the head chef for the Whitney’s new Meatpacking District location. The museum will include two restaurants: Untitled, a fine dining establishment run out of the museum’s ground floor, and the Studio Cafe, which will be located on the Museum’s 8th Floor. (more…)
The Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice has announced an expansion plan that will double the institution’s exhibition space to 10,000 sq. meters by April of next year, just in time for the 2015 Biennale. The project was made possible by a grant from Samsung and US non-profit Venetian Heritage, and marks “the conclusion of a project that has been close to our hearts for a long time, after a restoration that has lasted more than ten years,” says Giovanna Damiani, head of the Venetian museums authority. “We hope it is the beginning of a long collaboration.” (more…)
The New York Times looks at the nearly $67 million in upcoming renovations slated for the Louvre in Paris, and president Jean-Luc Martinez’s vision for a more visitor-centered experience. “I lived in a suburb that was very modern, and everything was new,” Martinez tells the NYT. “And when I arrived here, everything was ancient. Imagine for a child, to see five centuries of art, some as old as two or three millenniums. In this space, I felt the depth of human history.” (more…)
The Wall Street Journal notes the growing trend for museums to collect visitors data as they pass through the museum, using the information in exhibition planning, marketing, and other strategies in running a successful institution, despite some criticism. “It’s not as if people going out of museums say, ‘Jeez, I wish that museum knew a lot more about me, I would’ve had a lot better experience,’” says Marc Rotenberg, the law professor heading the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “It’s being driven by the possibility of increased sales, advertising and better marketing.” (more…)
The Guggenheim has released a list of finalists in the competition to design the prospective new Guggenheim in Helsinki, Finland. The final six selections include a variety of designs, including repurposed buildings and a series of pavilion-style structures linked through an interconnected walkway. The design contest “opens extraordinary possibilities for a Guggenheim in Helsinki and asks us to imagine what a museum of the future can be,” according to director Richard Armstrong. (more…)
As the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami prepares its launch party tomorrow night at its temporary site in Miami’s Design District, the museum has released its plans for a 37,500-square-foot, privately funded permanent home in the area. The museum is funded by car dealership billionaires Irma and Norman Braman. “We love this museum, and we felt it was the right time, and the right place, and with the right museum,” says Ms. Braman, who also serves as co-chairwoman of the city’s museum’s board. (more…)
An article in The Economist charts the ongoing progress of The Louvre Abu Dubai, part of the Saadiyat Island Cultural District being built on a sandbar off the course of the U.A.E. city. “It will be a museum of and for the world,” says Rita Aoun-Abdo, head of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority. (more…)
Uta Werner, a cousin of embattled collector Cornelius Gurlitt, has stepped forward to challenge the late man’s will in a Munich court. The move comes as Kunstmuseum Bern is preparing to announce its decision on the artworks, which were initially bequeathed to the institution when Gurlitt passed away earlier this year. (more…)
As construction gets underway for the new Tate Modern extension, Guardian writer Well Self asks if the new renovations to the museum is just another step in the ongoing transformation of the museum as an extension of influence by the hyper wealthy, and an indication of the financial impact the contemporary market has made on the museum’s curatorial practices. “The new Tate Modern will not be an art gallery per se, but a sort of life-size model of what an art gallery might be should our culture have need of one,” he writes. “Since it doesn’t, but rather has a requirement for visitor attractions that reify the ever‑widening gulf between haves and have-nots, I’m absolutely certain it will prove an outrageous success” (more…)
The Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, which found itself as the unlikely recipient of the late Cornelius Gurlitt’s trove of looted artworks, is preparing to announce its decision of the collection following a lengthy discussion among museum officials. Initial reports are claiming that the museum will in fact accept the works. (more…)
The Whitney Museum has set the opening date for its new, Renzo Piano-designed building in the Meatpacking District location on May 1st of next year. The news came this week during the Museum’s annual gala benefit. (more…)
A recent article by the New York Times cites the newest trend among today’s ultra-rich art collectors is the founding of their own boutique museums to house their collection, tracing the trend back to François Pinault’s purchase of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2006. Other museums covered include Bernard Arnault’s Fondation Luis Vuitton, and Eli Broad’s Los Angeles museum currently under construction. (more…)
Mick Peter, all photos via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The newly re-opened SculptureCenter in Long Island City has earned a reputation for forward-thinking exhibitions and thematic concerns, opening new dialogues between the constructed, three-dimensional object and its related artistic formats. It’s perhaps highly fitting then, that the exhibition space’s newest show, and its first since its impressive renovation, would focus specifically on these links of space and form. (more…)
The Victoria and Albert Museum is preparing to unveil a cast of Michelangelo’s David, which was given to Queen Victoria in 1857, after a lengthy restoration. The 16-foot statue will go on view November 29th inside the the newly renovated Weston Cast Court. (more…)
Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani of Qatar passed away unexpectedly this week at his home in London. The former president of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage from 1997 to 2005, Al-Thani was at one point considered among the most influential art buyers in the world, and oversaw the initial stages of a massive museum-building project in the Gulf. (more…)
Egon Schiele, Portrait of Gertie Schiele (1909), all photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The energy on view in the paintings of Egon Schiele often feels as if the surface itself cannot contain it, as if the visceral poses and lucid, flowing lines of the artist’s hand posses an ethereal force beyond that of his practice. The Austrian painter, who died at the young age of 28 during the Spanish Flu epidemic, poured himself into his works with an enthusiasm few have ever matched, constantly pushing the gestural formats and emotional charges of his materials and subjects.
Egon Schiele: Portraits (Installation View)
Hollywood film and television producer Jerry Perenchio has announced a major gift of works to LACMA, including works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger and René Magritte, that totals upwards of $500 million in value. “We live in a modern city and modernism has shaped our everyday life, and to tell the story of late 19th century art and the birth of modernism is an incredible thing for LACMA,” says LACMA Director Michael Govan. (more…)
The Hirshhorn’s new director, Melissa Chiu, is profiled in the New York Times this week, highlighting her aims at expanding the Hirshhorn’s international and experimental art offerings, and her efforts at placing the museum in the spotlight as a major patron of experimental works and forms. “The whole art world ecology has changed,” says Ms. Chiu. “The art world has become truly transnational.” (more…)
Peter Brant has announced the focus of his newest exhibition at the Connecticut-based Brant Foundation Art Study Center, which will center around the works of Cady Noland, Larry Clark, Richard Prince and Christopher Wool. Deliverance, as the show is titled, will open November 10th, and will feature work from 1970 through 1997. “It’s when they were really exploring the same kind of themes, and when they each produced some of their best work,” Mr. Brant says. (more…)
The Oslo city council in Norway has approved a proposal for a new Munch Museum design on the city waterfront, created by firm Herreros. The process in building the museum has moved slowly over the past years, with a number of critics challenging the tilting, “Lambda” design. A vote on zoning is due to take place in November. (more…)
