Museologia UPR 2009 / 2010

Sobre la arquitectura de los museos - Whitney Museum of American Art

2010-11-17T12:47:00.000-08:00

Jack Manning/The New York Times

Jacqueline Kennedy attended the opening of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1966.

By Christopher Gray

Whiter the Whitney? Yes, it’s got a swell building designed by Renzo Piano under way in the meatpacking district, to be finished in 2015. But what about its structure at 75th and Madison, where Jacqueline Kennedy attended the ribbon-cutting in 1966? Ornery and menacing, it may be New York’s most bellicose work of architecture.

The artist, heiress and collector Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney established the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1931 in back of her studio in some row houses at 10-14 West Eighth Street. In the 1950s the Whitney jumped to a small structure behind the Museum of Modern Art. In 1961 the museum enlarged its board — to include, for instance, Mrs. Kennedy — and began seeking a site for a larger building.

The board found just the spot at the southeast corner of Madison and 75th Street, which was owned by the developer and art collector Ian Woodner. He had cleared it of a lovely little group of houses, including a brick-and-brownstone Queen Anne, an Edwardian limestone and a demure neo-Federal. Mr. Woodner, who had intended to erect an apartment house, agreed to sell the property to the Whitney.

The board, despite a mission to encourage American art, hired the architect Marcel Breuer, who was Hungarian-born and Bauhaus-trained, to design a building.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The Whitney today.

Municipal Archives

The southeast corner of Madison and 75th in 1940; the buildings had been razed when the museum bought it.

A 1963 rendering of the museum shows it almost as it stands, projecting out over Madison Avenue like a medieval fortress, with oddly shaped windows reminiscent of the gun ports of the Maginot Line. But in the rendering the panels of granite are variegated in tone, giving the building a life it does not have today with its more uniform masonry.

In an article Dec. 12, 1963, Ada Louise Huxtable, the architecture critic for The New York Times, praised the initial design, finding it “serious and somber,” and “sympathetic to its neighbors.” But harmony was not, apparently, Breuer’s intent, since in 1966 Newsweek quoted him as saying that the neighboring brownstones and town houses “aren’t any good.”

By this point the elite had accepted modernist architecture, and anyone who protested risked denunciation as a hayseed. But the art critic Emily Genauer, writing in The New York Herald Tribune, also on Dec. 12, cautiously ventured that the new building seemed “oppressively heavy.”

A fortnight later Mrs. Huxtable backtracked slightly, saying that “it might be too somber and severe for many tastes,” but was still “careful” and “conscientious.” Her description, however, used the words bulky, sunken, gloomy, stygian and Alcatraz within three sentences.

The Whitney opened in 1966, and the hayseed lobby had apparently made itself known to Mrs. Huxtable; while acknowledging that it was “the most disliked building in New York,” she still admired Breuer’s design.

But Miss Genauer called it “the Madison Avenue Monster.” And Thomas B. Hess, writing in Art News, was of the opinion that the granite gave the museum “a mineral, prison look.” However, the stark concrete interiors received wide praise.

In 1967 the brash new “A. I. A. Guide to New York City,” by the architects Norval White and Elliot Willensky, quipped that passers-by should “beware of boiling oil,” but also called Breuer’s work a must-see. It was as if, as Olga Gueft put it in Interiors Magazine, the high-culture stamp of the Whitney and its trustees made it “completely invulnerable.”

Most writers at the time expressed skepticism about the Whitney’s choice of a cramped site. And only a little more than a decade after opening there was talk of a critical need to expand. In the 1980s the architect Michael Graves proposed demolishing the flanking brownstones down to the 74th Street corner for a complementary addition.

But in 1980 the Whitney had been included in the Upper East Side Historic District, designed to preserve just those buildings that Breuer had deprecated to Newsweek. The landmark designation caught up good and bad alike, and Mr. Graves’s proposal was not the only one that failed on the grounds of either the loss of the brownstones, or the changes to the Whitney.

It is easy to imagine the conniption fits the Whitney of 1966 would meet if it were being built today; its threatening character spears every tenet of people-friendly cities now held dear. In comparison the reviled white brick apartment houses of the 1960s are absolutely benign.

Even in an age where traditionalism has triumphed, Breuer’s granite bunker is still aesthetically bombproof. If its architecture is like a horror movie, it is like a Stephen King horror movie, unimpeachably literate.

The Whitney hasn’t said what it intends to do with the old museum after it completes its downtown structure, and perhaps it will operate the two in tandem.

If it decides to sell, it will be offering a monument that is probably unexpandable, even unchangeable, and unmistakably the brand of a single famous institution. Even if Breuer’s building comes into other hands, the name Whitney will never be far removed from this singular edifice.

sobre los balances de seguridad + protocolo de un museo y la integridad y diversión del arte

2010-11-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Down From the Heights
By ROBIN POGREBIN

Take 6,800 bamboo poles, 70 miles of colorful cord and plans for an art installation that will change every day over a six-month period and ultimately grow to 50 feet high. Add two artists and a bunch of rock climbers who like to listen to the Rolling Stones while they add to the piece, and drink pilsner when they’re done working. And then stick the whole thing on the roof of the esteemed, establishment Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It was bound to be a combustible mix. “There’s the good and the bad,” Doug Starn, one of the artists, said last week while watching the piece, “Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t and You Won’t Stop,” being dismantled. (It closed on Sunday.) “People like us — and rock climbers — we don’t fit into the dead artist thing. As much as they welcomed us in” — he said of the Met — “there were struggles all the way through. Us and the climbers are part of the piece, part of the organism. We live in the piece. We need to enjoy what we make, and we need to enjoy ourselves while we’re making it.”

Curfews and adjusting music volume became part of the creative experience for Mr. Starn and his twin brother, Mike. But it wasn’t all tension and sticky red tape. There was also enormous success: 600,000 visitors (400,000 had been projected), international acclaim, six marriage proposals in the bamboo thicket, and famous climbers like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; the artists Martin Puryear and Francesco Clemente; Bono, Lou Reed, Paul McCartney, who went up barefoot or — as Mike Starn put it — “ ‘Abbey Road’ style.” And though the Starns had mapped out certain elements, like staircases and “living rooms” with benches inside the structure, plenty of things were unexpected, which was actually kind of the point. They hadn’t planned, for example, to have bamboo cup holders, which sprouted throughout the piece (the climbers put them in), or the cresting wave of bent bamboo at the top, or the spontaneous wind chime that turned up toward the southern end. They could not have predicted that the roof’s wisteria would wend its way all the way up the piece; that the red-tailed hawk Pale Male would regularly circle overhead; or how breathtaking Central Park would look from “Big Bambú” as the seasons changed. The installation had to close every time it rained and the climbers and the Starns had to stop work for a week when the artists ran out of cord, which was used to lash the poles together.

“We used up all the rope in the United States,” Mike said. “Then we had to wait for the ash cloud to pass so we could ship the rope from Switzerland.” Met officials last week seemed satisfied, if still catching their breath. It is certainly the most complex and ambitious project to date on the roof,” said Anne L. Strauss, an associate curator at the museum, who organized the installation. “Their project has brought our sculpture program on the roof to a new dimension and literally to great heights.” And the Met had to navigate some uncharted territory. To prepare for “Big Bambú” the museum secured approval from the city Buildings Department and ran its plans by several other city agencies, including the Fire Department. It plotted how people could safely go up the undulating sculpture, though the piece was a perpetual work in progress. And it came up with requirements that visitors sign waivers and follow strict rules (no sandals, no cellphones) as they ascended the installation’s winding walkways. And there was more: How do you handle a fleet of rock climbers who insist on listening to Jimi Hendrix while they help construct the sculpture? And how do you enforce museum operating hours if the artists have Friday-night parties atop the sculpture that stretch past closing time?

Standing on “Big Bambú” last week, sipping bottles of beer in T-shirts and jeans, the Starns said they thought the Met had responded like a pretty cool parent. “It’s amazing that the Met had the nerve to take on an evolving structure like this,” Mike said. “But we had to pull them along to create something about chaos. It’s a habitat. They wanted us out at 5 o’clock. But we’re not just here working. We’re a part of it. They didn’t like that — the beers. We finally got them to understand that this piece wouldn’t exist if it were too controlled. The vibe is important.” The music was clearly a flashpoint. Ms. Strauss said: “There might have been from time to time some volume issues, but then those were addressed. We’ve had a very collegial working experience with them.” When it came to the artistic side of the piece, the Starns were given a lot of rope (so to speak). “Big Bambú” took shape from one day to the next. Except for designated locations for the vertical poles to touch ground, placing each pole was largely up to the rock climbers. “That’s a moment-to-moment decision on their parts,” Mike said. The only time the artists exercised a veto is when “it wasn’t interconnected enough,” Doug said, “when it wasn’t part of the flow of the piece.”

The Starns ran out of bamboo after using 3,200 poles and had to order two more shipments of 1,800 each. (They said they had to share the cost of the bamboo and the extra cord with the Met, which declined to discuss the matter.) It was all worth it, though, according to many who waited hours for tickets or returned repeatedly because they wanted to see how “Big Bambú” kept changing. “It’s exciting for people to become part of an installation like this,” said Ryan Wong, one of the tour guides. “People are just exhilarated to be up there. You can see it in their faces. They say, ‘This is like being Robinson Crusoe or being on a wooden roller coaster.’ A melancholy hangs over the piece’s dismantling, which is expected to take two months. The Starns will cut out whole sections to keep as relics and are planning to gather the thousands of photographs they took of the piece into a pile, which will become an exhibition of its own. “It’s a lot of ambivalent feelings, conflicted feelings,” Doug said. “There is also an excitement taking it apart. I’m not quite sure why.” Many fans of the piece have suggested the Met make it permanent. “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people talk about a petition,” Mike said. “But as far as I know, there isn’t one.” The Met, whose roof sculpture program is in its 13th year, does not seem to have considered the possibility. “We use that space for a rotating series of exhibitions, so every time we invite an artist to work there, they know it’s for a The rock climbers found it hard to go. One tried to sleep up there once — he just curled up until a guard discovered him and made him come down. The Starns said they understood the impulse. “If we could, we would camp out here,” Doug said.

“When we do this again,” Mike added, “we’ll definitely make living in the piece part of the contract.”

La Bienal de Sevilla no sobrevive a la crisis

2010-10-29T09:40:00.001-07:00

El Gobierno autónomo de Andalucía ha retirado su apoyo económico a la Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, por lo que no habrá cuarta edición, ni en 2010 ni en 2011. La retirada del apoyo oficial es el tiro de gracia para un encuentro que logró atraer a más de 130.000 personas en 2008, y al que ya había dado la espalda la Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, que prometió en 2009 una aportación económica de alrededor de 2 millones de euros para la cuarta edición.

Qatar interesado en comprar la casa de subastas Christie's

2010-10-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

El Gobierno del Emirato de Qatar quiere comprar la mayor casa de subastas del mundo, dentro de su ambicioso plan para afianzarse como un gran destino cultural. “Si se presenta la oportunidad, no lo dudaríamos", dijo el emir Al Thani al Financial Times.

"Estamos construyendo un nuevo museo y Christie´s tiene ver con lo que estamos coleccionando", explica el jefe del estado más rico del Golfo Pérsico, que tiene 58 años, y dirige con pulso firme un proyecto encaminado a sustituir el actual monocultivo petrolífero del país.

El jeque Hamad Al Thani explicó al diario londinense que no está interesado en seguir el camino de otros gobernantes de la zona, empeñados en costosos planes de rearme, aunque no niega su preocupación por lo delicado de la situación estratégica en la región.

Qatar es el mayor exportador de gas licuado del planeta, y ahora podría aprovechar el impulso de su nuevo Museo de Arte Islámico para adquirir una empresa que factura muchos millones de euros en ventas cuyo destino final es el propio emirato.

Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts

2010-10-29T09:36:00.000-07:00

The Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts in San Francisco offers an expanded perspective on curating contemporary art and culture. Alongside traditional forms of exhibition making, this two-year master’s degree program emphasizes artist-led initiatives, public art projects, site-specific commissions, and other such experimental endeavors that have had a momentous impact in the last half-century. The program is distinguished by an international, interdisciplinary perspective, and it reflects San Francisco’s unique location and culture by placing a particular importance on the study of curatorial and artistic practices in Asia and Latin America. Our graduates have gone on to successful careers in the fields of independent curating, museums, galleries, public art agencies, and arts publishing.

The program was established in 2003 by the curators Kate Fowle and Ralph Rugoff. It provides practical training in curating and organizing exhibitions as well as rigorous study in the history of the discipline, modern and contemporary art history, theory, and criticism. Close, ongoing partnerships with outside organizations (such as SFMOMA and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts) bring students into direct contact with artworks, archival materials, and artists, and allow them to engage in original research and collaborative projects. CCA offers many opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange, and we privilege collective forms of practice. The program also organizes numerous exhibitions, lectures, and symposia.

Our core faculty members include curators, art historians, and other art professionals from prominent Bay Area institutions. More than 200 curators, critics, scholars, and artists from around the world have taught courses here since the program was launched.

* NEWS: CURATORIAL PRACTICE WITH A CONCENTRATION IN ARCHITECTURE or DESIGN
CCA has extremely strong graduate programs in Architecture and Design, and students interested in pursuing curatorial avenues in either field can now apply for an MA in Curatorial Practice with a concentration in one or the other. The curriculum combines core courses in Curatorial Practice with a selection of theory and practice courses (including possibly a written thesis) in the second discipline. Applicants who wish to pursue this should indicate their interest in the personal statement that accompanies the application.

101 WATTIS CURATORIAL FELLOWSHIP
The Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, in collaboration with the CCA Wattis Institute and the 101/Artnow Collection, supports one paid, nine-month, postgraduate curatorial research fellowship each year. In addition to regular curatorial duties at the CCA Wattis Institute, each fellow organizes an exhibition of works from the 101 Collection and proposes works for acquisition. This multiyear commitment on the part of the 101 Collection recognizes the importance of offering young curators professional opportunities as well as our program’s dual emphasis on academic knowledge and practical experience.

QUALIFICATIONS FOR ADMISSION (deadline: January 5, 2011)
• Undergraduate degree in the history of art, fine art, or other appropriate area of the humanities or social sciences
• Relevant practical experience in the visual arts and a demonstrated commitment to curating
• Strong interest in contemporary art

For full details on the application process and requirements please visit www.cca.edu/admissions/grad. Our program manager, Sue Ellen Stone (sstone@cca.edu or 415.551.9239), is always happy to answer questions.

OPEN HOUSE & INFO NIGHT: NOVEMBER 3, 2010
Prospective applicants are invited to attend our open house and info night at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 3, 2010, where they can meet the program chair, faculty, and current students. For more information or to RSVP please contact Sue Ellen Stone at sstone@cca.edu or 415.551.9239.

Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street
San Francisco CA 94107-2247
T: 415.551.9239
http://www.cca.edu/curatorialpractice

EL Pais ::: Joyas de Artista

2010-10-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

'El ojo del tiempo', de Salvador Dalí, en la exposición del MNAC "Joyas de artista. Del modernismo a la vanguardia"- CARLES RIBAS

Joyas de Artista

Las joyas que diseñaron a lo largo de su vida artistas como Josep Llimona, Manolo Hugué, Pablo Gargallo, Alexander Calder, Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí o Pablo Picasso se confrontan y ponen en diálogo con sus pinturas, esculturas, fotografías y tejidos en una exposición única en el Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña (MNAC), que abre sus puertas mañana hasta febrero de 2011.

Bajo el título Joyas de artista. Del modernismo a la vanguardia, la exposición, que reúne 340 piezas, explora por primera vez el acercamiento al ámbito de la joyería de los artistas que encabezaron los principales movimientos de las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Tanto la directora del MNAC, Teresa Ocaña, como la comisaria de la exposición, Mariàngels Fondevila, han resaltado lo "inédito" de la propuesta, tanto por la lectura que se podrá hacer sobre el contexto en el que se realizaron las obras, como porque se exhiben piezas muy difíciles de ver y reunir.

Algunas proceden de colecciones privadas y otras son de instituciones y museos como el Metropolitan Museum of Art de Nueva York, el Victoria and Albert Museum de Londres, el Reina Sofía de Madrid o el Musée d'Orsay de París. La idea es mostrar cómo los grandes de la Historia del Arte en el último siglo se acercaron de forma abierta a una disciplina como la de la joyería creando obras artísticas, muchas veces con materiales nada nobles como el latón e incluso obtenidos de los contenedores por parte de un escultor como Julio González.

Piezas singulares

Reivindicando la "singularidad" de cada una de las piezas así como su aspecto fetichista en ocasiones, Fondevila no ha obviado que el "espíritu lúdico" también está muy presente y no ha escondido que algunos de los artistas acabaron moldeando pequeñas joyas, porque así lo aconsejaban sus problemas de salud, como la artrosis.

La exposición, dividida en tres ámbitos, se abre con una selección de piezas realizadas por "joyeros artistas", entre las que destacan las elaboradas por el francés René Lalique, algunas de ellas adquiridas en su momento por el Museo de Hamburgo para la Exposición Universal de París de 1900, o el colgante inédito que el industrial catalán Antoni Amatller compró para su hija Teresa. También se muestra la obra con ricos esmaltes y variadas gamas de colores del barcelonés Lluís Masriera.

El corazón de la exposición late, sin embargo,gracias a las joyas concebidas por artistas no joyeros como Manolo Hugué, Herich Heckel, Pablo Gargallo, Julio González, Josef Hoffmann, Joaquim Gomis, Charlotte Perriand, Alexander Calder, Henri Laurens, Hans Arp, Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Antoni Gaudí o Salvador Dalí. Colocadas en unas vitrinas con cuidada iluminación, las joyas se contraponen con pinturas o esculturas que se exhiben a unos metros y que se reflejan en los cristales con el objetivo de establecer un paralelismo entre las diferentes disciplinas que cultivaron todos ellos.

'El ojo del tiempo'

Entre este ámbito y el último, en el que domina la fotografía y una exhibición de vestidos procedentes del Museo del Traje de Madrid, llama la atención una imagen de Salvador Dalí, realizada por Philippe Halsman, donde lleva tapado uno de sus ojos con la joya El ojo del tiempo, un icono omnipresente desde la primera página del catálogo-libro que se ha editado para esta exposición.

En la última de las salas se explora la relación existente entre "cuerpo y joya" y, además de mostrarse una selección de trajes, uno de ellos de Coco Chanel, de 1939, hay fotografías de los años treinta de autores como Man Ray, Edward Steichen, George Hoyningen-Huené y Horst P. Horst, todos ellos alejados del mundo de la moda pero que ofrecieron "visiones rutilantes y evocadoras, en las que el cuerpo y la joya forman una estrecha alianza".

Crítica de arte ::: Nuevos Descubrimientos

2010-10-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Nuevos Descubrimientos

Mirado con reluctancia y aprensión por la mayoría de los ciudadanos de los países latinoamericanos desde casi el mismo momento de lograr su independencia, los cuales preferían afincar sus respectivas identidades en el patrimonio histórico-artístico anterior al descubrimiento de América, el llamado arte colonial posee un inmenso valor que desborda cualquier estrecha visión política. También la retórica política afectó a España, que quiso usarlo, principalmente durante el franquismo, como una trasnochada reivindicación del finiquitado Imperio y de las glorias de una raza hispánica. Ambas son visiones caducas, que es imprescindible superar, porque, a la postre, ni benefician a los que las promueven, ni, sobre todo, al conocimiento de un maravilloso y muy singular fenómeno cultural, de interés universal.

De entrada, hay dos hechos que caracterizan la exploración y conquista del continente americano y otras tierras de ultramar por parte de los españoles: el primero y más importante es el mestizaje, que, desde luego, no se limitó al simple cruce racial; el segundo, que el afán de explotación no impidió el desarrollo de una formidable política de infraestructuras locales, que, por ejemplo, apenas si existió en los territorios norteamericanos bajo dominio británico. Las razones que explican este comportamiento colonial tan desparejo son diversas y complejas, pero su raíz última quizá obedezca a una concepción del poder imperial más medieval por parte de los monarcas españoles, frente a otra imperialista propia del moderno capitalismo anglosajón. Sea como sea, lo cierto es que en los territorios ultramarinos dependientes de la corona española, entre los siglos XVI y XIX, se lleva a cabo una formidable labor constructiva y artística, que no sólo forma una parte sustancial del arte de la época moderna, sino que posee una personalidad única, al surgir del entrecruzamiento de las culturas más diversas.
Nuevos Descubrimientos

Tan sólo acotando el tema al terreno de la pintura, como lo hace la exposición titulada Pintura de los Reinos. Identidades compartidas en el mundo hispánico, el resultado de lo exhibido es, se mire por donde se mire, de un interés y una calidad asombrosos. Sorprende, por tanto, que, con semejante acervo patrimonial, ninguno de sus protagonistas hayan sabido sacarle su extraordinario rendimiento potencial, empezando por lo más básico, que es explicar su auténtico sentido y su importancia, más allá de oportunistas retóricas políticas.

En el caso español, es muy elocuente la inveterada pésima gestión de lo atesorado en nuestro país de este increíble legado histórico-artístico. Hasta 1941, por ejemplo, no se crea una nueva institución del así llamado Museo de América, ni se inaugura su nueva sede física propia hasta 1965, habiéndose cobijado sus tesoros hasta entonces en el Museo Arqueológico Nacional, fundado casi un siglo antes, en 1867. Ubicado en la zona de Moncloa, muy cerca de la Ciudad Universitaria, el nuevo edificio, diseñado por los arquitectos Luis Feduchi y Luis Moya, y sus fantásticas colecciones no fueron adecuadamente dotados y promocionados. No se ha producido tampoco nunca una reflexión y un debate serios sobre cómo ordenar y distribuir sus tesoros, en los que se mezclan las obras precolombinas, el arte colonial, las artes populares e industriales, los documentos de la índole más diversa, etcétera. Por otra parte, no se ha llevado una duradera política de exposiciones temporales, ni la programación de otras muchas actividades que podrían haberlo convertido en el centro de la atención pública nacional e internacional. Con un poco de imaginación y medios, se comprende, en fin, lo que podía dar de sí una institución como ésta, hoy todavía muy poco conocida por la mayoría de los españoles, aunque debería ser uno de los cauces para que se produjera un nuevo descubrimiento de América, que sería simultáneamente también el descubrimiento de nuestro pasado y de nosotros mismos, y, por supuesto, por lo mismo, el de los pueblos americanos.

El Pais ::: Babélica Manifesta

2010-10-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

Instalación Assembly instructions: (Tangential Logick, tangential Magick), de Alexandre Singh, en Manifesta 8.-

Babélica Manifesta

El artista Thierry Geoffroy (Nancy 1961), reconocido bienalista, lo tiene claro: "Hay mucha más gente viendo la televisión que visitando museos". De ahí que se haya uniformado de reportero colonialista (pantalón corto caqui, salacot y pajarita) y, desde hace algunas semanas, recorra las calles de Murcia y Cartagena interrogando y grabando (emergencyrooms.org/manifesta.html) a todo tipo de gentes sobre "el diálogo con el norte de Europa". Un corresponsal que no deja de cuestionar el porqué del argumento que plantea la última edición de Manifesta, la nómada bienal europea de arte contemporáneo con sede administrativa en Ámsterdam y que en esta su octava edición se traslada a esta región levantina. Desde su espacio-celda en la prisión de San Antón (una de las 14 ubicaciones de Manifesta 8), Geoffroy proclama con una pintada en la pared que cede el lugar a cualquier artista africano. Lo tiene difícil: de los 110 artistas de la sección oficial solo ocho han nacido o residen habitualmente en el norte de África.

Hasta su clausura, el 9 de enero, podrán ser visitados en la ciudad de Murcia tradicionales espacios expositivos y arrumbados edificios, abiertos expresamente para albergar esta babélica Manifesta. Emblemáticos inmuebles como la antigua oficina de Correos y Telégrafos y los dos primeros pabellones militares del cuartel de Artillería, se encontraban en estado ruinoso tras más de treinta años de abandono. También en Cartagena se ha abierto al público la prisión de San Antón, que este mismo año ha dejado de funcionar como tal. Las obras de arte se han acomodado en los desconchados interiores, lugares inhóspitos que el arquitecto Martín Lejárraga ha tenido que vehicular con escuetos remoces a las líneas argumentales de los tres equipos curatoriales para crear burbujas creativas en edificaciones que rezuman disciplina, reeducación y control moral. Hay cruces simbólicos entre espacios y okupas: los artistas exponen en el campamento militar y la cárcel y las imágenes digitales de los presos se proyectan en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Murcia.

Country Europa es el trabajo colectivo de autorrepresentación fotográfica, resultado de un taller impartido por Marcelo Expósito (Puertollano, 1966) y Verónica Iglesia (Buenos Aires, 1972) en el Centro Penitenciario de Murcia, en el que también ha intervenido Nada Prjla (Sarajevo, 1971), quien ha logrado que los presos se grabaran sin abandonar los muros. Otro artista, David Rych (Innsbruck, 1975), reproduce el encuentro entre presos y jóvenes ingresados en reformatorios. El resultado subraya las nuevas formas del poder: vigilar (sin) castigar.

La Fundación Manifesta, que ha dispuesto de un presupuesto de tres millones de euros para producir la programación, ha encargado a tres colectivos independientes la selección de artistas. Los proyectos anteriormente reseñados pertenecen al programa de Chamber of Public Secrets (CPS), amparado por Khaled Ramadan y Alfredo Cramerotti. Desde Copenhague y Oriente Próximo, a través de prácticas de producción en los mass media, fomentan diálogos que trasladan al dominio público el periodismo estético donde la realidad deviene artificio. "El resto es historia", es el lema de la estimulante propuesta que podemos iniciar en Cartagena desde el pabellón de autopsias con El proyecto de las baterías, de Laurent Grasso (Francia, 1972), artista que disecciona en sus trabajos los dispositivos de control y vigilancia, por lo que ha recorrido el litoral cartagenero buscando los emplazamientos militares que lo jalonan. Las vigilantes baterías observadas desde la costa y el zumbido de un submarino se transfiguran en inquietantes situaciones sociopolíticas. CPS también ha logrado abrir las puertas de la prisión de San Antón a los artistas con un permiso especial de la Secretaría General de Instituciones Penitenciarias. En la primera celda, un documental de Abed Anoud (Líbano, 1963) revela la sórdida historia del enclave con aportaciones de diversos protagonistas, entre los que destaca la erudición del historiador Pedro Egea. Este documento sirve de base para el recorrido guiado de Khaled Hafez (El Cairo, 1963), quien también presenta dos narraciones radiofónicas cuyo guión recorre la biografía de dos murcianos universales: los místicos sufís Abbul Abbass al Murci e Ibn Arabí. Podemos seguir hacia el fondo de la galería observando los murales pintados por los presos, allí nos encontraremos con la atronadora propuesta de Brumaria (Madrid, 2002). Descargas de metralletas, silbidos de ambulancias, turbias imágenes de guerra y un libro: Violencias expandidas. Lo resumo con la frase de Bertolt Brecht que fulminó a sus gestores: "La violencia es necesaria para cambiar este mundo asesino".

En la asociación de vecinos de Santa Lucía se exhibe una ampliación del Archivo FX de Pedro G. Romero (Aracena, 1964), seleccionado por los asamblearios Tranzit.org (Austria, República Checa, Hungría y Eslovaquia) cuyo plan expositivo se estructura en torno a un cuestionario de cuarenta preguntas denominado CET: Constitución para una exposición temporal. Sus conclusiones poscolonialistas y poscomunistas pueden verse en el cuartel de Artillería, cuyos pabellones han sido desescombrados por presos sujetos al tercer grado penitenciario que, en su programada readaptación social, han trabajado para la organización de Manifesta 8, según nos confirma la coordinadora general Esther Regueira.

Las propuestas de artistas más mediáticos se encuentran en el centro de Murcia en Correos. El irlandés Willie Doherthy (Derry, 1959), candidato en dos ocasiones al Premio Turner, ha presentado una decepcionante videocreación resuelta con una cincuentena de anodinos planos cortos grabados bajo uno de los puentes que cruza el río Segura, mientras Simón Fujiwara (Londres, 1982), ganador del Premio Cartier 2010, se acomoda a una arquitectura que rezuma tiempo por su deterioro para integrar una de sus falsas narraciones basadas en el descubrimiento arqueológico de un falo gigante hallado en el desierto. Estas propuestas son parte del comisariado de Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, representados por Bassam el Baroni y Jeremy Beaudry, quienes rubrican su discurso electivo con el título Overscore (tachadura).

www.manifesta8.com

Roberta Smith, crítica de arte del NYT, opina sobre la pieza de Ai Weiwei en el Tate Modern

2010-10-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

La más reciente comisión de Unilever para el Turbine Hall en el museo Tate Modern en Londres es la instalación "Sunflower Seeds" del artista chin Ai Weiwei. La instalación levanta tanto polvo de la cerámica que, por razones de salud y por posiblemente afectar a los pulmones, se ha limitado el acceso al público. Ahora, en vez de poder caminar, tocar y recostarse sobre la instalación, se debe observar a la distancia. La crítica Roberta Smith escribe sobre las consideraciones que un museo debe tomar al presentar este tipo de trabajo y comparte su opinión sobre el dilema actual:

At Tate Modern, seeds of discontent by the ton

LONDON — Last Wednesday I had a close encounter with “Sunflower Seeds,” the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s oceanic new installation piece in the cavernous Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern here. The work consists of roughly 100 million hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds covering a vast expanse of floor to the depth of about four inches, and visitors were invited to wade right in. The black-and-white seeds crunched delightfully underfoot, and the whole thing resembled an indoor pebble beach, with people strolling about and then plunking down to sit or recline. One young man had buried himself.

As it turned out, my timing was lucky. By the next day “Sunflower Seeds” — the ninth in the Tate’s annual series of large-scale installations known as the Unilever commissions — had become the third to run into significant safety problems. In consultation with the artist, the Tate decided that people would no longer be allowed to enter the work, saying that the dust they stir up posed a health hazard. Now it can be viewed only from behind ropes or from the bridge that spans the Turbine Hall one floor up.

I could say I told them so, except I didn’t. I merely commented to my husband, as we looked down from the bridge a few days earlier, that the piece looked like an upper-respiratory disaster waiting to happen. It had not yet opened to the public, and was empty — except for one person off in the distance who was raking the seeds and wearing a surgical mask. That was a big clue.

My inkling was confirmed during my Wednesday visit, as I watched kids dashing through the seeds, followed by little clouds of dust, like Pigpen from “Peanuts.” And as other visitors settled into or sifted through Mr. Ai’s creation, we soon noticed our hands turning gray, as if we’d been reading a newspaper for hours.

What is the dust? The seeds, cast in porcelain, are painted with black slip — essentially liquid clay — and fired. (Some 1,600 residents of a village that once provided porcelain to the imperial court produced them over the course of several years, as documented in a video that accompanies the piece.) This process yields a matte finish that looks exactly like that of real sunflower seeds, but slip lacks glaze’s imperviousness to wear and tear.

The use of slip without glaze is highly unusual on porcelain, although typical on stoneware, with which it bonds more completely. But “stoneware” lacks the cultural resonance of “porcelain,” which refers to a form the Chinese invented, and using glaze would have made the seeds less seedlike and probably very slippery, creating a different problem for the public. All this suggests that Mr. Ai and the Tate must have known that his piece was something of a gamble from the start; so far, it appears that they took it and lost.

Holding the seeds in my hand, I found one already worn white by the friction of all the rubbing together and wondered if the entire expanse of them would have lost their markings by the end of the exhibition. Now we’ll never know, and a lot of lungs are probably the better for it.

As the perils of participatory art go, at least at the Tate, this latest example is probably the most profound. The problems in the other pieces were more easily avoided by visitors: In 2006 Carsten Höller’s enormous spiral slides reportedly caused a few injuries, and a year later three people got too close to Doris Salcedo’s “Shibboleth” — an extended, widening crack in the floor — and fell in.

Perhaps the Tate will finally learn its lesson about due diligence. For now, it is consulting with the artist about widening a pathway that runs along the long side the piece to allow more viewers to get close. It is also having what it calls the “ceramic dust” tested for its level of danger, in hopes that direct access can be restored to some extent.

Meanwhile, experientially, “Sunflower Seeds” has been severely curtailed, stripped, really, of the most appealing qualities of the work: not just the crackle produced by moving through the seeds, but also the way they slow your progress. Their quite un-sunflowery weight in your hand. The slightly overwhelming sense that each one is unique, like a fingerprint or a grain of sand, thanks to the three or four strokes of hand-painted black on both sides. None of this can really be experienced at a remove. All that remains is the vast grayness, stretching into the distance like a congealed sea, and of course the idea: the quantity, the labor, the care.

Before my Wednesday afternoon visit, I had watched a video segment on the Tate’s Web site, tate.org.uk, in which a curator cautioned people not to take the seeds. Until then, I had assumed that pocketing a few would be part of the experience, as with Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s piles of brightly wrapped candy.

And maybe now it should be — perhaps Mr. Ai and the museum should reconsider the prohibition, and hand out (or sell) little packets of the seeds. That way people could have some immediate contact and get a better idea of what moving across their gray terrain might be like, without putting their health at risk.

En Berlín, una exhibición sobre Hitler propone repensar el rol del pueblo alemán en un momento de creciente rechazo a los inmigrantes

2010-10-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

An advertisement for the Hitler Youth program.

Hitler exhibit explores a wider circle of guilt

Slide show

BERLIN — As artifacts go, they are mere trinkets — an old purse, playing cards, a lantern. Even the display that caused the crowds to stop and stare is a simple embroidered tapestry, stitched by village women.

But the exhibits that opened Friday at the German Historical Museum are intentionally prosaic: they emphasize the everyday way that ordinary Germans once accepted, and often celebrated, Hitler.

The household items had Nazi logos and colors. The tapestry, a tribute to the union of church, state and party, was woven by a church congregation at the behest of their priest.

“This is what we call self-mobilization of society,” said Hans-Ulrich Thamer, one of three curators to assemble the exhibit at the German Historical Museum. “As a person, Hitler was a very ordinary man. He was nothing without the people.”

This show, “Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime,” opened Friday. It was billed as the first in Germany since the end of World War II to focus exclusively on Adolf Hitler. Germany outlaws public displays of some Nazi symbols, and the curators took care to avoid showing items that appeared to glorify Hitler. His uniforms, for example, remained in storage.

Instead, the show focuses on the society that nurtured and empowered him. It is not the first time historians have argued that Hitler did not corral the Germans as much as the Germans elevated Hitler. But one curator said the message was arguably more vital for Germany now than at any time in the past six decades, as rising nationalism, more open hostility to immigrants and a generational disconnect from the events of the Nazi era have older Germans concerned about repeating the past.

“The only hope for stopping extremists is to isolate them from society so that they are separated, so they do not have a relationship with the bourgeoisie and the other classes,” Mr. Thamer said. “The Nazis were members of high society. This was the dangerous moment.

“This we have to avoid from happening.”

Increasingly, Germans have put the guilt of the past behind them, reasserting their pride in national identity in many positive ways. But there also have been troubling signs seeping from the margins into the mainstream.

A best-selling book by a former banker promoted genetic theories of intelligence and said that Muslims were “dumbing down” society. A leading politician condemned “alien cultures.” A new right-wing party recently attracted hundreds to a speech by the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

Even government officials say that immigrant children are picking on native Germans. The media is filled daily with reports of conflict between immigrants, especially Muslims, and Germans.

The planners began discussing this kind of show 10 years ago, Mr. Thamer said. An expert committee viewed it as part of a continuum of penance and awareness that historians say began with the Auschwitz trials.

The process did not always go smoothly. A 1995 exhibition in Hamburg was widely condemned for showing that the Wehrmacht, or regular army, committed atrocities on the eastern front, just like the SS, the Nazi special police. The public was not ready to widen the sense of responsibility for Nazi-era wrongs.

But for this show, museum officials thought the time would be right. And in the end, they said, the timing added special value.

“It would be presumptuous to say that an exhibition could counter the radiance of populism,” said Rudolf Trabold, spokesman for the museum. “We try to achieve what we can afford, and to achieve our mission. But if that outshines the populist power of a Geert Wilders, I myself would not presume to say.”

As he walked through the exhibit on Friday, Eric Pignolet, a Belgian who has lived in Berlin for 22 years, said he was pleased that Germans were no longer saying, “I didn’t know.” But he said he was troubled by parallels between then and now.

“I think if you had someone like him today, it could be very dangerous,” he said halfway through his walk through the displays about Hitler. “There are a lot of people out there who want jobs, who are not happy with the political leadership, who would vote for someone like him if he came along.”

The line had already formed when the museum doors opened at 10 a.m. An estimated 3,000 visitors paid the $8.40 admission fee to see the nearly 1,000 items, including photographs, videos, uniforms and a narrative that explained the early appeal of a man and a party that offered jobs, pride and a sense of purpose, while employing wholesale violence and brutality to those who did not go along.

“This exhibition is about Hitler and the Germans — meaning the social and political and individual processes by which much of the German people became enablers, colluders, co-criminals in the Holocaust,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior trans-Atlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin. “That this was so is now a mainstream view, rejected only by a small minority of very elderly and deluded people, or the German extreme right-wing fringe. But it took us a while to get there.”

The museum placed the display downstairs, below street level, so it was dark and silent. Three images of Hitler projected on a mesh screen opened the show; behind them were pictures of cheering crowds, marching soldiers and other demonstrations of popular support. Around the corner were details of how Hitler was embraced early on, by the elite in Munich. “The wives of entrepreneurs, such as Elsa Bruckhmann, vied to be the first to drag Hitler” to a social event, one display said.

“Our teachers in the past, were integrated in that system, and I can remember they wanted to tell us that the German people became the first victim of Hitler, that they were practically mugged,” said Klaus Peter Triebel from Seefeld, near Munich.

The exhibit explains the early appeal of the Nazis, who demonstrated a keen appreciation for the politics of populism’s creating a sense of unity and purpose: “Attending popular sports events, film premiers, they dedicated autobahns and new industrial builds,” read a display.

There were also the familiar striped uniforms forced on prisoners in the concentration camps, and the cold calculation in maps that showed the division of Poland between Germany and Russia.

But over and over, the point was spelled out clearly in the exhibit’s plaques like one, near letters written by children who were sent off to concentration camps, that said: “Hitler was able to implement his military and extermination objectives because the military and economic elites were willing to carry out his war.”

The exhibit, with all its photographs of young and old adoring Hitler, also sought to dispel the notion that the Nazi spirit was simply impossible to resist. It held up Johann Georg Elser as proof that “it was possible for an individual to develop into a resistance fighter.”

Mr. Elser was a carpenter who tried to kill Hitler at the outset of the war and was hanged for his actions.

His story, however, left some viewers to wonder why their parents and grandparents had not rejected Hitler. Why everyone went mad.

“My father was a Hitler Youth,” said Gutfreund Keller, as she walked through the exhibit with her husband and two daughters. “It’s hard to understand.”

Stefan Pauly contributed reporting.

Arte contemporáneo en Venecia, Italia

2010-10-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo's studio at Palazzo Fortuny.

In arts capital, galleries fill a void

Venice has no permanent museum of contemporary art. Perhaps it has not felt the need for one because every two years the contemporary art world descends en masse for the Visual Arts Biennale, which for months occupies scores of locations all around the city.

In any case, there’s something paradoxical about a contemporary art museum. The longer a collection sits around, the less contemporary it becomes. The French multimillionaire François Pinault took over Palazzo Grassi, the Fiat Group’s flagship exhibition space on the Grand Canal, in 2005 and added the refurbished Dogana, or Customs House (on which he flies his own Breton flag), to his empire last year. He uses both spaces primarily to showcase his own collection of post-modern art. Some pieces on display at Palazzo Grassi go back nearly 50 years.

All of which is not to say that the city does not have a homegrown contemporary art scene, and much of it can be found in areas that have been steeped in art and artists for centuries.

Many of Venice’s commercial art galleries are concentrated in the central San Marco district, in a triangle of streets and squares between Palazzo Grassi, the Fenice Opera House and Palazzo Fortuny. There’s a cluster of galleries around the Fenice and another in and around the tiny San Samuele area behind Palazzo Grassi.

Veronese had his studio-house on the now gallery-lined Salizzada San Samuele. Casanova was born here, the illegitimate child of an actress and an aristocratic theatrical entrepreneur, and played the violin in the San Samuele theater where his mother performed. Byron lived here with his menagerie of exotic animals and mistresses. (At various points in its history, San Samuele was chiefly famous for its prostitutes.)

Fiat’s acquisition of Palazzo Grassi and the nearly 20-year run of blockbuster exhibitions it held there brought hundreds of thousands of visitors to San Samuele and encouraged the blossoming of the neighborhood’s cosmopolitan gallery scene. This was also a period when Venice’s stores were closing as the population declined and children became reluctant to follow their parents into family businesses. The spaces left vacant attracted a new generation of aspiring gallerists.

The galleries are small, and some represent only one or a limited range of artists. This is partly due to the economic squeeze: galleries fall back on reliable sellers to pay the rent rather than taking risks by showing untried artists. Italy’s arcane, restrictive licensing laws are another factor: it is easier to open an “artisanal” outlet authorized to display only one type of product, which, when applied to art, means the work of a single artist.

While the opening of a Palazzo Grassi show during the Fiat days was an event, as any of the San Samuele galleries will tell you now, Mr. Pinault has so far failed to create the same buzz. The number of visitors appears to have dwindled to a trickle — hardly surprisingly given the present show has been going on there since the last Visual Arts Biennale in 2009 and will remain in place until April, when it will have run for nearly two years. How edgy is that?

This lapse has spurred the galleries of the triangle to initiatives of their own. Fifteen of them put on “Three Days in September,” a jamboree to coincide with the opening of the Architectural Biennale and the Venice Film Festival, with late-night openings and drinks parties.

And Palazzo Fortuny, at another corner of the triangle, has become ever more lively. Shows and featured artists change frequently. At the moment there are seven simultaneous temporary exhibitions (continuing until Jan. 9) across its four floors.

The palazzo itself was once the working space of an artist. Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo arrived in Venice from Granada in 1899, four years after the first Venice Biennale, and took a studio in the attic of the 15th-century building that now bears his name. Painter, engraver, sculptor, photographer, fabric-maker, fashion and theater designer, inventor of a theatrical lighting system and stylish domestic lamps, he gradually took over the rest of the palazzo, floor by floor, to accommodate his pursuits.

At the time of his death in 1949, it was Fortuny’s hope that Palazzo Fortuny would become a Spanish cultural center, but his homeland refused the legacy and, when his widow, Henriette, died in 1956, the palazzo and its contents were left to Venice’s municipality.

Since then the palazzo has gone through phases of revival and neglect. But under the leadership of its current director, Daniela Ferretti, the Fortuny has been reborn. Over the past couple of years Ms. Ferretti has curated a series of colorful and entertaining exhibitions, increasingly mixing them with the Fortuny’s permanent collection — a successful formula, both enhancing the contemporary pieces and highlighting the collection.

Among the shows have been ones devoted to the Art Deco designer George Barbier, the sculptor and couturier Roberto Capucci, and the sculptors Isabelle de Borchgrave, working with painted papers, and Francesco Candeloro, with laser-cut plexiglass.

The current exhibitions open on the ground floor with the furniture, fabrics and portraits of the Irish artist Nuala Goodman. On the second floor, the works of two contemporary artists — the painter Marco Tirelli and the sculptor and jewelry maker Alberto Zorzi — are integrated with a rich variety of Fortuny pieces, including some beautiful examples of his fashions from two private collections. Two side rooms host a score of still-lifes by Giorgio Morandi, some on public view for the first time.

On the floor above are large canvases of Mr. Tirelli’s subtle monochrome images of geometrical forms and architectural spaces. The top floor is shared by 11 installations in glass, copper, gold and found objects by Giorgio Vigna, and by “My Wild Places,” 40 magnificent photographs by the Venetian-born Luca Campigotto, of mountains, deserts, polar wildernesses and oceans.

There are also, inevitably in Venice, artists pursuing their work, still unknown, but undaunted. On a recent Saturday morning stroll around the warren of narrow alleys near by, where the ladies of the night used to dwell, I came across an artist whose name you likely haven’t heard: Paolo Paitowsky. He was shaping his latest compositions: arrangements of carrots and apples in the iron window grills of his house, which he photographs — and then enters his work in competitions.

Noticias :::

2010-10-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

A close-up of Ai Weiwei' sunflower seeds, which were handcrafted by a team of 1,600 artisansPhoto: GETTY

The floor of the gallery's vast Turbine Hall has been carpeted with 100 million porcelain seeds in a new installation by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Visitors are encouraged to pick them up and crunch them underfoot for an interactive art experience.

However, Tate bosses have issued a stern warning after visitors on launch day said they were fighting the urge to take home a seed as a memento - raising the possibility that the 1,000sq metre work could be significantly smaller before the year is out.

"We are encouraging people to walk on them - but certainly not to take them," said Juliet Bingham, the curator.

The artist himself appeared tickled by the notion of his work spreading across the world via the pockets of visitors. But he said: "For the museum's part, the argument is very clear. This is a total work and we want people to see the full effect of 100 million seeds."

He was more worried about somebody mistaking them for the real thing. "People might also like to eat them. That's a safety issue. They might try to sue the Tate for that."

The installation is the latest in the Unilever Series. Previous works include Carsten Holler's giant slides and Olafur Eliasson's fake sun.

MAS INFO SOBRE LA EXHIBICION :::

The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern has been carpeted with more than 100 million "sunflower seeds" - the latest commission in the gallery's popular Unilever Series. Visitors will be able to walk on and touch the seeds - the brainchild of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei - which are in fact made of porcelain. Each imitation seed husk was individually handcrafted by skilled artisans and now covers 1,000 square metres of the London gallery's Turbine Hall. The ceramic seeds were moulded, fired at soaring temperatures, hand-painted and then fired again over the course of two years.

Sunflower seeds are a popular Chinese street snack but also hold another meaning for the artist, a political dissident in China. During the Cultural Revolution, propaganda images showed Chairman Mao as the sun and the mass of people as sunflowers turning towards him.

Chief curator Sheena Wagstaff said of the new work: "It's a beautifully simple idea that belies an extraordinary rich layer of meanings and references." Curator Juliet Bingham added: "To touch one seed is to touch the whole. It's a poignant commentary on the relationships between individuals and the masses."

More than 150 tonnes of seeds have been used for the 10cm (4in) deep, "extremely costly" installation produced by 1,600 people in China. The seeds were made over a process of 20 to 30 steps in the city of Jingdezhen, which is renowned for its production of imperial porcelain. Ai Weiwei said: "I made three or four seeds. I couldn't really make them. They picked them out and threw them away saying 'It looks so bad... It's no good'" At the end of the show all the seeds will be returned to the artist's studio in Beijing, as long as they have not broken under the weight of visitors' feet. Asked what he would do with the seeds afterwards, he joked: "I'll try to cook with them. Maybe some new product will come out." He said the artisans were surprised to have been asked to make the seeds, saying: "They are used to making practical objects" and that if he had explained the end result "nobody would believe it".

LINKS

Noticias ::: Fisk University files new plan to sell share in Stieglitz collection

2010-10-13T22:45:00.000-07:00

Fisk University has drafted a new plan to sell a $30 million share in its art collection to an Arkansas museum, hoping that this time the court will sign off on the deal.

Documents filed with a Nashville chancery court Friday attempt to remove provisions that had raised alarms — including language that could have allowed the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to slowly buy up the entire $73 million art collection if Fisk was unable to pay its share of the upkeep.

"Neither Fisk nor Crystal Bridges intended for this agreement to result in the erosion of Fisk's ownership in the Stieglitz collection," Fisk's attorneys wrote in the filing.

The university is asking the court to set aside the wishes of artist Georgia O'Keeffe, who gave the university 101 modern art masterpieces that she and her husband, photographer Arthur Stieglitz, had collected. The collection includes works by O'Keeffe, Picasso, Cezanne and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Fisk argued that the cost of maintaining the collection had become burdensome for the struggling school and that the $30 million sale agreement with Crystal Bridges is the only way to restore its depleted endowment fund.

Taking no chances, the university lifted much of the language for its changes directly from an earlier court order by Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle. Lyle has given Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper — who is battling to block the sale and keep the art in Nashville — until Oct. 22 to submit new arguments against the sale.

Cooper has argued that setting aside O'Keeffe's wishes would have a chilling effect on charitable donations to other Tennessee universities and charities. In court, his attorneys also pointed out that Fisk has said it needs at least $150 million to get back on sound fiscal footing — and the $30 million art sale would be only a drop in the bucket.

"The fact remains that selling the Stieglitz Collection neither solves Fisk's underlying financial problems nor honors the intent of the donor, Georgia O'Keeffe," Cooper said in a statement. "There are alternatives that would ensure the collection remains available to Fisk students and the Nashville public in a way that honors the mission and the history of Fisk, protects the public interest and respects the donor's wishes."

Revised Plan

Earlier this fall, Cooper offered the court his proposal to keep the art in Nashville by moving it from Fisk to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts until the university was in better shape. Amid angry protests from Fisk students and the community, the judge rejected the proposal and ordered Cooper to focus on the merits of the sales agreement.

Fisk's revised sale plan removes a provision that would have set up a separate Delaware-based corporation to oversee the art and mediate between Fisk and Crystal Bridges. Opponents warned that the corporation, again, could have shifted the balance of power in the art-sharing agreement to Crystal Bridges' favor. Instead, the chancery court would oversee any disputes between the two sides.

The new contract also blocks Crystal Bridges from selling its share of the collection without the Davidson County court's permission.

It also beefs up the language in the contract urging that O'Keeffe's wishes be followed as closely as possible.

O'Keeffe's gift to Fisk came with a great many strings attached.

Along with her wish that the collection never be sold, O'Keeffe also left detailed instructions about everything from how the collection should be displayed to the color the gallery walls should be painted.

Rotating Collection

The deal Fisk hopes to strike with Crystal Bridges would rotate the collection between Nashville and Bentonville, Ark.

The new agreement outlines the first schedule for the art swap: The art would remain at Fisk until 2013, go to Crystal Bridges for two years, then return to Fisk from 2015 to 2017 and continue to rotate every two years.

While the art is out of town, the empty spaces in the university's Van Vechten gallery would be filled with images of the art and interactive computer kiosks for students to access information about the collection.

"In the 21st century, museums have adopted the practice of sharing artwork to reduce the cost of acquisition and to ensure that a broader segment of the population can view and study collections," Fisk University President Hazel O'Leary said in a statement. "The students of Fisk, to whom Georgia O'Keeffe made the gift of art, citizens of Nashville and of the state of Tennessee, are in no way adversely impacted by this sharing agreement. Rather, because of the sharing arrangement, more people in the South can enjoy and study The Stieglitz Collection which was the donor's intent."

El Pais ::: La maleta mexicana

2010-10-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

Fotografía de David Seymour, Chim (1911-1956).

La maleta del tiempo

Me habían dejado solo en una gran habitación que tenía algo de almacén y de archivo, con una mesa muy larga en el centro, con lámparas bajas que difundían una luz de clínica. Ahora no estoy seguro de si había alguna ventana, pero el caso es que no recuerdo haberme asomado a una. La habitación estaba en el piso catorce o quince de una torre de la Sexta Avenida, muy cerca del tráfico de la Calle 42, agravado aquella mañana por esa mezcla vengativa de lluvia helada y viento que se abate sobre Nueva York algunos días de invierno. Pero en mi recuerdo de la habitación hay un silencio de cripta o cámara de seguridad que se confirmó cuando una secretaria se me acercó calladamente por detrás para pedirme que leyera y firmara una declaración de confidencialidad, uno de esos meticulosos documentos legales a los que hay tanta afición en Estados Unidos. Me comprometía a no sacar nada del archivo sin autorización expresa y a no difundir nada de lo que encontrara en él sin acuerdo previo con la institución que me había invitado. Leí por encima, más que nada por no dar una impresión de falta de seriedad a la secretaria, y firmé con mi descuido español, con prisa, para seguir volcado sobre las fundas de plástico de los archivadores en los que estaba viendo, en tiras de contactos, las más de cuatro mil fotos de la llamada maleta mexicana de Robert Capa, Gerda Taro y David Seymour, Chim.

La llegada de la secretaria me había sacado fugazmente de la cripta de tiempo en la que volví a sumergirme durante varias horas. Una semana antes había recibido un correo electrónico de Cynthia Young, del International Center of Photography. Estaban terminando de catalogar esos millares de fotografías y les quedaban dudas sobre algunos de los personajes y los lugares que aparecían en ellas. Si a mí no me importaba, si tenía tiempo, me agradecerían que fuera a revisarlas. Peleando con un paraguas que desbarataban los golpes contrarios de viento de todas las esquinas, avanzando entre la gente apresurada y el tráfico mientras la lluvia me calaba los zapatos y me mojaba en frías rachas casi horizontales los pantalones llegué a la torre contigua al edificio donde está la sala de exposiciones del ICP. Unos minutos después me había olvidado de la lluvia, de la mañana de invierno, de las sirenas de los camiones de bomberos, de Nueva York, del presente. Estaba sentado en un extremo de aquella mesa tan larga, bajo la luz blanca de las lámparas, y tenía delante de mí cinco enormes archivadores de anillas, de tapas negras. Dentro de ellos estaba mi país. Era como haber levantado la tapa de un baúl que nadie ha abierto en muchísimos años y recibir de golpe todo el olor del tiempo, el pasado intacto, en estado puro, dolorosamente familiar y al mismo tiempo desconocido; era como encontrar de pronto un yacimiento arqueológico de mi vida más íntima: de esa parte crucial de la propia vida que tuvo lugar antes de que uno naciera.

Cynthia Young, una mujer seria, joven, concentrada, tensa a la manera americana, me propuso que eligiera alguna foto que me gustara mucho y escribiera un ensayo breve sobre ella para el catálogo. Pero cómo elegir, entre aquella abundancia, entre tanto dolor de hace ya casi tres cuartos de siglo, preservado en frágiles negativos, salvado casi por un milagro del azar de la gran catástrofe de Europa. En cada foto había una sorpresa, una desgarradura, un reconocimiento. Vi campesinos trillando en el campo en cualquiera de los veranos de la guerra. Vi milicianos con alpargatas, con sombreros de paja, con cascos desiguales procedentes de quién sabe qué batallas, durmiendo tirados sobre la tierra pelada, derrumbados de agotamiento, o compartiendo platos de rancho, o lanzándose al asalto por laderas pedregosas. Vi un hombre con boina sucia y cara sin afeitar que lleva en brazos a un chico grandullón que está herido o está muerto, y detrás de él una pared encalada, y un portalón de maderas viejas. Y en cada uno de esos detalles reconocía con pena y ternura las superficies tan ásperas de mi país, que era tan pobre en los tiempos en que se tomaron esas fotografías, que lo siguió siendo cuando yo empezaba a tener recuerdos. Mi mundo verdadero estaba en las fotos, no en la sala de la que me había olvidado, no en la ciudad que se extendía más allá. Esas personas que las habrían examinado y catalogado, qué sentirían cuando vieran lo que para mí era pura memoria, cuando comprobaran en las enciclopedias los datos de una guerra nebulosa y exótica, con figurantes de uniformes tan desiguales, con mujeres y niños a los que se les veía correr huyendo de las bombas por calles abstractas de ciudades en guerra, en las que un letrero, un cartel medio desgarrado en un muro, me permitían a mí identificar un lugar exacto, una fecha.

A veces reconocía caras, y como eran fotos que no se han visto nunca o casi nunca la persona retratada cobrada una presencia estremecedora: Manuel Azaña, fotografiado por Chim, quizás en la primavera de 1936, o a principios del verano, en el tiempo tan breve que pasó entre su elección como presidente de la República y el comienzo del desastre, más cercano y verdadero porque no está posando, porque el fotógrafo lo ha tomado por sorpresa mientras charla y gesticula; Hemingway, compartiendo cigarrillos y risas con algunos militares y con Herbert Matthews, el valeroso corresponsal de The New York Times; Dolores Ibarruri, pensativa, no épica ni declamatoria, en un interior de penumbra, recostada en un sofá; y Federico García Lorca, visto de golpe, al pasar una página, inédito en ese gesto de atención cotidiana, la cara carnosa moldeada por una fuerte luz matinal, la chaqueta moderna, como de entretiempo, la corbata clara resaltando contra la camisa más oscura, un hombre joven en la plenitud de sus treinta y siete años, una mañana como cualquier otra de una vida en la que no hay ningún indicio del espantoso porvenir: el porvenir que no está fijado, que podría no suceder.

Cynthia Young me señaló una foto sobre la que no tenía ninguna pista, tomada desde una ventana: una calle ancha, con edificios altos a los lados, con toldos, con largas sombras como de principio de la mañana o final de la tarde, con automóvil y figuras diminutas de gente. Al instante reconocí la Gran Vía de Madrid, una mañana tal vez de principios de verano, por los toldos que hay en casi todos los portales, y deduje por el ángulo el lugar donde había sido tomada la foto: una ventana alta del hotel Florida, que estaba en la esquina de Callao, y donde se alojaron durante la guerra tantos corresponsales y visitantes extranjeros. Pero fijándose bien no hay signos de guerra: es una hora temprana, el aire permanece fresco en las zonas de sombra, circulan los coches, desde la distancia de la ventana muy alta se ve a la gente caminando sin miedo, sin demasiada prisa.

Rediscovered Spanish Civil War negatives by Capa, Chim, and Taro. International Center of Photography. Nueva York. Hasta el 9 de enero de 2011. www.icp.org. antoniomuñozmolina.es

Reinaugura el Museo de Arte de Ponce

2010-10-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

Una de las instituciones museísticas más importantes de Puerto Rico, y el único museo en la isla acreditado por la American Association of Museums, reabre sus puertas luego de varios años de estar cerrado por obras. El MAP mudó temporeramente sus operaciones al centro comercial Plaza las Américas y también organizó, junto a otras importantes instituciones, como el Museo del Prado en Madrid y el Tate Modern en Londres, préstamos de obra para que las obras de la colección circularan por el mundo. Esta estrategia ayuda a mantener al museo activo y darle renombre a la colección, ayudando también en sus estrategias de difusión cultural e incluso recaudación de fondos.

Haga 'click' en las imágenes para verlas más grande.

Dinosaurios!

2010-10-04T11:18:00.001-07:00

Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata

En la Argentina se han realizado algunos de los más grandes descubrimientos que involucran dinosaurios y meteoritos. Uno de los lugares obligatorios a visitar es el Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata en la provincia de Buenos Aires.

Link

Comisionan instalación de Pepón Osorio en museo universitario

2010-10-04T11:07:00.001-07:00

Drowned in a Glass of Water: An Installation by Pepón Osorio
Williams College Museum of Art
September 25, 2010–February 6, 2011

The museum has commissioned a new work of art by artist Pepón Osorio, whose creative practice involves a process of social engagement. Over the past year, Osorio has shared conversations, stories, and meals with many people in Williamstown and North Adams, Massachusetts. The result—a large-scale, multimedia installation that slowly revolves—represents the stories of two families, transforming personal memory into a collective narrative. What are the dynamics that nourish an individual, a family, or a community? How do we cope with challenges that seem so large we feel like we are “drowning in a glass of water”? Following Osorio’s practice, the exhibition opened first in an unconventional setting—a former Chevrolet dealership in North Adams. By shifting context, the project enables the museum to link audiences in dialogue and reflection and become a crossroad to the community. Organized by Cynthia Way, Director of Education and Visitor Experience.

Williams College Museum of Art
The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Imágenes disponibles aquí :::

EL Pais ::: Por la Crisis, museos en España organizan muestras con colecciones privadas

2010-10-04T11:00:00.001-07:00

Los Museos Brillan con Arte Privado

Las exposiciones temporales sirven para atraer visitantes a los museos y para hacer funcionar sus cajas registradoras. El modelo básico consiste en buscar un artista o un movimiento y, a partir de las colecciones del propio museo, enriquecerlo con préstamos de otros centros o de colecciones privadas; un sistema tan laborioso como costoso. La drástica disminución de presupuestos de los museos ha provocado que sus responsables busquen nuevas recetas mucho más baratas.

La temporada que acaba de comenzar está llena de ejemplos. La más espectacular se verá desde el próximo miércoles en la Fundación Mapfre. Se trata de Made in USA, arte americano de The Phillips Collection de Washington, en la que 91 obras de 63 artistas detallan la esencia del arte estadounidense durante un siglo, desde Hopper a Georgia O'Keeffe, Pollock, Motherwell o Rothko.

Edward Hopper, Domingo

Poco después, el 19 de octubre, el Prado abrirá sus salas a una de las máximas estrellas del impresionismo: Auguste Renoir. Ocasión única para contemplar 31 pinturas prestadas por la Fundación Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute de Williamstown (Estados Unidos). El IVAM, museo pionero en esta práctica, mostrará a partir del jueves la colección Christian Stein (con obras de Mario Merz, Boetti, Tombly, Lucio Fontana, Pino Pascali, Giulio Paolini, Piero Manzoni, Luciano Fabro o Jannis Kounellis) y también The Judith Rothschild Collection, colección de obra sobre papel propiedad del MoMA.

Miguel Zugaza, director del Prado, precisa que la Fundación Clark es ya más un museo que una colección particular y que su aportación a la pinacoteca es doblemente importante. "Empezando por la calidad de su colección", explica. "Por la novedad que supone para el público de nuestro país ver una pequeña retrospectiva de uno de los grandes maestros del impresionismo -el que más interés tenía en pertenecer a la historia del arte y en que su obra se expusiera en los museos- y, no menos importante, por presentar en el seno de una gran colección privada histórica, como es la que dio origen al Prado, la pasión coleccionista del siglo XX. Curiosamente, frente a otras colecciones con una visión más enciclopédica, como la del barón Thyssen, los Clark centraron una buena parte de su interés en un artista concreto, algo también muy conectado con el Prado: nuestra colección reproduce también la pasión de Felipe II por El Bosco y de Felipe IV por Rubens y Velázquez. De hecho, la sala central del museo Clark está consagrada a su colección de Renoir de forma similar a lo que sucede aquí con Velázquez".

El director del Prado considera que el intercambio de colecciones beneficia a todas las partes implicadas. "Frente a la tendencia actual de muchas instituciones de alquilar exposiciones, creo que tiene más interés compartir colecciones entre museos, como en este caso hacemos el Prado y el Clark. Ahora se presenta los renoir del Clark en el Prado y, dentro de unos años, coincidiendo con la apertura de la nueva ampliación que está construyendo Tadao Ando en Williamstown, nosotros presentaremos allí una pequeña exposición sobre el desnudo en el coleccionismo real".

Consuelo Císcar, directora del IVAM, ha practicado el intercambio desde su llegada al museo. Argumenta que las ventajas de presentar colecciones son múltiples, tanto en el terreno económico como en el de la difusión, la investigación, la colaboración con otros centros públicos y privados y la coherencia del relato: "Grandes obras del arte contemporáneo están en colecciones privadas. Es la única forma de verlas".

La Fundación Mapfre es la institución que más ha destacado en este campo, con el Impresionismo el pasado año y con la Phillips Collection esta temporada. El director general de la fundación, Pablo Jiménez Burillo, declina hablar del coste de estos desembarcos artísticos y asegura que solo presenta exposiciones de una sola colección pública o privada de manera excepcional. "En más de 20 años de exposiciones apenas siete u ocho han sido de colecciones procedentes de un solo museo y por razones muy concretas. En el caso del Impresionismo, gracias al cierre de una parte del Museo D'Orsay fue posible traer obras que normalmente no hubieran podido salir de París. Es el mismo caso de la exposición de Picasso en el Museo Reina Sofía, o las colecciones del Museo Ponce de Puerto Rico en el Prado". En cualquier caso, todos piensan en el ahorro económico sin perder calidad artística.

Elpais.com ::: Sobre curadores, la historia del comisariado y el libro Creamier

2010-10-04T10:50:00.000-07:00

El Arte de Estructurar el Caos en El Pais

Los comisarios de exposiciones son una especie de narradores capaces de organizar un "relato" a partir de las obras que seleccionan. Dos libros recientes rastrean la historia y actualidad de este quehacer, entre lo creativo y el oportunismo

El artista más influyente del siglo XX -y también el primer curador avant la lettre-solía decir que existen dos clases de artistas, los que tienen tratos con la sociedad y los absolutamente independientes. Como artista de la segunda categoría, Marcel Duchamp agregaba: "Para mí, el peligro está en caer en gracia al público inmediato, a ese público primero que te arropa, te acepta y te da el éxito. Yo preferiría esperar al público que vendrá dentro de cincuenta años, o de cien años, después de muerto". Por entonces -corría el año 1953- Duchamp había montado la primera exposición internacional sobre dadaísmo en la Janis Gallery, un espacio que se había convertido en el escaparate principal de la Escuela de Nueva York. Diseñó el catálogo, que era de por sí dadá puro: una publicación de gran formato en papel de seda con textos en diversas tipografías de Arp, Lévesque y Tzara dispuestos en estrechas columnas que cruzaban la página en diagonal. Cuando las hojas llegaron a la galería, cogió una, la estrujó como una bola y pidió que se mandara así a los invitados. El día de la inauguración había una papelera de mimbre junto a la entrada de la galería llena de catálogos arrugados.

En su esfuerzo por extraer tanto del mundo, Duchamp fue un personaje siempre a contracorriente. Cuando se requería que el artista se encerrara en el estudio, se mantuvo ayudando a otros creadores, como ideólogo o como diseñador de exposiciones. Trabajó para Peggy Guggenheim, Catherine Dreier, los Arensberg y los Kiesler. Su fuerza como comisario se manifestaba en la serena persistencia de sus ideas; como artista, su fecundidad era infinita, porque representaba el corazón y la cabeza, en lugar de los privilegios de la fama. Robert Motherwell, el más culto de los expresionistas abstractos, le preguntó en una ocasión: "Siendo francés, ¿por qué prefieres Nueva York? "Porque París te devora, respondió señalando una cesta de cangrejos que se desgarraban a zarpazos. Aquí me siento a salvo".

Roe Ethridge, Myla with Column (2008), de Roe Ethridge. Imagen del libro Creamier

Décadas después, el llamado mundillo del arte responde exactamente a aquella apreciación de Duchamp. Después de todo, el arte contemporáneo había aprendido de él la compleja idea de que el artista del mañana debía, al mismo tiempo, enfrentarse al dilema dialéctico de nombrar el arte de otra forma y quitarle esa cualidad a todo lo que encontrara. La evasión como método. Una gioconda con bigotes. Una merde enlatada. Y muchas cestas de cangrejos, todos buscando la fama, todos buscando la muerte. La utopía alcanzada.

La historia del arte, que en el siglo XIX llegó a ser una de las disciplinas más destacadas dentro del terreno de las ciencias sociales, presenta hoy síntomas de debilidad extrema. Si artistas como Duchamp o Man Ray desempeñaron un papel definitorio en la creación de las grandes colecciones, en su lugar la figura del "hacedor de exposiciones" o curador ha cobrado una fuerza inusitada, lo que no implica necesariamente un poder de restitución. El papel del comisario aparece incorporado a profesiones relacionadas con el arte, como directores de museo, artistas, marchantes o críticos. A diferencia de figuras pioneras como Alfred Barr y Werner Hofmann, directores fundadores de las colecciones del MOMA y del Jahrhunderts de Viena, respectivamente, o de los museólogos Franz Meyer, Arnold Rüdlinger y Willem Sandberg, los comisarios "creadores" idean una manera más dinámica de entender el arte, muy cercana a la narración. Sus antecedentes hay que buscarlos en personajes de energía infinita como Walter Hopps, que empezó como galerista en Los Ángeles antes de organizar la primera panorámica de arte pop americano en un museo y la primera institucional de Duchamp. Pontus Hultén, director fundador del Beaubourg, fue lo que hoy diríamos un comisario global y el primero que definió el museo como un espacio elástico y abierto que acoge una plétora de actividades entre sus muros. Gracias a él, Estocolmo emergió como una de las capitales de las artes.

Pensemos también en los conservadores de los museos más importantes de Centroeuropa durante los sesenta y setenta -el Stedelijk de Ámsterdam, Eindhoven, Krefeld o Mönchengladbach- que fueron conscientes de las rápidas transformaciones que experimentaba el sistema social occidental, incluida la impenitente mercantilización de nuestra vida. Como explica Peter Pakesch, director artístico de la Kunsthaus de Graz, "era un momento en que la crítica se expandió más allá de las revistas y las universidades, transformó el papel de las galerías, que llegaron a tener gran éxito en el desempeño de un papel público, sobre todo en lo tocante a la necesidad de un espacio específico para determinados proyectos. Muchos galeristas procedían de otras profesiones. Konrad Fischer comenzó siendo artista; Paul Maenz había iniciado su carrera en el campo de la publicidad. Se habían acabado los marchantes al estilo clásico; los nuevos pasaron a ser más bien intermediarios. Surgió una estructura completamente nueva".

Harald Szeemann, para muchos el profeta perdurable del comisariado, fue un archivero, montador, jefe de prensa, contable, pero, sobre todo, cómplice de artistas. Hans Ulrich Obrist, uno de los curadores más hiperactivos del momento, cree que las muestras eclécticas del comisario suizo, fallecido en 2005, "traducen una energía sin límites para la investigación y un saber enciclopédico no solo del arte contemporáneo sino también de los acontecimientos sociales e históricos que han moldeado nuestro mundo posilustrado". El trabajo de Szeemann en la Kuntshalle de Berna y su versión de 1972 de la Documenta justifican su teoría de que el trabajo del comisario consiste en "estructurar el caos". De Monte Veritá (1978), una muestra que relata las utopías visionarias de comienzos del siglo XX en Europa, el artista italiano Mario Merz dijo que "sin duda Szeemann fue capaz de visualizar en ella el desorden que nosotros, como artistas, tenemos en la cabeza. Un día somos anarquistas, otros borrachos; al siguiente, místicos".

"Después de Hultén y Szeemann, nos queda seguir el trabajo de organizar un entorno global. El museo de éxito se ha convertido en empresa, la bienal está en crisis, ¿qué acecha a la vuelta de la esquina?, se pregunta Daniel Birnbaum, comisario de la Bienal de Venecia 2009. Es posible que los nuevos comisarios respondan a la definición de la primera categoría de artistas de Duchamp, creadores que se diluyen en la corriente de la acción inmediata de los mercados manejados por coleccionistas y marchantes. En el libro Breve historia del comisariado, Obrist repasa en una serie de entrevistas los perfiles de las grandes cabezas del siglo XX, que todavía hoy iluminan como un faro el pasado reciente del arte. Un recopilatorio que dista mucho de la vulgar actualidad descrita a cuentagotas en Creamier, el periódico/libro que acaba de lanzar Phaidon, una especie de Financial Times del comisariado cuya realidad principal es difundir el velocísimo replanteamiento de la potente y ubicua generación.4 como promotores de las técnicas de entrenamiento del artista en el escenario global. Adam Szymczyk (Basel), Chus Martínez (Barcelona), Tirdad Zolghadr (Berlín), Kitty Scott (Canadá), Yukie Kamiya (Hiroshima), Inés Katzenstein (Buenos Aires), Debra Singer (Nueva York), Catherine Word (Londres), Douglas Fogle (Los Ángeles) y Elena Filipovic (Rotterdam) incluyen en sus listas de la compra un tipo de artista emergente, demasiado vitalista y metamórfico como para atenerse a un solo papel y que maneja una estética de estanterías y diplays, lejos de la esfera angélica del estudio.

Desde Vancouver hasta São Paulo, Francfort o Brno, la mayoría de los trabajos de lostop cien -nacidos durante la década de los setenta- se disolverá seguramente en el fondo común de los grandes eventos artísticos, y los comisarios que los promocionan se sentirán libres de acortar el tiempo y la duración naturales de los "acontecimientos" que presentan, sacrificando una plausible carrera (del artista) en aras de una correcta puesta en escena en el decorado posindustrial de una bienal.

-------

Lista de artistas en Creamier:

Artistas: Gabriel Acevedo Velarde, Nevin Aladag, Can Altay, Armando Andrade Tudela, Ibon Aranberri, Tonico Lemos Auad, Lisa Ann Auerbach, Sven Augustijnen, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Nairy Baghramian, Dave Hullfish Bailey, Anna Barham, Walead Beshty, Cezary Bodzianowski, Pablo Bronstein, Tom Burr, Gerard Byrne, Duncan Campbell, Bonnie Camplin, Nina Canell, Alejandro Cesarco, Paul Chan, Rosa Chancho, Spartacus Chetwynd, Chto Delat, Anne Collier, Keren Cytter, Kate Davis, Thea Djordjadze, Nathalie Djurberg, Matías Duville, Shannon Ebner, Sherif El Azma, Haris Epaminonda, Patricia Esquivias, Leopoldo Estol, Roe Ethridge, Geoffrey Farmer, Claire Fontaine, Zachary Formwalt, Cyprien Gaillard, Mario Garcia Torres, Shilpa Gupta, Lasse Schmidt Hansen, Leslie Hewitt, Richard Hughes, Jamie Isenstein, Jackson Pollock Bar, Izumi Kato, Janice Kerbel, Hassan Khan, Yuki Kimura, Ragnar Kjartansson, Friedrich Kunath, Ignacio Lang, Valentina Liernur, Kalup Linzy, Hilary Lloyd, Maria Loboda, Renata Lucas, Goshka Macuga, Rubens Mano, Josephine Meckseper, Miguel Mitlag, Anna Molska, Matthew Monahan, Melvin Moti, Museum of American Art, Rosalind Nashashibi, Eduardo Navarro, Miguel Noguera, Olivia Plender, Michael Portnoy, Seth Price, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Robin Rhode, Stephen G. Rhodes, Noguchi Rika, Aïda Ruilova, Tomas Saraceno, Katerina Šedá, Dexter Sinister, Reena Spaulings, Fia Stina Sandlund, Katja Strunz 224, Tadasu Takamine, Ron Terada, Yuken Teruya, Althea Thauberger, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Ryan Trecartin, Kaari Upson, Kostis Velonis, Adrián Villar Rojas, Danh Vo, Tris Vonna-Michell, Claude Wampler, Andro Wekua, Xijing Men, Haegue Yang.

Curadores: Elena Filipovic, Douglas Fogle, Yukie Kamiya, Ines Katzenstein, Chus Martinez, Kitty Scott, Debra Singer, Adam Szymczyk, Catherine Wood, Tirdad Zolghadr

CECA - Educación y la acción cultural Comité internacional para la educación y la acción cultural

2010-09-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

El CECA reúne a profesionales de museos especializados en la educación y la acción cultural de los museos que trabajan en los campos de: la investigación, la gestión, la interpretación, las exposiciones, los programas, los medias y la evaluación. Los objetivos de este comité son la búsqueda de información y de ideas sobre la importancia de la educación en los museos teniéndolas en cuenta en la política y en los programas del ICOM; la promoción del papel educativo de los museos del mundo; el desarrollo de normas profesionales de alto nivel en el sector de la educación museística.

El CECA organiza conferencias anuales y publica las actas de éstas así como el Boletín del CECA, y la revista anual ICOM Educación.

Museo de "arte malo"

2010-09-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

The comic Judah Friedlander is among a coterie of fans of the genre known as bad art.

Loving the Lowbrow (It has own hall of fame)

A BLUE woman and her red daughter smile with the hungry mouths of zombie maniacs. The hand of a Bigfoot grazes the breast of a topless unicorn mermaid. Faces decorate the pregnant belly of a pantsless man-boy.

It’s the wondrous, if not always wonderful, world of art so bad it’s good — or at least great fun to look at.

With its U.F.O.’s, suicidal clowns, smiling genitals and other shocking, humorous or bleakly sentimental imagery, “bad art” — or “vernacular painting” and “found art” in polite circles — has achieved the status of a genre, a tiny but devoted corner of the art world. It’s a place where the passion of an amateur is prized over the skill of a technician and where an artist’s identity is of little or no importance. It’s neither kitsch (too cheery) nor camp (too smart) nor outsider (way too good and way too expensive). The best bad art is anonymous, strange, clumsy and cheap (or free, if you’re lucky).

The paradox of placing these works within the art world at all has roots in the controversy surrounding the legitimacy of Dada and Art Brut in past decades. It was a 1991 exhibition at the Chelsea gallery Metro Pictures, “Thrift Store Paintings,” that really put bad art on the map. The show of ugly children, distorted landscapes and other oddities, along with a book with the same title, were the brainchild of the artist Jim Shaw, a longtime collector of the horribly wonderful.

“Thrift store paintings was a nonjudgmental term,” Mr. Shaw said recently from his studio in Los Angeles. “I don’t think you should tell people what to think.”

Since that exhibition, not just thrift shops but also flea markets, yard sales, 99-cent stores, gas stations and sidewalk trash heaps have become go-to places for connoisseurs of the bad, among them Judah Friedlander, the comedian who can be seen regularly on the sitcom “30 Rock.”

“Certain things turn me on,” said Mr. Friedlander, whose book, “How to Beat Up Anybody,” a manual on how to pummel dinosaurs and other assailants, is to be released by It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in October. “If a painting, whether it’s at the Met or it’s something somebody threw away, gets a reaction out of me and gets me thinking, and gets me mentally and emotionally, I like it.”

Mr. Friedlander’s home in Queens is filled with paintings, sculptures and at least one laminated-wood image of women in thong bikinis astride motorcycles. (Most of his collection can be seen at his Web site, judahfriedlander.com.) As the title of his book suggests, Mr. Friedlander is especially enthusiastic about macho pieces that, like most found art, are given descriptions in lieu of titles: “Topless Chick” or “Bandanna Guy With Necklace.”

“Some people want to save the world or shed light on starvation,” he said. “But you give a junior high kid paint and canvas, and he’ll paint someone getting kicked in the face. No political connotations, just a guy kicking another guy in the face. I like simplistic testosterone passion.”

The designer Todd Oldham, another collector of unusual art, said a treasured shopping spot used to be the flea markets around the Avenue of the Americas in Chelsea.

“One of my favorites I found was a Martian having a drink with a real wistful wink in his eyes,” he said. “It looks like it was painted by Braque or Picasso.”

He said he had also had luck in Palm Beach and Miami Beach, “any place where there was a large elderly contingent,” adding, “Relatives will sometimes just dump stuff out.”

When browsing brick-and-mortar stores fails, Mr. Friedlander scours the Internet, where bargains and the strangest of the strange are available.

“I’ll go on eBay and just type in weird stuff like ‘alien abduction’ or ‘alien art,’ ” he said. “You surf, and your mind starts moving.”

No venture into the world of bad art is complete without a trip to the Museum of Bad Art (called MoBA for short), currently with three sites in the Boston area. All offer an art historical immersion in the movement. During a tour of one exhibition space, the basement of a movie theater in Somerville, Mass., the museum’s volunteer curator, Michael Frank, said most of the art on display was donated by patrons, genre enthusiasts and sometimes artists themselves. The roughly two dozen works on display are a fraction of the museum’s 500-piece collection.

“They were things that I’m convinced were created in all seriousness, but clearly something has gone wrong, either in the execution or in the concept,” said Mr. Frank, who pays the bills by working as a musician and balloon artist named Mike the Hatman. “Sometimes we’ll have poor technique that results in a compelling image. But a painting that shows poor technique isn’t necessarily bad art.”

A walk through the current exhibition, “Bigger, Better, Beautifuller,” offers oversize evidence of off-kilter paintings (and psyches). Still, some of the images bring to mind Klee, Botero, Klimt and other big names.

Comments in the museum’s guest book summed up the genre’s dark appeal. “This collection is disturbing, yet I can’t seem to look away,” wrote Voyeur From Canada. “Just like a hideous car accident.”

Another wrote: “Her nipples follow you around the room. Creepy!”

Like the worthiness of the genre itself, what to call the artwork is controversial. Some collectors and enthusiasts, including Mr. Friedlander and Mr. Oldham, dismiss the “bad art” label, saying it unfairly and incompletely describes a powerfully personal genre that would be better known as “found” or something similarly neutral.

“Bad art has nothing to do with it being produced by a naïf,” said Frank Maresca, an owner of the Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York, which in 2003 organized an exhibition called “Sunday Painters: Discarded Paintings by Gifted Amateurs.” “There’s tons of bad art produced by people that went to the best academies.”

The filmmaker John Waters agreed. “I see plenty of really bad art in the galleries in Chelsea,” he said in a telephone interview. “But that just means I don’t like it.”

One man’s piece of trash is another man’s masterpiece of trash. Context is everything.

In June Mr. Waters was a curator, with Dian Hanson, of an exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery of sexually explicit portraits of ex-cons, hustlers and other men by the vintage pornography photographer David Hurles, whose nom-de-porn is Old Reliable. As his films do, Mr. Waters said, the show gave him a chance to marry the fine art of photography with the lowbrows of pornography, something the best “bad art” — or whatever it’s called — does well.

“David took erections and put them in the context that made them art,” he said. “You walked into that room and realized that an artist took these pictures.”

Referring to one contemporary American painter, Mr. Oldham said: “I’ve bought portraits that would make John Currin weep, they are so beautiful.” It’s not bad art. It’s just unschooled artists that create with unbridled, unique passion.”

With the bad-art genre still uncharted territory, what are the criteria for differentiating good-bad works from the bad-bad?

Mr. Friedlander has a suggestion: “I found one for 99 cents, and the shipping was three bucks,” he said. “That’s a good deal, when the painting is cheaper than the shipping.”

WHERE TO FIND THE WORST

MUSEUM OF BAD ART Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Square, Somerville, Mass. (other locations in Dedham and Brookline, Mass.); free with purchase of a movie ticket; (781) 444-6757, museumofbadart.org. Most of the collection can be viewed online.

NYT ::: Museo del Hip Hop - cuándo?

2010-09-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

Grandmaster Caz en 1981

A Museum Quest Spins On and On

IN the lobby of a budget hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Craig Wilson began his staff meeting, oblivious to guests strolling past. The location, he conceded, was far from ideal; the same could be said for the prospects of his venture.

Mr. Wilson is the president of the National Museum of Hip-Hop, a title made slightly confusing by the unavoidable fact that there is no such museum. He has been trying to create one for five years and has obtained a charter from the New York State Board of Regents and 501(c)3 tax-exempt status. But despite an ambitious concept, a polished Web site and a goal of raising $50 million, his organization has a bank account with only about $6,000.

“Hip-hop as a culture is extremely powerful, but I think there is a stereotype out there that none of us can work together,” he said. “I am hoping to turn that image around and show people how powerful we actually are.”

Mr. Wilson is not the first to try to create such a museum, and some in the hip-hop community have voiced concern that the genre’s pioneers would not fairly benefit from the project. At an event in April, the rapper KRS-One told reporters that Mr. Wilson needed to ensure that some of the museum’s revenue would go toward helping some of hip-hop’s originators, who did not enjoy the commercial success of some of those who came later.

But KRS-One, who is also known as Kris Parker, acknowledged Mr. Wilson’s efforts, comparing him to Perseus, the hero of Greek mythology.

“He is like Perseus: against all odds, but still represents the best chance,” KRS-One said in an interview last month.

Mr. Wilson was born in 1975, two years after and a mile or so away from the accepted birth of hip-hop, in a community room inside 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx.

“I’ve been rhyming since I could talk, graffiti writing since I first learned to hold a pencil, b-boying since I could walk, and making beats since the first desk I sat at in school,” he said.

He went to Rutgers University, where he received a bachelor’s degree from the business school, and, after a stint as a financial adviser at Morgan Stanley, started his own managing, marketing and consulting firm in 2002.

In 2005, a group of investors seeking to create a hip-hop museum asked if Mr. Wilson could help. He ended up taking control of the project, and within a year he dissolved his own company and turned his full attention to the museum. “I realized all the failures before us had a common denominator: there was no perseverance involved, no one was willing to just give up everything and concentrate on making this happen,” he said. “So I did.”

He originally wanted to place the museum in the Bronx. He said that in 2007, he was promised by Adolfo Carrión Jr., then the Bronx borough president, that he could use a contaminated parcel of city land near Yankee Stadium. When that property proved too costly to rehabilitate, Mr. Wilson expanded his search to Harlem.

The difficulties in finding a site and financing led him to scale back his initial vision; instead of a 100,000-square-foot museum, he is now planning for a building roughly half that size, hoping that it will later grow.

He works on the project out of a small room that also serves as his home in a two-family house he owns in Fort Lee, N.J. Rent from the rest of the building is his only income, he said. His relatives “think I’m crazy,” Mr. Wilson said. “They know I’m educated and I’ve had jobs, so it just doesn’t make sense to them.”

“The only reason I can come up with is that I truly believe if I don’t, no one else will,” he said.

That said, Mr. Wilson is not the first to try.

In 1996, J. T. Thompson, a community activist in Los Angeles, created the “Hip Hop Hall of Fame Awards Show,” hoping to echo the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s model of using a series of shows to raise money for a museum. The awards show was carried on BET in 1996, and Mr. Thompson secured a deal with Showtime to make it an annual telecast. But with the murders of Tupac Shakur that September and Biggie Smalls six months later, the show was scrapped. Mr. Thompson has continued to work to resurrect the program and to build a hall of fame.

In 1999, Ernest Davis, then the mayor of Mount Vernon, N.Y., proposed turning an abandoned firehouse into a hip-hop museum. Despite a $500,000 grant and positive feedback in the print media, plans stalled.

Larry B. Seabrook, a City Council member from the Bronx, tried six years later, securing $1.5 million from the city for seed money to revitalize a building in the northeast Bronx. But after Mr. Seabrook’s indictment in February on federal fraud and money laundering charges, support for the project vanished.

Each attempt faced similar problems: a lack of money and an inability to get some of hip-hop’s founders to coalesce behind it.

“Everyone comes to us, wants to put us on display to help them get funding, and nothing ever comes of it,” said Curtis Brown, who, as Grandmaster Caz, was an original member of the hip-hop group Cold Crush Brothers. Mr. Brown and other hip-hop founders say they should be given positions in any organization that seeks to profit from their history. And while they insist that respect is as much a motivation as money, they are cognizant of a past in which, for example, Mr. Brown was not compensated when his lyrics were used in the 1979 Sugarhill Gang song “Rapper’s Delight.”

“It’s not about money, but it is about money,” KRS-One said.

John Ambrose, the vice president of Mr. Wilson’s museum organization, said that once the facility opened, part of the revenue would be dedicated to a foundation to support early hip-hop artists and help them reinvent or re-energize their careers.

This month, the National Museum of Hip-Hop will begin its first major fund-raising campaign, “Donate a Dollah,” trying to get legions of fans to give $1 each.

“The hip-hop posse is huge, and not only in the U.S.,” said Mr. Wilson, whose board of governors includes Benjamin Chavis, a former executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “If we got a dollar from just hip-hop fans in New York City alone, we would be fully funded.”

Cerarrá el Museo Liberace

2010-09-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

LAS VEGAS — Bill Holt was gawking. At the room filled with ornate antique pianos, among them a Baldwin grand glistening with a coat of rhinestones that was Liberace’s favorite. At a 1962 Phantom V Landau Rolls-Royce, covered in mirrors, that looked like a disco ball on wheels. At Liberace’s collection of candelabras, rings, capes and boots.

At, in short, the paraphernalia of a onetime star of the Strip who appears to have become a symbol of an era that is not only past, but forgotten, too.

The Liberace Museum, once a tourist attraction on a par with the Hoover Dam — 450,000 people came every year to the strip-mall museum with a red neon piano on the roof — is closing its doors next month. The collection is being put into storage.

“I’ve lived here for 40 years and this is the first time I’ve come,” said Mr. Holt, 71, a retired civil engineer, soft piano music tinkling above him. “I heard this place was closing, so I headed over.”

Tanya Combs, the museum director and one of 30 employees about to be out of a job, glanced dolefully at Mr. Holt. “That is the problem,” she said. “You should have come more often.”

Yet it is hard to blame Mr. Holt or any of the other hundreds of people who suddenly showed up over the past few days at the news of the Oct. 17 closing, filling a parking lot that had grown barren in recent years. “They used to come in droves,” said Jack Rappaport, the president of the Liberace Foundation and Museum.

There can be no disputing that Wladziu Valentino Liberace once helped define this town that loves its glitz. He was Mr. Showmanship, if he did say so himself, and people, or at least older people, remember catching a Liberace show at the Riviera Hotel (a picture of the Riviera marquee shows Liberace with top billing over a singer named Barbra Streisand).

With his costume changes, arch piano playing and desire to shock — yes, he played Radio City Music Hall in red, white and blue hot pants and knee-high boots, which you can see in all its garish glory if you hurry — Liberace was Lady Gaga before Stefani Germanotta was even born.

There are millions of Americans who watched him on television in the 1950s, who swooned at his campy outfits and jewelry and blinding-white smile. “I want to look at Liberace!” Alice yelled at Ralph Kramden in a “Honeymooners” episode in which she pleaded with her cheap husband to buy her a television set.

And Liberace’s fans followed with stunned sorrow when he died of AIDS in 1987, one more turning point in the nation’s perception of that disease and homosexuality.

Yet unlike Frank Sinatra’s or Elvis’s, Liberace’s legacy has steadily faded as his audience has aged. A taxi driver taking a visitor to the museum got lost.

His appeal failed to cross generational lines, despite the effort of museum officials to, as one put it, rebrand him.

“We really started pushing the idea of bling, and Liberace was the first person who was really doing bling,” said Jeffrey P. Koep, the chairman of the Liberace Foundation and dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. “He had the big rings. He had the look that you see the kids doing now that’s very popular.”

Attendance last year was down to 50,000 from 450,000 just 12 years ago, and even that number was inflated by two-for-one discounts, and free admission on Sunday for Las Vegas residents.

The museum’s founding endowment has shrunk from $10 million five years ago to $1 million, a result of money-losing investments and a decision to take out an expensive mortgage to finance a renovation of the building that in hindsight, Mr. Koep said, does not seem like a wise decision.

The museum anchored both ends of a strip mall Liberace bought to display the trappings of his life. But many of the stores that once rented space from the foundation, including a wedding chapel and a music school, are gone. The mall, typically for Las Vegas these days, is a collection of empty storefronts.

The Liberace Museum has also fallen victim to changing tastes of tourists. When it was opened by Liberace — two blocks away from one of the 39 places he called home, Ms. Combs said, but three miles from the heart of Las Vegas — the Strip was all about gambling. Today, the museum has to compete with a boulevard of top-name performers and exported shows from Broadway. The museum began running a shuttle to the Strip, but that did not do much good.

There are some rays of hope for those interested in preserving a Liberace legacy. The director Steven Soderbergh said he was intending to go ahead with a biopic on Liberace that had been in doubt, probably starting production this summer.

Mr. Koep said that part of the collection would be displayed in some form of traveling exhibition. And he said the founders would look to sell the property, a prospect he described as tough in this market, to raise money to buy another space, ideally closer to the Strip.

“We are not selling the collection,” Mr. Koep said. “Part of the reason we are closing down is so we can keep the collection.”

Still, there is sadness in the dusky exhibition rooms that will soon be closed to the public. “I can’t imagine his name ever stopping,” said Pauline Lachane, a onetime president of the Liberace Fan Club, and today the museum librarian. “He’s going to go on forever. He put the excitement in this town.”

Billy Vassiliadis, the head of the advertising agency that represents the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said the loss of the museum “was a shame, especially for us older folks.” But, he said, Las Vegas, like Liberace, has always been about reinventing itself.

“We have to keep refreshing Las Vegas,” he said. “Thousands of people turn 21 every day. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a Lady Gaga museum in 10 years.”

La biblioteca del Vaticano reabre sus puertas, esta vez con adelantos tecnológicos

2010-09-22T09:57:00.000-07:00

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican Library, which houses one of the world’s most important collections of manuscripts, will reopen next Monday after a three-year $12 million renovation, much to the relief of academics around the world. Msgr. Cesare Pasini, the prefect of the library, said at a news conference on Monday that he was “happy to alleviate the anxiety” of the many scholars who had written to him since the library closed in July 2007, cutting off access to its 1.6 million volumes, including 75,000 manuscripts.

The renovations were both structural — involving the reinforcement of foundations and floors — and technological. Scholars granted access to the library, which was founded in 1451 and is open only to a select public, will be able to view some of the collections in the reading rooms by WiFi. Books are also being tagged with computer chips so they can be monitored (to ensure they stay in the library, where thefts have been known to occur).

Another modern addition will be a brick tower inside the library courtyard — once part of the great architect Donato Bramante’s Cortile del Belvedere — that will house an elevator and stairs connecting the bombproof bunker used to store manuscripts to the library’s photographic and restoration laboratories. “I got chills just hearing the name Bramante, and thinking I would do something near him,” said Gennaro Guala, an engineer with Italcementi, whose foundation was one of the main sponsors of the restoration.

Gran donación al British Museum de Londres

2010-09-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

3:36 p.m. | Updated Two foundations run by the Sainsbury family, the founders of one of Britain’s largest supermarket chain, has donated $38.5 million toward an expansion of the British Museum, the museum announced on Sunday. The gift is one of the largest private donations to the arts ever made in Britain and comes at a time when cultural institutions there are bracing for an expected 25 percent cut in state funding when the government announces the results of a spending review on October 20. The British Museum is building a $360 million wing, designed by Richard Rogers, to house temporary exhibitions and a conservation center. The government has pledged roughly $35 million toward the new building.

Se retrasa la inauguración del Museo de Arte Africano en la 5ta avenida en NY

2010-09-22T09:51:00.001-07:00

Citing construction delays, the Museum for African Art said on Friday that it had pushed back the planned opening of its new Manhattan home by about six months, from April 2011 to September or October of that year.

The museum will occupy the lower floors of a 19-story condominium building, designed by Robert A. M. Stern, on Fifth Avenue between 109th and 110th Streets. The museum’s president, Elsie McCabe Thompson, said that the building’s developers, Brickman and Sidney Fetner Associates, had failed to complete the core and shell as expected several months ago, and that they were now planning to do so in the next few weeks.

In the meantime the museum’s construction consultants, engineers and architects decided that they could not finish the interior in time for a spring opening.

“It’s a complex situation — I don’t want to lay blame on any one entity,” Mrs. Thompson said. “There’s a lot of factors,” she continued, adding, “It’s quite common.”

Roderick O’Connor, a principal of Brickman, however, said in a phone interview that there had not been any significant delays on its part.

Mrs. Thompson said fund-raising was not a factor in the delay. As of June, the museum had raised only $71 million of the $95 million it needed to pay for construction. Mrs. Thompson said she had since raised an additional $4.5 million. Asked if the museum was considering a phased opening, she said, “I promised a full building, and I’m going to move earth to make it happen.”

Mrs. Thompson, the wife of the former mayoral candidate William C. Thompson Jr., has been pursuing a permanent home for the museum since she took it over in 1997. She first envisioned building on the site a decade ago. The plans were delayed for several years by the withdrawal of the museum’s original development partner, Edison Schools.

Since the museum partnered with Brickman and Sidney Fetner Associates, the opening has been postponed further. When the museum unveiled Mr. Stern’s designs in 2007, it said it would open its new home in late 2009. The date was later pushed back, partly because of the discovery of a quicksandlike layer of sediment under the site.

Mrs. Thompson said she still hoped to open with the planned slate of exhibitions, including a retrospective of the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui and a show of African- and African-American-made baskets.

The museum, which was founded in 1984, has been credited with presenting groundbreaking exhibitions, but it has sometimes struggled financially. Mrs. Thompson and members of the board have said they expect that moving to such a prominent location, on the upper end of Museum Mile, will help attract a large audience, as well as donors and corporate sponsors.

The long journey toward a permanent home, however, has come at some cost to the museum’s visibility. It closed its gallery in Long Island City, Queens, in 2005, though it has created traveling exhibitions and mounted some shows in other spaces since then.

Se retrasa la inauguración del Museo de Arte Africano en la 5ta avenida en NY

2010-09-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

In the meantime the museum’s construction consultants, engineers and architects decided that they could not finish the interior in time for a spring opening.

“It’s a complex situation — I don’t want to lay blame on any one entity,” Mrs. Thompson said. “There’s a lot of factors,” she continued, adding, “It’s quite common.”

Roderick O’Connor, a principal of Brickman, however, said in a phone interview that there had not been any significant delays on its part.

Mrs. Thompson said she still hoped to open with the planned slate of exhibitions, including a retrospective of the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui and a show of African- and African-American-made baskets.

Exit Art ::: Historias alternativas, una historia de los espacios alternativos en NY desde los años 60

2010-09-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We do experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. We absorb cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions. We are a center for multiple disciplines. Exit Art is a 25-year-old cultural center in New York City founded by Directors Jeanette Ingberman and artist Papo Colo. It has grown from a pioneering alternative art space into a model artistic center for the 21st century committed to supporting artists whose quality of work reflects the transformations of our culture. Exit Art is internationally recognized for its unmatched spirit of inventiveness and consistent ability to anticipate the newest trends in the culture. With a substantial reputation for curatorial innovation and depth of programming in diverse media, Exit Art is always changing.

Enfoques curatoriales

2010-09-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Enfoques curatoriales

Programa- “Foro Museos y Exposiciones:Enfoques curatoriales”
Curriculum Vitae- Prof. Carlos Aranda Márquez (curador invitado al foro)

El rol del curador– Rafael Emilio Yuren ¿Museología Nueva? ¡Museografía Nueva http://www.cielonaranja.com/rey-museografía.htm (12/mayo/08)

Curadoría, fin de la historia y muerte de la crítica—Félix Suazo Intervención realizada en el Coloquio “Crítica de Arte: prácticas institucionales y artísticas en la contemporaneidad” Parque Recreacional Sur, Valencia, estado carabobo, (26/mayo/2007)

¿Qué hace un curador? http://sepiensa.org.mx/contenidos/1_artesp/curador/curador1.htm

Apuntes sobre curadoría - Carlos Trivelli http://bastacuboblanco.blogspot.com/2006/10/apuntes_sobre_curadora_10.html

Revista: “El Huevo” Noviembre 01 vol.#64 Número especial de Arte

La institucionalidad y el profesional en la figura del curador—Dermis P. León (Ponencia presentada al Tercer Coloquio Latinoamericano de Arte y Diseño Identidad e Integración, Facultad de Artes y Diseño Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza (Noviembre 2006)

Querido Público—Carlos Aranda Márquez

La crítica de arte “Historia, teoría y praxis” - Anna María Guash (coordinadora) Ediciones del Serbal/primera edición:2003

Thinking about exhibitions—Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson y Sandy Nairne (editores) Routledge/edición 1996

Pensamiento crítico en el Nuevo arte latinoamericano—Kevin Power (ed.) Fundación César Manrique

Museología Crítica y Arte contemporáneo - Jesús– Pedro Lorente (director) Prensa Universitaria de Zaragoza/1ra. Edición, 2003

e-flux ::: Rubén Santiago y The Intercepted City

2010-09-19T12:46:00.001-07:00

The Interpreted City
1 October – 28 November 2010

Rubén Santiago
Cálculo (Calculus)

Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC)
Rua Ramón del Valle-Inclán
15704 Santiago de Compostela
Spain
www.cgac.org

Curator: Pablo Fanego

The Interpreted City is a public art initiative organised by the Concello de Santiago, Xacobeo and the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, designed to offer a set of unprecedented approaches to the city of Santiago de Compostela and create situations that enable us to superimpose an intersubjective map on her ordinary codification.

The Interpreted City hopes to establish connections between history and our immediate reality through the specific proposals of a number of artists of international renown: Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Mircea Cantor, Andreas Fogarasi, Latifa Echakhch, Daniel Knorr, Goshka Macuga, Rubén Santiago, Florian Slotawa and Michael Stevenson.

Rubén Santiago (Spain, 1974) works on the mechanisms of the social construction of memory and the consensual production of symbolic value.

From a process approach and through multiple means, Rubén conceives each of his art works as an opportunity to create dissent around a range of themes or collective concerns.

His proposal for The Interpreted City consists of a series of interventions in two separate yet interconnected areas: the city's canal network and the basement of the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea.

On the one hand, the hydraulic engineering elements in the subsoil that branch out in the verticality of our homes have been used to support an innocuous action of great symbolic consequence: the artist altered the proportion of chemical substances needed for the purification of water for common use. By means of this 'infiltration in the ordinary' his intention was to arouse a little concern over a basic public service and prompt reflection on those socialisation structures that remain hidden.

The starting point of his intervention at CGAC is the outward appearance of the building designed by Álvaro Siza and the history of its surroundings: the museum's location on land rich in springs, a feature that to a great extent defined the architectural conception. Rubén devised an alternative system for evacuating the water that stems from the ground floor of the museum by means of a path that runs through the different galleries, perforating the walls, and leads us to a square that lies in its surrounding area.

The poetics defining the other pieces that complement Ruben's project unfolds around this condition of the 'stone' museum as a structure exposed to the erosion and continuous changes produced by the passage of time: the presentation of a kidney stone belonging to a resident of Santiago de Compostela and a series of readings of the humidity recorded in the same exhibition space of the basement over a certain period of time.

In short, the artist is interested in exploring the museum as a medium for the articulation of subjectivities and immaterial capital that reflects the community of users that define it. His intervention affects the museum space both on a physical plane—determined by geography, architecture and town planning—and on the conceptual plane, understanding the museum as an institution central to the task of recognising the present and shaping the future through experience and memory.

posible nuevo museo Smithsonian sobre la presencia Latina en EU

2010-09-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

Este mes de septiembre se presentará ante el Congreso los hallazgos de los varios comités para la creación de un museo dedicado a la comunidad latina en los Estados Unidos.

Aquí puedes leer más al respecto y opinar:

National Museum of the American Latino

Daimler Art Collection

2010-09-17T12:37:00.001-07:00

Daimler Art Collection

Exhibition view at MALBA, Buenos Aires

Geometry in 20th Century Art from the Daimler Art Collection
Geometría en el Siglo XX en la Daimler Art Collection

Highlights of 20th Century and Contemporary International Art from
the Daimler Art Collection (1909 – 2009)

At Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, Argentina
Presented by Mercedes-Benz Argentina

12 August – 25 October 2010

As the 10th stage of its world tour, around 120 works of the Daimler Art Collection are currently on show at MALBA Buenos Aires. The exhibited high profile works range from Oskar Schlemmer via Andy Warhol to international Contemporary Artists: On show are installations, sculptures, photography as well as video works from the Daimler Art Collection.

A unique key component of the exhibition is a comprehensive educational program for school and college students, which was developed in collaboration with the education department of the museum. The aim of the program is to examine the content of the exhibition, its works and artists as integral part of school lessons or studies. Therefore students receive a 200 page educational booklet about the exhibition, developed by Daimler's Art Collection department, free of charge. In the run-up to the exhibition, museum employees, teachers, professors and art history students have been trained to provide their young audience with key information and details of the exhibition. Furthermore a shuttle service was set up by Mercedes-Benz to provide transport opportunities for the students from their schools to the museum.

The exhibition, curated by Renate Wiehager, head of the Daimler Art Collection, is a high-quality collection of works covering a range of styles and content, documenting modern and contemporary art developments in the last 100 years. With its 120 pieces on show, it also offers a comprehensive portrait of one of the most important German corporate collections. The works were created between 1909 and the present, and represent artists as Andy Warhol, Willi Baumeister, Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, Max Bill, Julio Le Parc, François Morrelet, Sylvie Fleury, Liam Gillick, Philippe Parreno, Zinny/Maidagan and other young artists from Europe, South Africa, Latin America, Asia and Australia.

The world tour of the Daimler Art Collection started in 2003 at ZKM in Karlsruhe and at the DIA in Detroit. It continued until today in important museums in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Tokyo, São Paulo, Palma de Mallorca, Madrid and Singapore.

The Daimler Art Collection, founded in 1977, now comprises around 1,800 pieces by about 600 international artists. It focuses on an abstract-constructive, conceptual or minimalist image concepts. The collection includes work groups of public sculptures, photography and video as well as car-related art and commissioned art works. Initially the collection followed the development of art in the first half of the 20th century around Stuttgart and Southern Germany, later expanding to include related German, European and International Artists.

More information at www.collection.daimler.com and www.malba.org.ar.

Wall Street Journal ::: ahora los museos podrán vender su arte?

2010-09-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

Esta noticia nos sorprende. Los museos tradicionalmente no pueden vender sus piezas a menos que sea para adquirir otra obra de arte de más importancia para su colección. No se permite vender obras para subrir los gastos operacionales de un museo - hasta ahora (?) Apoyarán esta decisión otros museos? Qué consecuencias podrá tener para la AAM y los préstamos entre museos?

------

Museums can sell off art again, por Erica Orden

The state will allow emergency regulations that prohibited cash-strapped museums from selling their artworks to cover expenses to expire next month.

The Education Department's Board of Regents, which oversees museums, voted Tuesday to let the rule lapse but ordered the creation of an advisory group to weigh in on matters concerning museum collections.

The Regents had been expected to make the rule permanent, in part because of the collapse of support for a bill in the state Legislature—which the city's biggest museums had fought—that would have outlawed museums from selling works from their permanent collections to cover operating costs. But the board's cultural education committee voted Monday to recommend that the full board allow the temporary regulations to expire Oct. 8, a step criticized by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat who sponsored the bill.

"This is the precursor of the massive transfer of art held in the public trust into private hands," said Mr. Brodsky, who called the decision a "disastrous move."

Mr. Brodsky accused the Regents of reneging on an agreement to make permanent the emergency rules after the demise of his bill, and of doing so behind his back. "This is a violation of the duties of the Regents to defend the public, and to do it…without even informing their partners, is evidence that they couldn't sustain the scrutiny of this decision," he said.

"While the emergency regulations were in place, the Board of Regents sought input from the museum community statewide and found there was no consensus on the efficacy of those emergency regulations," Education Commissioner David Steiner said in a statement. "Consequently, those regulations will be allowed to expire, allowing the prior regulations regarding museum collections to once again take effect."

The version of the regulations set to take effect on Oct.8 states that proceeds from the sale of an item in a museum's collection be used "only for the acquisition, preservation, protection or care of collections," but the emergency rules more sharply limited an institution's options for selling parts of a collection, a practice known as de-accessioning.

The emergency policies were implemented in December 2008, in response to concerns that the rules governing collections were not specific enough to address questions arising during the financial crisis.

The step was prompted by several incidents, including a proposal, subsequently abandoned, by Fort Ticonderoga, a restored military fortress in the Adirondack Park, to sell some works to compensate for a deficit. In December 2008, the Upper East Side's National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts sold two Hudson River School paintings to raise operating funds and prevent its closure.

The director of the Museum Association of New York, which along with the Regents helped draft Mr. Brodsky's bill, said the vote was an unexpected turn of events. "We were prepared to hear that the Regents were going to make the temporary rule permanent, so it was a surprise to find out that the tide had changed and there was going to be a total rethinking of that rule," director Anne Ackerson said. She speculated that the outcome was the result of the objection of several major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, whose director, Glenn Lowry, sent a letter Ms. Ackerson observed "being passed around."

A spokeswoman for the museum confirmed that it sent a letter asking the Regents to reconsider the emergency measures because the museum felt they were too restrictive.

The director of the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, Michael Botwinick, said he was "disappointed" by the decision. "I think Brodsky's legislation got it right, and I think they should pay some real attention to the financial troubles of the smaller institutions and less to the bureaucratic concerns of the larger institutions," Mr. Botwinick, who is also a board member of the museum association, said. "I'm discouraged that we've got back to the status quo."

The advisory group the Regents ordered established will be "representative of the state's diverse museum community," Mr. Steiner said. A spokesman for the department said members will be drawn from institutions varying in size, function and geographical location. The board is expected to further discuss the creation of the group at its October meeting.

The board's decision this week will have no effect on state regulations that prohibit the pledging as collateral of works from a museum's permanent collection.

The Wall Street Journal reported in August that the Chelsea Art Museum's entire permanent collection was pledged as collateral for a loan needed to pay its mortgage. The museum faces the possible revocation of its charter, removal of its board of trustees or referral of the matter to the state attorney general's Charities Bureau by the Education Department. A spokesman for the department, Tom Dunn, said it is "still studying" the Chelsea decision. "The staff is collecting information and continues to do that," he said.

Gobierno de los museos

2010-09-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hola!
Adjunto un link a una entrada anterior sobre el gobierno de los museos y las juntas directivas :::
Junta de directores

ELPAIS.COM ::: REPORTAJE: El 'lifting' de un tesoro cultural - Arqueológico sí, moderno también

2010-09-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

Arqueológico sí, moderno también, por Angeles García 11/09/2010

Cuando hace dos años comenzaron las obras de restauración del Museo Arqueológico Nacional , el edificio sufría todas las deficiencias imaginables. Era un coloso repleto de tesoros, sí, pero un coloso obsoleto, un gigante dormido y anclado en el pasado. Y, sobre todo, un museo incómodo y démodé. No sólo sus magníficas piezas (las damas de Elche y Baza, el tesoro de Guarrazar....) se estaban exponiendo en deficientes condiciones: también se contravenían las más elementales normas de seguridad (incendios, accesos...) en un edificio que comparte estructura con la Biblioteca Nacional (un tercio es museo y el resto Biblioteca), algo que complicaba la rehabilitación del espacio.

Pero por fin ha sonado la hora del renacimiento para el Arqueológico Nacional. El museo, que exhibirá su nueva cara a partir del verano de 2011 pero mostrará al público una de sus remodeladas alas el próximo mes de octubre, presenta ya un aspecto que corta definitivamente con su pasado y entra de lleno en el siglo XXI. Para resolver el espinoso tema de las colecciones y su necesaria reordenación, el Ministerio de Cultura abrió el 3 de agosto un concurso museográfico público que deberá resolverse también en el próximo mes.

El responsable de esta radical transformación es el arquitecto Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade (Madrid, 1957), cuya rehabilitación del Palacio de Carlos V, en la Alhambra granadina, logró el Premio Nacional de Restauración en 1995. Las cifras básicas dan idea de la envergadura del proyecto: el espacio del museo ha pasado de 14.350 metros a 20.510, y el espacio expositivo que existía, 7.300 metros, ha aumentado hasta 9.715. El presupuesto límite es de 35 millones de euros y la fecha de terminación se ha dilatado un año.

El nuevo aspecto del Museo Arqueológico se aprecia ya desde la entrada principal. Se ha mantenido y concedido aún más protagonismo a la bella y protegida escalinata que va a dar a la calle de Serrano en medio de unos de los escasos jardines históricos que se pueden ver en el madrileño barrio de Salamanca. Una de las principales novedades en el lifting del edificio se refiere a los accesos: en el nuevo Arqueológico, el público entrará por unas puertas laterales; éstas confluirán en un espectacular vestíbulo que servirá de punto de encuentro, información y venta de entradas; dos salones de actos para 100 y 200 personas, cafetería, ascensores, rampas para minusválidos y dos salas de exposiciones temporales.

Desde ese vestíbulo, el visitante se adentra en lo que el arquitecto considera como la joya de la obra y su gran apuesta creativa: la recuperación de los patios romano y árabe de 20 metros de altura, 30 de largo y 14 de ancho cubiertos con cristal. Presididos por sus fuentes originales, están rodeados de las salas en las que se exhibirá la colección permanente. Una vistosa escalera interior hecha de madera remata la zona central.

Los materiales empleados en la resurrección del edificio son otro de los capítulos esenciales.En las tres plantas del edificio se ha utilizado madera de Merbau ranurado para las paredes, mientras que los suelos serán recubiertos de mármol travertino. Son materiales que diferencian visualmente estos espacios respecto a otros museos y que no han sido especialmente costosos, según el arquitecto. Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade explica que ha querido hacer una operación de limpieza del interior: "Mi trabajo ha consistido en depurar, en evitar agregar barreras prescindibles. Me interesa la Museografía que emociona en silencio, que facilita la contemplación. Soy de los que opina que hay que conjurar todos los elementos posibles para que se cree una intimidad total entre la obra contemplada y el público", explica.

Pero conseguir ese ambiente no ha sido sencillo, según el autor de la remodelación: "El ambiente de aparente simpleza se ha logrado con tecnología de última generación que está oculta a los ojos del visitante", explica. Y como ejemplo, señala los cristales que cubren las bóvedas de los patios: unos cristales que experimentan transformaciones en función de la intensidad de la luz y el calor. En caso de incendio, serían los primeros en abrir se de manera automática para expulsar el humo.

Otro de los retos cuya resolución técnica más ha satisfecho el arquitecto es la organización de lo que es actividad pública o privada del museo. El mundo de quienes allí trabajan se cruzaba con la parte expositiva. "Los laterales de las antiguas salas eran espacios ciegos que ahora he podido aprovechar para que las actividades no se mezclen. En la tercera planta está una de las joyas del edificio y ya está ocupada por las 300.000 monedas que integran la colección numismática del museo; las monedas han sido instaladas en estantes metálicos en los que se garantiza una protección eficaz contra el paso del tiempo, algo que no aseguraban las antiguas repisas de cristal.

Los nuevos almacenes pintados en rojo y amarillo acumulan en un orden militar los armarios en los que se guardan las piezas de los numerosísimos tesoros propiedad del museo. La fría temperatura y la tenue luz cumplen las exigencias impuestas por los últimos avances en conservación museística.

Sin duda alguna, uno de los principales alardes arquitectónicos es el practicado en la biblioteca del edificio, en el espacio abuhardillado, donde metal, madera y cristal crean un espacio que recuerda las estaciones ferroviarias parisienses. Los fondos documentales de los tesoros del museo se instalarán aquí, protegidos de polvo y luz.

En la azotea del edificio confluye la maquinaria que da vida al edificio. Las espléndidas vistas sobre el centro de Madrid se mezclan con el cableado regulador de las necesidades vitales del museo. Todo un mundo que habla de una brutal transformación tanto del aspecto interior como exterior del edificio.

Para el arquitecto y su equipo, las obras han entrado ya en una etapa en la que se nota por fin como las piezas van encajando, y el resultado está próximo. "Ha habido momentos en los que aquí han trabajado simultáneamente 30 empresas diferentes, cada una con un cometido específico", recuerda Rodríguez Frade, "parecía un milagro que no hubiera encontronazos. ¿Lo más difícil? Hacer todo este trabajo mientras que el museo seguía abierto al público. Sólo se ha cerrado durante el verano".

Como testigos mudos de las palabras del arquitecto, en una de las salas de la planta baja, perfectamente embaladas, se acumulan algunas de las piezas más valiosas del museo. Las damas de Baza y Elche no se distinguen ahora de las momias egipcias o esculturas griegas y romanas que centran la atención del público. Se despojarán de sus peculiares camisas de fuerza a finales de octubre para una selectiva muestra de los fondos. La colección permanente tendrá que estar preparada para el próximo verano.

EL PAIS.COM ::: ANÁLISIS: El 'lifting' de un tesoro cultural

2010-09-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

Desconocido y maltratado, por Francisco Calvo Serraller 11/09/10

Larguísimo tiempo adormecido entre sus tesoros, justo como nuestro país en trance hipnótico secular, el tradicionalmente llamado Museo Arqueológico Nacional, lo sepan o no los españoles, es uno de los 10 mejores del mundo. En relación con su contenido, aún me quedo corto en cuanto a la clasificación, pero lo cierto es que, para ser, hay que existir, y el Arqueológico ha dormido el sueño de los justos, como Lázaro antes de que Cristo se acercase a Betania; esto es: más muerto que vivo.

Como quiera que a nuestros políticos les gusta el arte de alancear toros muertos, no hace mucho a uno se le ocurrió resucitar el Arqueológico destruyendo sus entrañas; es decir: no solo cambiándole el nombre, lo que es una tontería poco tóxica, sino desbaratando sus fondos, todo esto, además, con un director de pega y en plenas obras de remodelación del edificio. Hubo una airada reacción internacional ante el atentado, cuyo efecto, como la lapidación de Sakineh, está por ver si se consumará, pero, sea como sea, es triste que un museo de esta excepcional categoría todavía hoy sea tan desconocido y esté tan maltratado.

Oficialmente cerrado por un Real Decreto del 21 de marzo de 1867, la procelosa historia política de nuestro país dilató su inauguración hasta el 9 de julio de 1871, contando ya, en 1876, con 120.000 objetos. No es extraño que semejante patrimonio, constantemente incrementado, pusiera en aprietos a su primera sede en la calle de Embajadores y que fuese reubicado en la actual de la calle de Serrano, en un edificio de nueva planta diseñado por el gran arquitecto Francisco Jarreño, que se remató en 1892. Se trata, pues, de un museo centenario, que en 1936 ya contaba con 200.000 piezas, cifra hoy ampliamente sobrepasada. No solo se trata de cantidad, porque allí hay obras capitales de la prehistoria, la historia antigua y medieval del mundo occidental y, en particular, lo esencial de toda nuestra historia, tan rica en efemérides y tan multicultural. Debe llegar la hora de que, por fin, se tome en serio este museo y se le restituya su dignidad, aunque no se la pida prestada a los políticos de turno. Piénsese que, entre otras joyas, el Arqueológico conserva no solo la Dama de Elche o la Bicha de Balazote, sino maravillosas piezas de arte grecorromano y un sinfín de testimonios escalofriantes de arte medieval, con su sobrecogedor añadido de todo tipo de arte hispano-árabe.

Colaboración entre museos: exhibición sobre la presencia latina en Nueva York inaugura en el Museo del Barrio

2010-09-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

“From Here to There,” an installation by Antonio Martorell made to resemble the airplanes that brought many Puerto Ricans to New York, in “Nueva York (1613-1945),” at El Museo del Barrio.

"New York" o "New Amsterdam" también tienen una larga relación con el mundo hispano parlante, inclusive antes de que fuera colonizado por los holandeses. A falta de un hogar propio, la New York Historical Society (cuya sede está siendo renovada), ha colaborado con el Museo del Barrio para realizar la exhibición "Nueva York: 1613 - 1945". Esta exhibición nos presenta una oportunidad para reflexionar sobre el rol del arte en la educación histórica, las oportunidades que se presentan al establecer vínculos interinstitucionales y las curadurías que abarca varias disciplinas.

Looking South, Not East, Into New York's Past - New York Times

Sweeping exhibition explores the latin legacy in NYC over four centuries - NY Daily News

Introducción al American Association of Museums

2010-09-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

En este enlace encontrarán las entradas anteriores relacionadas a la AAM en este blog :::

http://museologiaupr2009.blogspot.com/search/label/AAM

Once respuestas a 'Art without artists' de Anton Vidokle

2010-09-09T15:44:00.000-07:00

El anterior artículo suscitó una polémica en torno al rol del curador en el mundo contemporáneo, específicamente en el campod el arte. A continuación, el enlace a las respuestas :::

Letters to the Editors: Eleven Responses to Anton Vidokle’s “Art Without Artists?”

Artículo sobre el rol del curador en e-Flux Journal

2010-09-09T15:42:00.000-07:00

Art Without Artists?, de Anton Vidokle

It is clear that curatorial practice today goes well beyond mounting art exhibitions and caring for works of art. Curators do a lot more: they administer the experience of art by selecting what is made visible, contextualize and frame the production of artists, and oversee the distribution of production funds, fees, and prizes that artists compete for. Curators also court collectors, sponsors, and museum trustees, entertain corporate executives, and collaborate with the press, politicians, and government bureaucrats; in other words, they act as intermediaries between producers of art and the power structure of our society....

CONTINUA AQUI::: http://e-flux.com/journal/view/136

Nuevo curso!

2010-09-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

Hola!

Soy Marina, la editora del blog Museología UPR de la clase del profesor Humberto Figueroa. Este semestre estaré subiendo noticias, enlaces, documentos, e información de libros relacionados al campo de la museología.

Creé un grupo de discusión para la clase en la siguiente dirección:
http://groups.google.com/group/museologiaupr2010

Si son estudiantes de la clase del Prof. Figueroa, envien un email a
museologiaupr2009@gmail.com para integrarlos.

Saludos
Marina

Propuesta del ICOM para una Carta de Principios sobre Museos y Turismo Cultural

2009-05-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Propuesta del ICOM para una Carta de Principios sobre Museos y Turismo Cultural

Este propuesta fue elaborada por los participantes en el taller "Museos, patrimonio y turismo cultural" organizado por el ICOM, con la colaboración de los Comités nacionales peruano y boliviano, en Trujillo (Perú) y La Paz (Bolivia) del 21 al 27 de mayo de 2000.

INTRODUCCION

En concordancia con lo establecido en el Código de Deontología Profesional del ICOM, el Museo en tanto institución sin fines de lucro y al servicio de la sociedad y su desarrollo debe, entre otras cosas:

* Favorecer la participación activa de las comunidades y desempeñar su papel de fuente de educación y mediador cultural al servicio de un número cada vez mayor de visitantes pertenecientes a cualquier nivel de la comunidad, localidad o grupo social, ·
* Desempeñar un papel preponderante en los esfuerzos realizados para detener la degradación de recursos culturales y naturales, según principios, normas y objetivos de esfuerzos nacionales e internacionales de protección y valoración del patrimonio cultural, ·
* Garantizar que los recursos financieros derivados de políticas o relaciones económicas no comprometan los principios, normas y objetivos que definen al museo.

Igualmente, el museo debe velar para que sus profesionales: ·

* Se desempeñen en forma adecuada en la protección del patrimonio en general y de la conservación e investigación de sus colecciones en particular, ·
* Respeten el principio de que los museos representan una responsabilidad pública cuyo valor para la comunidad está en proporción directa con la calidad de sus objetivos, ·
* Promuevan el conocimiento y gestión del patrimonio cultural , no sólo con sus colegas, sino además con los miembros de la comunidad interesada, con el tacto y respeto que merece la dignidad humana de todos los pueblos.

La ética en el turismo cultural demanda de los agentes actuantes, que el visitante combine el conocimiento creativo con el disfrute de su tiempo libre, favoreciendo principalmente que participe de un contexto social que, siéndole desconocido, le invita a participar en la vida y saberes locales de la comunidad anfitriona. Para ello resultan de importancia los aspectos relativos a la formación del recurso humano partícipe de las actividades de los museos, del ejercicio cultural y del desempeño de los profesionales del turismo, especialmente aquellos concernientes a la conservación del patrimonio cultural, sus principios, normas, objetivos y requerimientos.

El turismo cultural se vincula al patrimonio cuando lo hace a un conjunto de contribuciones de una cultura, pueblo o comunidad, que muestra a través de sus expresiones el testimonio de su propia identidad. Esta vinculación es única y excepcional y constituye un recurso no renovable. El patrimonio cultural no puede constituirse en un producto de consumo ni establecer con el visitante una relación superficial. En la medida en que se logre una identificación entre ambos, el turista podrá tomar conciencia de su valor y de la importancia de su conservación y así convertirse en aliado de los museos.

Los museos se clasifican tipológicamente atendiendo a la naturaleza de sus colecciones, y entre mayor sea el atractivo que ejerzan sobre los distintos públicos, mayor número de visitantes serán capaces de captar. Los turistas se dirigen preferentemente a museos representativos de la historia, la cultura y las tradiciones del país anfitrión con el afán de conocer lo que les resulta más novedoso y particular. Tal es el caso de las instituciones de carácter regional o local, donde es más directa la relación con las comunidades. Las colecciones excepcionales de interés universal. tanto de arte, arqueología u otra disciplina son disfrutadas por un creciente número de turistas como visitantes permanentes, pero en este caso la relación museo-comunidad es más distante.

PRINCIPIO 1
Los museos, dada su propiedad como mediadores culturales y su diversidad tipológica en cuanto a colección, naturaleza pública o privada, nacional, regional o local, sus condiciones de pluralidad, singularidad, libertad, flexibilidad y potencialidad creativa, constituyen un importante recurso para el Turismo Cultural. ·

* La legislación para la promoción de un turismo que ampare aspectos referentes a inversiones e intervenciones en áreas de valor patrimonial, debe garantizar la prevalencia de la conservación del patrimonio cultural y natural por sobre los intereses económicos, ante el peligro de ocasionar daños irreversibles. ·
* Propiciar una relación planificada y concertada entre las instituciones museísticas, las del sector turismo y las comunidades. ·
* Buscar la compatibilidad legislativa necesaria para la defensa del patrimonio y el desarrollo turístico teniendo en cuenta la convivencia de distintos niveles de autoridad gubernamental y la existencia de los diversos sectores sociales interesados, privilegiando la participación de los representantes naturales de las comunidades locales. ·
* Los museos deberán privilegiar la autogestión como forma de redistribución hacia la comunidad de los beneficios socioeconómicos del turismo cultural, ya que el desarrollo turístico representa una opción indiscutible para generar recursos. Estos, debidamente administrados, pueden revertirse en beneficios directos para las instituciones patrimoniales, especialmente los museos y las comunidades en las que están enclavadas.

PRINCIPIO 2
La interacción entre el turismo y los museos es una relación que puede afectar la conservación del patrimonio natural y cultural incluyendo el de las colecciones y los valores que transmiten. Dicha relación debe preservar una ética de la conservación para garantizar la permanencia de los testimonios. ·

* Los bienes del patrimonio cultural son únicos e irremplazables, su autenticidad tiene un valor apreciado y su pérdida o deterioro significaría un menoscabo a la cultura universal. Un turismo responsable y sostenible reduce al mínimo el impacto y el deterioro de los bienes culturales. ·
* Las características del patrimonio cultural demandan responsabilidades de carácter moral y ético a los profesionales de museos, operadores turísticos y visitantes, por tanto los programas orientados a la conservación preventiva deben ser prioritarios. ·
* El planeamiento del turismo patrimonial debe prioritariamente evaluar el impacto de visitantes y regular el uso turístico del museo. Dichos estudios deben tomar en cuenta la adecuada base conceptual y programática consensuada entre los sectores interesados que permita enfrentar el desafío que implica la incorporación de un recurso patrimonial en función de su uso turístico.

PRINCIPIO 3
De cara al turismo cultural, los museos deben promover la participación activa de las comunidades locales tanto en la planificación de la gestión patrimonial como de la operación turística. ·

* Los bienes patrimoniales no pueden desvincularse de las comunidades que les dan origen y sentido histórico. Los museos están llamados a favorecer los procesos de identificación, valoración y conservación de tales manifestaciones, así como del medio ambiente en que se insertan, mediante la participación crítica de los miembros de las comunidades y sectores sociales comprometidos con éstos, en el ejercicio y defensa tanto de sus derechos individuales como de sus derechos colectivos. ·
* La comunidad debe estar presente en las etapas de diseño, planificación, ejecución y monitoreo de las actividades que propendan al uso del patrimonio cultural con fines turísticos. Por lo anterior es necesario que conlleve tanto procesos de identificación cultural como de mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de los grupos sociales involucrados en el hecho cultural. ·
* La simbiosis sociocultural entre la actividad turística y los recursos patrimoniales, con participación libre y democrática de amplios sectores, deberá ser garantía de la calidad del servicio al turista, de la autenticidad de los productos ofertados al visitante así como al fundamento del hecho cultural. ·
* Los museos deben propiciar que las comunidades gestionen su patrimonio cultural, para lo cual deben fomentar una capacitación adecuada.

PRINCIPIO 4
Una relación armónica entre los museos y el turismo cultural debe atender todos los aspectos constitutivos del museo como infraestructura, calidad de la colección, sistemas de información y comunicación, actividades educativas y de exhibición, el personal y la relación con el entorno. ·

* Los museos deben ser concebidos para todo público, no exclusivamente para el turismo, aunque los turistas representan una parte importante de su público. Por su función social deben propiciar experiencias placenteras de educación y comunicación, donde la información que se presente sea de fácil comprensión, reduzca al mínimo las barreras idiomáticas, facilite la comunicación y muestre un personal profesional debidamente capacitado, tanto para su desempeño museístico como para la atención al visitante, y una colección adecuadamente seleccionada y conservada., con los más modernos elementos tecnológicos disponibles. ·
* El turismo debe ser una experiencia creativa del uso del tiempo libre, en condiciones temporales y espaciales fuera de la cotidianeidad. Los museos deberán crear las condiciones para que sus visitantes los recorran a su ritmo y disfruten su permanencia. Es importante el planeamiento de recorridos turísticos mediante programas temporales y ceñidos a un calendario que satisfagan tanto el ocio de los habitantes locales como alternativas para el turismo foráneo. ·
* Los museos y el turismo cultural deben propiciar la interacción de los visitantes con la comunidad anfitriona en un marco de respeto hacia los valores y hospitalidad que se ofrecen.

PRINCIPIO 5
Desde el punto de vista económico, la comercialización del turismo cultural basado en recursos patrimoniales deberá entender la rentabilidad en su dimensión económica, social y medio ambiental. ·

* El planeamiento de proyectos culturales, a partir del museo y el turismo cultural, debe responder a estrategias de mercado congruentes con las características del recurso cultural y las comunidades anfitrionas. ·
* La conservación del acervo depositado en los museos es una responsabilidad que trasciende cualquier instancia administrativa para convertirse en una responsabilidad de la nación. Esto no exime a los museos de asumir sus propios mecanismos de búsqueda de patrocinio y financiamiento alternativo y tratar de convertirse en instituciones rentables capaces de generar recursos sin hacer concesiones, ofreciendo un producto genuino cuya fortaleza esencial radica en ser excepcionales y portadores de identidad. ·
* La participación de los museos en circuitos turísticos conlleva el diseño y oferta cultural complementaria además de convertirse en elementos integradores en la red de atractivos turísticos de cada lugar, .pudiendo ser, además, puntos de encuentro y de partida de otros itinerarios y servicios adicionales, tales como sitios de interés turísticos, restaurantes, transportes, artesanías, etc.

Museos y Turismo, una ruta a explorar

2009-05-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

La palabra ruta implica ya de por si camino trazado en un plan, es camino seguro que responde a una guía que facilita llegar a nuestro destino. En el turismo el destino es clímax de experiencias recorridas desde el ocio, la búsqueda de lo novedoso lo otro, lo exótico. El Huracán del norte en el mural La Plena de Rafael Tufiño anticipo los vientos de borrascas de la crisis económica que hoy levanta cimientos y techos de metal como se aprecian en una gráfica del Maestro Homar.
La transhumancia, las travesías de antropólogos anglosajones al sur, la búsqueda del paraíso perdido, la ilusión de las indias, el mito de las Américas, los cuentos y trofeos de guerra, todo anticipa el movimiento masivo de personas en barcos, aviones, trenes para alejarse de lo propio buscando lo otro, lo ajeno, le desconocido, en afán de diversión ,a veces en espíritu de saqueo, de competencia mirando desde arriba a los nativos. Buscando verse en los ojos de los locales como embajadores de cultura, dinero y poder.
O representando el mal gusto, lo kitsch o cursi, lo retrogrado, o bárbaro, lo ridículo.
Solo ver el grabado de Homar, los turistas para comprenderlo.

Joaquín Sorolla también tiene cabida en el nuevo Reina Sofía

2009-05-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

Saltando a la comba, La Granja, cuadro de Joaquín Sorolla de 1907.

El museo solicita obra del pintor aunque lo impide la ley que separa las colecciones

I. SEISDEDOS - Madrid - 09/05/2009

El pintor Joaquín Sorolla también entrará en el Reina Sofía. Sucederá con la renovación de la colección permanente que se está gestando desde hace meses y que será inaugurada el 27 de mayo. Su entrada no causará a buen seguro tanto revuelo como la petición del director del centro, Manuel Borja-Villel, de un puñado de grabados de Goya al Museo del Prado. Sea como sea, al igual que en aquella ocasión, la suma del artista al museo contraviene el Real Decreto de 1995 que fija la separación de las colecciones del Prado y del Reina Sofía en 1881, año del nacimiento de Picasso.

Sorolla (1863-1923) tampoco figura en la lista de artistas nacidos con anterioridad a esa fecha, que la norma fija en su anexo como "excepciones en atención a las especiales características que en ellos concurren". En esa enumeración de una veintena de nombres figuran algunos como los de Darío de Regoyos o Zuloaga, ampliamente representados en la colección permanente del Reina Sofía.

"Está comúnmente aceptado que la España negra es moderna, y por su luminosidad mediterránea a Sorolla se le ha considerado un artista de otra época", explicaba ayer Borja-Villel en el museo. "Pero también hubo una España blanca que hay que tener en cuenta, y lo cierto es que Zuloaga y él tuvieron una consideración internacional, sobre todo en EE UU, similar. Y de la confrontación de ambas ideas es de donde surge Picasso y la superación de los discursos caducos por la vía de las vanguardias".

Con Saltando a la comba, La Granja (1907), cuya cesión oficial ha conocido estos días, Borja-Villel pretende establecer ese contraste y abundar en el proyecto de la reconsideración de la historia del arte que se ha planteado desde el centro artístico que dirige.

Este acuerdo con el Museo Sorolla forma parte de una filosofía de colaboración que también es muy importante en la nueva etapa del Reina Sofía. También es el comienzo de una relación estable entre el museo madrileño dedicado al pintor valenciano y el centro nacional de arte. La idea es que Sorolla tenga mediante acuerdos puntuales una creciente representación en el Reina Sofía. La presencia del artista en el Prado también aumentará con la nueva configuración de su colección permanente, en la que el siglo XIX cobrará protagonismo.

Entre los últimos retoques que está recibiendo la remodelación del Reina Sofía (la más significativa en su historia), el comité encargado de los trabajos espera la recepción de los grabados de Goya. Pertenecen a las series Los Caprichos, Los desastres de la guerra y Los disparates. En total serán 24 piezas (y no 12, como se pensó en un principio) procedentes del Museo del Prado. Se colocarán en dos tandas -para evitar su deterioro- en la nueva sala 1, junto a las pinturas negras de Gutiérrez Solana.El lienzo 'Saltando a la comba' es el primero de los cedidos

ejemplo de exposición en espacio alternativo: museología en espacio industrial

2009-05-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

Guy Bourdin (Courtesy of Phillips de Pury & Company)

French photographer Guy Bourdin is among that lot of macabre but gloriously talented artists (think Stanley Kubrick), whose work equally disturbs and intrigues. The influential French Vogue contributor was rumored to be whiney, stung by the abandonment of his mother at a young age and unfairly demanding. There was no doubt that Bourdin was struggling with some dark demons: You need not look further than his photographs, which often feature an unholy mix of death and desire, misogyny and eroticism (the leggy, usually nude, models he used often had their heads cropped off or hidden). Despite the twisted subject matter, his photos are highly cinematic as well as glamorous and inspired a legion of photographers including Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Jean Baptiste Mondino, Nick Knight and David LaChapelle.

“Unseen: Guy Bourdin,” which opens this Saturday at The Wapping Project in London, is a collection of 32 of the photographer’s unseen works. Shown in a massive former hydraulic power station-turned arts center, the industrial-chic environ feels like an apt place to show the work. The Wapping Project founder and director Jules Wright — who was aware that Bourdin wanted his photographs to be destroyed after his death (in 1991 at age 63) — felt no moral implication when planning the show, which was curated in conjunction with Bourdin’s son Samuel Bourdin and Phillips de Pury & Company, and hosted by Bourdin’s model muse, Nicolle Meyer. “It is a bit of a conundrum,” she says, “However, from my point of view, I think the work is extraordinary and it deserves to be seen. It’s so influential and I’m pleased and delighted to be showing it, and for the work to be re-looked at, reappraised, re-thought.”

Through July 4 at The Wapping Project,, London.

Guy Bourdin (Courtesy of Phillips de Pury & Company)

otras tipografías: la letra como seducción

2009-05-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

Computers made hand-lettering both possible and inevitable. Here, Jonny Hannah’s cover typography for “Telling Tales” and John Gray’s lettering for “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

Steven Heller, a former art director at The New York Times, is a co-chair of the MFA Design Department at the School of Visual Arts and a blogger and author.

You may have noticed it, or maybe not. It may not be perceptible to the layman’s eye. After all, type and typography are supposed to be a crystal goblet — transparent — seen and read but not heard. Type should not be boisterous or distracting, though it must be appealing. In recent years there has been a veering away from the exclusive use of traditional typefaces (or fonts) to an increase in hand or custom lettering for advertisements, magazines, children’s books, adult book jackets and covers, film title sequences and package designs. Hand lettering is not just used, as it once was, for D.I.Y. youth-cult concert posters and T-shirts.

Calvin Klein, IBM, Microsoft, even the Episcopal New Church Center have run ad campaigns using what might be viewed as sloppily scrawled, sketchily rendered, untutored lettering. Its applications are so widespread that a couple of years ago, I co-authored a book about it (Handwritten: “Expressive Lettering in the Digital Age,” Thames & Hudson), and from what I can see, there is no sign that the trend is on the wane.

Owing to its infinite capacity for perfection, the computer has made this kind of hand lettering possible and inevitable. Incidentally, this is not the beautiful hand-crafted calligraphy celebrated by scribes and hobbyists and used for wedding invitations and diplomas. On the surface, this riotously raw lettering looks like it was produced by those who are incapable of rendering letters with any semblance of accuracy or finesse. And while this may or may not be true, a decade or so ago, this lettering was a critical reaction to the computer’s cold precision. It was also, in certain design circles, a means of rebelling against the purity and exactitude of modernism. Eventually it became a stylistic code for youthful demographics (the poster and title sequence for the film “Juno” stands out as a high-water mark in hand lettering, and before that, the TV series “Freaks & Geeks” used the trope), before being embraced by the mainstream (like the aforementioned IBM advertisements).

Some hand lettering derives from roughly sketching vintage and passé letterforms (including Victorian, Art Nouveau, or Art Deco styles), making them even more imperfect and, by doing so, injecting a contemporary aesthetic. Others are crazy and novel scripts and scrawls based on nothing other than an eccentric sensibility. Some look suspiciously like the kind of block letters with shadows that one might draw on a doodle pad. With the popularity of comics and graphic novels, hand lettering of the comic strip variety has also emerged as vogue.

Once, designers replaced official typefaces with their own handwriting because it was too expensive to set type (see Paul Rand or Alvin Lustig). These days, it is not an economic decision at all. Hand lettering is seen as a means to distinguish expressive from non-expressive messages. Or conform to certain fashions. I recently rented “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist” because the poster reminded me of the laissez-faire lettering of “Juno,” which I liked so much. It said playful and youthful. Lettering can certainly trigger that Pavlovian response, and hand lettering can do it better than most formal typefaces.

I am a big fan of this anti-type typography. This may be because it is something I can do without mastering complex techniques. But it is more complicated than that. Nonetheless, hand lettering is liberating. Sure, most official documents, in fact, most things we read (like books, magazines and blogs) require official typefaces — the more elegant, readable and legible, the better. But not every type treatment needs to be standardized. The hand offers a more human dimension and individual personality. Of course, this will inevitably change. A popular design trope will be copied until it is overused and we’re sick to death of it. But while it is still done well, my advice is to enjoy it, for in another few years it may simply be that style of the early 2000s, quaint and old hat.

NYT: museo de diseño - reconocimientos al diseño contemporáneo

2009-05-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Porter House in New York by the 2009 National Design Award winners SHoP Architects.

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has announced the winners of its 2009 National Design Awards. These ten winners represent an interesting cross-section of the design world, and this was one year in which the work of the runners-up was often just as compelling. The Walker Art Center — which has championed design for decades — won the Corporate Achievement Award, but the other two finalists, Dwell Magazine and Heath Ceramics, are no slouches in that department, either.

SHoP Architects, the winners in the Architecture Design category, had serious competition from Architecture Research Office and the Los Angeles architect Michael Maltzan. Francisco Costa, the creative director of Calvin Klein Collection, won the Fashion Design award over Rodarte and Thom Browne, a three-time nominee (wanna bet the fourth time will be the charm, and he’ll win next year?)

The Product Design award went to the provocative, witty work of Boym Partners, over Salvor Projects and Smart Design. HOOD Design beat out Andrea Cochran and Rios Clemente Hale in the Landscape Design category. Perceptive Pixel, Inc. won the Interactive Design Award (Lisa Strausfield and Potion were runners-up), while Bill Moggridge, the IDEO co-founder and designer of the first laptop computer (remember GRiD?) got the Lifetime Achievement award, and the energy guru Amory Lovins won for Design Mind. The New York Times Graphics Department won the Communications Design award, over Hofler & Frere-Jones and Project Projects.

And now for the inevitable quibbles. The NDA has categories for both Architecture Design and Interior Design, but the latter always seems to go to an architecture firm anyway — and often to an architecture firm that has completed many freestanding buildings. This year’s winner, Tsao & McKown Architects, does sublime interiors, but it has also done a six million-square-foot development in Singapore. Why not give two architecture awards and eliminate the distinction? And why were all of this year’s jurors past NDA winners? All props to their talent and expertise, but this arrangement looks a bit too cozy and insider-ish. Time to bring in more outsiders — some (I think it’s safe to use the word again) mavericks.

Pilar Viladas is the design editor of The New York Times Magazine.

lo que los museos deben aprender de Facebook

2009-05-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

Facebook is more than a fad—and museums need to learn from it

By Jim Richardson | From Editorial & Commentary | Posted: 23.4.09

Social networks and blogs are the fastest growing online activities, according to a report published in March by research firm Nielsen Online. Almost 10% of all time spent on the internet is spent on these types of sites, which Nielsen describes as “member communities”, and they are visited by more than two-thirds of the world’s online users.

This has not gone unnoticed by museums and galleries, with many creating some kind of presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. But because this has primarily been done as a marketing tool, institutions are missing a far greater opportunity. By treading gently into the second generation of web development and design, known as Web 2.0, museums risk achieving little, and are effectively paying mere lip service to online social engagement. If they were to make a proper commitment to the enterprise, they could transform their relationship with audiences, change people’s perceptions of them and vastly expand the reach of their collections.

The Nielsen research shows that a major factor in the success of social networks is that they allow people to select and share content. This has become a hobby, even considered by some to be a serious creative outlet, with web users spending time “curating” their online space. Museums are well placed to appeal to this new generation of “curators” because they offer rich and interesting content that can be virtually “cut-up” and stuck back together online in numerous different ways to reflect the individual tastes of each user. If remixing, reinterpreting and sharing interesting content is, as Nielsen suggests, the kind of engaging interaction that draws people to social networks, then museums should embrace the idea that “everyone is a curator”, both online and offline.

Most of the institutions that are adapting their own websites with those facets of the social networks that so many people find attractive are in the US. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York relaunched its website in March. It now includes links to the museum’s online users on various social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Users can also create personal online accounts, which allow them to bookmark upcoming events, create online exhibitions and “collect” works of art via their mobile phone as they walk around the gallery and view them later on the website.

Victor Samra, digital media marketing manager at MoMA, says: “It's not enough just to broadcast information now. Sharing and participating in discussions are becoming normal activities on the web, so I think people are coming to expect it. People want to engage with content they are really passionate about, and museums have a great opportunity to provide this for them. This helps to change the perception of the museum as a building with four closed walls to an organisation with personality and a human face.”

One potential obstacle to museums sharing content online is the issue of copyright and how to protect images if they are put on the internet. Legal implications aside, from a practical point of view this approach is becoming outdated. For example, the Art Museum of Estonia has gone against convention by actively encouraging visitors to photograph its collection; the MoMA website helps users to co-create content and share these creations with friends.

All museums want to create a dialogue with their audiences, and most museum staff are well aware that the internet can be a useful tool for doing this. But museums such as MoMA that have wholeheartedly embraced the new digital environment are becoming part of the conversation, rather then just pushing content or questions at visitors and then sitting back.

Online activity such as MoMA’s requires investment, both in terms of web development costs and staff time, but if this is where people are and how they are communicating, then, one can argue, museums should be there too.

Curators pride themselves on using their collections to analyse issues, provoke reactions and ask difficult questions. But these questions are no longer just being debated over a coffee or in the galleries themselves; they are also being discussed online, whether it is on social network sites such as Facebook, online discussion forums or the many blogs, and the content prompting these responses is no longer restricted to the four walls it actually inhabits. This means museums and galleries need to expand the sites where they introduce, narrate and edit their programmes.

The writer is the managing director of Newcastle-based Sumo, a design consultancy specialising in arts and culture. He is a speaker at the conference, “Communicating the Museum”, in Malaga (24-27 June). www.communicatingthemuseum.com

Noticias: The Art Newspaper

2009-05-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Nazi-era stolen art located in Dresden collection

Reina Sofía and Prado strike historic loan deal

Greek panels in Vienna restored to former glory

Indonesian minister of culture’s public apology for destruction of archaeological site

UK museums profit from recession

Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour put their contemporary art collection on show

International cultural property: how to find your way through the legal maze

Rockefeller rooms find homes

Japanese treasures draw astounding crowds in Nara and Tokyo

Brandhorst Museum opens in Munich on 21 May

Government’s big push for French art with Force de l’Art 02

Rome’s MACRO museum of contemporary art reopens for Museum Night

Museums and the recession: there is an alternative to closure or selling off the collections—sharing

Pinturas, dibujos, máquinas y diseños del artista del Renacimiento se exhiben en Roma

2009-05-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

Por Iván Fombella / Agencia Efe

Roma - La exposición “La mente de Leonardo. En el laboratorio de un genio” muestra en el Palacio de Venecia, en el centro de Roma, máquinas, diseños y pinturas del artista y científico renacentista Leonardo da Vinci, que ayudarán al visitante a introducirse en su mundo interior.

La mayor atracción de la exposición, además de la presencia de dos fragmentos de dibujos pertenecientes al Códice Atlántico que se encontraban en Los Ángeles, es la reconstrucción de diversas máquinas inventadas por Da Vinci, pero que el autor de “La Gioconda” nunca llegó a ver realizadas.

Según los organizadores -el Museo de Historia de la Ciencia de Florencia y las autoridades regionales, provinciales y municipales de Roma-, estas máquinas, algunas fabricadas a escala y otras a tamaño natural, se han hecho con técnicas y materiales “históricamente plausibles”, es decir, que ya existían en tiempos de Da Vinci.

Al contrario que otras muestras anteriores sobre el genio, que se reducían a una visión parcial de su obra, la atención de “La mente de Leonardo” se centra en la producción global de Da Vinci, y en la convicción de que, “en su infinita variedad de argumentos y direcciones”, ésta se caracteriza por “la unidad de criterios” en el método de análisis de la naturaleza.

El objetivo es hacer entrar al visitante en los misterios de Da Vinci, “invitándolo a explorar su modo de pensar y su esfuerzo por asimilar las leyes que gobiernan todas las operaciones del hombre y de la naturaleza”, y divulgando “una imagen clara, pero rigurosamente fiel a la realidad histórica, de la aventura intelectual de Leonardo”.

Para ello se han traído desde Los Ángeles algunos de los dibujos que componían el Códice Atlántico, en los que se representa, por ejemplo, un diseño que Da Vinci hizo para un escenario teatral móvil, con motivo del estreno de la obra “Orfeo” de Angelo Poliziano en Milán.

En el manuscrito se puede ver también un escenario con un volcán que se abre y deja ver al personaje de Plutón, ascendiendo de los infiernos. El propio escenario ha sido reconstruido en una maqueta, como también el aparato volador inventado por Leonardo, un león mecánico, una cámara oscura, su “prospectógrafo” y su “reloj planetario”.

Algunos de ellos funcionan, y otros simplemente demuestran el genio visionario de un inventor que se adelantó varios siglos a su tiempo en campos como la física y la mecánica, y que imaginó aviones, helicópteros y precursores de las cámaras de fotos y de cine.

La muestra también cuenta con una parte dedicada a la obra artística, en la que destacan dos cuadros de “Leda y el cisne” realizados en su taller.

Se trata de una obra de Da Vinci famosísima en el Renacimiento pero cuyo original se ha perdido, y de la que sólo quedan reproducciones como las dos que se exhiben en la muestra, la “Leda Borghese” y la “Leda Spiridon”, hasta ahora conservadas en la Galería Borghese de Roma y en la Galería de los Uffizi de Florencia, respectivamente.

También se podrán admirar en el Palacio Venecia los dibujos preparatorios de dos de sus más grandes obras pictóricas: “La adoración de los Magos” y el enorme mural que representaba la batalla de Anghiari en el Palazzo Vecchio de Florencia, también perdido.

Videos en alta resolución, contenidos interactivos y visualizaciones virtuales de las obras perdidas del artista completan una muestra, abierta hasta el 30 de agosto, que pretende ser un paseo por una de las mentes más brillantes del Renacimiento.

Museo de EE.UU. pudiera permitir examen de sangre de Lincoln

2009-05-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

martes, 5 de mayo de 2009
Actualizado hace 1 días (10:00 a.m. )
Prensa Asociada

Filadelfia.- El jefe de un museo de Filadelfia dijo que su muestra de la sangre de Abraham Lincoln pudiera ser usada para un examen de ADN, pero agregó que primero deben responderse varias preguntas sobre el procedimiento.

El cardiólogo John Sotos piensa que Lincoln padecía de una enfermedad genética rara y quiere realizar el examen de ADN para probar su hipótesis.

La muestra de sangre del decimosexto presidente de Estados Unidos está en una franja de una funda de almohada en la colección del Museo y Biblioteca del Gran Ejército de la República.

La junta del museo se reunió el lunes por la noche y rechazó el pedido de Soto para realizar el examen de la funda.

El presidente de la junta, Eric Schmincke, dice que primero deben quedar claras varias interrogantes sobre cómo será tratado el objeto en el proceso. Dijo que es posible que el examen sea supervisado por el Museo Nacional de Salud y Medicina.

En Barcelona, controversia por cierre de museo militar

2009-05-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

Los avidores de la república en contra de que cierren museo militar

Los adversarios de que se clausure el Museo Militar de Montjuïc y se desarme el castillo cuentan con una inesperada fuerza aliada: los aviadores de la República.

Los viejos veteranos de la Gloriosa deploran que la conversión del castillo en centro internacional por la paz suponga la retirada del material bélico del recinto y solicitarán que se les devuelva la enseña de la unidad de cazas republicanos que depositaron en el museo hace seis años -la bandera de la tercera escuadrilla del Grupo 26 de Chatos-.

Desde otra instancia muy diferente pero igualmente castrense, el ex capitán general de la Región Pirenaica con sede en Barcelona y ex jefe del Estado Mayor del Ejército de Tierra, Luis Alejandre Sintes, ha decidido retirar su sable, que formaba parte de la colección del museo, y regalárselo a su editor, Daniel Fernández, lógicamente exultante, no en balde publica a Patrick O'Brian. El fenómeno es general (nunca mejor dicho) y diferentes propietarios de las colecciones cedidas al museo están solicitando que se les devuelvan sus piezas, descontentos con que se les busque emplazamiento alternativo como el castillo de Figueres.

"Las armas no tienen la culpa de las guerras", es absurdo castigarlas", expresó a este diario el presidente de la asociación de Aviadores de la República, el ex mecánico de Chatos de 92 años Antoni Vilella. "Todas las grandes capitales europeas tienen museos militares, desgraciadamente hay en la actualidad en Barcelona, o más bien en una parte de su Ayuntamiento, un ambiente contrario. Nos sabe muy mal que el patrimonio del museo esté desapareciendo pieza a pieza, vaciándose inexorablemente. Lo que queda no se sabe bien adónde irá al final".

Vilella no considera paradójico que las viejas alas de la República defiendan un centro al que se le reprocha su concepción y pasado franquistas. "Siempre hay quien arrima el ascua a su sardina, pero es absurdo desmilitarizar completamente un castillo, convertirlo sólo en un lugar panorámico. Ni a las armas ni a los paramentos se los puede hacer responsables de lo nefasto de la historia". Los aviadores quieren recuperar su bandera "antes de que se la lleven". La colocarán en el local de su asociación, orgullosos de sus colores.

Coreografía en el Reina Sofía en Madrid - actividades alternativas en un centro de arte

2009-05-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

ELPAIS.ES: Sólo 900 personas podrán ver el montaje de Cunningham en el Reina Sofía

El coreógrafo más influyente del mundo prepara para Madrid un espectáculo de danza intimista y restringido

Sólo 900 personas tendrán el privilegio de contemplar a partir de mañana la pieza de arte efímero que el coreógrafo Merce Cunningham, que acaba de cumplir 90 años, ha creado para el Reina Sofía: un Event en el que 14 miembros de su compañía bailan en una sala del museo a escasos centímetros de los espectadores. Según ha explicado hoy a Efe el director ejecutivo de la compañía, Trevor Carlson, los asistentes -en grupos de 150 en cada uno de los dos pases diarios que habrá desde mañana hasta el día 9- elegirán una posición en la sala donde los bailarines evolucionarán por los cinco tatami que se han colocado en el suelo.

La ubicación del público es fundamental en todos estos espectáculos porque Cunningham quiere que su forma de entender la composición, como un collage dadaísta, esté no sólo dispuesto frontalmente al espectáculo, sino que se desplace por la sala para que tenga multiplicidad de "centros" de observación. En este Event, "el ochenta y tantos", según Carlson, de los que Cunningham ha hecho desde 1964, los bailarines actuarán durante unos 40 minutos en cada "pase" en la Sala 1 del Reina Sofía, en el Edificio Sabatini.

Se trata de un espacio largo y estrecho dividido en tres galerías en las que se han colgado como fondo grandes murales, pintados por el propio Cunningham y otros miembros de la compañía. Son, dice Carlson, "reinterpretaciones" de partituras del compositor John Cage, compañero sentimental del coreógrafo durante 50 años, hasta su muerte en 1992. La compañía, que ha actuado también la pasada semana en el Festival Internacional Madrid en Danza, ideó los Event como una manera de presentar su trabajo fuera del espacio escénico tradicional.

"Realmente hay que amar la danza para dedicarle la vida. No te devuelve nada: ni manuscritos que conservar ni pinturas que mostrar en las paredes o tal vez colgar en los museos ni poemas para editarse o venderse", explica el coreógrafo en el programa de mano editado por el Reina Sofía. Un Event está compuesto por diversas secciones de coreografías preparadas con antelación que son ensambladas el mismo día de su representción para adaptarse al espacio, y lo habitual es que los bailarines no escuchen la música hasta el mismo día del estreno para que sea el azar el que determine los elementos.

Música colectiva

Para su exposición en el Reina Sofía, la música la pondrán Takehisa Kosugi, director musical de la compañía desde 1995, y Stephen Moore y John King, además de Alessandra Rombola y Ingar Zach, ambas residentes en España. Cunningham, nombrado Living Leyend (Leyenda viva) por la Biblioteca del Congreso de los Estados Unidos, creó su compañía en 1953 y revolucionó las ideas básicas de la danza moderna, en la que ha aplicado tecnología como los programas informáticos de captura del movimiento y que ya emplean coreógrafos de todo el mundo.

Con su iniciativa, el museo quiere rendir homenaje a la "gran aportación" que el coreógrafo ha hecho en el desarrollo del arte contemporáneo en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, "superando con creces el ámbito estricto de la danza". El museo ha organizado también un taller infantil de danza, los días 7, 8 y 9 de mayo, con el método de Merce Cunningham.

Juez ordena el cierre de “Bodies” en París

2009-05-06T12:38:00.001-07:00

La exhibición muestra cadáveres chinos cuyos fluidos corporales fueron sustituidos con plástico. (AP)

martes, 21 de abril de 2009
Actualizado hace 14 días (04:22 p.m. )
Prensa Asociada

París.- Un juez parisino ordenó hoy el cierre de una exhibición de cadáveres chinos preservados argumentando que el lugar de los muertos está en los cementerios.

El juez le dio a los organizadores 24 horas para cerrar la muestra y presentar una lista de los cuerpos usados para buscar una solución en relación con las leyes francesas sobre entierros.

La exhibición muestra cadáveres chinos cuyos fluidos corporales fueron sustituidos con plástico. Organizada por Encore Events en una galería de arte en la margen derecha de París, la muestra incluye cuerpos desnudos sin vidrio protector, algunos sin piel, otros con los músculos desollados para asemejar plumas.

Eventos similares se han realizado sin problemas en varias ciudades de Estados Unidos, México y Corea del Sur, entre otros. En Venezuela, empero, se clausuró "Bodies Revealed" el mes pasado supuestamente porque los organizadores no informaron en la aduana que la muestra incluía verdaderos órganos humanos.

Algunos opositores dicen que los cuerpos podrían ser parte de un mercado negro de cadáveres de prisioneros chinos. Dos grupos franceses defensores de los derechos humanos presentaron una demanda argumentando que la exhibición, que abrió el 12 de febrero, viola las leyes de protección de la dignidad del cuerpo humano.

En su fallo del martes, el juez Louis-Marie Raingeard de la Bletiere ordenó una multa de 20.000 euros (26.000 dólares) por cada día de retraso en el cierre.

"Los cadáveres y sus desmembramientos en primer lugar serán enterrados o incinerados o colocados en colecciones científicas", dijo el juez. Indicó que la "detención privada" de un cadáver es ilegal en Francia.

Los organizadores dijeron que le daban al público conocimientos científicos a través de la muestra "Our Body", pero el juez estuvo en desacuerdo.

Señaló que la compañía tenía un claro "objetivo comercial" y que la exhibición carece de "respeto a la decencia" y al cuerpo humano.

El curador científico de la muestra, Herve Laurent, argumentó que ésta es "técnicamente irreprochable".

"Contribuye a un mejor entendimiento de nosotros mismos", dijo en conferencia de prensa tras conocer la decisión de la corte.

Pascal Bernardin, director de Encore Events, dijo a principios de mes que la fundación de Hong Kong que provee los cuerpos, Anatomical Sciences & Technologies, le había asegurado que éstos fueron adquiridos de acuerdo con las leyes chinas. Sin embargo, insistió en que los cadáveres estaban amparados por el derecho médico al anonimato.

La fecha de cierre de "Our Body" era el 10 de mayo, cuando iba a mudarse a otra ciudad a las afueras de París. Exhibiciones previas en Lyon y Marseille atrajeron en conjunto 145.000 visitantes. La muestra de París había vendido 200.000 boletos a principios de abril, dijo Bernardin.

Dos compañías — Premier Exhibitions Inc. en Estados Unidos y Gunther von Hagen’s Body Worlds en Alemania — han sido las principales organizadoras y promotoras de estas exhibiciones, y también los principales blancos de críticas.

Arte que invade la ciudad

2009-05-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

Diversas obras adornan las estaciones del Tren Urbano. Arriba, la escultura Árbol de china de Anna Nicholson, en Guaynabo. En los círculos, de abajo hacia arriba, Silla de salvavidas, de Reynold Rodríguez; Paloma, de Imel Sierra; y El pescador de sueños, de José García Campos. (Primera Hora / Archivo / Teresa Canino)

viernes, 24 de abril de 2009
Janet González Bolivar / Primera Hora

Su presencia, a menudo inesperada, quebranta la monotonía del paisaje y la arquitectura urbana, imprimiendo un nuevo discurso visual a la ciudad: una paloma de acero inoxidable que alza vuelo en una concurrida intersección del Condado, varios aguacates que reposan en plena plaza del mercado de Santurce y cinco monumentales letras rojizas que anuncian la llegada al pueblo de Ponce. Son todas piezas de arte que rehúyen la contemplación íntima que supone un museo o galería, y se proponen -muy por el contrario- entablar un diálogo con la urbe, sus habitantes y sus espacios. Son, sin más, obras de arte público.

Aunque sus manifestaciones pueden ser diversas -esculturas, monumentos, mosaicos y tipografías, entre otras tantas-, este tipo de arte tiene una característica necesaria: se exhibe en algún espacio público (generalmente en el exterior) y, por tanto, va dirigido a todos. Parques, autopistas, paredes, plazas y estaciones de tren de todo el mundo exhiben con frecuencia estas propuestas artísticas, que parecen soportar agua, sol y sereno con tal de que los transeúntes se crucen con ellas y las admiren.
“El arte está hecho para interactuar con él, reflexionar y disfrutar. Las obras de arte público son exitosas cuando las personas tienen un contacto real con la pieza, cuando generan comentarios y controversias, y, ante todo, cuando no pasan desapercibidas”, asegura Celina Nogueras, promotora de arte y directora del despacho MUUAA, líder nacional del movimiento de las artes, el diseño y la arquitectura.

Durante los primeros años de la presente década, Nogueras estuvo capitaneando -junto con el arquitecto Miguel Rodríguez- el Proyecto de Arte Público de Puerto Rico, una iniciativa estatal que, bajo la gobernación de Sila Calderón, asignó $25 millones para la instalación de 100 obras de arte a través de toda la Isla. Fue en ese tiempo cuando aconteció un verdadero boom de este tipo de piezas a nivel local, un fecundo periodo artístico en donde numerosas creaciones pasaron a ser parte de los entornos urbanos: Paloma y el conjunto escultórico Aedes (en Condado y la PR-22 en Arecibo, respectivamente) de Imel Sierra, Aguacates (plaza de mercado de Santurce ) de Annex Burgos, Mujer reclinada de Fernado Botero y El pescador de sueños de José García Campos (ambas en la plaza del edificio Minillas), por mencionar algunas de las más emblemáticas.
“Antes tú decías ‘arte público’ y creías que eran solamente esculturas, bustos o monumentos decorativos, pero ese proyecto abrió la oportunidad para que otros tipos de obras menos tradicionales -como los mosaicos, las lumínicas y hasta las famosas letras de Ponce- interactuaran y se involucraran con la gente. Eso no pasaba antes”, reflexiona Nogueras. “Fue, además, una oportunidad superimportante para muchos artistas, quienes tuvieron la experiencia de hacer trabajos para el alcance público y a una escala muy grande”, añade la también curadora independiente.

Más allá de los medios empleados o de sus artífices particulares, estas intervenciones urbanas buscan principalmente acercar el arte a la comunidad en su conjunto. Y es que la premisa básica del arte público -poner el arte en la calle- no les tiene mayor tolerancia a los espacios encerrados y selectos. El arte público, como comenta la escultora Linda Sánchez, fue ideado para entrar en contacto directo con las masas y fomentar, así, la sensibilidad artística de muchos.
“La plástica es parte de la cultura de un pueblo, y que el pueblo tenga acceso a lo que es el proceso creativo de la clase artística del país es, sin duda, de suma importancia”, plantea Sánchez, también directora del Departamento de Escultura de la Escuela de Artes Plásticas (EAP). “Entiendo que el arte público es la manera en que el artista se acerca al pueblo y el pueblo al artista, proponiendo -de paso- una valiosa interacción”, puntualiza.

PUERTO RICO: Simposio internacional de educación en los museos

2009-05-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

jueves, 30 de abril de 2009

Actualizado hace 6 días (00:00 a.m. )
Primera Hora

Los museos son agentes de cambio social y constituyen una extensión de la sala de clases en múltiples países. Partiendo de estas premisas, el Museo de Arte de Ponce (MAP) celebrará del 13 al 14 de mayo en la Universidad de Puerto Rico en Río Piedras el simposio internacional de educación en museos: La aportación educativa de los museos a la sociedad, el cual presentará una serie de conferencias, talleres y mesas de trabajo sobre el tema a cargo de expertos de Estados Unidos, Venezuela, México y Puerto Rico.

El principal oficial ejecutivo y director del MAP, Agustín Arteaga, explicó que en la Isla “los programas de educación en los museos son relativamente nuevos. Sin embargo, nuestra práctica y la literatura científica demuestran que cuando se explican e ilustran conceptos utilizando como punto de referencia obras de arte los resultados son sumamente positivos. A través de este simposio, nos interesa intercambiar experiencias, conocer qué están haciendo otros profesionales de este campo, cómo fortalecer nuestros programas y promover más efectivamente la integración de las artes en el currículo escolar”.

Con el fin de abordar estas interrogantes desde una visión amplia, el MAP recibirá a 10 autoridades de la educación en museos. Entre estas figuras se destacan los estadounidenses George E. Hein, profesor emérito e investigador principal asociado de la Universidad de Lesley; Shari Tishman, directora del Proyecto Cero de la Universidad de Harvard; Lynn D. Dierking, profesora del programa Sea Grant de la Universidad del Estado de Oregon; y Rebecca McGinnis, coordinadora del programa de acceso a personas con necesidades especiales del Metropolitan Museum of Art de Nueva York.

También participarán en el evento Mary Alexander, del Maryland Historical Trust’s Museum; Leslie Bedford, directora del programa graduado de liderazgo en museos de la Universidad de Bank Street; y Nancy Jones, directora ejecutiva del Departamento de Interpretación y Aprendizaje del Instituto de las Artes de Detroit.

Otros que compartirán con el público sus conocimientos son la mexicana Nuria Sadurni, curadora educativa independiente, y la venezolana María del Carmen González, curadora de programas educativos de la Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Fundación Cisneros y Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, EUA y Latinoamérica. Además, representantes de iniciativas educativas en museos locales que junto al MAP, dialogarán sobre sus experiencias y retos durante un panel especial.

La coordinación de las mesas de trabajo quedará a cargo de Annette López de Méndez, directora del Centro de Investigaciones Educativas y profesora del Departamento de Currículo y Enseñanza de la UPR-RP. Además el público podrá tener la oportunidad de compartir con Teresa Brigantti, Museo Casa Roig, UPR; Evita Busa, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo; Doreen Colón, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; Humberto Figueroa, Museo de Arte Dr. Pío López Martínez, Cayey; Lisa Ortega, Museo Historia, Antropología y Arte, UPR, Juan Pastoriza, Museo y Centro de Estudios Humanísticos, Universidad del Turabo, Ana Margarita Hernández, Museo de Arte de Ponce los cuales constituyen el panel sobre Proyectos educativos exitosos en museos en Puerto Rico.

“La aportación educativa de los museos a la sociedad será una gran oportunidad para que maestros, profesores universitarios, educadores y colegas de otros museos enriquezcan sus conocimientos sobre la educación en arte y la valiosa aportación que ofrece al bienestar de la Sociedad. De igual modo, nos permitirá sumar esfuerzos y crear alianzas por el bienestar social del País. Participar de este evento es hacer un compromiso con el presente y futuro de Puerto Rico, porque el arte es un agente de cambio y motor de la identificación de la gente con su cultura. Además, estimula el sentido de pertenencia y la inteligencia emocional”, concluyó Ana Margarita Hernández, directora del Departamento de Educación del MAP.

El simposio internacional de educación La aportación educativa de los museos a la sociedad cuenta con el auspicio de el National Endowment for the Arts, la Oficina de Apoyo a las Artes del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, la Fundación Samuel H. Kress, la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras, El Nuevo Día Educador, y WAL-MART.

Todas las actividades comenzarán a las 8:00am y tendrán lugar en el Anfiteatro I de la Facultad de Educación y en el Anfiteatro de la Escuela de Arquitectura en la UPR-RP. Además, la División de Educación Continua y Estudios Profesionales (DECEP) de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras certificará por horas contacto de capacitación profesional a los interesados. Para obtener más información de costos y registro, puede llamar al 787.840.1510, Ext. 254, visitar www.museoarteponce.org o escribir a ecolon@museoarteponce.org.

NYT: remodelación del ala Americana en el Metropolitan Museum of Art

2009-05-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

The renovated Engelhard Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art now houses marbles, bronzes and other pieces that can be examined up close. More Photos >

The Met offers new look at Americana

By CAROL VOGEL

In the early 1970s, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled a plan to create its own Crystal Palace in Central Park — a glass-enclosed, glass-roofed space to house its expanded American Wing — Community Planning Board 8 voted 24 to 1 against the proposal, and one board member called it a rape of the park.

But the Met persevered, and in May 1980 the American Wing opened to rave reviews, going on to draw thousands of visitors every year to its 136,000-square-foot space — larger than many small museums — and its collection of American furniture, decorative arts and paintings.

But nearly 30 years is a long time in museum life: collections grow, visitors seek out the new, and curators have fresh ideas about how to do things. Now, after two years of construction and renovation, the Charles Engelhard Court — that light-filled pavilion punctuated by the Greek Revival limestone facade of Martin E. Thompson’s Branch Bank of the United States — will reopen on May 19, along with its period rooms.

The renovation completes the second phase of a larger $100 million project to reconfigure, renovate and upgrade the entire wing by 2011. (The first phase, in which the first-floor galleries received a makeover, was finished in 2007.)

On a recent rainy morning, as workers put the finishing touches on Engelhard Court, the chairman of the American Wing, Morrison H. Heckscher, could be found standing in the center of the space, surveying the proceedings. “There was never much art in here,” he said. “Since it was a garden court, the focus was on tranquillity. The only sculptures were in the planting beds, where nobody could get close to them.”

Now the space, with 30 percent more room for displaying work, is filled with some 60 monumental marbles, bronzes, mosaics, stained-glass windows and architectural elements, many placed so that visitors will be able to examine them at close range. Before, the sculptures were decorative; now they’re the focus in an effort to illustrate their importance in American art.

“Diana,” a bronze by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, is still the centerpiece, pointing toward the wing’s entrance, as she always has, although now she sits on a higher pedestal. “I call it the greatest weather vane in American sculpture,” Mr. Heckscher said.

Nearby, flanking the Tiffany loggia, are two white marble memorial reliefs by Daniel Chester French. “Previously they were on the second-floor balcony where nobody could see them,” Mr. Heckscher said. “They’re pretty big things to hide — they about weigh eight tons each.”

Also newly prominent is a carved limestone pulpit from All Angels’ Church, which the museum acquired when that West End Avenue building was demolished in the 1970s. Created by the Viennese-born sculptor Karl Bitter, perhaps best known to New Yorkers for the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel, it is not the first example that Met visitors can see of his work. He also created four 10-foot-tall figures and six medallion reliefs that adorn the museum’s facade.

Next to the pulpit that day was a cardboard mock-up of a circular oak sounding board topped with a trumpeting angel. The real thing was waiting to be mounted above the pulpit.

There are other references to the museum’s facade here too. A pair of monumental French-style lamps are new to the court. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt, an architect who contributed to the museum’s 1902 facade and the Great Hall, they stood on either side of the entrance to the grand staircase until 1970, then were put in storage for decades. They have now been restored, and the lanterns surrounding the bulbs were replicated based on original drawings and vintage photographs.

Some of the space’s greatest hits, like the Tiffany stained-glass windows, have been seamlessly recessed into the architecture. And a new acquisition, an 1867 window by Henry Sharp called “Faith and Hope,” from St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn, has been added too.

Whether sitting or wandering around the courtyard, a visitor cannot help taking in a new glass mezzanine and the original balcony above that is now glass-fronted. Here some 1,000 works of decorative objects will be displayed in cases that line three sides of the courtyard. They include the department’s latest acquisition: 250 examples of American art pottery made between 1876 and 1956 that were recently promised to the museum by Robert A. Ellison Jr., a New York collector.

In rethinking the collection, which has grown considerably since the court first opened (3,400 works have been added in the last 30 years), the curators decided to change the way decorative objects were displayed. Rather than grouping works by medium — say, cases of all silver — they will now be shown chronologically.

“Silver will no longer be isolated but shown with brilliant-colored ceramics,” Mr. Heckscher said. “It’s visually more exciting for our public.”

In addition to decorative objects, there will be two new cases devoted entirely to American jewelry, ranging from early-18th-century mourning rings to examples of Arts & Crafts pieces.

In keeping with the sun-filled, floating feel of the architecture, a new glass elevator leads visitors to the period rooms. Formerly a hodgepodge, they have been rearranged so that visitors, without even intending to, take an architectural journey, beginning with 17th-century Puritan Massachusetts and ending with an early-20th-century living room from a house in Wayzata, Minn., designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

“There was never a rational way to get to the start of the story,” Mr. Heckscher said.

Technological advances have been made throughout. The lighting in the period rooms, for instance, is all fiber-optic now, which allows more precise illumination of individual works as well as a more historically accurate atmosphere in each room.

In researching the proper colors for the period rooms, Mr. Heckscher said, 30 years has made a giant difference.

“We’ve revived the craft of using hand-ground natural pigments within an oil base that over time will develop the right sense of patina,” he said. Before, modern latex paints were used, and they did not age well.

Most of the period rooms will have touch screens so that visitors can learn more about a piece of furniture or an object. Rather than getting a full image of what is selected, however, only a silhouette will appear.

The feature is intentional. Curators don’t want visitors concentrating on the screen, a hazard with such museum technology. Instead, Mr. Heckscher said, the goal is to get “people to actually look at what is in the room.”

NYT 2007: MUSEO DE LA CREACION

2009-05-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

A dinosaur in Eden at a museum opening in Petersburg, Ky. More Photos >

Adam and Eve in the land of the Dinosaurs

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

PETERSBURG, Ky. — The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away.

What is this, then? A reproduction of a childhood fantasy in which dinosaurs are friends of inquisitive youngsters? The kind of fantasy that doesn’t care that human beings and these prefossilized thunder-lizards are usually thought to have been separated by millions of years? No, this really is meant to be more like one of those literal dioramas of the traditional natural history museum, an imagining of a real habitat, with plant life and landscape reproduced in meticulous detail.

For here at the $27 million Creation Museum, which opens on May 28 (just a short drive from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport), this pastoral scene is a glimpse of the world just after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, in which dinosaurs are still apparently as herbivorous as humans, and all are enjoying a little calm in the days after the fall.

It also serves as a vivid introduction to the sheer weirdness and daring of this museum created by the Answers in Genesis ministry that combines displays of extraordinary nautilus shell fossils and biblical tableaus, celebrations of natural wonders and allusions to human sin. Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel.

Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection. But inside the museum the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man’s fall.

It is a measure of the museum’s daring that dinosaurs and fossils — once considered major challenges to belief in the Bible’s creation story — are here so central, appearing not as tests of faith, as one religious authority once surmised, but as creatures no different from the giraffes and cats that still walk the earth. Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah’s flood; in fact dinosaurs were on the ark.

So dinosaur skeletons and brightly colored mineral crystals and images of the Grand Canyon are here, as are life-size dioramas showing paleontologists digging in mock earth, Moses and Paul teaching their doctrines, Martin Luther chastising the church to return to Scripture, Adam and Eve guiltily standing near skinned animals, covering their nakedness, and a supposedly full-size reproduction of a section of Noah’s ark.

There are 52 videos in the museum, one showing how the transformations wrought by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 reveal how plausible it is that the waters of Noah’s flood could have carved out the Grand Canyon within days. There is a special-effects theater complete with vibrating seats meant to evoke the flood, and a planetarium paying tribute to God’s glory while exploring the nature of galaxies.

Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative. Its 60,000 square feet of exhibits are often stunningly designed by Patrick Marsh, who, like the entire museum staff, declares adherence to the ministry’s views; he evidently also knows the lure of secular sensations, since he designed the “Jaws” and “King Kong” attractions at Universal Studios in Florida.

For the skeptic the wonder is at a strange universe shaped by elaborate arguments, strong convictions and intermittent invocations of scientific principle. For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection.

The Creation Museum actually stands the natural history museum on its head. Natural history museums developed out of the Enlightenment: encyclopedic collections of natural objects were made subject to ever more searching forms of inquiry and organization. The natural history museum gave order to the natural world, taming its seeming chaos with the principles of human reason. And Darwin’s theory — which gave life a compelling order in time as well as space — became central to its purpose. Put on display was the prehistory of civilization, seeming to allude not just to the evolution of species but also cultures (which is why “primitive” cultures were long part of its domain). The natural history museum is a hall of human origins.

The Creation Museum has a similar interest in dramatizing origins, but sees natural history as divine history. And now that many museums have also become temples to various American ethnic and sociological groups, why not a museum for the millions who believe that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old and was created in six days?

Mark Looy, a founder of Answers in Genesis with its president, Ken Ham, said the ministry expected perhaps 250,000 visitors during the museum’s first year. In preparation Mr. Ham for 13 years has been overseeing 350 seminars annually about the truths of Genesis, which have been drawing thousands of acolytes. The organization’s magazine has 50,000 subscribers. The museum also says that it has 9,000 charter members and international contributors who have left the institution free of debt.

But for a visitor steeped in the scientific world view, the impact of the museum is a disorienting mix of faith and reason, the exotic and the familiar. Nature here is not “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson asserted. In fact at first it seems almost as genteel as Eden’s dinosaurs. We learn that chameleons, for example, change colors not because that serves as a survival mechanism, but “to ‘talk’ to other chameleons, to show off their mood, and to adjust to heat and light.”

Meanwhile a remarkable fossil of a perch devouring a herring found in Wyoming offers “silent testimony to God’s worldwide judgment,” not because it shows a predator and prey, but because the two perished — somehow getting preserved in stone — during Noah’s flood. Nearly all fossils, the museum asserts, are relics of that divine retribution.

The heart of the museum is a series of catastrophes. The main one is the fall, with Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge; after that tableau the viewer descends from the brightness of Eden into genuinely creepy cement hallways of urban slums. Photographs show the pain of war, childbirth, death — the wages of primal sin. Then come the biblical accounts of the fallen world, leading up to Noah’s ark and the flood, the source of all significant geological phenomena.

The other catastrophe, in the museum’s view, is of more recent vintage: the abandonment of the Bible by church figures who began to treat the story of creation as if it were merely metaphorical, and by Enlightenment philosophers, who chipped away at biblical authority. The ministry believes this is a slippery slope.

Start accepting evolution or an ancient Earth, and the result is like the giant wrecking ball, labeled “Millions of Years,” that is shown smashing the ground at the foundation of a church, the cracks reaching across the gallery to a model of a home in which videos demonstrate the imminence of moral dissolution. A teenager is shown sitting at a computer; he is, we are told, looking at pornography.

But given the museum’s unwavering insistence on belief in the literal truth of biblical accounts, it is strange that so much energy is put into demonstrating their scientific coherence with discussions of erosion or interstellar space. Are such justifications required to convince the skeptical or reassure the believer?

In the museum’s portrayal, creationists and secularists view the same facts, but come up with differing interpretations, perhaps the way Ptolemaic astronomers in the 16th century saw the Earth at the center of the universe, where Copernicans began to place the sun. But one problem is that scientific activity presumes that the material world is organized according to unchanging laws, while biblical fundamentalism presumes that those laws are themselves subject to disruption and miracle. Is not that a slippery slope as well, even affecting these analyses?

But for debates, a visitor goes elsewhere. The Creation Museum offers an alternate world that has its fascinations, even for a skeptic wary of the effect of so many unanswered assertions. He leaves feeling a bit like Adam emerging from Eden, all the world before him, freshly amazed at its strangeness and extravagant peculiarities.

The Creation Museum opens Monday at 2800 Bullittsburg Church Road, Petersburg, Ky.; (888) 582-4253.

Roban dos pinturas en museo holandés

2009-05-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

By REUTERS

Published: May 1, 2009

Armed robbers stole two paintings — one by Dalí — from a Dutch museum on Friday, the police said. Several masked men entered the Scheringa Museum for Realist Art in Spanbroek, a village north of Amsterdam, at midday and took two paintings from the wall while holding the staff at gunpoint, the police said in a statement. The robbers fled in a black car. The Dalí, “Adolescence,” was painted in 1941. The other painting, “La Musicienne,” by the Polish Art Deco portraitist Tamara de Lempicka, dates from 1929. Both are owned by the museum.

NYT: exhibición sobre moda en el Metropolitan Museum of Art

2009-05-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

Perhaps more than just pretty faces

By CATHY HORYN

“The Model as Muse” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which opens on Wednesday, feels a little like a funhouse caught between the mummies and the Renoirs. You’re tempted to snap into one of those incredible bump-and-grind poses suggested by tiny amounts of Spandex and squeal, “Hey, girlfriend!”

Sometime in the 1980s fashion models left the glossy kingdom of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and moved in with us. We haven’t been able to get rid of them since. They went from being remote goddesses in Paris couture — and, just as condescending, starved British chicks with super boyfriends — to being plain old Gisele, Naomi and Tyra.

We’re not sure why they fascinate us, though with their height, long legs and skin like polished marble, they fail to suppress the idea that pretty girls always get what they want. Sharon Stone, at the peak of her fame, said she felt like a stump next to these women.

Like it or not, these creatures embody ideals of beauty and fashion, often representing generational shifts in taste and popular culture. The curators of “The Model as Muse,” Harold Koda and Kohle Yohannan, focus on the second half of the 20th century, starting with Dior’s New Look in 1947. Fashion models certainly existed before then — Mr. Yohannan notes in the exhibition’s catalog that in 1924 Vogue conducted a model search and got more than 500 applicants — but, despite the creamy images of photographers like Edward Steichen and Horst, it was hard to compete with the glamour of movie stars and debutantes.

What changed, in a word, was fashion. Postwar fashion, which essentially meant French fashion, assumed an ultra-sophisticated, imperious look that demanded an expressive type of model, one who didn’t shrink from the boned corsets and satin folds but instead felt a heightened sense of femininity — arching her narrow back, extending her long, alabaster neck. The 1950s seemed to invite men to make love to the clavicle.

It’s hardly a surprise that the ’50s and ’60s provide the curators with their best material. More than the merger of great photographers like Irving Penn, Lillian Bassman and Richard Avedon, or beauties like the Texas-born sisters Suzy Parker and Dorian Leigh, or energetic art directors like Alexey Brodovitch at Bazaar, these years were when a relationship developed between model and photographer.

This was especially evident in the pictures that Penn made with his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, whose lithe body lent a kind of nonchalant grace to the most imposing Balenciaga garment. But a similar understanding is also clear in Penn’s images of other models, notably Jean Patchett and Leigh. As Penn said of Leigh: “She seems to sense the coming click of the camera; her expression builds until she and the camera come alive together.”

Although models in the ’60s seem no less integral to the fashion-making process — Marisa Berenson recalled recently that she always had to do her own makeup for shoots and that it was her idea to give herself exploding lashes — the young women were becoming personalities in their own right. To deal with the crowds following Twiggy during her first shoot in New York, in 1967, the photographer Melvin Sokolsky had hand masks made of her image for the fans to hold up on cue. It was a way both to acknowledge Twiggy’s celebrity and avoid seeing other faces.

Of all the exhibition rooms at the Met, which are organized around decades and include copies of fashion magazines and re-creations of famous shoots with original garments (like the Dior dress in Avedon’s “Dovima With Elephants”), the ’60s room is the most effective. Blown up on one wall is “Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo?,” William Klein’s 1966 satiric film of the fashion world, and in the center are Bernard and François Baschet’s aluminum dresses from the movie, their cold surfaces reflecting the quest for modernity.

In many ways, though, the exhibition feels in search of a legitimate center, a justification — beyond icon-mongering — to spend so much time looking at pretty faces. By its very title, “The Model as Muse” presents an idealized relationship between photographer and model, or designer and model, and while much of the work in fashion is collaborative, the fact is that many designers and photographers are major control freaks. And some just outright dismiss the role of models.

As it is, the exhibition ignores one of the most significant model-designer relationships of the last 30 years: that between the Paris designer Azzedine Alaïa and his long-serving muses, among them Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista. It’s hard to imagine their careers — and bodies — without Mr. Alaïa’s singular fashion. The omission of Bruce Weber, who expertly plugs models and designers alike into his cinematic vision, also seems glaring.

Ultimately, in this attractive-looking exhibition, you don’t learn enough about the modeling experience as it played out in the late 20th century really to care. Linda and Naomi came along. Steven Meisel photographed them. They wore grunge and had a real good time. Then came Kate Moss, and, well, she was different. By the time you reach the last rooms of “The Model as Muse,” in the ’80s and ’90s, you might as well be flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine, so random and arbitrary are the conclusions.

Personality takes over the exhibition, the cult of personality that Gisele and Kate necessarily fuel. This may be a cultural reality, but it seems to me the curators could have avoided the obvious. What goes unaddressed is the change from film to digital photography, and how that affected sittings and the dynamics of the photographer-model relationship. It’s the sort of elemental question the curators should have asked. Instead they seem guilty of the grossest fashion sin: wanting to hang out with the models.

“The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion” is on view through Aug. 9 at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org.

Hirshhorn Museum to Auction Eakins Portraits

2009-05-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

After a two-year assessment of its collections, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington has decided to sell three portraits by Thomas Eakins at a Christie’s auction in New York on May 20, The Washington Post reported. Proceeds from the sale of the paintings, which are together estimated to bring between $580,000 and $870,000, will go toward the institution’s acquisition fund. Curators selected the portraits from the museum’s holdings of 220 works by the American artist. The three have not been exhibited at the Hirshhorn since a survey of Eakins’ work in 1977. Going on the block are “Robert C. Ogden,” from 1904; “Study for Portrait of Mrs. Charles L. Leonard,” from 1895; and “Study for William Rush and His Model,” painted in 1908.

NYT: Recortes de presupuesto en museos vivos

2009-05-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

MOVING A tight budget has led the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Mo., to find a new home for its two striped hyenas.

In Zoo cuts, it's Man vs. Beast

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

Chicago

AS in other cities, the shocks of the economic collapse have reverberated throughout Chicago, from the commodities exchanges in the Loop, past the fancy storefronts on Michigan Avenue and into the residential and commercial neighborhoods across the city’s inland expanses.

But the gloom has also spread north along Lake Michigan, through the gates of the Lincoln Park Zoo on the lakefront and right into the Regenstein Center for African Apes. There, the gorillas are no longer getting their blueberries.

Facing a budget shortfall of more than $1 million because of endowment losses, the 140-year-old zoo has had to cut back where possible. “Blueberries are pretty expensive,” said Steven D. Thompson, senior vice president for conservation and science programs. “And there are lots of other things we can use as treats.”

Taking pricey fruit off the table may seem like a trivial way to save money, but it illustrates the problem that zoos and aquariums confront when the economy turns sour. A gorilla — or a sea lion, marmoset, skink or chinstrap penguin, for that matter — can’t be put in storage, like a painting, to reduce costs. Yet savings must come from somewhere.

“We’re a living museum,” said John F. Calvelli, executive vice president for public affairs of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo, three smaller zoos and the New York Aquarium and is facing a 10 to 15 percent budget cut, in part because of the threatened elimination of state aid. “We just can’t close a wing of our museum as other institutions can.”

So officials at zoos and aquariums around the country are freezing or cutting jobs, reducing hours of operation or eliminating programs, or are planning such cuts as the next fiscal year approaches. As at Lincoln Park, they are looking at the smallest details of their operations, “the kinds of things you hope could be done every day but often take a little ‘stimulus’ to go after,” Dr. Thompson said.

At the Staten Island Zoo, officials are eliminating overtime and cutting back on supplies to cope with a 5 percent reduction in the operating budget, said John Caltabiano, executive director. But they are also receiving blemished and otherwise unsalable fruits and vegetables three times a week from a local supermarket to help reduce feeding costs.

Only in the most dire circumstances are institutions considering reducing the number of animals in their collections. At the Wildlife Conservation Society no plans are final yet, and it and other New York zoos and aquariums are pressing the state’s political leaders not to eliminate aid. But given the likely need to make large cuts in the society’s operating budget, Mr. Calvelli said, “I’d be hard pressed to think how we do it without closing down some exhibits.”

Yet that solution brings with it its own set of problems and expenses.

At the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Mo., where an underfinanced police and fire workers’ pension plan has led to sharp reductions in the city budget, including money for the zoo, officials have decided to get rid of several animals to save money on food and keepers.

Among the animals due to leave are two hyenas that were brought in several years ago as eventual replacements for the zoo’s aging cheetahs. The cheetahs are still around, so rather than keep the hyenas waiting in the wings, the zoo has found a new home for them at a zoo in Boise, Idaho.

“It’s a significant challenge,” said Melinda Arnold, a spokeswoman. As a member of an industry group, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the zoo has to find another accredited zoo or sanctuary to take the hyenas. “We have to adhere to standards,” Ms. Arnold said. “It doesn’t mean we can close down an exhibit tomorrow and move these animals out.”

Removing animals creates other problems as well. At the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, a budget crisis earlier this decade led to the removal of about 10 percent of the animals, including snow leopards, gibbons and red pandas, and an entire section of the zoo was closed. But the moves were counterproductive, said Donald P. Hutchinson, the zoo’s interim president and chief executive.

“What happened was that there was a significant drop-off in our attendance,” said Mr. Hutchinson, who arrived after the cuts were made. “When people come to a zoo, they want to see a variety of animals, not just farm animals or big cats or whatever.” By cutting back on that variety, the zoo became less appealing.

The zoo also lost some of its staff. “When you make the decision that you are going to make animal reductions, your professional keepers are going to leave quickly,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “Your vets are going to look elsewhere.” And the slow process of finding homes for the animals means that expenses won’t drop immediately. “We got rid of a lot of snakes,” he said. “But it took two years to distribute them.”

This time, with cuts in government money, the museum has opted to close for three months instead of the usual two during the winter. “It allows us to not have our temporary employees for the month,” Mr. Hutchinson said, “although it doesn’t save you as much as you’d think because you’re still caring for and feeding the animals.”

It’s the people, not the animals, that bear the brunt of the cutbacks everywhere. For visitors, cuts in maintenance or seasonal staff might mean that the bathrooms are cleaned less often or the lines at the food concessions are longer. “The visitor experience begins to be affected negatively, as opposed to the animal experience,” Mr. Hutchinson said.

For the workers themselves, though, cutbacks are potentially devastating. Dr. Thompson said the Lincoln Park Zoo was trying to reduce the number of layoffs by leaving some recently vacated positions unfilled. For example, he said, the zoo’s “green” coordinator has left, and the job will not be filled. As a result, he said, other employees are going to have to resume certain duties they had given up long ago.

Employees are also working harder at the North Carolina Zoo, a state-supported zoo in Asheboro. Zoo administrators have postponed major equipment purchases and have laid off a few employees to cut the operating budget by 7 percent, said Rod Hackney, a spokesman. “It’s had no impact on animal care,” he said. “We wouldn’t shortchange them; they’re our top priority.”

“Some people have to work longer,” Mr. Hackney acknowledged. “But they are certainly more than willing to do that. You don’t get into this business if you don’t love animals.”

Boletín electrónico de un museo con vocación de espacio alternativo

2009-05-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

noticias sobre proyectos de arte contemporáneo, sobre el menu del cafe, musica jazz y otras actividades....
The Mattress Factory Art Museum en Pittsburg.

The Mattress Factory is a museum of contemporary art that exhibits room-sized works called installations. Created on site by artists from across the country and around the world, our unique exhibitions feature a variety of media that engage all of the senses.

The Museum's unusual galleries are located in two creatively reused buildings on Pittsburgh’s historic North Side. Both buildings house a growing-and distinctive- permanent collection, featuring artists James Turrell, Yayoi Kusama, Winifred Lutz and Rolf Julius, as well as innovative exhibitions that change throughout the year.

Since 1977, the Mattress Factory has supported over 300 artists through our world-renowned residency program. Each year artists come to Pittsburgh, live at the museum, and create new work. During their time here, the museum supports them completely while they experiment, take risks, and explore the creative process.

Each exhibition is paired with a variety of engaging and inventive educational programs including hands-on art projects, workshops, lectures, and tours. The Mattress Factory
encourages all viewers, regardless of their background, to discover connections between art, creativity and their everyday lives.

FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2009
GESTURES: AN EXHIBITION OF SMALL SITE-SPECIFIC WORKS
Opening Reception
7:00 PM - 9:00PM | $10 | Members + PITT + CMU (w/ I.D.) = FREE

We're two days out from the opening reception for Gestures: An Exhibition of Small Site-Specific Works, guest-curated by Katherine Talcott. Artists are installing in their space and the exhibition is coming along. The days before an opening are, hands-down, the most exciting time here at the MF; artists are working, the galleries are buzzing with activity, everyone's creative juices are flowing, and the energy is infectious! Don't take my word for it, just check out this video from Gestures artist Josh Tonies. He's documenting his install via time-lapse. Great stuff!

In 2001, the Mattress Factory initiated the Gestures exhibition series to present new works by regional artists. In each exhibition, participants include individuals from a wide range of creative practices. Past participants in Gestures shows have included florists, architects, graphic designers and a wig maker.

The upcoming installment continues to bring together a diverse cross-section of talents and practices. Exhibiting artists include Atticus Adams, Amber Coppings, Claire Hoch & Dawn Weleski, Stephanie Flom & Peter Oresick, Kate Joranson, Keny Marshall, Than Htay Maung, Carin Mincemoyer, Risë Nagin, Ian Page, Vanessa Sica & Chris Kasabach, Josh Tonies, Ray Werner, R. Weis, Greg Witt and Brett Yasko.

We hope to see you Friday night at the opening!

FREE ADMISSION + MIMOSA FOR MOM THIS SUNDAY!
Mother's Day is Sunday, May 10th!

As we are all aware, Mother's Day is rapidly approaching this Sunday (YIKES!). If you're like most people, time has certainly crept up on you and now you're scrambling to make sure your Mom is well-taken-care-of this weekend. Well, we here at the MF have a few offerings designed to help make your Mom's special day easy for you and art-filled for her!

1) FREE Admission and Mimosas for Mom! Bring your Mom to the museum this Sunday, May 10th, and she gets in FREE. That's right, all Moms attending with their child(ren) get in FREE. And if that's not enough of a deal, the BoxSpring Café will be serving brunch from 1:00PM - 4:00PM, at which Mom will be treated to a complimentary Mimosa!

2) Unique Gifts for the Mom Who Has Everything! The perfect gift for Mom can be very hard to find. The MF Shop has some great new items that would make fantastic gifts for any Mom this Mother's Day. We have some very fun recycled tote bags that would be perfect for summer trips to the beach or even just the grocery store. Our recycled totes make the perfect gift, as we are all trying to be a bit more eco-conscious in our everyday lives these days....

LAST CHANCE: YUMI KORI'S KANATA
THROUGH SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2009

It's hard for most of us here at the MF to believe, but we opened Inner and Outer Space one year ago last week. Most of the pieces stayed on exhibit for the published run of the show (04.26.2008 – 01.11.2009), but there were two we extended. Sarah Oppenheimer's 610-3356 remains on view indefinitely on the 4th floor of 500 Sampsonia Way and Yumi Kori's kanata will be open through Sunday, May 10th, on the museum's lower level. In honor of its closing next week, check out Artist Spotlight :: Yumi Kori, which includes audio of the artist speaking about the piece and her process while working here at the MF.

SAVE THE DATE: FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2009
ART, JAZZ + POETRY: THADDEUS MOSLEY IN HIS OWN WORDS
6:30PM | $10 | MF members + PITT + CMU (w/ I.D.) = FREE

In a city like Pittsburgh that is steeped with tradition, oral histories become a unique view into the past. Stories told over generations are met with curiosity about places and people forever changed by time. One such storyteller is artist Thaddeus Mosley.

Join us on Friday, May 15, as Thad discusses his work and inspirations with music provided by renowned jazz drummer Roger Humphries and friends, and a poetry reading by award-winning poet Ed Roberson. The discussion will be moderated by Heinz History Center curator, Samuel Black.

THADDEUS MOSLEY: SCULPTURE (STUDIO | HOME) is on view through August 2, 2009

NYT: Reaparecen negativos de la Guerra Civil Española de fotógrafos de la cooperativa Magnum - Capa, Taro, Seymour

2009-05-03T07:47:00.000-07:00

April 30, 2009

New Works by Photography's Old Masters

By RANDY KENNEDY

When the three weathered cardboard boxes — known collectively, and cinematically, as the Mexican suitcase — arrived at the International Center of Photography more than a year ago, one of the first things a conservator did was bend down and sniff the film coiled inside, fearful of a telltale acrid odor, a sign of nitrate decay.

But the rolls turned out to be in remarkably good shape despite being almost untouched for 70 years. And so began a painstaking process of unfurling, scanning and trying to make sense of some 4,300 negatives taken by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War, groundbreaking work that was long thought to be lost but resurfaced several years ago in Mexico City.

What the center’s scholars have found among the 126 rolls over the last several months are a number of previously unknown shots by Capa, one of the founders of the Magnum photo agency and a pioneering war photographer, and by Taro, his professional partner and companion, who died in 1937 when she was struck by a tank near the front, west of Madrid. But more surprising has been the wealth of new work by Seymour, known as Chim, that was in the cases. Another of Magnum’s founders, he was known not for his battle photography but for penetrating documentation of Spanish life in the shadow of war.

[Man in beret with swastika, Basque region], January 1937, by David Seymour.

“This really fleshes out for the first time our picture of Chim in Spain, and the work is truly a great accomplishment,” said Brian Wallis, the chief curator for the center, which is planning a retrospective of Chim’s career to open in September 2010. Roughly a third of the negatives found in the cases have been determined to be by Chim (pronounced shim, an abbreviation of his real surname, Szymin), who was killed in 1956 while covering the Suez crisis. “We were bowled over by how much of his work was in this,” Mr. Wallis said.

While there was some initial hope, the negatives did not end up laying to rest a question that has long hovered over Capa’s career: whether he staged perhaps his most famous picture and one of the defining images of war, “The Falling Soldier,” which shows a Spanish Republican militiaman reeling backward at what appears to be the instant a bullet kills him near Córdoba. The boxes contained none of the series of photographs taken that fateful afternoon of Sept. 5, 1936, though several surviving images from the sequence have been published previously, and Richard Whelan, Capa’s biographer, has made a persuasive case that the picture was not faked. (A negative of the shot has never been found; it has been reproduced from two vintage prints.)

What the boxes have provided, said Cynthia Young, the curator of the center’s Capa Collections, who has been most closely involved with the images, is a much deeper understanding of how Capa, Taro and Chim worked during the relatively brief period in which they were collectively creating the archetype of the modern war photographer. The find has also fleshed out important stories from the war, like Capa’s coverage in March 1939 of the notorious internment camps for Spanish refugees in southwestern France, a subject that is the focus of increasing historical research.

[Distribution of food at Spanish refugee internment camp Bram, France], March 1939, by Robert Capa.

For Capa and Taro the newly discovered negatives are providing a way to make sense of their jumbled archive of images from the Spanish Civil War, in which dates, sequences and even attributions have remained uncertain. Much of their known work from those years was organized in nine notebooks of contact prints with little identifying information. (One of the notebooks is at the center; the others are at the French national archives in Paris.)

Because the rolls in the boxes show sequential shots from much of all three photographers’ most famous work from the war, it also allows scholars to “see how their eyes were working as they shot these stories,” Ms. Young said. “And I really think that’s the most interesting thing in this project, to see their thought process.”

The job of carefully scanning all the 35-millimeter images could not begin in earnest until several months after their arrival in New York, when Grant Romer, a conservation specialist from George Eastman House in Rochester, helped develop a special holder through which to run the negatives for digital scanning without damaging them.

[Gerda Taro, Paris], 1935, by Fred Stein.

Even now that the images have been brought to light, the story of how they wended their way from Capa’s Paris studio to Mexico has not become any clearer. From what Mr. Whelan, the biographer (who died in 2007), and other experts have pieced together, Capa apparently asked his darkroom manager to save his negatives in 1939, after Capa fled from Paris to New York. The boxes probably made their way to Marseille and at some point ended up with Gen. Francisco Aguilar Gonzalez, a Mexican diplomat stationed in the late 1930s in Marseille, where the Mexican government was helping antifascist refugees from Spain emigrate to Mexico.

The negatives also made the trip to Mexico, where after the general’s death they came into the possession of a filmmaker in Mexico City, Benjamin Tarver, whose aunt was a close friend of the general. In the 1990s, Mr. Tarver made the existence of the negatives known, and in 2007, after fitful negotiations, he agreed to give them to the International Center of Photography, which was founded by Capa’s brother, Cornell Capa.

In addition to new images by Chim that will be exhibited at his retrospective, the center is now planning a major exhibition of much of the work from the Mexican suitcase for sometime in 2010, Mr. Wallis said, adding: “We consider this one of the most important discoveries of photographic work of the 20th century.”

Museologia UPR 2009 / 2010

Sobre la arquitectura de los museos - Whitney Museum of American Art

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Municipal Archives

sobre los balances de seguridad + protocolo de un museo y la integridad y diversión del arte

La Bienal de Sevilla no sobrevive a la crisis

Qatar interesado en comprar la casa de subastas Christie's

Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts

EL Pais ::: Joyas de Artista

Crítica de arte ::: Nuevos Descubrimientos

El Pais ::: Babélica Manifesta

Roberta Smith, crítica de arte del NYT, opina sobre la pieza de Ai Weiwei en el Tate Modern

En Berlín, una exhibición sobre Hitler propone repensar el rol del pueblo alemán en un momento de creciente rechazo a los inmigrantes

Arte contemporáneo en Venecia, Italia

Noticias :::

Ai Weiwei at the Tate Modern

Ai Weiwei and The Unilever Series

Tate Modern covered in seeds

Ai Weiwei: setting a new benchmark

Ai Weiwei: the artist who took on China

Noticias ::: Fisk University files new plan to sell share in Stieglitz collection

El Pais ::: La maleta mexicana

Reinaugura el Museo de Arte de Ponce

Dinosaurios!

Comisionan instalación de Pepón Osorio en museo universitario

EL Pais ::: Por la Crisis, museos en España organizan muestras con colecciones privadas

Elpais.com ::: Sobre curadores, la historia del comisariado y el libro Creamier

CECA - Educación y la acción cultural Comité internacional para la educación y la acción cultural

Museo de "arte malo"

NYT ::: Museo del Hip Hop - cuándo?

Cerarrá el Museo Liberace

La biblioteca del Vaticano reabre sus puertas, esta vez con adelantos tecnológicos

Gran donación al British Museum de Londres

Se retrasa la inauguración del Museo de Arte Africano en la 5ta avenida en NY

Se retrasa la inauguración del Museo de Arte Africano en la 5ta avenida en NY

Exit Art ::: Historias alternativas, una historia de los espacios alternativos en NY desde los años 60

Enfoques curatoriales

e-flux ::: Rubén Santiago y The Intercepted City

posible nuevo museo Smithsonian sobre la presencia Latina en EU

Daimler Art Collection

Daimler Art Collection

Wall Street Journal ::: ahora los museos podrán vender su arte?

Gobierno de los museos

ELPAIS.COM ::: REPORTAJE: El 'lifting' de un tesoro cultural - Arqueológico sí, moderno también

Arqueológico sí, moderno también, por Angeles García 11/09/2010

EL PAIS.COM ::: ANÁLISIS: El 'lifting' de un tesoro cultural

Desconocido y maltratado, por Francisco Calvo Serraller 11/09/10

Colaboración entre museos: exhibición sobre la presencia latina en Nueva York inaugura en el Museo del Barrio

Introducción al American Association of Museums

Once respuestas a 'Art without artists' de Anton Vidokle

Letters to the Editors: Eleven Responses to Anton Vidokle’s “Art Without Artists?”

Artículo sobre el rol del curador en e-Flux Journal

Art Without Artists?, de Anton Vidokle

Nuevo curso!

Propuesta del ICOM para una Carta de Principios sobre Museos y Turismo Cultural

Museos y Turismo, una ruta a explorar

Joaquín Sorolla también tiene cabida en el nuevo Reina Sofía

El museo solicita obra del pintor aunque lo impide la ley que separa las colecciones

ejemplo de exposición en espacio alternativo: museología en espacio industrial

otras tipografías: la letra como seducción

NYT: museo de diseño - reconocimientos al diseño contemporáneo

lo que los museos deben aprender de Facebook

Noticias: The Art Newspaper

Pinturas, dibujos, máquinas y diseños del artista del Renacimiento se exhiben en Roma

Museo de EE.UU. pudiera permitir examen de sangre de Lincoln

martes, 5 de mayo de 2009 Actualizado hace 1 días (10:00 a.m. ) Prensa Asociada

Filadelfia.- El jefe de un museo de Filadelfia dijo que su muestra de la sangre de Abraham Lincoln pudiera ser usada para un examen de ADN, pero agregó que primero deben responderse varias preguntas sobre el procedimiento.

La junta del museo se reunió el lunes por la noche y rechazó el pedido de Soto para realizar el examen de la funda.

El presidente de la junta, Eric Schmincke, dice que primero deben quedar claras varias interrogantes sobre cómo será tratado el objeto en el proceso. Dijo que es posible que el examen sea supervisado por el Museo Nacional de Salud y Medicina.

En Barcelona, controversia por cierre de museo militar

Coreografía en el Reina Sofía en Madrid - actividades alternativas en un centro de arte

El coreógrafo más influyente del mundo prepara para Madrid un espectáculo de danza intimista y restringido

Juez ordena el cierre de “Bodies” en París

martes, 21 de abril de 2009 Actualizado hace 14 días (04:22 p.m. ) Prensa Asociada

París.- Un juez parisino ordenó hoy el cierre de una exhibición de cadáveres chinos preservados argumentando que el lugar de los muertos está en los cementerios.

El juez le dio a los organizadores 24 horas para cerrar la muestra y presentar una lista de los cuerpos usados para buscar una solución en relación con las leyes francesas sobre entierros.

Arte que invade la ciudad

viernes, 24 de abril de 2009 Janet González Bolivar / Primera Hora

PUERTO RICO: Simposio internacional de educación en los museos

Actualizado hace 6 días (00:00 a.m. ) Primera Hora

martes, 5 de mayo de 2009
Actualizado hace 1 días (10:00 a.m. )
Prensa Asociada

martes, 21 de abril de 2009
Actualizado hace 14 días (04:22 p.m. )
Prensa Asociada

viernes, 24 de abril de 2009
Janet González Bolivar / Primera Hora

Actualizado hace 6 días (00:00 a.m. )
Primera Hora