KABAKOV RETROSPECTIVE FUNDED BY RUSSIAN OLIGARCH
Bloomberg reported this week that billionaire metal tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov is to give $2 million to finance Russia's first retrospective of artworks by its leading postwar artist Ilya Kabakov. New York-based Kabakov, 74, is a founder of the Moscow conceptualist art movement that developed in the Soviet Union even as the government repressed non-official art. In 1989, Kabakov began collaborating with his wife, Emilia. The Moscow show opens September 15 at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, and runs simultaneously until October 15 at three other locations, including a renovated 1920s bus depot built by one of Russia's foremost modernist architects, Konstantin Melnikov.
FOLKESTONE TRIENNIAL COMMISSIONS SIX NEW WORKS
Six new projects by Christian Boltanski, Tacita Dean, Sejla Kameric, Langlands & Bell, Pae White and Mark Wallinger have been announced for the inaugural Folkestone Triennial which will run from 14 June - 14 September 2008. One of the most ambitious public art projects to be presented in the UK, the Triennial is a three-yearly exhibition of works which will be specially created for public spaces throughout Folkestone.
MIAMI PROPERTY DEVELOPER CRAIG ROBINS LAUNCHES FREE ART PROGRAM
New York Magazine reported this week that Craig Robins, one of the property developers and art collectors credited with transforming Miami into one of the world's top art destinations, is starting a free postgraduate art program in the city. His new program, named Art + Research, will open in September 2009 with eight-to-twelve "resident artists", who will receive full scholarships, studio space, housing, and stipends. The University of Miami-operated venture already has an impressive roster of New Yorkers on board. Founding faculty include artists Liam Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija, both of whom teach in Columbia's M.F.A. program; Yale instructor Steven Henry Madoff; and White Columns gallery director Matthew Higgs (they will all squeeze Miami tutorials into their current gigs). Former Columbia art-school dean Bruce Ferguson consulted on it. And for added star power, sitting on the board of Robins's nonprofit Anaphiel organization to guide the school are former Whitney director (and Robins's cousin) David Ross, John Baldessari, and ex-Art Basel director Sam Keller. Robins will kick in $2 million to help fund Art + Research for its first four years, and the University of Miami has promised to help raise another $2 million.
ARMORY SHOW SET TO EXPAND
The 10-year-old Armory Show is poised for a major expansion, according to the New York Times. The New York City Economic Development Corporation has appointed Vornado Realty Trust and its subsidiary, Merchandise Mart Properties of Chicago, to redevelop and expand the city-owned Pier 92; after a $100 million renovation there, Merchandise Mart will become the landlord for both Pier 92 and neighboring Pier 94. The renovated pier will be the site of a winter garden, trade shows and conferences, many of which Merchandise Mart will produce. All this will allow the Armory Show to spread from Pier 94, at 12th Avenue and 55th Street, to occupy the 75,000 square feet the renovation of Pier 92 will provide as well. The extra space means that the fair will be able to invite some 75 new exhibitors. While the Armory Show has focused on contemporary art, though, its organizers plan to use the new pier for older art. "We're going to give the show two names - the Armory Show and Armory Modern," said Paul Morris, a co-founder. "To keep it just new art was to infantilize the fair."
ARTISTS FORCED OUT OF STUDIOS IN BEIJING
The Globe and Mail reports on the fast-changing 798 district in Beijing which has just a few years ago was funky, brave, cutting edge, postindustrial and vaguely dangerous, like the Soho district of New York in the 1960s. It took 30 years for Soho to become dominated by boutiques and chic restaurants. It took only five years for the same phenomenon to happen in Beijing. The Beijing government, which had wanted to demolish 798, is now adopting it as a government project, the kiss of death for any true colony of artists. Small galleries are being demolished to make room for a parking garage and other massive developments. Rents for some spaces have leaped as much as tenfold since 2002. As its popularity grew exponentially, the district endured the unwelcome attention of Beijing's city officials, who threatened to demolish it in 2004. Two years later, police raided the district and seized paintings on sensitive subjects such as Mao Zedong and the Tiananmen massacre. Yet none of those threats were as dispiriting as the current commercial boom, with its glitzy redevelopment projects and financial obsessions. One huge gallery in 798 has a gift shop where merchandising is so rampant that customers can buy T-shirts and mouse pads emblazoned with the names of famous Chinese artists. "Massive commercialization has happened here, and with it has come the swanking up of the type of galleries and the type of people," said Tamsin Roberts, owner of Red T gallery, which was opened in 2005 and demolished this spring to make room for a parking garage.
CARO GIFT TURNED DOWN
A sculpture by Sir Anthony Caro, which the artist wanted to donate to the city he has lived in most of his life, has been rejected by London's Westminster City Council. Caro's hope was that the work - 'Millbank Steps', which is made out of 100 tonnes of rusted steel - could be on permanent public display; instead, it could now be sold abroad for £2.5m.
PACE WILDENSTEIN OPENS IN BEIJING
This summer the New York gallery Pace Wildenstein will open in Beijing, reports the New York Times. The gallery has renovated a 22,000-square-foot space in a former munitions factory in the 798 District. The $20 million project is scheduled to open on August 8, in time for the Summer Olympics. The Beijing-based critic and curator Leng Lin, 43, has been appointed president of Pace Beijing. The inaugural show, "Encounters," will be a group exhibition in which Zhang Huan and Zhang Xiaogang will be joined by longtime members of Pace's stable, like Chuck Close, Alex Katz and Lucas Samaras.
MALEVICH HEIRS SETTLE DISPUTE
Heirs of Russian artist Kazimir Malevich settled a dispute with the city of Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, getting five paintings in return for the right to keep the remaining Malevich works in the city's collection, reports Bloomberg this week. In 2003-4, when the Stedelijk showed 14 Malevich paintings in the US, the artist's heirs claimed ownership of the paintings before a US court. The heirs said that the original seller, German architect Hugo Haring, had no right to sell the paintings to the city of Amsterdam in 1958. This week's settlement ends the dispute, the release said. The city will retain the remaining works, and the heirs will withdraw their US action permanently, the press release said.
PRIZES
The Guggenheim Museum in Berlin is currently showing the work of the winners of the Freisteller Award-winners of the Villa Romana-Prize 2008 (until June 22), who are: Dani Gal, Julia Schmidt, Aslı Sungu and Clemens von Wedemeyer.
The nominees for the 2008 Marcel Duchamp Prize in Paris are Michel Blazy, Stephane Calais, Laurent Grasso and Didier Marcel.
This year's Artes Mundi Prize has been awarded to Indian artist N S Harsha. The £40,000 prize was awarded to Harsha by Jack Persekian, Chairman of the Judging Panel and Chinese artist Xu Bing, also a judge and the winner of the first Artes Mundi Prize in 2004.
The Dubai-based Abraaj Capital has launched three prizes for the best works from the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asian region, each for $200,000 as part of its $1 million budget, with the remainder allocated for administrative costs. The Abraaj Capital Art Prize competition will be judged by an international panel and curators, with selected works to be unveiled at Art Dubai 2009 exhibition.
Sarah Anne Johnson is the inaugural winner of the $50,000 Grange Prize for Contemporary Photography, named after the Grange, the Art Gallery of Ontario's historic home, and underwritten by Aeroplan.
Vanessa Winship has won the $25,000 L'Iris d'Or, for best overall photograph, at the Sony World Photography Awards in Cannes.
New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl has won the$25,000 2008 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Performance artist Rafael Sanchez has won the $10,000 Ida Applebroog Award at Exit Art in New York, established to nurture outstanding artists at critical points in their careers.
Among those honored in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2008 Class of Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members are the artists Mel Bochner, David Hammons, Charles Ray, Richard Tuttle, and Sigmar Polke; and art historians Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Gülru Necipoglu, and Debora Leah Silverman.
COMINGS AND GOINGS
Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, artistic director of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, has resigned effective immediately after being in the job for less than a year. No reason has been given for her resignation but Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach will from now on will be led by Annette Schönholzer (formerly director of operations and finance) and Marc Spiegler (formerly director of strategy and development). Both will share the title co-director, Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach.
Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Thelma Golden, and artist Hans Haacke will both receive honorary degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute later this month.
Curator, critic, and educator Lawrence Rinder has been appointed the new director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Rinder is currently the dean of the college at the California College of the Arts, in San Francisco and Oakland.
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