Dia Announces Plans for New Chelsea Space

05.25.12

The Dia Art Foundation today announced plans for its new twenty-two-thousand-square-foot project space on West Twenty-second Street in Chelsea. Roger Duffy, design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill will design the new site, which will comprise the former 545 West Twenty-second Street location as well as its newly acquired building, the former Alcamo Marble building at 541 West Twenty-second Street, and the ground floor Dia’s existing six-story building at 535 West Twenty-second Street.

Nathalie de Gunzburg, chairman of Dia Art Foundation, said, “Our board of trustees and good friends throughout the art community are thrilled for Dia to be moving forward with this plan, which is the centerpiece of Philippe Vergne’s and the board’s compelling vision. There are more than seventeen-and-a-half-million-square-feet of artists’ projects in the Dia constellation and these twenty-two thousand square feet in Chelsea will be where the most experimental artists and thinkers generate new insights that will run through all of them.”

Huntington Library Receives $2.5 Million Renovation

05.24.12

The Huntington Library, Art, and Botanical Gardens will receive a $2.5 million dollar renovation after June 4. During this time it will be closing its main exhibition hall, and will reopen sometime in 2013 with an entirely new exhibition model focused on “landmark works” in the collections, reports Mike Boehm for the Los Angeles Times. While much will be inaccessible as the exhibition hall is remodeled, one exception is the Gutenberg Bible, which will remain on display every day the museum is open.

Mary Katharine MacGregor (1923–2012)

05.24.12

Curator Mary Katharine MacGregor has died at the age of eighty-nine, reports the Iowa City Press Citizen. MacGregor was the curator of prints and drawings at the Joslyn Art Museum. During the course of her career she had worked with the Museum of Modern Art, the American Federation of Arts, Associated American Artists, Jacques Seligman and Co., and the Weyhe Gallery. MacGregor held a BA from Cornell College and an MFA from Columbia University.

Jesper Just to Represent Denmark at 2013 Venice Biennale

05.23.12

The Danish artist Jesper Just has been selected to represent Denmark at the 2013 Venice Biennale. The New York–based artist will be creating an original film installation for the Danish Pavilion, in collaboration with a yet-to-be-announced architectural firm. Just has had solo shows in venues ranging from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam to the Hammer Museum at UCLA. His work is owned by institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Tate Modern, London.

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts Receives Major Gift

05.23.12

The Boston Globe’s Sebastian Smee reports that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has received a major donation from longtime trustee Saundra Lane. With one hundred works on paper, twenty-five paintings, and 6,000 photographs, the gift encompasses the entire photographic estate of Charles Sheeler, comprising 2,500 works, and as many photos by Edward Weston. The paintings, meanwhile, are by artists including Hyman Bloom, John Marin, Stuart Davis, and Franz Kline. The entire grouping of works is worth “nine figures,” according to the museum. Museum director Malcolm Rogers says that the donation makes Lane “one of only a few collectors who have changed the face of the museum.”

New Director for Wichita Art Museum

05.23.12

KSNT reports that Patricia McDonnell has been named the new director of the Wichita Art Museum. Replacing Charles Steiner, she begins her post on August 20. McDonnell currently serves as the director of Wichita State’s Ulrich Museum of Art, where she is overseeing its renovation and reopening. Before working at the Ulrich, McDonnell was chief curator at the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Washington, and curator of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Jeffrey Weiss Named Senior Curator at the Guggenheim

05.22.12

Jeffrey Weiss has been appointed senior curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, effective June 1. Weiss has acted as curator of the Panza Collection at the museum since 2010 and will remain lead curator of the Panza Collection Conservation Initiative, a project aimed to address the questions that surround the preservation and refabrication of works of Minimalist, post-Minimalist, and Conceptual art from the 1960s and ’70s. Additionally, Weiss will continue his collaboration with On Kawara on a comprehensive presentation of his work scheduled to take place at the museum in 2015.

Said museum director Richard Armstrong: “During the past two years, Jeffrey Weiss has made invaluable scholarly contributions to the Guggenheim, collaborating with a team of curators and conservators in an interdisciplinary examination of key works from the Guggenheim’s Panza Collection. We are enormously pleased that he will continue this important work as well as take on a greater role as part of the museum’s core curatorial team.”

Adam Carr Appointed Curator of Mostyn

05.22.12

Adam Carr has been named curator of visual arts at Mostyn Oriel gallery in North Wales. Over the past decade Carr has organized exhibitions for museums and institutions around the world, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Castello di Rivoli in Turin, and the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, as well as worked with artists like Claire Fontaine, Ryan Gander, Simon Fujiwara, and Dan Rees. In addition to his work as a curator, he is a regular contributor to publications like Flash Art, Mousse, and Spike Art Quarterly. Said the British-born curator of his appointment: “Having visited Mostyn since I was a child, it has played a strong influence in the formation of my work as a curator. I look forward to contributing to Mostyn’s vision at an exciting time in its evolution, with the recent expansion and redevelopment, and with the appointment of Alfredo Cramerotti as its new director.”

Controversial Painting in Cape Town Defaced

05.22.12

A painting by Cape Town artist Brett Murray depicting South African president Jacob Zuma with exposed genitals was defaced by two men at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg on Tuesday. Claiming that the painting was “offensive,” the vandals painted red crosses over Zuma’s face and genitals and smeared black paint across the artwork. Both men were subsequently arrested. Murray stated that he never intended his artwork to offend anyone; rather, he saw the work as an “attempt at humorous satire of political power and patriarchy within the context of other artworks in the exhibition and within the broader context of South African discourse.”