Uruguay Launches National Biennale
02.08.12
Uruguay is to launch its first national biennale, titled Biennale de Montevideo, reports Nicolas Smirnoff of the Art Newspaper. It will include fifty artists from five continents and has a budget of two million dollars. Smirnoff notes the fair, scheduled to open October 15, has been timed to coincide with the middle of the São Paulo Biennial, which is set to take place between September 8 and December 9.
Alfons Hug, director of the Goethe Institute in Rio de Janeiro, will curate the biennale in collaboration with two cocurators, Paz Guevara and Patricia Bentancur. Guevara is a Chilean-born curator and critic based out of Berlin; Bentancur is a Uruguayan curator and artist as well as director of exhibitions and new media at the Spanish Cultural Center of Montevideo. Hug has curated for the São Paulo Biennial and the Instituto Italo-Latino Americano Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Plans Entrance Plaza Redesign
02.08.12
Carol Vogel of the New York Times reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched an ambitious plan to transform its entrance plaza “into a more efficient, pleasing, and environmentally friendly space, with new fountains, tree-shaded allées, seating areas, kiosks, and softer, energy efficient nighttime lighting.”
Philadelphia landscape architecture and urban design firm OLIN—the group behind the renewals of Bryant Park and Columbus Circle—has planned the project and will act as its lead designer. Museum trustee and philanthropist David H. Koch has pledged sixty million dollars to finance the new plaza; however, Vogel notes that unlike the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, which was renamed for Koch after he provided one hundred million dollars for renovations, the plaza will not bear his name. If all goes as scheduled, construction is set to begin this coming fall and expected to be completed by the summer of 2014.
Thomas P. Campbell, director and chief executive of the museum, noted that at the moment “the plaza is a frying pan in the summer and a wind tunnel in the winter. Our first priority is to create an appropriate entrance to the greatest encyclopedic museum in the world, one that is attractive and welcoming rather than austere and forbidding.”
Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei to Create 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion
02.07.12
Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei are set to create the 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. In a press release issued today, Serpentine notes that the pavilion will lead visitors to the space beneath the gallery’s lawn, allowing them to “explore the hidden history of its previous pavilions.” The work will include eleven columns characterizing each past pavilion and a twelfth to support a platform roof suspended approximately five feet above ground. The pavilion will be presented as part of the London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad.
Said Serpentine director Julia Peyton-Jones and codirector Hans Ulrich Obrist of the gallery’s selection: “It is a great honor to be working with Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. We are delighted that our annual commission will bring this unique architectural collaboration to Europe to mark the continuity between the Beijing 2008 and the London 2012 Games.”
University of Arizona Acquires the Jack Welpott Archive
02.07.12
The archive of photographer Jack Welpott has been acquired by the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Welpott is noted for establishing a graduate program in photography at San Francisco State University in the early 1960s, at a time when “few photography courses were offered,” reports the center in a press release. The center also notes that he taught one of the first history of photography classes. Welpott’s works are included in collections at institutions like the Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
“We are thrilled that the Jack Welpott Legacy Trust has chosen the Center for Creative Photography as the permanent home for the Welpott archive,” comments Katharine Martinez, the center’s director. “Welpott was an accomplished photographer and a key member of the rich community of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area during the second half of the twentieth century. His archive will allow researchers, curators, and photographers to better understand his career as well as his pivotal role as a teacher and mentor.”
Design Selected for AIDS Memorial Park in Manhattan
02.07.12
“Infinite Forest,” a design proposed by a team of architects at Studio a+i, has won a competition for an AIDS memorial park in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, reports the Associated Press in an article published on the Washington Post. The park was previously part of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital; after the institution’s bankruptcy, Rudin Management Company acquired the triangular piece of land and hosted the design competition. CEO and chairman Bill Rudin notes the memorial has received partial approval by the city. He adds that the design, which includes groves of trees and mirrored glass surfaces, will allow for “a commemoration of those impacted by AIDS.”
Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012)
02.06.12
Painter, sculptor, and art theorist Antoni Tàpies has passed away, according to AFP. His works ranged from abstract compositions on canvas to a ten-foot-high model of a sock with a hole in its heel. In 1948, Tàpies helped found the Spanish movement Dau al Set, closely affiliated with Surrealist and Dadaist movements. Over a decade later, he was active in resistance efforts against dictator Francisco Franco’s regime. In 2010, he was given the title of Marquess by Spain’s King Juan Carlos.
Tàpies’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions and retrospectives at institutions including the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Guggenheim in New York, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and in the Spanish Pavilion during the 1993 edition of Venice Biennale. He was represented by Pace Gallery.
Katie Sonnenborn Named Codirector of Skowhegan
02.06.12
Katie Sonnenborn has been named codirector of Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. She will begin her new position in New York at the end of this month, working closely with the other codirector, Sarah Workneh, who will be based in Maine this summer. Sonnenborn comes to her new post from Dia Art Foundation, where she started as assistant to then-director Michael Govan, and later became director of external affairs, leading preservation efforts at Dia’s Western Projects. Her writing appears in Performa catalogues, as well as Frieze and the Brooklyn Rail.
Winners Announced for Zabludowicz Curatorial Open
02.06.12
Artlyst notes that the winners of the second annual Zabludowicz Collection Curatorial Open are Helga Just Christoffersen and Natasha Llorens.The duo will be given a budget of over sixty thousand dollars—as well as full access to the Zabludowicz Collection—to curate an exhibition at the collection’s space in London this summer. Christoffersen and Llorens were chosen from a short list by a panel comprising Chris Dercon, the director of Tate Modern; Maria Lind, the director, Tensta Konsthall; Anita Zabludowicz, the collection’s founder; and writer Martin Herbert. Last year’s winner was Pavel S. Pyś, who has since been named the exhibitions and displays curator at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
Guggenheim to Close Berlin Outpost
02.06.12
Carol Vogel reports for the New York Times that the Deutsche Guggenheim will be closing at the end of 2012. Though neither Deutsche Bank nor the Guggenheim enumerated any concrete reasons behind the decision, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation, Richard Armstrong, stated: “Berlin today is a very different city from what it was when we began. We feel the time is right now to step back and reexamine our collaboration to see how it might evolve.’’ Over the course of its fifteen years, the institution has brought in 1.8 million visitors to a total of fifty-seven exhibitions. It has also commissioned seventeen artists to create works that made their debut in the space.