International News Digest
RACIAL-DISCRIMINATION COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST FRENCH MUSEUMS
The French organization SOS-Racisme (SOS-Racism) has filed a complaint in a Paris court against alleged acts of discrimination in eighteen French museums, including the Louvre. As Le Monde’s Nathaniel Herzberg reports, the story begins with the recent free entrance policy, which was introduced by the ministry of culture in April to benefit younger museum visitors, aged eighteen to twenty-five years old. But SOS-Racisme sees a problem in the restriction of the policy to citizens of EU member-states only. All non-EU nationals, including young students residing legally in France, must pay at the door. In addition to initiating the court case, SOS-Racisme has filed a notice with the Conseil d’Etat—the highest juridical administrative instance in the country—against the ministry of culture’s decision to extend the same rule to fifty national museums as well as over a hundred national monuments.
The association seems to have won over some politicians, at least from the left. In the national assembly, a deputy for the green party, Martine Billard, denounced a policy that “excludes young non-EU foreigners living regularly on national territory while simple tourists passing through, coming from one of the countries of the EU, can benefit [from the free entry policy].” Minister of culture Christine Albanel, who was “surprised” by the SOS-Racisme legal complaint, has promised to study the possibility of extending the policy to include non-EU citizens living in France. Some museums are not waiting for the minister to change the policy. Both the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, a museum dedicated to the history of immigration, and the ethnographic Musée du Quai Branly removed the restriction on their own initiative.
NO PHOTOS, PLEASE
Another restriction has been met with disapproval in a new Belgian museum: no photographs. As Le Soir reports, the Fondation Hergé—dedicated to the creator of Tintin—opened last week in Louvain-la-Neuve for a media preview, but the journalists on hand were not allowed to take any pictures or to film the interior. “It’s a decision that was taken to avoid the multitude of shots of originals that are exhibited in the rooms,” said a Foundation Hergé spokesperson to defend the ban. Surprised by the policy, some journalists simply left the premises. The new museum, which opens to the public this week, features approximately twenty thousand square feet of exhibition space over three floors in a surprisingly voluminous building created by the French architect Christian de Portzamparc at a cost of over twenty million dollars. In a separate editorial, Le Soir’s Jean-Claude Vantroyen criticized the policy. Noting that a museum cannot exist without a public, Vantroyen argues that the public “can be attracted by intermediaries such as the media.”
ARTWORKS IN QUARANTINE
One hundred and thirty paintings have been placed in quarantine after an exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. As the Austria Presse Agentur and Der Standard report, the exhibition “From Van Dyck to Bellotto” seems to have attracted more than forty-five thousand viewers. When the exhibition was taken down, the wooden frames around some of the paintings were found to be infested by small yet destructive beetles. Now experts are checking the extent of the damage. There is a danger that the bugs have laid eggs in the paintings, which were on loan from museums and galleries in Italy, Austria, Spain, France, and Belgium.
KUNSTKOMPASS UNVEILS LIST OF TOP 100 ARTISTS
Just in time for the opening of the Venice Biennale, Kunstkompass (Art Compass) has unveiled its list of the top hundred contemporary artists. As Austria Presse Agentur, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, and Der Standard report, the list—which has been commissioned this year by the periodical Manager Magazin—ranks living artists according to a variety of factors, including exhibitions at major institutions and reviews in art magazines. The top ten for 2009 are Georg Baselitz, Gerhard Richter, Bruce Nauman, Sigmar Polke, Maurizio Cattelan, Olafur Eliasson, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra, Mike Kelley, and William Kentridge. The most successful female artist is Louise Bourgeois, who is ranked at number thirteen. Germany has the most entries, with twenty-eight artists, followed by the United States (twenty-five), the UK (twelve), Italy (four), and Switzerland (four). These figures seem to show no signs of the impact of globalization, but Kunstkompass has never before listed so many new artists—forty-six—since the first compilation in 1970. Those gracing the list for the first time feature many artists from outside Europe and the US, including Ai Weiwei and Cao Fei from China, Dan Perjovschi from Romania, and Nedko Solakov from Bulgaria.
PICASSO GRANDSON BUYS BUILDING IN BERLIN
A grandson of Pablo Picasso has purchased a listed building in the center of Berlin. As Agence France-Presse reports, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and his wife, Almine, of Galerie Almine Rech, purchased the twenty-five-thousand-square-foot complex located in Rosa-Luxemburg Street in the Mitte section of the city. The building features an Art Nouveau staircase. According to reports in the German press, Ruiz-Picasso intends to transform the site into a gallery, apartments, and offices. In 2002, Ruiz-Picasso and Rech created in Spain the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, a foundation to support contemporary art.