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International News Digest
FREE MUSEUMS IN SPAIN?
Spain is the latest country to pick up on the debate about the policy of free entry to state museums. Eurotopics cites a report by El Correo’s Enrique Portocarrero, who considers the French policy of opening national museums to the public for free one day a month with the goal of increasing visitor numbers. “This is an interesting solution,” writes Portocarrero. “Especially for attracting younger visitors and for the evening hours when visiting these places can be an alternative to other, less cultured pastimes.” Calling France “an important laboratory for cultural and educational policy experiments,” Portocarrero notes that his policy has been only “moderately successful.” While the total number of visitors to national museums has risen, the same kind of visitors are coming, albeit more frequently. For Portocarrero, the measure is worthy of discussion in Spain, only insofar as there appears to be a lack of alternative policies.
“SUPER” ART IN BERLIN
It’s a bird . . . it’s a plane . . . it’s Super Art! With the exhibition “Die Kunst Ist Super” (Art Is Super), Udo Kittelmann, the director of Berlin’s national galleries, has curated a new presentation of the collections at the city’s contemporary art museum Hamburger Bahnhof—Museum für Gegenwart. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Niklas Maak is not impressed. “What does that mean—super, like a pair of pants looks super? Super, like Super-8 film? Like super lead-free gasoline?” wonders Maak, who seems to be especially troubled by the latest configuration of the Christian Friedrich Flick collection, just one of the private collections showcased by the museum. The addition of Flick’s collection to the Hamburger Bahnhof originally created an uproar, since the collector’s grandfather—and his wealth—was enriched by the use of slave labor from concentration camps during World War II. “If it’s supposed to be a trick—with a decidedly underexposed title hiding the problem of the Flick collection—then it’s a very poor trick,” writes Maak. “In the case of the Flick collection, little was super—neither the way a mediocre collection was yanked into a public museum here, nor the collector’s conduct in handling the family history.” The exhibition continues until February.
FUROR OVER ISRAEL EXHIBITION
An exhibition featuring Palestinian suicide bombers has caused a furor in Tel Aviv. As Der Standard reports, the artists Lilia Chak and Galina Bleich created the exhibition “Woman, Mother, Murderer . . .” with images of seven female Palestinian suicide bombers whose faces have been mounted with various pictures of the Virgin Mary. Conservative politicians have asked that the exhibition be canceled. “For thousands of Israelis, who have suffered under the terror of suicide bombers, this [exhibition] is a slap in the face,” said the assembly member Ofir Akunis from the ruling Likud party. “The freedom of speech in the name of art has limit, and a self-defending democracy must prevent this exhibition.” For the artists, the exhibition judges the acts of the suicide bombers. “The task of modern art is to ask questions,” said Chak, “and we ask how such a woman could become a terrorist.”
KOOLHAAS DEFENDS BEIJING TOWER
Rem Koolhaas seems to have made a move to assure the public that his design for state television—the CCTV-Tower in Beijing—is not associated with pornography. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Mark Siemons reports, the Dutch star architect made a statement—in both English and Chinese—on the website of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in response to the widespread belief. The perception seems to stem from a photomontage that shows the archways of the building near a bending naked woman. The image was a sketch for the cover of Koolhaas’s 2004 book Content. While rejected for the cover of the book, the image was documented in the book and has since circulated on the Internet throughout China, much to the displeasure of Chinese Web users.
“The building should be torn down again as a national disgrace,” insist some of the indignant, while one claims that the architect takes the Chinese people for “fools.” In his statement, Koolhaas insists that the photomontage, which was created by a designer, “does not represent our opinion in any way.” On the contrary, the decision was made to present CCTV-Tower as a “positive and shining example for a changing world order.” Moreover, the architect insists that the design has “no hidden meaning.” The central administration of the state broadcaster plans to move into the building before October 1, the sixtieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
HIRST VS. CARTRAIN
Damien Hirst is struggling with a new force: a London teenager. Citing a report in The Independent, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports on the latest installment in what appears to be an ongoing feud between the billionaire artist and a seventeen-year-old graffiti artist called Cartrain. In this David-versus-Goliath story, the giant seems to be winning. According to the report, in July Cartrain stole a package of pencils from Hirst’s installation Pharmacy, which was on display at London’s Tate Britain. While such a package usually goes for well under ten dollars, the pencils in Hirst’s installation are worth a whopping eight hundred thousand dollars—at least according to the officials at New Scotland Yard who arrested the teenager for the theft and for causing damage to “the concept of a public artwork titled Pharmacy . . . valued at over $10,000,000.” Police originally arrested Cartrain’s forty-nine-year-old father on suspicion of harboring the hot pencils.
The feud began last fall: After Cartrain used an image of the skull in his own collage works and sold them online for more than one hundred dollars a shot, Hirst filed a complaint with the Design and Artists Copyright Society, according to a report in The Independent from December. Cartrain’s online dealer, 100artworks.com, gave over Cartrain’s works to Hirst along with an apology. Seeking revenge, Cartrain stole the pencils last July and created a mock “Wanted” ad calling for a hostage exchange: Hirst’s HBs for his own works. According to the most recent Independent report on the feud, Cartrain is now free on bail but, should he be convicted, his act will feature “among the highest-value modern-art thefts in Britain.”
ART FOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN ESTONIA?
Estonia is the latest country to consider adding contemporary artworks to public building projects. According to the policy, 1 percent of the total budget for a public construction project is set aside in order to commission a new artwork for the final building. Eurotopics cites a report in Postimees, which notes the prevalence of the policy in Western European countries. “But precisely because of this [prevalence], we should take account of the criticism in these countries.” According to the article, such a law can turn into an obligation to produce “mediocre art ill suited to the place in question instead of promoting a greater appreciation of art.” “If the bill becomes a law, the public hopefully won’t have to bear the strenuous debates it has had to put up with so far: People have nothing against art—just against what is done with it.” Since the goal of the law would be to create opportunities for younger artists, artist associations “should make it their task to ensure that the new generation actually uses this opportunity and takes part in the competitions.”