International News Digest
VAN DER HEIDE TO DIRECT KUNSTVEREIN MÜNCHEN
Munich’s Kunstverein has decided on Bart van der Heide as the successor to director Stefan Kalmár. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, van der Heide––an art critic and publicist––worked at London's Cubitt gallery up until March of this year. Kalmár is the new director of Artists Space in New York.
PETER WEIBEL AWARDED EUROPEAN CULTURE PRIZE
The media megatheorist Peter Weibel has been awarded the European Culture Prize in the Project category. As the Standard reports, Weibel directs the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Center for Art and Media Technology) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Pro Europa, the cultural association awarding the distinction, also gave the art historian Hans Belting the Culture Media Prize.
FISCHLI & WEISS WIN WOLFGANG HAHN PRIZE
2009 isn’t even over, and the prizes for next year are already being given away. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been honored with the Wolfgang Hahn Prize for 2010. The prize––which is awarded by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst (Society for Modern Art) from Cologne’s Museum Ludwig––will be given to the artists during Art Cologne and includes the purchase of a work that will be made available to the collection as a long-term loan. Fischli and Weiss, who have been working together for more than thirty years, have reportedly created a “radio installation” for the Museum Ludwig. Past winners include Rosemarie Trockel, Lawrence Weiner, and Isa Genzken, among others.
BASELITZ HONORED
In other prize news, the German painter Georg Baselitz has been awarded the Cologne Fine Art Artist Prize. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung also reports, the prize of the city’s fall art fairs, is doted with nearly fifteen thousand dollars. Baselitz will be presented with the award on November 17.
UPDATE ON THE “AFFAIRE MITTERRAND”
The Mitterrand affair is leading to an all-out French political battle. Troubles began after France’s culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, voiced support for director Roman Polanski. Mitterrand’s support was criticized by the right-wing party Front National, which suggested connections between Polanski being charged with having sex with a minor and Mitterrand confessing in his 2005 best seller La Mauvaise Vie (The Bad Life) to using young male prostitutes in Thailand.
Ignoring traditional party alliances, France’s left-wing Socialist Party seemed to side with its polar opposite the Front National by voicing a similar critique of Mitterrand. Socialist spokesman Benoit Hamon criticized Mitterrand for “drawing attention to himself by defending a filmmaker accused of raping a child” after having written a book flaunting sexual tourism. While Mitterand refers to paying for “young boys” in his book, the BBC reports that Mitterrand has since denied being a pedophile and has added that he used the word boys only loosely.
As Agence France-Presse reports, now the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has jumped into the fray with a seething attack on Socialists for playing the role of a “moral brigade,” among other criticisms. “Marine le Pen [the daughter of the Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen] was not enough,” noted Lévy. “It was necessary that the young Socialist guard, with Benoît Hamon in front, fly to the aid of the new moral order.” Having once expressed hope in the younger politicians in the Socialist Party, Lévy denounces “the insane alliance, profoundly against nature, suicidal,” while evoking “the distressing spectacle of this squad of the virtuous, stamped Socialist, rushing to the right into the trap set up by its worst adversaries.”
MAJORITY WANTS MITTERRAND TO STAY
Despite efforts at both ends of the French political spectrum to discredit Mitterand, the French people are not moved. According to Agence France-Presse, an opinion poll shows that two-thirds of the population––67 percent––do not want Mitterrand to resign from his job as national minister of culture. In the poll, which was completed last week by BVA for Canal+, 20 percent said that they wanted Mitterrand to resign while 13 percent did not have an opinion. Despite these conclusions, BVA’s Gaël Sliman believes that “everything is not over.” According Sliman, the majority sentiment “does not mean that the French people . . . were not affected by this episode.”
ACADÉMIE DES BEAUX-ARTS SUPPORTS POLANSKI
Not an institution to be left out of the fray, the venerable Académie des Beaux-Arts has made an official statement on the Polanski affair. As Agence France-Presse reports, the academy expressed “stupor and indigation” at learning of the arrest of the filmmaker in Switzerland last September. Polanski, who has double French-Polish citizenship and has been a member of the academy since 1998, is facing extradition to the United States for having sex with a minor in 1977. Polanski's arrest indirectly set off the Mitterrand affair. After the minister of culture expressed his support for the filmmaker, the right-wing party Front National voiced opposition, citing excerpts from Mitterrand’s 2005 book. In its statement, the academy asked for Polanski’s “quick release,” but he has been denied bail by Swiss authorities. No word on its position with respect to Mitterrand.