International News Digest
IRANIAN ARTIST ARRESTED
Parastou Forouhar—an Iranian artist living in Offenbach, Germany—has been arrested in her native country. As Der Standard reports, Forouhar was stopped as she was traveling from Tehran to Germany while her passport was confiscated. The Iranian ministry of information has brought charges against Forouhar, but in a telephone interview last week, the artist said that she not been informed about the precise content of the charges. Her work is currently on display at the BrotKunsthalle in Vienna and at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Gereon Sievernich, the director of the Martin-Gropius-Bau, has asked the Iranian ambassador to Germany to assist the artist in leaving the country. Forouhar usually returns to Iran once a year to mourn the murder of her parents by the Iranian secret service in 1998. At the start of November, the artist gave interviews in which she protested moves to stop her commemorative services. These interviews are apparently the grounds for the charges against her. “Such mechanisms are an attempt to wear down the forces in society,” said Forouhar, adding that “cohesion and solidarity” are “very important so that people are not alone in their fear.”
LITZ TO HEAD DOCUMENTA 13 PROJECTS
The art historian Christine Litz has been named as the project director for Documenta 13, which will take place in Kassel in 2012. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, Litz will be responsible for turning the ideas of D13 artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and her team into “praxis.” Christov-Bakargiev was named as the head of Documenta 13 just over one year ago.
CAN GOOGLE POST IMAGES?
Germany’s Federal High Court of Justice (the Bundesgerichtshof) will soon decide whether Google has the right to post copyrighted material as part of its results for Internet image searches. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, a Weimar-based painter and graphic designer is defending herself against the search-engine giant for showing thumbnail images of her works when her name is submitted as a keyword. The artist, who is not named in the report, wants Google to ask permission to show the thumbnail images.
“ART OF TWO GERMANYS” AICA’S TOP SHOW
It’s time for the tops and the flops of 2009. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the American branch of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) has picked “Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures” as the top thematic exhibition of 2009. It’s the first time that an exhibition about German art has won the coveted prize. The exhibition, which began its run at LACMA from January 25 to April 19, 2009, is on view at Berlin’s Deutsches Historisches Museum until January 10, 2010.
HUMAN RIGHTS EXHIBITION PARTIALLY DISMANTLED
An art exhibition about human rights by the Düsseldorf artist Günther Uecker has been partially dismantled in Uzbekistan. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, some state officials called for a partial closure of Uecker’s thematic exhibition. It seems that the collection of Tashkent’s military museum, which is in need of renovation, had to be moved into the art gallery as an emergency measure. Far from welcoming the new exhibition pieces, Uecker found the presentation of military museum works among his own to be a “provocation.”
FRENCH STRIKE UPDATE
The strike at French cultural institutions and public monuments continues—with some resolution. As Le Monde reports, the implementation of a new, contested labor measure from the ministry of culture will now be postponed until the end of January. According to the report, the French minister of culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, is said to want to find solutions. The personnel at the Louvre agreed to go back to work on Friday; the Musée d’Orsay, the Pompidou Center, and the Arc de Triomphe all remained closed. The impact of the strike has been felt at the Pompidou Center, where workers have been off the job since November 23. According to Pompidou president Alain Seban, the strike has led to the loss of nearly $1.5 million in ticket sales at the museum’s box office along with disappointment for “tens of thousands of visitors.”