International News Digest
FRENCH MUSEUMS LOOK TO SECURITY AND BUDGET CUTS
After a spectacular robbery six weeks ago at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the French minister of culture Frédéric Mitterrand has sent out a massive group e-mail about security to the country’s museum directors. As Le Monde reports, Mitterrand said that the prevention of robberies is “a priority in the heritage policy of France” and urged directors to recognize “the importance of inventory, checking, and documentation of the collections.”
Mitterrand’s group e-mail does not seem to include information about financing the measures to make French museums more thief-resistant, nor is the minister the only one sending out e-mails. In a separate report, Le Monde’s Clarisse Fabre and Michel Guerrin cover a rare epistolary collaboration between the Louvre director Henri Loyrette, the Musée d’Orsay’s Guy Cogeval, and the Centre Pompidou’s Alain Seban, who have written to the minister about the upcoming cuts faced by their institutions. The directors’ fear: A reduction in state subventions will reflect a “short-term logic” that could eventually “threaten dynamics that have been built for the long term.” To cite one example, the Louvre’s state subvention now stands at $162 million. But all of the directors insist that all possible measures have already been taken at each institution to reduce costs.
The directors’ letter comes at a crucial time when budgets are being determined by a French government aiming for austerity measures. The museums are expected to be hit hard by any cuts because museums can always increase the price of tickets at the door in order to make up for any losses in state subventions. But ticket price increases are not the only possibility looming on the horizon of austerity. The Louvre, Orsay, and Pompidou could also reduce the number of exhibitions as well as renovation works on the buildings. Yet such savings would evidently have a negative impact on tourism, and lead to losses in ticket sales at the door. As the directors note, “immediate savings” could have an impact on the “loss of earnings in the mid and long term.”
NEW CANCER DIAGNOSIS FOR SCHLINGENSIEF
There’s unfortunate news concerning Christoph Schlingensief, the theater director-cum-artist who was chosen to fill the German Pavilion for the next Venice Biennale. As Der Standard reports, the forty-nine-year-old has canceled his production “S.M.A.S.H.—In Hilfe ersticken” (S.M.A.S.H. —Choking on help) at the Ruhr Triennial cultural festival after a new cancer diagnosis. According to the report, Schlingensief, who has battled with lung cancer in the past, no longer had the capacity to complete the production in the given timeframe. “Now, there are unfortunately a few new hard pieces of news, which must immediately be followed up!” wrote Schlingensief in a message to his team and the Triennial. “But now that means reacting quickly on the new diagnostic findings and only then see what happens.”
BERLIN’S POSTFUHRAMT SOLD
Berlin’s Postfuhramt, once a location for the Berlin Biennial and currently home to the photography forum C/O Berlin, is facing an uncertain future as a contemporary arts venue. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the Postfuhramt has been sold to a foreign investment group. The immediate impact is that C/O Berlin will have to leave the building by March 31, 2011. “(The news) came like a bombshell,” said curator Felix Hoffmann. “Five years of work is being lost.” Hoffmann has made an appeal to politicians to assist in the search for a new location for the institution.
GALLERISTS HEAD TO REYKJAVIK AS AN ECONOMIC AVANT-GARDE?
Reykjavik has become a new gallery hub, at least for the month of July. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, fourteen international galleries have moved for the month into empty stores in the harbor area of the Icelandic capital. Making the best of the economic downturn that has hit Iceland hard, the galleries making up the new “gallery mile” include Johann König and Croy Nielsen from Berlin, Brussel’s Jan Mot, Istanbul’s Rodeo, Warsaw’s Raster, as well as Jocelyn Wolff from Paris. In addition to exhibitions by artists including Michael Sailstorfer, Pawel Althamer, and Johanna Billing, the gallery mile will host concerts and performances by William Hunt, Prinz Gholam, and Oskar Dawicki, among others, as well as the debut of Wilhelm Sasnal’s first film.
PALAIS DE TOKYO ARCHITECTS CHOSEN
The architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have been selected to revamp the rest of the Palais de Tokyo building in Paris. As Le Monde’s Frédéric Edelmann reports, Lacaton and Vassal were behind the renovation of the part of the building that opened as the Palais de Tokyo Site de Création Contemporaine in 2001 under the co-direction of Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans.
Chosen from eighty-seven teams and three finalists, Lacaton and Vassal must now bring together their initial works with the remaining 29,500 square feet of the massive building. “They are the ones who know the building best,” said Olivier Kaeppelin, who will direct the new extension project. “We are still in a poor economy, they are great creators who know very well how to open a maximum of spaces while sticking to the budget.”
The budget is estimated at $25 million with $16 million coming from the state and $5 to $7 million coming from donations and sponsorship. Construction will begin in February 2011 while the new space is expected to open one year later. The unused parts of the building will become home to 18,000 square feet of exhibition space, compared to the existing 14,700 in the Palais de Tokyo.
SOUTH LONDON GALLERY EXPANDS
The South London Gallery has finally opened its expansion with a group exhibition titled “Nothing is Fovever.” As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Alexander Menden reports, the building started as the South London Working Men’s College in 1868 but the gallery seems to have been relegated to a side role in defining the London arts scene, despite many contributions, most recently Michael Landy’s Art Bin. The expansion, a $3 million project by the architects 6a, incorporates a neighboring building into the original structure and thereby gains three new gallery spaces, a garden, as well as a cafe. “Nothing is Forever” features works by twenty artists, including Mark Titchner and David Shrigley, who have filled the walls with drawings and other works. At the end of the exhibition, the works will be simply painted over and become yet another part of the building’s long history. The exhibition runs until September 5.
ENGLAND REVEALS SALARIES
The salaries of various public officials in England have been revealed as part of the government’s policy of “new openness.” As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Alexander Menden reports, the top cultural earner is David Higgins, the organizer of the 2012 Olympic Games in London who, at $600,000, makes approximately two and half times more than the Prime Minister David Cameron. Other top earners includes Tate head Nicholas Serota ($243,000); John Woodward, the director of the British Film Council ($258,000); and Lynne Brindley, the director the British Library ($235,000). The “new openness” may end up being part of history. Menden doubts that the coming austerity measures will allow these salaries to remain at the same levels.
FINNS HAVE A BASIC RIGHT TO INTERNET
Eurotopics reports that Finland has become the first country to pronounce access to a high-speed Internet connection a basic right. Life would be unthinkable without the Internet nowadays, writes the conservative daily Lidové Noviny: “The citizens in the civilized West live to an ever greater degree in the virtual world. They are entitled to care and pensions when they’re old, but the multigeneration family is collapsing—in contrast to the Confucian model where families stick together because there is no functioning social system. Normal social contacts, normal communication are increasingly difficult to maintain when the family is replaced by old people’s homes, and e-mails and the Internet take the place of the local pub. Even ordinary gossiping is done on the Internet nowadays. And just as gossip is necessary so is the Internet.”