International News Digest
ITALY CULTURE CUTS RUN DEEP
The Italian government’s massive cuts to its own budget, thirty-two billion dollars for 2011–2012, are now being felt in the cultural realm. Le Monde’s Philippe Ridet focuses primarily on cuts to the performing arts––from theaters to operas––which will have to make do with one-third less of their annual budget, which has been slashed from 582 million dollars to 388 million dollars for the next year. “Many foundation and cultural associations will receive no further financing from the state starting in 2011,” writes Ridet.
At the beginning of June, a demonstration was held in Rome against the cuts and brought together performers, directors, and heads of theaters. Their demand for more financing was met with a cold response from the minister of culture, Sandro Bondi, who evoked the economic crisis and the poor management of certain institutions, which had wasted public finances. “I want to liberate culture from the suffocating grip of the state,” said Bondi. There is not much power left in that “grip” of state financing. Italy currently dedicates 2.3 billion dollars annually to culture: 0.3 percent of its gross domestic product.
VENICE BIENNALE TOO PRICEY FOR ESTONIA?
Estonia has a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, but not everyone seems to be pleased with the country’s participation. Eurotopics cites an article in the daily Eesti Päevaleht by Margaret Tali, who believes that that biennial is too expensive for the country and that the money should be spent domestically. “The bitter truth is that neither the Ministry of Culture nor the Cultural Fund pay artists salaries,” writes Tali. “But they do support any and every trip to exhibitions abroad. The Venice Biennale is probably the only project for which artists are paid directly, but the majority of artists will never take part in it, whether because of disinterest, the kind of art they do, or other reasons.”
The reason might just be that only one artist tends to be selected for a national pavilion. But Tali seems to see a problem with the exhibition format itself. “It’s not right that the function of modern art should be reduced solely to its ability to be exhibited, while all other aspects are consciously and systematically blended out,” she writes. “The Center for Contemporary Arts should also ask itself critical questions from time to time about what is being shown abroad and why. Probably not all too much would happen if Estonia stayed away from Venice now and then and invested the money at home instead.”
BRITISH PAVILION WITH GERMAN
At the Venice Biennale for architecture, there will be a surprise guest in the British pavilion this year. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, Wolfgang Scheppe, a German philosopher who teaches at the architectural university in Venice, will be part of the British pavilion. The choice mirrors the selection of Liam Gillick for the German pavilion at the last Venice Biennale for contemporary art, although the report notes that there has been no discussion about Schleppe’s nationality. In any case, his project “Migropolis” takes not Germany nor Britain, but rather Venice as its starting point.
NEW DATES FOR CONTEMPORARY ISTANBUL
The Contemporary Istanbul (CI) fair will take place this year in November. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Hande Oynar reports, the fourth edition of CI took place last year at the same time as Art Basel Miami Beach. Yet the overlap, and Miami’s draw of foreign collectors, did not seem to hurt CI, which welcomed seventy-three galleries and 52,000 visitors. The fair director Emin Mahir Balcioglu has nevertheless decided to start the fair in November this year; next year, the fair will run even earlier, in September, although the specific dates are yet to announced. “Art is a universal language,” said Balciouglu, “and we hope that scenes can come in contact with each other through this platform.” To that end, Balciouglu also initiated “CI Dialogues” with themes such as art criticism. The dialogues will take place in Berlin in October and then return to Istanbul in December while other conferences have been initiated in Izmir, Adana, Ankara, and Bursa. “Also in these cities,” added Balciouglu, “we want to create awareness for contemporary art.”
LEOPOLD MUSEUM SELLS SCHIELE TO PAY VICTIM OF NAZI THEFT
As reported on Artforum.com, the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria has agreed to pay a Jewish art dealer’s estate nineteen million dollars for Schiele’s 1912 Bildnis Wally (Portrait of Wally), a painting that the Nazis stole from the dealer. But as Der Standard reports, not everyone is pleased with the museum’s latest proposal to raise the cash.
Vienna’s Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (the Vienna Israelite Community) has criticized Diethard Leopold, a museum board member and the son of the late art collector and museum founder Rudolf Leopold. According to the article, Diethard Leopold proposed to auction off another work by Schiele, Häuser am Meer (Houses on the sea), 1914, and to split the profits between the museum and the heirs of Viennese collector Jenny Steiner, from whom this Schiele work was also stolen by the Nazis.
For the Vienna Israelite Community, selling Schiele’s Häuser am Meer to finance part of the buy-back of Schiele’s Bildnis Wally, in other words, selling one work stolen by the Nazis to get back another work stolen by the Nazis, is “tasteless.” Ariel Muzicant and Erika Jakubovits compared the proposal to a fox caught in a chicken stall who proposes to sell the chicken and split the profits instead of giving the booty back to the farmer. Moreover, the restitution of artworks, also in terms of the law, is a money-free return, not deal-making. “That’s not a good beginning,” said Muzicant and Jakubovits, “after the death of Rudolf Leopold and the forced buy-back of Schiele’s Bildnis Wally for nineteen million dollars a few days ago.”
MUSEUM LUDWIG AND SUCHAN KINOSHITA HONORED
Cologne’s Museum Ludwig and the artist Suchan Kinoshita have been awarded the 2010 art prize from the German branch of the European plastics industry. PlasticsEurope Deutschland, an alliance of German manufacturers of plastics and synthetics, funded the prize, which is doted with sixty-five thousand dollars.