International News Digest
QUESTIONS UNANSWERED ABOUT GERMAN PAVILION
In the wake of Christoph Schlingensief’s death, many are wondering what will happen to the German Pavilion at the next Venice Biennale in 2011. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Barbara Gärtner reports, Schlingensief’s nomination last May to represent Germany raised more than a few eyebrows—not least from Gerhard Richter, who called his participation “a scandal.” Susanne Gaensheimer, the German pavilion curator and the director of Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), did not offer many details about the near future. “Now, we have to discuss things calmly and then see,” Gaensheimer told the SZ. “We are very shocked that it happened so quickly, we were in the middle of working. We wanted to travel next weekend together to Venice.”
Der Standard and Austria Presse Agentur have more information, but not many details. According to the report, the next weeks will be used to see if Schlingensief’s ideas for the pavilion can be realized. “[He] had already developed many themes and details with enthusiasm,” according to Gaensheimer. “We knew the risk,” said a MMK press rep, although no Plan B was ever considered. Berlin’s opera house on Unter den Linden is also looking for a solution. The multitalented Schlingensief was due to direct the debut of the opera Metanoia with the rehearsals scheduled for this week. As for Schlingensief’s memoirs, these are “almost done” according to his publisher Kiepenheuer und Witsch. While the manuscript is complete, the exact publishing date now remains open. The book was due to come out on September 23, one month before his fiftieth birthday on October 24. Already, last July, the publishers announced a delay, although no reason was given at that time.
TROUBLE AT GERMANY’S ISTANBUL ACADEMY
The German pavilion in Venice is not the country’s only foreign art project in trouble. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Kai Strittmatter reports, the grand plan to open a German art academy in Istanbul have come to an abrupt halt. The project was to turn Villa Tarabya, the summer residence on the Bosporus of Germany’s Istanbul embassy, into an artist academy, reminiscent of the country’s artist academy Villa Massimo in Rome. Villa Tarabya should have opened this week as a special German contribution to a year when Essen and Istanbul shared the title of European Cultural Capital. Even chancellor Angela Merkel had praised the project as a “milestone in our foreign cultural policy.”
Guido Westerwelle, the foreign minister, Merkel’s coalition partner, and the controversial head of the liberal party FDP has abruptly canceled the money for this “milestone.” As Strittmatter writes, the plans were complete, the architects were ready, but the money was suddenly gone from the foreign ministry’s budget. The federal government’s cultural commission found out about the cut more or less by chance in March. “We were incredibly taken aback,” said Monika Grütters, chairperson of the commission, especially since the project was one of the most important of Germany’s foreign cultural policy. “We parlementarians decided on [Villa Tarabya] and we learned, only after many inquiries, that the project was simply canceled, without our participation.”
The foreign ministry is not offering any clear explanations for the cancellation. According to people working at the ministry, the project is “dead.” The first official answer: “The original plans will be reconsidered,” especially with respect to tighter budgets. Yet as Grütters points out, the Villa must be renovated, however it is used. The second official answer: There are “problems with the diplomatic status” of the Villa––problems that originate with Turkey. “Now, the Turks are supposed to be guilty [for the cancellation],” said Claudia Roth, who is also a member of the cultural committee. “I take that for a cheap excuse.”
It seems that the real troubles may lie somewhat closer to home––namely with German diplomats who use the summer residence of the embassy. According to Strittmatter, some diplomats are said to have raised the possibility of horror scenarios with capricious artists-in-residency, from drug consumption to Mohammed caricatures, during the initial talks about the project. “I am sad,” said Claudia Hahn-Raabe, head of the Istanbul Goethe-Institute. “It would be a scandal if the project were allowed to die.” Grütters is ready for a fight. “The German federal parliament has the last word,” she told the SZ. “It will be tough work. We must start all over again. But perspectively this project with Turkey is very important. The artist academy is not only the best idea that we have for Tarabya––it is an idea that we need urgently.”
FIAC CELEBRATES RECORD NUMBER OF APPLICANTS
If FIAC’s application list offers any indication, the art market slump may be improving. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Angelika Heinick reports, the fair received a record number of applications from galleries hoping to participate in the upcoming thirty-seventh edition, which runs from October 21–24 in the Grand Palais and the Louvre’s Cour Carrée. According to FIAC director Jennifer Flay, 640 galleries applied for stands. Only 190 made the final cut, including seventy-two from France, twenty-two from Germany, twenty-one from the US, thirteen from Italy, and eleven from Belgium. As Heinick notes, many heavyweights are making a debut or a return to the Paris fair. The Grand Palais will include Gagosian Gallery, which will also be opening a new space in Avenue Matignon; Barbara Gladstone; David Zwirner; Max Hetzler; Contemporary Fine Arts; Mehdi Chouakri; and Esther Schipper. “The word went round that in the crisis year of 2009, when a group of galleries stayed away, business was good at the FIAC,” writes Heinick. “Without being over-confident, the [fair] can by now lay claim to a place alongside the great rivals Basel and Miami Beach.”
MOST LIKELY YOU GO YOUR WAY AND I'LL GO MINE
Bob Dylan will soon be heading to Copenhagen, but not for a concert. As Le Monde and Agence France-Presse report, the sixty-eight-year-old artist will be exhibiting forty paintings and eight drawings at the Statens Museum. The new artworks are part of his “Brazil Series,” although there’s no word on the actual connection between the works and the country. The exhibition, a world debut, begins at the Statens Museum on September 4.