Jeu de Paume Transforms; Filiale Returns; More
JEU DE PAUME TO BECOME CENTER FOR PHOTO AND VIDEO
This spring, Paris's Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume will be offering a new perspective on the image. As Le Monde's Michel Guerrin reports, France's minister of culture, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, has changed the gallery's focus to photography, video, and multimedia works both contemporary and historical. Though he'd been hired to show contemporary art (a mandate now fulfilled by the Palais de Tokyo), former director Daniel Abadie had tended more toward great moderns like Picasso and Matisse. Régie Durand, the head of the Centre National de la Photographie (CNP), will take the helm at the Jeu de Paume. Both the CNP, currently located at the Hôtel de Rothschild, and the state photo archive Patrimoine Photographique will move to the Jeu de Paume.
Moving Durand and the CNP to the Tuileries is not a simple relocation. "I asked Durand not to make his program into a simple transfer of exhibitions," Aillagon told Le Monde. "We are not creating just another center for art but a site that will address the entire historical field of photography without overlooking contemporary artists." To that end, Durand will be working with researchers as well as invited curators.
The reconfigured Jeu de Paume will mount an exhibition dedicated to the late Helmut Newton in early May, and on June 23 the official inauguration will take place with "Guy Bourdin" and a group show featuring the works of luminaries Man Ray and Ubac along with contemporaries Bustamante and Kuntzel. For the fall, Durand is planning an exhibition called "The Shadow of Time," a response to last year's "Cruel and Tender" at the Tate Modern.
BASEL'S FILIALE REOPENS
One of Switzerland's earliest independent platforms for contemporary art has risen from the ashes. The Filiale was founded in 1981 and debuted the works of artists like Thomas Hirschhorn, Silvia Bächli, and Felix Stephan Huber before closing its doors in 1995. Now the doors have reopened, in an old house with a courtyard in the middle of Basel. As the Neue Zürcher Zeitung's Samuel Herzog writes, the Basel-based artist Eric Hattan heads the Filiale’s new incarnation and will be working with curators Noëlle Pia and Maja Wismer. "If I think a work is good, then I'll look for a place for it," Hattan told the publication. So far he has found places for performance artist Silvia Buonvicini’s fire-branded carpets, along with works by artists Bernard Voita, Christoph Büchel, Esther Hiepler, Philippe Gasser, Guido Nussbaum, and Sonja Feldmeier, among others. Herzog notes that the Filiale's operating budget has been secured for 2004 and that the exhibitions this year will focus mainly on Swiss artists. What will happen in 2005 is still open. "There's no question that experimentation-friendly art spaces are urgently needed in Basel," writes Herzog. "Especially since this city otherwise tends to focus on established values in the domain of art."
SENATE BLOCKS CROFF'S NOMINATION TO BIENNALE PRESIDENCY
Italy's minister of culture Giuliano Urbani may have named Davide Croff to preside over the Venice Biennale, but the cultural commission of the Italian senate seems to have other ideas. As La Repubblica reports, the commission blocked Croff's nomination to head the newly named Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, a more commercial and partially privatized version of the festival. According to the commission’s Venetian deputy, Andrea Martella, the problem lies not with Croff—a former director of the Banca Nazionale di Lavoro and Fiat—but with the controversial legislation that Urbani has tried to slip in along with his chosen director. "Croff would find himself the president of a Biennale whose new status neither guarantees a recovery nor resolves any fundamental problems, such as the Fondazione's role with respect to heritage and its ability to attract private funding," Martella told La Repubblica. "Now, all the Biennale programs have been seriously delayed—and without an extra Euro."
While Urbani calls the commission's act "regrettable," he still has hope for Croff. "Basically, we all absolutely agree on the nomination of Croff, who remains our candidate," the minister told La Repubblica. But according to Martella, Croff's chances with the commission would improve considerably without Urbani's backing. "Croff has been nominated by a minister who has been criticized by the world of culture, art, and film," Martella told La Repubblica, "and who also has not remained credible in the eyes of his own majority government." These delays can spell only bad news for the visual arts festival, whose curator was due to be named this spring. Judging from Urbani's handling of the film festival La Mostra, which still does not have a director although it is due to start this summer, the 51st Venice Biennale just might turn into an autumn affair.