International News Digest

JANUARY 28

Artist Arnulf Rainer has given forty paintings and seventy works on paper to Munich’s Pinakothek Museum, making the Pinakothek the home of the largest Arnulf Rainer collection outside of Austria. The donated works include major pieces made from the early 1950s through today. Klaus Schrenk, general director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Painting Collection), which oversees the Pinakothek told Der Standard that the museum would accept “this generous gift with great gratitude and joy.” These 110 works were shown two years ago in Munich as part of an exhibition titled “Arnulf Rainer: The Overpainter” on the occasion of the artist’s eightieth birthday.

Though the Guggenheim’s proposal to build an outpost in Helsinki has been well received, the Social Democrats of Helsinki have raised concerns that the January 30 deadline for the city council’s decision on this project is unreasonable. According to Der Standard, the feasibility study hasn’t even been translated into Finnish yet. Social Democrat parliamentary leader Jorma Bergholm has requested at least two months for the hearings. His petition has received support from the Green party, which is the second-largest faction in the city council. Ville Ylikahri, the Green party whip, pointed out: “The Guggenheim Foundation themselves said that the decision does not have to be made already in February.” The city of Helsinki still has to approve funding for the construction of the museum, which has been reportedly assessed at $182 million.

Forty-nine-year-old curator Okwui Enwezor has given the world a peek at the direction he will take the Haus der Kunst in Munich as its new director. Monopol reported that Enwezor plans to bring attention to the darker elements of the kunsthalle’s past for its seventy-fifth anniversary, including its inauguration by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in 1936 as well as its import as a symbol of the cooptation of art by fascism during its genesis. Enwezor told Monopol, “The museum has a long history behind it and it went through many incarnations.” The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that in general, Enwezor has made it clear he isn’t even interested in solo shows, and instead will design the institution’s program around “ideas, questions, and proposals.” Responding to the recent controversy surrounding Germany’s abundance of new museums, he told Die Welt, “It is important not to simplify the purpose of the museum. I work in an institution that doesn’t collect. Our mission is to reflect on other models: I don’t believe that the role of museums only resides in acquisition and conservation.”

In tandem, Enwezor aims to restructure the Haus der Kunst’s layout. He explained that he plans to transform the foyer into a “public plaza,” by taking down the heavy curtains and opening previously closed doors, all in all continuing former director Chris Dercon’s work and striving for what Monopol calls a “new transparency.”