CHAIRMAN LEAVES NEH; GETTY CREATES DEPARTMENT; LU WINS PARIS PHOTO PRIZE
Jacqueline Trescott of the Washington Post reports that Bruce Cole, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, announced yesterday he is leaving in January to join the American Revolution Center in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. His departure gives Barack Obama’s incoming administration the opportunity to name the heads of both national endowments. Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, announced in September that he will leave on January 1 to join the Aspen Institute, an international organization that conducts forums on contemporary issues. Cole, a Renaissance art scholar and former distinguished professor at Indiana University, was the longest-serving NEH chairman and expanded its public reach and partnerships through traditional programs and digital initiatives.
In other news, Bruno Agnese reports in Architect Magazine that the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles has announced a new Department of Architecture and Design. Led by Getty senior staff member Wim de Wit, with Christopher James Alexander acting as associate curator, the department was established because the Getty wanted “a better mechanism to engage the architectural community,” says de Wit, who adds that the Getty recently acquired the archives of the International Design Conference in Aspen, which met annually from 1949 to 2004, but that it will be some time before everything, including audio and video materials, will be cataloged and made available to researchers.
In more news, Chinese artist Yao Lu was named the winner of the 2008 BMW Paris Photo Prize for contemporary photography at a gala awards ceremony yesterday at the Paris Photo Fair. The prize is worth fifteen thousand dollars. Born in 1967, the artist is represented by 798 Photo Gallery in Beijing and is the fifth winner of this major international award, after Czech artist Jitka Hanzlova in 2007, French artist Mathieu Bernard-Reymond in 2006, American artist Anthony Goicolea in 2005, and Swiss artist Jules Spinatsch in 2004.
