DENNIS HOPPER TO PRESENT TURNER PRIZE; MORE VISITOR INJURIES FROM SALCEDO’S WORK

Actor and director Dennis Hopper will present this year’s Turner Prize at next week’s ceremony in Liverpool, notes the BBC. The Easy Rider star said he was “very honored and excited” to be asked to the event, which takes place at the Tate Liverpool gallery on December 3. Hopper, seventy-one, has had retrospective exhibitions of his own artistic work in Amsterdam, Vienna, and Saint Petersburg.

According to The Times, the casualties have been mounting up at Tate Modern in London, where fifteen people were hurt viewing Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth, 2007, in the first four weeks after its opening. Beginning as a crack, Shibboleth widens and deepens as it snakes across the gallery’s Turbine Hall, until in some places it is large enough for a toddler to fall into. Staff have been detailed to monitor visitors wandering around the hall, but a Freedom of Information request by The Times_ has revealed that their efforts have not been entirely successful. Four of the fifteen accidents, some of which resulted in minor injuries, have been reported to the Health and Safety Executive.