NEW SPERONE WESTWATER BUILDING; MAXXI ANNOUNCES COMPETITION
Artnet reports that Sperone Westwater Gallery has announced plans to build a new nine-story skyscraper at 257 Bowery, on a site one block north of the New Museum. The gallery will move there on the building’s completion in December 2009. The new building, designed by Foster + Partners, features a double-height display area at street level, a sculpture terrace looking out toward the park on Christie Street, to the building’s rear, and a twelve-by-twenty-foot “moving hall” that allows expansion of exhibition spaces on the various floors. A rendering of the building is available on Artnet.
MAXXI, the first Italian museum dedicated to contemporary art, has announced an international call for artists to create two new works of art for the new National Museum of 21st-Century Arts, a building designed by Zaha Hadid, which will be inaugurated in 2009. One work will be installed in the main entrance lobby and the other on the exterior grounds. The overall budget for the two works is $1.5 million. The competition is in keeping with Legislation 717 of 1949, also known as “the 2 percent law,” which dictates that new federal buildings must devote no less than 2 percent of the total estimated costs to the production of artworks. The competition is open to all artists, with the option of participating individually or as a group. The deadline for entries is February 7.
Entries will be examined by a jury composed of seven members: Francesco Prosperetti, general director of PARC; a yet-to-be-chosen representative of the educational department for the Lazio, Abruzzo, and Sardegna regions; Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli, superintendent of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contempornea, Rome; Hadid; artists Alfredo Jaar and Giuseppe Penone; and art critic Mario Codognato. The rules of the competition and the details of the sites designated to host the works are available here and here.
