PARKLED HARING?
Installation of 14 monumental sculptures by Keith Haring on the Park Avenue mall in New York begins Sat. June 14. Go to Seagram's Plaza at 8 a.m. to see men with machines setting up the 30-foot-tall, 18-ton Headstand, never before seen in the U.S. (it comes from Germany). The rest go in the mall from 53rd to 75th streets, including a self-portrait at 59th. Two other works are presently on view at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the southeast center of Central Park. The exhibition is organized by the Public Art Fund.
RAUSCHENBERGALOO!
Get ready to rediscover Robert Rauschenberg this fall. The Guggenheim Museum has announced plans to fill both its uptown and downtown facilities with "Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective," Sept. 19, 1997-Jan. 7, 1997. Guest curators of the show are Walter Hopps and Susan Davidson, curators at the Menil Collection in Houston. The show is slated to appear also at three Houston venues (the Museum of Fine Arts, the Contemporary Arts Museum and the Menil) as well as at the new Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain (opening this Oct.), and elsewhere, to be announced. The artist's last U.S. retrospective was in 1976.
ARMAN & THE PALACE
For his contribution to the VI Sculpture Biennale of Monte Carlo, May 24-Oct. 31, 1997, the famed Nouveaux Realiste artist Arman installed a massive accumulation of distillery barrels and portraits of Lenin. A phone call soon came from the Palace, where Prince Rainer was closely watching the art work with one eye and the next day's French elections with the other -- Monaco is close politically to France and the Communists and Socialists were threatening to unseat the ruling conservative government (a threat that the voters upheld, as it turned out). According to New York dealer Marisa del Re, who organizes the biennale, the Palace asked, "Arman, is this FOR Communism, or against?" Arman hinted that the sculpture suggests that the distillation of Communism's idealistic philosophy by the Soviet bureaucracy turned it into something else altogether. "But above all," he said, "the artist must be free."
RECORD DAVID IN LONDON Jacques Louis David's Portrait of Suzanne le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau has sold at Sotheby's London for $6.1 million, well over its presale estimate of $2.4 million and a new record for a work at auction by David. The price was paid by London dealer Alex Wengraf at Sotheby's June 11 sale of 19th-century European Paintings, Drawings and Watercolors. Other top lots included An Arab Scribe with a Seated Woman in a Moroccan Interior by Eugene Delacroix, sold for $363,000 to dealer Olivier Bergrueen, and Theodore Chasseriau's Deux Jeunes Juives.... sold for $309,000 to Dover Street Gallery.
NEA RESCINDS GRANT
The National Endowment for the Arts has rescinded a $15,000 grant to Canyon Cinema, the California-based distributor of avant-garde and experimental films. During hearings on NEA in Congress last March, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich) singled out the film company for the sexual content of some of the works it distributes. San Francisco attorney Karl Olson says Canyon Cinema is appealing the NEA decision. Canyon Cinema handles films by Kenneth Anger, Bruce Conner, Stan Brakhage, Barbara Hammer, Les Blank, Craig Baldwin, Su Friedrich and Canyon founder Bruce Baillie, among others.
MORI VIDEO Mariko Mori's new videotape, titled Miko no Inori, was a big hit at its debut at Gallery Koyanagi in her hometown of Tokyo last month, writes ArtNet correspondent Kay Itoi. The five-minute video, which costs 100,000 yen (about $800), shows Mori dressed in a futuristic metallic silver suit and white wig in the deserted Kansai International Airport. She plays a Miko, or shaman, praying for peace in the 21st century. It's proving to be a hot seller. For copies contact Gallery Koyanagi at 81-3-3561-1896.
CLOUGH ONLINE
The Hans Hofmann of Postmodernism, Charles Clough -- they both compose with the entire palette -- has established his own Website. This model of the genre includes 128 jpegs of his colorful abstractions (some done with the giant thumb tool) plus copies of past essays on the artist's work by the likes of Holland Cotter, Charlotta Kotik, Carter Ratcliff and Roberta Smith.
ART CLUB 2000 Art Club 2000 returns to American Fine Arts in SoHo on June 14 with "1970," featuring a new video sculpture featuring interviews with artists about the year 1970. "There's a glitz on top, but it's a depressed condition underneath," says Alex Katz. Vito Acconci says, "I know then, I think I still had some kind of belief in art doing. I have absolutely none now."
DAVIES ELECTED Hugh Davies, director of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, has been elected president of the prestigious Association of Art Museum Directors. Headquartered in New York, the AAMD represents 170 museums in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
OUT LATE IN ITALY
For the summer tourist season, 33 of Italy's most popular museums and archeological sites will stay open 8:30-11:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Among the attractions open late are Florence's Uffizi, the Borghese Gallery in Rome and the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.
NEW SCHOOL TOURS EUROPE
The New School Art-Tour `97: International Exhibitions Online has begun posting its online reports from its tour of the Venice Biennale, Documenta X and Sculpture: Projects in Munster 1997. The tour is conducted by three New School staffers: curator Kathleen Goncharov, photo director Robert Ransick and faculty member Mary Dinaburg.
