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Artnet News
9/3/99		  
     
  ISTANBUL BIENNIAL TO BENEFIT QUAKE VICTIMS
The shattering earthquake that struck Turkey on Aug. 17 spared the structures that are to house the 6th International Istanbul Biennial, Sept. 17-Nov. 8, 1999. But approximately $300,000 in Turkish funds earmarked for the international art show has been redirected for earthquake relief. The Biennial will go on, and Biennial director N. Fulya Erdemci and commissioner Paolo Colombo, director of the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva, Switzerland, have secured a $100,000 2-to-1 challenge grant from the Peter Norton Family Foundation and are seeking matching funds from other sources. Many of the 60 participating artists have agreed to donate works for a benefit auction scheduled for Sept. 19; as of Aug. 26 advance bids totaling $145,000 were already in hand. Furthermore, entrance fees for the show will go to a specific reconstruction project. For more info contact Rex Moser at the United States Information Agency at rmoser@usia.gov. The show is titled "The Passion and the Wave." U.S. participants are Tony Oursler, Fatimah Tuggar, Kara Walker, Christopher Wool and Lisa Yuskavage.

ARTNET.COM LINKS WITH AOL
Look out AOL, here we come! Artnet.com has inked a deal to link with AOL, where we'll be an "anchor tenant" on the superpopular online site's arts and antiques shopping mall. That means 18 million AOL members are only a click away! While you're celebrating our newfound reach out into the heart of the mass internet market, pick up a copy of the fall 1999 issue of Forbes Interactive Money Guide, where Artnet.com is named "Forbes Favorite" in its special section on art and antiques on the web.

ARTISTS FOR MUMIA 911
The art world is joining the fight for Philadelphia journalist and radical activist Mumia Abul Jamal, who has been on death row in Pennsylvania since 1982, with a nationwide series of exhibitions and other events kicking off on Sept. 11, 1999. Among the participants are P.P.O.W., which is mounting a show of political works by James Casebere, Lyle Ashton Harris, Jerry Kearns, Carrie Mae Weems and Laurie Simmons; galleries like George Adams, White Columns and Printed Matter are having special installations; Dread Scott is at Atelier Boricua at 1680 Lexington Ave.; and Beth B is at Smack Mellon Studios in Brooklyn (opening Sept. 25). For more info check out the website, www.mumia911.org.

PAULA COOPER OPENS SECOND SPACE
On Sept. 15 Paula Cooper Gallery opens a second exhibition space, located at 521 West 21st Street, (formerly Paolo Baldacci) with a wall drawing by Sol LeWitt -- who did his first wall drawing at Cooper's gallery on Prince Street in SoHo in 1968. The space measures approximately 2,000 square feet and is illuminated by two large skylights. LeWitt's piece covers the room from floor to ceiling with combinations of bright purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red, resulting in "a veritable gesamtkunstwerk of color." A retrospective of LeWitt's work opens at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Feb. 19-May 30, 2000, and then appears at the Chicago MCA and the Whitney Museum.

SEPTEMBER BOOKS
The flood of gallery shows opening in New York in September is carrying some new art books along on the crest. Tony Shafrazi Gallery debuts a show of paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat on Sept. 23 and celebrates two new books on the artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat is a 250-page, $75 tome published by the gallery and edited by Franklin Sirmans. Also on hand is a new book from Galerie Enrico Navarra, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Works on Paper, available in the Artnet.com bookstore for $175.

Cheim & Read opens a show of new works by photographer Adam Fuss at the same time that Twin Palms Publishers announces a new large-format, $75 monograph titled My Ghost, due out in December (reserve a first edition -- signed and numbered copies are $200 -- by calling 800-797-0680).

And Gracie Mansion Gallery opens a show of new works by David Sandlin on Sept. 18, accompanied by the release of his latest book, Road to No…Where (A Sinner's Progress, Vol. III), a large-format hand-printed silk-screen publication in an edition of 25 for $1,600. A smaller format edition of 400 from Editions Cornelius in France is also available. Go to Printed Matter in SoHo on Oct. 3 from 6 to 8 p.m. to meet the artist and have him sign your copy.

NEW CONTEMPORARY HEAD AT CHRISTIE'S
Christie's has appointed Tracy Williams as head of its contemporary art department in New York. Williams was formerly an artist's agent with Michael Klein in the '80s, director of Galerie Crousel-Robelin in Paris in 1990-93 and worked in the contemporary department at Sotheby's since then.

$5 MILLION FROM FEINSTEIN
U.S. senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.) and her husband, Richard C. Blum, have donated $5 million to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco towards the construction of a new theater.

VILLEGLE AT UBU
New York's Ubu gallery has been wowing its mailing list with especially witty exhibition announcements for some time, but it outdid itself for its fall show of works by French artist Jacques Villeglé. A blank black card comes in the mail, marked simply with a horizontal tab and a white arrow. But instead of opening easily along perforations, as we've come to expect, the card tears open jaggedly -- appropriately enough revealing a color repro of a Villeglé décollage. The show is on view at Ubu, 16 East 78th Street, Sept. 14-Oct. 23, 1999.