GOOD ODDS FOR JULIEN IN TURNER PRIZE SCRAMBLE
Online bookie William Hill, which takes bets on everything from greyhounds and snooker to the U.S. Open, has named black English filmmaker Isaac Julien the favorite to win the £20,000 Turner Prize next November. According to Hill's odds board, a $1 bet on Julien would earn $2.75 if he wins. Photographer Richard Billingham, known for snapshots of squalid family life, is rated at 3-to-1. Cocky conceptualist Martin Creed is 3.5-to-1, while Mike Nelson, whose poetic multi-room construction is a hit at the current Venice Biennale, is the long shot at 4.5-to-1.
In an unrelated development, Julien was recently reported to be in a court battle with choreographer Javier de Frutos over copyright to The Long Road to Mazatlan, a multiscreen film installation which features de Frutos dancing. "I'm not interested in awards," de Frutos told the London Independent, "but I want my role acknowledged."
BROOKLYN UNVEILS REAR ENTRY
The Brooklyn Museum of Art unveils its brand new rear entrance this week, which features a 16-foot-wide doorway and curved glass wall designed by architect James Stewart Polshek that will be the sole access point to the museum for the immediate future. The museum is closing its Eastern Parkway entrance to begin construction on Polshek's innovative new glass entry pavilion. The new construction will double the size of the museum lobby, to 7,000 square feet. The total construction should add an impressive 127,000 square feet of space to the museum. Brooklyn's fall exhibitions begin today, Sept. 7, with "Wit and Wine: A New Look at Ancient Iranian Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation." A major reinstallation of 350 works from the museum's collection of American art, dubbed "American Identities: A New Look," opens on Sept. 13.
BROOKLYN IN PALM BEACH
And by the way, the hot museum show of new art for the fall season stars 86 Brooklyn artists -- at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art in Lake Worth, Fla., Sept. 8-Nov. 25, 2001. Enthusiastically titled "BROOKLYN!," the show celebrates the "storied" borough's "new role as art world's magnet and muse" via works selected by New York curator and critic Dominique Nahas and Palm Beach ICA director Michael Rush. The Brooklyn review, which is characterized by "a low-tech high effect" approach to art-making, extends back over several generations, including Vito Acconci, Nayland Blake, Martha Rosler and Sue Williams as well as newer arrivals like Christoph Draeger, Ricco Gatson, Kristen Lucas, Laura Parnes and Amy Sillman. Other participating artists are Joe Amrhein, Xu Bing, Mary Carlson, Joe Coleman, Leonard Drew, Tim Gardner, Perry Hoberman, James Hyde, Alix Lambert, Kristin Oppenheim, Roxy Paine, Esther Partegas, Bruce Pearson, Haim Steinbach and Jim Torok. Among the attractions is a reconstruction of the pint-sized Holland Tunnel Gallery, originally a shed in a Williamsburg vacant lot; an interactive video projection by FakeShop that feeds live images from the Tokyo airport into the museum; and a rotating program of film and video art by Michael Smith, Guy Richards Smit, and artists from Ocularis Cinema Williamsburg from the Galapagos space. For more info, visit www.palmbeachica.org.
MOMA OPENS NEW SOHO STORE
The Museum of Modern Art is expanding to SoHo -- or rather, its design store is. Opening on Sept. 13, 2001, at 81 Spring Street over by Crosby Street, the new space is double the size of the museum's 53rd Street Design Store that carries pricey furniture and home accessories with MoMA's museum-class imprimatur.
NEW ART FROM CUBA
The contemporary art world fell in love with Cuba at the 2000 Bienal de la Habana. Now, all that and more is available in Art Cuba: The New Generation, a profusely illustrated 174-page survey of new work by more than 60 artists. Edited by Holly Block, executive director of the New York alternative space Art in General (where works by Cuban artists have been shown in the past), the book includes essays by Cuban art critic Gerardo Mosquera, by the satirical cartoon-artist Tonel, and by Orlando Hernández and Eugenio Valdés Figueroa. Art Cuba is published by Abrams and has a list price of $49.50.
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