DANIEL BUREN, PERFORMANCE ARTIST Daniel Buren is nothing if not interdisciplinary. As an adjunct to his Guggenheim Museum exhibition, "The Eye of the Storm: Works in situ by Daniel Buren," Mar. 25-June 8, 2005, the French conceptualist orchestrated a theater piece starring his signature stripes on the show's opening night. Titled Couleurs Superposes: Acte VII, the event at the Gugg's Peter B. Lewis Theater was Buren's first performance in New York since 1973.
Buren's signature yellow, red, green and blue stripes came to life on stage, as student performers -- following Buren's directions -- used wheat paste to put up variously colored rectangular sheets of paper onto a large black-and-white-striped wall. Colors and stripes appeared, disappeared and changed locations on the wall for almost over an hour, until Buren signaled the performers to pause and begin to reverse the process, peeling off sections of the layered surface, revealing odd shapes and lacerated bits of alternating colored stripes beneath.
The event encouraged viewers to notice the conceptual leaps proposed by the artist's work. "Did Buren patch over the red, white and blue stripes reminiscent of an American flag consciously?" an audience member asked after the performance.
For fans of Buren's esthetic, the performance was a demonstration of his devotion to the experience of beauty while dismantling it at the same time. The performance made literal Buren's "interrogation" of art and its various forms. Performa director RoseLee Goldberg, who co-organized the evening, called the piece "a sparkling gem" that perfectly demonstrated Buren's "entire belief system as an artist."
Couleurs Superposes: Acte VII was produced by Mary Cronson of the Guggenheim's Works & Process program, and was co-organized by Goldberg and Guggenheim curators Susan Cross, Lisa Dennison and Alison Gingeras.
-- Defne Ayas
BIG NAMES FOR CLEVELAND JOB
The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently printed a list of possible candidates for the open director's job of the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is well known for having one of the richest endowments of any U.S. museum. Whether accurate or not, the list does serve as a revealing roll call of top museum talent.
Among the names: Maxwell Anderson, 48, former director of the Whitney Museum (1998-2003) and the Art Gallery of Ontario, now at Yale's Chief Executive Leadership Institute; Michael Brand, 47, an Austrialian native who has been director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 2000, and who previously held posts at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra; Jay Gates, 59, director of the Phillips Collection since 1998, and former director of the Dallas Museum of Art and the Seattle Museum of Art; Deborah Gribbon, 56, director of the Getty Museum (2000-04), who resigned in October, citing differences with Getty Trust CEO Barry Munitz; Willard Holmes, 56, director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum since 2003 and formerly deputy director at the Whitney; Neil MacGregor, 58, director of the British Museum since 2002, former director of the National Gallery in London (1987-2002) and editor of Burlington Magazine; Michael Shapiro, 55, director of the High Museum since 2000; Gary Tinterow, 51, longtime 19th-century curator at the Metropolitan Museum; Gail Trechsel, 51, director of the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art since 1996; Charles Venable, 45, deputy director for collections and programs at the Cleveland Museum since 2002, and formerly a longtime staffer at the Dallas Museum of Art.
NEW WALKER BOWS IN APRIL
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis shows off its new $130-million expansion and renovation on Apr. 17, 2005, with a 12-hour gala opening featuring seven separate exhibitions of works from the collection. Designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the facility more than doubles the museum's size, adding a new entrance plaza with dramatic vistas of the city skyline, a 130,000-square-foot south wing covered with embossed aluminum mesh panels and punctured by asymmetric windows, a 385-seat theater, a restaurant and a caf operated by Wolfgang Puck, and an outdoor "skyspace" artwork by James Turrell.
Debut exhibitions include "The Shape of Time," a chronological survey of 50 years of art history, from postwar abstraction to the art of the 1990s; "Shadowland: An Exhibition as a Film," a show of film and video works by artists ranging from Chantal Akerman to Bruce Nauman; "Urban Cocktail," artists who "chart the contours of the heart" of the digitalized world, ranging from John Bock and Thomas Hirschhorn to Kerry James Marshall and Nari Ward; "Elemental," a show of Minimal art; "Mythologies," works by artists ranging from Joseph Beuys to Paul McCarthy and Charles Ray; and two sets of four installations devoted to individual artists: Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Joan Mitchell and Robert Motherwell, and Matthew Barney, Robert Gober, Sherrie Levine and Kara Walker.
All has not been smooth sailing, however. According to a report in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, construction went $6 million over budget, and as a result museum director Kathy Halbreich and her hard-working staff are consigned to remain in their old offices until additional funds can be raised for their new spaces on top of the galleries.
JOHNS CATALOGUE RAISONN FROM WILDENSTEIN INSTITUTE
The Paris-based Wildenstein Institute has announced a new project -- The Catalogue Raisonn of the Paintings and Sculpture of Jasper Johns. The new reference work is being authored by Roberta Bernstein, the art historian and expert on Johns (and Ellsworth Kelly) who teaches at the University of Albany and recently organized "Jasper Johns: Numbers" at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Wildenstein Institute has been putting out artist's works catalogues since 1922; a new edition of the publication on Paul Gauguin is due soon, and catalogues are in progress for Zurbarn, Houdon, David, Vigee Le Brun, Pissarro, Renoir, Modigliani, Marquet, Vlaminck and Van Dongen.
ARTS INITIATIVE MARKS HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI ANNIVERSARY
A global arts initiative is planned to mark the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on Aug. 6, 2005, sponsored by the Mayors for Peace and EPOP International. The initiative kicks off with a benefit art auction in New York, scheduled for May 3, 2005, at Ruby Falls, a space on West 29th Street in Chelsea. The benefit sale is being conducted by Christie's and features works by Jerry Kearns, Julian LeVerdiere, Yoko Ono and Tom Otterness. Proceeds from the sale go to Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of A-bomb survivors based in Japan.
The initiative also includes plans for a "Back to the Garden" benefit concert at Madison Square Garden on July 25, plus a related traveling public art exhibition that is planned to open in New York on Aug. 6. For more info on the art show, contact Artnet Magazine contributor Elliott Arkin at (718) 260-9542.
MAD GETS 40 WORKS
Longtime craft collectors Simona and Jerome Chazen have given a group of 40 modern and contemporary artworks in ceramics and glass to the Museum of Arts & Design (formerly known as the American Craft Museum). The collection includes works by Robert Arneson, Dale Chihuly, Stanislav Libensky, William Morris, Mary Shaffer and Lino Tagliapietra, among others, and goes on view in "Dual Vision: The Simona and Jerome Chazen Collection," May 26-Sept. 11, 2005. The Chazens are both boardmembers at the museum.
RIJKSMUSEUM SENDING REMBRANDTS TO U.S.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is sending "Rembrandt and the Golden Age," a show of over 100 paintings and artworks by Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Frans Hals and other artists from the museum collection, to three U.S. museums in 2006-07. The show premieres at the Dayton (Ohio) Art Institute, Oct. 7, 2006-Jan. 7, 2007, before traveling to the Phoenix Art Museum, Jan. 27-May 6, 2007, and the Portland (Ore.) Art Museum, May 26-Sept. 16, 2007. The Rijksmuseum is undergoing renovation till mid-2008.
BEN ELWES OPENS IN LONDON
Old Master and British paintings dealer Ben Elwes is opening a new gallery at 45 Maddox Street in London on Apr. 11, 2005. His team includes his wife, Rachel Layton Elwes, an American academic and museum professional, and researcher Corina Kleinert. Elwes formerly worked with Christie's London and Shepherd Gallery in New York before joining with William Hanham to establish Elwes & Hanham in 1993.
DCKT GOES INDEPENDENT
Art dealers Dennis Christie and Ken Tyburski, who launched DCKT Contemporary at Charles Cowles Gallery several years ago to showcase new talent, are striking out on their own. DCKT Contemporary debuts on Apr. 9, 2005, at its own space at 552 West 24th Street with a group show, "Welcome 2 the Jungle." For more info, contact info@dcktcontemprary.com.
ECCLES TO BARD Public Art Fund director Tom Eccles has been named executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Eccles is to oversee the forthcoming renovation of the center's exhibition space, including a 16,800-square-foot gallery wing slated for completion next year. Norton Batkin is continuing as director of Bards graduate and research programs.
JAMES LEBRON, 1928-2005 James Lebron, 76, celebrated New York art handler who also made painting stretchers for artists ranging from Roy Lichtenstein to Francesco Clemente, died of respiratory failure on Mar. 16 in West Islip, N.Y. Lebrons clients included many of the Color Field painters as well as the Metropolitan Museum and collectors like S.I. Newhouse.
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