CHAPMAN BROS WIN AWARD Jake and Dinos Chapman are this year's winners of the 25,000 Royal Academy Charles Wollaston Award for a sculpture titled The Marriage of Reason and Squalor II. A bronze designed to resemble a lump of clay, the work was selected from among the 1,242 exhibits on view in the Royal Academy's sprawling "Summer Exhibition." The shortlist for the award included Georgia Hayes, Andrea McLean, Mick Moon, Mimmo Paladino and Patrick Procktor; judges this year were the artists Anthony Green, Gerard Hemsworth and Gary Hume, and the curator Judy Collins. Most of the works in the show, which remains on view until Aug. 10, are for sale, with purchases totaling 1.4 million so far.
COME ON DOWN TO MARFA
Looking for a good excuse to visit Donald Judd's museum of Minimalist masterpieces founded in 1986 on a former army base in remote Marfa, Tex.? This year's Chinati Foundation open house celebration is scheduled for Oct. 11-12, 2003. The free event, which is co-hosted by the Judd Foundation, regularly draws over 1,000 guests. On the slate this year is a special exhibition of drawings by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, a show of textiles by Trine Ellitsgaard, and presentations by Chinati artists-in-residence Thomas Mller and Erwin Redl, plus dinner at the Presidio County Courthouse to Mariachi music and a barbeque feast held at Casa Perez, Judd's former ranch in Pinto Canyon. For info, email eliebert@chinati.org.
EL GRECO COMING TO THE MET
The first major retrospective in 20 years of the 16th-century painter El Greco (1541-1614) goes on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 7, 2003-Jan. 11, 2004. The ca. 80 works in the international loan show range from early religious icons from churches in the artist's native Crete to the late, nine-foot-tall Adoration of Shepherds, made by El Greco to decorate his own tomb. El Greco scholar David Davies is leading the team that is organizing the exhibition, which subsequently appears at the National Gallery, London, Feb. 11-May 23, 2004.
RUBENS AT THE COURTAULD
The Courtauld Institute of Art and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg are collaborating to mount "Peter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance," a show of approximately 40 oil sketches and 10 related drawings from the two museums' collections. The exhibition opens in London, Sept. 20, 2003-Feb. 8, 2004.
BONTECOU ON VIEW
Opening this fall is the first museum survey of Lee Bontecou (b. 1931), the artist who became known during the 1960s for expressive, emblematic wall reliefs made of canvas stretched over welded metal armatures. "Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective" opens at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Oct. 5, 2003-Jan. 11, 2004, with approximately 60 sculptures and 75 drawings, including works that originally appeared in exhibitions at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York between 1960 and '71 as well as newer works made at her secluded studio in rural Pennsylvania. The show is organized by Chicago MCA chief curator Elizabeth A.T. Smith in conjunction with Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin. The show subsequently appears at the Chicago MCA, Feb. 14-May 23, 2004, and MoMA QNS, July 28-Sept. 27, 2004. The exhibition is sponsored by Altria Group, Inc.
GONZALEZ-TORRES ON D.C. BILLBOARDS
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is bringing an emblematic AIDS-related work of art to billboards throughout the nation's capital. Beginning this month, Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (For Jeff) (1992), a black-and-white photograph of the palm of a reaching, open hand, goes up at more than nine locations in Washington, D.C., and environs -- including a 25 x 34 ft. billboard that has been displayed on the museum's own faade since July 15. The photo is inspired by a healthcare worker who nursed the artist's dying friend (Gonzalez-Torres died of AIDS in 1996), and is on view as part of "Gyroscope," a rotating show of works from the Hirshhorn's permanent collection.
ARMANI INAUGURATES NEW ROYAL ACADEMY SPACE
The Guggenheim Museum's controversial retrospective of 400 garments by Giorgio Armani, which appeared in the museum's landmark Frank Lloyd Wright building in 2000, is slated to inaugurate the Royal Academy of Art's new facility in Burlington Gardens this fall, Oct. 18, 2003-Feb. 15, 2004. The RAs new space is the British Museum's former Museum of Mankind building, purchased for 5 million from the government in 2001. The Armani show is on the second leg of a tour that began this spring at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and subsequently appears in Rome, Tokyo and Las Vegas. As in New York, the installation is designed by theater impresario Robert Wilson. The show is sponsored by Mercedes-Benz.
DESSERT FOR GRANDMA MOSES
Cooks, call your grandmothers! As part of "Grandma Moses in the 21st Century" at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Oct. 3, 2003-Feb. 15, 2004, the museum is requesting heirloom recipes for "Grandma's Favorite Dessert Contest." Four winning recipes are to be featured on the menu of the Wadsworth Atheneum's Museum Café. Submissions (with accompanying family lore, if any) are due by Sept. 8 to Grandma's Favorite Dessert Contest, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main Street, Hartford, Conn. 06103.
ARTISTS SEE GOD
Put your hands together for "100 Artists See God," Nov. 1, 2003-Feb. 1, 2004, organized by Independent Curators International and debuting at the Naples (Fla.) Museum of Art, Nov. 1, 2003-Feb. 1, 2004. Acknowledging "the prevalence of religion and spirituality in contemporary art, culture and politics both in the United States and abroad," the show is organized by artists John Baldessari and Meg Cranston and includes works by artists ranging from Reverend Ethan Acres and Eleanor Antin to James Welling and Mans Wrange (in collaboration with Igor Isaksson). The show is slated to appear subsequently at the Jewish Museum San Francisco, the Laguna Art Museum and other venues.
GREENBERG GALLERY TO MOVE
Photo dealer Howard Greenberg is relocating his prestigious gallery, currently at 120 Wooster Street in SoHo, to a 6,700 square foot space in the Fuller Building on 57th Street. The new facility is over 50 percent larger than the old, and consolidates the gallery with its sister exhibition space, Gallery 292. Architects for the space is Lubrano Ciavarra Design LLC, known for its design of the Richard Avedon exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. The new gallery opens on Sept. 26, 2003, with a show by Bruce Davidson.
NEW AICA PRESIDENTS
The International Association of Art Critics/USA has announced the election of Eleanor Heartney and Carey Lovelace as co-presidents for a two-year term. Heartney is a contributing editor to Art in America and Artpress and author of Critical Condition: American Culture at the Crossroads. Carey Lovelace has written for ARTnews, Newsday and the Performing Arts Journal and is also an award-winning playwright. They succeed Amei Wallach as leaders of the nearly 400-member American chapter of the critics group.
NEW BOOK EXPLORES CONTEMPORARY COLLECTION
Fans both eBay and the Antiques Roadshow take center stage in a new book of essays about collecting and collectibles. Titled Acts of Possession: Collecting in America (Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, softcover, $29, hardcover $65), the 320-page book, edited by Leah Dilworth, takes a theoretical look at the market for mass-produced collectibles like Beanie Babies, the history of collecting in 18th- and 19th-century America, and even collections of fascist propaganda and racist memorabilia. The final essay "posits the serial killer as a collector, an investigation into the dangerous objectification of humans themselves." Publication date is Aug. 14, 2003.
YALE'S ITALIAN ART AT MET
The Yale University Art Gallery has lent 40 Italian paintings from its permanent collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art while Yale's Louis I. Kahn gallery building undergoes a two-year renovation. Consisting largely of Florentine and Sienese panels from the 13th to the 15th centuries, the works are on view in the Met's Robert Lehman Wing. Lehman collection curator Laurence B. Kanter said, "It is particularly gratifying to have these paintings housed in the Lehman Wing. Robert Lehman was himself a Yale alumnus, class of 1913."
STAINBACK DIRECTOR AT SITE SANTA FE Charles A. Stainback has been named executive director of SITE Santa Fe, succeeding Louis Grachos, who became director of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in January. Stainback is currently director of the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. Among the exhibitions Stainback has overseen are "Vik Muniz: Seeing is Believing" and "David Levinthal: Works from 1975 to 1996."
NEW DIRECTOR AT GUGG HERMITAGE IN LAS VEGAS Elizabeth Herridge has been appointed managing director of the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas. An art historian specializing in modernism and color theory, Herridge has been a gallery educator at the Las Vegas museum. Currently on view there is "American Pop Icons," May 15-Nov. 2, 2003, an exhibition of 28 works by eight Pop art masters.
PROMOTION AT HIRSHHORN Olga Viso, curator of contemporary art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, has been promoted to deputy director within the museum. Viso, who has worked at the museum for eight years and organized shows such as " Regarding Beauty: A View of Late Twentieth Century" and "Juan Muoz" begins her new position Oct. 1, 2003.
NEW HEAD FOR BUILDING MUSEUM
The National Building Museum has announced the appointment of Chase W. Rynd as president of the museum. Rynd, who has been the executive director of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tenn., assumes the post on Sept. 2, 2003.
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