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Artnet News
6/25/02

AUCTION PRIZE TO O'KEEFFE MUSEUM
Georgia O'Keeffe's Ram's Head, Blue Morning Glory (1938), an iconic Western painting that sold at auction in New York in April for $3.4 million, well above the presale high estimate of $1,200,000, has recently been unveiled at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The new acquisition marks the fifth anniversary of the museum's opening on July 17, 1997. The celebration continues throughout July and beyond, with a benefit preview of the Summer Antiquities Show at Sweeney Center on July 4, a "block party" in conjunction with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival (marking its 30th anniversary) on July 13, a tour of the homes of four Santa Fe art collectors on July 23, and a tour of O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch house, normally closed to the public, on Aug. 6. For more info, see www.okeeffemuseum.org.

FBI BAGS PURPORTED BASQUIAT FORGER
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has charged the New York artist Alfredo Martinez with attempting to defraud two art dealers by selling them $185,000 worth of fake drawings by the famed graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Martinez, a hulking 300-pound Puerto Rico native (who is not to be confused with the late Mexican painter Alfredo Ramos Martinez), is something of a fixture on the downtown alternative scene. He devised a mock shooting gallery for Pseudo-founder Josh Harris' "Quiet" exhibition in Lower Manhattan over New Year's in 1999-2000, had a solo show at Donahue/Sosinski and exhibited in group shows at P.S. 1, Exit Art and Kenny Schachter. Martinez has also organized large group exhibitions in vacant industrial spaces, including "Playground of the Fearless" in Brooklyn in late 2001. The charges against Martinez, which landed him in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correction Center -- otherwise known as the Tombs -- on June 19, 2002, involve an alleged scheme to sell fake Basquiat drawings, accompanied by forged certificates of authenticity, to SoHo dealer Leo Malca and a second art dealer. Martinez' whereabouts could not be determined at press time, but Harris suggested that Martinez is a "con artist" in more ways than one, and would use his arrest to seek notoriety.

LEMMON ON WESTON ON TAPE
One of the final projects of beloved Hollywood icon Jack Lemmon was to narrate "The Roots of California Photography: The Monterey Legacy," a 56-minute video documentary on Edward Weston, Wynn Bullock, Margrethe Mather and other early California photographers. Through vintage film clips, contemporary interviews and close study of the photos themselves, the video interweaves biography and history to tell the story of the new sharp-focus, formally based school of nature photography. Written by Steve Hauk, a former journalist and art dealer in Pacific Grove, Ca. (with a site on Artnet), the tape is jointly produced by U. Cal Santa Cruz Extension and the Monterey Museum of Art, where it can be purchased in VHS ($19.95) and DVD ($24.95). It's Hauk's second effort in this area: he also wrote "Time Captured in Paintings: The Monterey Legacy."

CAR ART, WITH LASERS, AT ROCK CENTER
Video art pioneer Nam June Paik unveils a new laser light-show at Rockefeller Center on Wednesday, June 26, 2002. Dubbed Transmission, the work consists of red, green and blue lasers beaming from the tip of a neon-decorated, 33-foot-tall radio tower from dusk to midnight (on view till Sept. 2). Also on the site is another Paik work consisting of 16 classic autos, from a 1929 Ford Model A to a 1959 Buick, painted silver, filled with old hi-fis and stereos, and playing Mozart's Requiem, the composer's final, unfinished work. The installation is organized by the Public Art Fund and RCPI Landmark Properties and Tishman Speyer Properties, owners of Rockefeller Center; it is presented by Cingular Wireless, with additional funding by TAC Americas. Paik's 32 Cars for the 20th Century: Play Mozart's Requiem Quietly is in the collection of Samsung Foundation of Culture.

MERIDA RETROSPECTIVE AT BARQUET
Galeria Ramis Barquet in New York opens a retrospective of the work of Guatemala-born, Mexico City modernist Carlos Mérida (1891-1984), June 27-Aug. 2, 2002. The exhibition includes figurative works from the '20s, biomorphic abstractions from the '30s and '40s and geometric, linear works from different periods.

HOLZER EPHEMERA SURVEY AT PRINTED MATTER
Printed Matter, the artists' books bookstore in Chelsea, is mounting its first retrospective. "Protect Me from What I Want: The Multiples and Editioned Works of Jenny Holzer," July 18-Sept. 31, 2002, features the artist's postcards, posters, t-shirts, caps, rubberstamps and other ordinary objects emblazoned with her text pieces. One of Holzer's earliest solo shows was at Printed Matter on Lispenard Street in 1979.

ARTISTS WANTED FOR OLYMPIC SCULPTURE PARK
The Chicago Atheneum seeks proposals from artists for new works to be sited in a new international sculpture park to be established on the island of Naxos, Greece, in time for the 2004 Summer Olympics there. Located at the southern edge of the city beside "the cool aquamarine waters of the Mediterranean Sea," the new park is a partnership between the Atheneum, which operates a 20-acre sculpture park outside of Chicago, and the city of Naxos, led by mayor Vasilias Kokkotas. Naxos, one of the largest Greek islands, has a population of 18,000 and is celebrated for its white marble. For more information, contact Jennifer K. Lavender at (847) 895-3950

NYFA FELLOWS FOR 2002
The New York Foundation for the Arts has announced the winners of its $7,000 fellowships for 2002 in eight categories. Painting: Chris Anderson, Karen Arm, Jaime Arrendondo, Sohyun Bae, Pedro Barbeito, Steven Charles, James Esber, Dan Ford, Phil Frost, Cadence Giersbach, Ellen Harvey, Eric Hongisto, Shigeno Ichimura, Tricia Keightley, Robin Lowe, Matthew Magee, Alison Moritsugu, Phyllis Gay Palmer, Michael Rodriguez, Lisa Sigal, C. Mark Stilwell, Steed Taylor, Mark Dean Veca, Amy Yoes. Photography: Donna Alberico, Alice Arnold, Anthony Barboza, Eric Baudelaire, Angel E. Chevrestt, Margaret Fox, Gerard H. Gaskin, Frank Gimpaya, Carol Golemboski, Simen Johan, Nina Kuo, Teru Kuwayama, Ethan Levitas, Ann Lovett, Tom Martinelli, Daniel Mirer, Orville Robertson, Frank Stewart, Laura Straus, Penelope Umbrico. Video: Irit Batsry, Peer Bode, Christina Choe, Adam Cohen, Todd Downing, Slawomir Grunberg, Thomas Allen Harris, Timothy Hutchings, Shaun Irons & Laura Petty, Matt Marello, Diane Nerwen, Mary Patierno, Pola Rapaport, Lisa Robinson, Patrick Smith. Architecture/Environmental Structures: Clifton Balch/Mojdeh Baratloo, Evan Douglis, Annette Dudek, Natalie Fizer / Glenn Forley, Freecell (Lauren Crahan /John Hartmann/Troy Ostrander), Karin F. Giusti, Anita Glesta, Stanley Greenberg, Shih-Chieh Huang, nArchitects (Eric Bunge/Mimi Hoang), Erwin Redl, Richard Rosa, Nathalie Rozot, StudioSumo (Sunil Bald/Yolande Daniels). For winners in choreography, fiction, music composition and playwriting/screenwriting, see the website at www.nyfa.org. The application deadline for 2003 awards, which includes fellowships for crafts, film, performance art, printmaking/drawing/artists' books and sculpture, is October 2002.

NEW VISUAL ARTS HEAD AT NEA
Robert Frankel, executive director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art since 1996, has been appointed director of museums and visual arts at the National Endowment for the Arts. The artist agency awaits a new chairman; NEA is currently headed by acting chair Eileen B. Mason.

ELDREDGE PRIZE TO MOUNT HOLYOKE ART HISTORIAN
The art-history world's prestigious Charles C. Eldredge Prize, awarded annually by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, has gone to Mount Holyoke art historian Anthony W. Lee for Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco (U. of Cal Press, 2001). The book examines both fine and commercial images of the neighborhood from 1850 through the 1940s, including work by Dorothea Lange, Carleton Watkins, the painters Edwin Deakin and Theodore Wores, and the 1920s collective known as the Chinese Revolutionary Artists' Club. The Eldredge Prize carries a $2,000 purse.

ART PROJECTS FOR MIAMI DEVELOPMENT
The celebrated Aqua development in Miami Beach, the high-concept-design community of homes and condos currently under construction on 8.5 acres of Allison Island by developer and art collector Craig Robins, has added two major public art commissions to its esthetic mix. Minimalist master Richard Tuttle has designed a wall mosaic depicting a large splash, as if from the nearby water. And map artist Guillermo Kuitca has come up with the "Aqua Oasis," a sunken plaza that can serve as a kind of amphitheater, its surface inlaid with a mosaic plan of the island, digitally morphed to appear as if it is under water.

GUGG & HERMITAGE UNITE IN NEW NONPROFIT
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg have joined together to form the Hermitage-Guggenheim Foundation to oversee collaborative projects between the two institutions, notably the renovation as museum space of the 400,000-square-foot, 19th-century General Staff Building across from the Hermitage on Palace Square. Chairman of the new foundation is Vladimir Potanin, head of Interros Holding Company in Russia and a recently appointed Guggenheim trustee; executive director of the foundation is Guggenheim director Thomas Krens.



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