the endless 
column 
compiled by 
Walter Robinson
7/2/96
MACARTHUR BUCKS
Chicago's John D. and Catherine T. 
MacArthur Foundation has announced 20 new 
"genius awards" to creative individuals 
working in the sciences, arts and social 
services. The no-strings-attached 
fellowships range from $150,000 to 
$375,000, depending on the age of the 
recipient (you get more if you're older), 
and are paid over five years. The arts-
related winners are Joan Breton Connelly, 
42, an archeologist who has proposed a new 
and controversial interpretation of the 
Parthenon frieze ($265,000); novelist 
Rebecca Goldstein, 46, whose books include 
The Mind-Body Problem (1983) and Mazel 
(1995) ($285,000); poet and Paris Review 
poetry editor, translator and critic 
Richard Howard, 66, who teaches English and 
creative writing at the University of 
Houston ($375,000); avant-garde theater 
director John Jesrun, 45, who East 
Villagers will remember for his serial 
soap-opera Chang in a Void Moon at the 
Pyramid on Ave. A. ($280,000); Louis 
Massiah, 42, documentary filmmaker whose 
latest film is W.E.B. Du Bois--A Biography 
in Four Voices ($265,000); Ann Arbor poet 
Thylias Moss, 42 ($265,000); goofy dream 
dancers Eiko and Koma, 44 and 47 
($290,000); and melodramatic social 
monologuist Anna Deavere Smith, 45 
($280,000). For more info, check out the 
MacArthur Website,www.macfdn.org 
and click on "fellows."
BOSS BUCKS 
The Guggenheim Museum has announced the 
short list for its new Hugo Boss Prize: 
Laurie Anderson, Janine Antoni, Matthew 
Barney, Cai Guo Qiang, Stan Douglas and 
Yasumasa Morimura. Their works will be 
shown in the at the Guggenheim SoHo's new 
Hugo Boss Gallery (the Hugo Boss Gallery?) 
in October. The prize is worth $50,000. 
TURNER BUCKS 
Finalists for the 1996 Turner Prize are 
Douglas Gordon, Craigie Horsfeld, Gary Hume 
and Simon Patterson. The prize is worth 
£20,000 British pounds, or $30,800, and is 
sponsored by the Tate Gallery. All guys, 
tsk, tsk. Last year's winner was Damien 
Hirst. New Yorkers may have seen Craigie 
Horsfeld's giant, moody black-and-white 
photos from Poland at Barbara Gladstone 
last year, Gary Hume's weird candy-colored 
enamel paintings at Matthew Marks uptown. 
As for the other two, we haven't seen their 
work, which means either that the British 
import boom is faltering or that the Tate 
jury is doing a better job seeking out new 
talent than their colleagues at the Boss 
Guggenheim.
NYFA BUCKS 
The New York Foundation for the Arts has 
announced its latest round of artist's 
fellowships. This year 104 artists working 
in eight disciplines won $7,000 each. 
Winners in painting: Lawrence Anderson, 
Andrew Boardman, Tom Burckhardt, Amy Cheng, 
Emily Cheng, Don Christensen, Michael 
Eastman, Margaret Wirstrom Evangeline, 
Russell Floersch, Joanne Greenbaum, Julie 
Heffernan, Ian Hughes, Carter Kustera, 
Christopher Martin, Donna Moylan, Laura 
Newman, Phase, Erika Ranee, Ruth Root and 
James Siena. Panelists for painting were 
Dawn Clements, Jane Dickson, Colin Lee, 
Mary Lum and Alberto Rey. Winners in 
Photography: Patti Ambrogi, Joan Barker, 
Ernesto Bazan, Mary Berridge, Renee Cox, 
Donna DeCesare, Phyllis Galembo, Rita 
Hammond, Joseph Harris, Tatana Kellner, An-
My Le, Shirin Neshat and Jeffrey Scales. 
Video fellows are Kenseth Armstead, Yau 
Ching, Norman Cowrie, David Deblinger, 
Julia Heyward, Jeffrey Lerer, Nora 
Ligorano/Marshall Reese, Kara Lynch, Diane 
Nerwen, Daniel Reeves and Jocelyn Taylor. 
Next year's deadline is Oct. 2, 1996. For 
info go to www.tmn.com/Artswire/www/nyfa.asp> or 
maybe you should just call (212) 366-6900, 
ext. 217.
APAA AWARD 
The Progressive Corporation, known among 
art aficionados for its cutting-edge art 
collection, has received the new award 
sponsored by the Association of 
Professional Art Advisors honoring "a 
significant contribution in bringing the 
visual arts and creative experience to the 
work environment." The award was designed 
by SoHo sculptor Jackie Ferrara. 
NATIONAL BLACK ART SHOW 
The National Black Art Show, the first U.S. 
art fair for black artists, will be held at 
the Puck Building in New York during Jan. 31
- Feb. 2, 1997, with a gala preview on 
Thursday evening, Jan. 30. The fair is 
being organized by Josh Wainwright in 
association with Sandy Smith, the same guys 
who have produced the Art Show for the Art 
Dealers Association, the recent Outsider 
Art Fair in New York and a number of 
others. According to Wainwright, the fair 
will include exhibitors presenting 
everything from African art to the avant-
garde, and will be the first concentrated 
effort to focus the economic power of black 
artists, dealers, collectors and curators. 
For more information call Wainwright/Smith 
Associates at (212)777-5218 or fax at 
(212)477-6490. 
PUBLIC ART IN ORANGE 
The mayor of Orange, N.J., Robert L. Brown, 
and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in 
Newark have unveiled Celebrating Orange, a 
new mural by Grace Graupe-Pillard installed 
at the Orange Public Library, 348 Main St., 
Orange, N.J. "It's my first public 
commission," enthused Grace, a regular 
ArtNet Magazine reader. The work is 16 feet 
tall and is made of concrete and porcelain 
enamel. It's funded by the Geraldine R. 
Dodge Foundation, the State of New Jersey 
Urban Enterprise Zone Program, and the U.S. 
Department of Housing & Urban Development 
Community Development Block Grant Program. 
Whew! 
EISENMAN IN YERBA BUENA 
The Jewish Museum San Francisco has 
selected deconstructionist architect Peter 
Eisenman to design its new facility in the 
downtown Yerba Buena district. Plans call 
to convert the historic (and empty for 20 
years) Jessie Street Substation, built by 
Willis Polk in 1905, into a 50,000-square-
foot art center featuring as much as 15,000 
square feet of gallery space. Founded 12 
years ago, the museum is presently housed 
in the Jewish Community Federation 
building; the Eisenman facility is slated 
for completion in 1999.
BASEL BOYS BACK BODY 
At this year's international art fair Art 
27'96 in Basel, an association of leading 
European and U.S. art fairs was formed, 
dubbed I.C.A.F.A., or the International 
Contemporary Art Fairs Association. Charter 
members are Art Basel, ARCO (Madrid), Art 
Chicago, Art Cologne and FIAC (Paris). The 
new association is headed by Art Basel fair 
manager Lorenzo A. Rudolf; Thomas Blackman 
of Art Chicago and Marwan Hoss of FIAC are 
vice-presidents. If you want to contact 
them try ringing up Basel, telefon 061 686 
2020 or telefax 061 686 21 88.
SOHO ART FOR MALL RATS 
Did someone say that Soho has become one 
big shopping mall? The Soho Arts Festival 
seems to think so, as it announces plans to 
present "Shopping," Sept. 5-28, 1996, a 
show that will put work by 25 international 
artists into Soho stores. It's organized by 
Jeffrey Deitch, Soho's coolest dealer, and 
Jerome Sans, France's handsomest curator. 
Computer-graphics wiz Jim Anderson plans 
something for that little porno parlor at 
West B'way and Canal (that we know you 
never actually noticed till now); deaf 
artist Joseph Grigely will display his work 
in a tag sale in someone's apartment; and 
Mona Hatoum, who has been known to fill 
furniture with concrete, will do something 
at SoHo's favorite lunch spot, Jerry's. Uh-
oh. And we hear that Ken Lum is creating a 
shopping bag for Agnes B featuring a 
photograph of a head covered in jelly. 
Jerome, did we get that right? Also 
included are works by Vanessa Beecroft, Jes 
Brinch & Henrick Plenge Jakobsen, Michel 
Dector, Michel Depuy, Sylie Fleury, Douglas 
Gordon, Joseph Havel, Paula Hayes, 
Noritoshi Hirakawa, Thomas Hirschhorn, Anne 
Marie Jugnet, Claude Leveque, Kristin 
Oppenheim, Gabriel Orozco, Sam Samore, 
Julia Scher, Ross Sinclair, Elaine Tin Nyo, 
Erwin Wurm and Chen Zhen.
COOPER-HEWITT TO REOPEN 
The Smithsonian's beloved Cooper-Hewitt, 
which persists in calling itself by its 
ugly new monniker "National DESIGN Museum," 
reopens Sept. 17 with "Mixing Messages," 
over 300 works of contemporary graphic 
design produced in the U.S. during the past 
15 years. The show is organized by Cooper-
Hewitt contemporary design curator Ellen 
Lupton and underwritten by the Mead 
Corporation, which makes stuff out of trees 
(nay, out of entire forests). In case you 
forgot while the Cooper-Hewitt's been 
closed for a year to expand, it is located 
at 91st St. and Fifth Ave. Work continues 
on refitting the two contiguous townhouses, 
scheduled to open as a Design Resource 
Center in fall 1997, in time for the 
museum's centennial.
BEAUTIFYING CHELSEA 
City-bound tree-huggers rejoice. The Dia 
Center for the Arts has planted 18 more 
trees along its Chelsea street, each paired 
with a four-foot basalt marker, as an 
extension of Joseph Beuys famed 7000 Oaks 
project began at Documenta 7 in Kassel in 
1982. Dia had already done five trees-and-
rocks in 1988; now the project spreads down 
22nd street from 10th to 11th Avenues.
MOMA GROWS AN ARM IN PA.
The Museum of Modern Art is expanding to a 
woody 38-acre estate in Hamlin, Pa. Or at 
least its film vault is. The museum has 
opened a new film-storage facility, the 
Celeste Baron Film Preservation Center, in 
a 36,000-square-foot center designed by 
Davis, Brody & Assoc. Housing MoMA's 
collection of more than 13,000 films dating 
back to 1894, the CBFPC is located over two 
hours from Manhattan by car, and is 
catalogued on a computer linked 
electronically to the museum.
WHITNEY RIDES CAMEL 
Joe Camel's proud daddy, tobacco giant 
Philip Morris, is helping to send a bunch 
of works from the Whitney Museum's 
permanent collection to Europe for the 
summer. Entitled "Art at the End of the 
20th Century: Selections from the Whitney 
Museum of American Art," the tour is slated 
to debut at the National Gallery, 
Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens (June 10 -
Aug. 19, 1996) and subsequently appear at 
the Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona 
(Dec. 18, 1996 - Sept. 1, 1997) and the 
Kunstmuseum Bonn, (June 1 - Sept. 1, 1997). 
The exhibition is organized by Whitney 
director David A. Ross and branch curator 
Eugenie Tsai, who heads the Whitney 
satellite facility at Champion in Stamford, 
Conn. (By the way, Eugenie's husband, Tom 
Finkelpearl, who has run the NYC Department 
of Cultural Affairs public-sculpture 
program for a hound's age, has taken a new 
post running Skowhegan in Maine. Watch out 
for those mosquitoes!)
CHOCOLATE SUMMER 
As long as we're on the subject of the 
Whitney and Philip Morris, we need to tell 
you that the museum's Philip Morris branch 
at Park Ave. and 42nd Street is readying 
itself for Ik-Joong Kang's installation, 
8,490 Days of Memory, which will feature 
8,490 squares of chocolate hung on foil-
covered walls! Shades of Hersheyville! 
Let's hope the Philip Morris air 
conditioner doesn't break down! According 
the museum, "this exhibition uses chocolate 
as material and metaphor to revisit the 
past from the perspective of the present." 
Okay! The number 8,490 corresponds to the 
number of days Kang spent in Korea before 
immigrating the U.S., and the chocolate 
represents the candy bars GIs based near 
Kang's grammar school would give to the 
students. The show runs July 11 - Sept 27.
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