ARTNET, ART BASEL, IN NEW COLLABORATION
At the Dec. 6, 2006, opening press reception for the 5th Art Basel | Miami Beach art fair, Art Basel director Samuel Keller announced a collaboration between Art Basel and Artnet to create a new online extension of the famous art fair. Starting with Art 38 Basel in June 2007, the two companies will collaborate on an interactive floor plan that will go online on the last day of the fair and essentially extend the fair’s duration for two months to a worldwide audience.
"Galleries will be able to offer works to collectors who were unable to attend the actual fair," Keller remarked. The new online presence brings the artworks in Art Basel to a much larger international audience for a much greater length of time.
"The fact that 50 percent of the galleries participating in Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach are Artnet members was a strong mandate for all of us to enter this cooperation," said Thomas Eller, executive manager of Artnet Germany and negotiator of the agreement. "Galleries have realized the importance of a web presence and collectors are using Artnet everyday to make informed decisions."
The cooperation between ABMB and Artnet will include all special sections of the fair such as "Art Unlimited" in Basel proper, or "Art Positions" in Miami Beach. The galleries will present artworks brought to the fair alongside a photograph of their actual booth at Art Basel or Art Basel Miami Beach.
"The benefit is great," said Artnet founder and CEO Hans Neuendorf. "Now, collectors can go back and revisit specific artworks. Searching by gallery or artist name is just one way of finding art. We’ve all had the experience of seeing an artwork and at that time it didn’t click right away. But after a day or so, one realizes that it won’t leave one alone. Using the interactive floor plan, visitors are able to retrace their steps at the fair and find the gallery’s booth again -- and the artwork, even if they have forgotten the artist’s name."
LANCE FUNG TO SITE SANTA FE
Independent curator Lance Fung is on tap to curate the 8th annual Site Santa Fe in 2008. Among other projects, Fung is known for curating "The Snow Show," which appeared alongside the 20th Olympic Games in Torino, Italy, in 2006, and he is currently working on the cultural program to run alongside the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
NEA ANNOUNCES 2007 GRANTS
The National Endowment for the Arts has announced its first round of giving for its 2007 grants season, a total of 848 grants worth more than $19 million. Highlights in the visual arts include:
* Money for New York stalwarts like Apex Art ($20,000), Art in General ($30,000), Artists Alliance ($10,000), Public Art Fund ($20,000), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture ($21,000), Smack Mellon Studios ($20,000), Socrates Sculpture Park ($20,000) and White Columns ($20,000).
* Support for a variety of art publications, such as Atlanta-based Art Papers ($25,000), the Houston-based ArtLies -- The Texas Art Journal ($25,000), the Bronx’s Nueva Luz ($20,000) and Sculpture magazine ($25,000), published by the International Sculpture Center in Hamilton, N.J.
* $10,000 for "Karaoke Ice," a mobile, community-based project conceived by an art collective that includes Nancy Nowacek, Katie Salen and Marina Zurkow, from Los Angeles’ Contemporary Exhibitions
* $25,000 for New Haven, Conn.’s Artspace to realize "50,000 Beds," an exhibit featuring 40 video artists on the topic of the tourism and the hospitality industry, in partnership with the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. (Artspace also gets an additional $15,000 grant all its own, for celebrations of the 10th anniversary of their open studios program).
* $25,000 for the Bronx Council on the Arts’ slate of "cyberspace residencies" that will culminate in online exhibitions hosted by the borough’s Longwood Arts Project
* $25,000 for Space One Eleven in Birmingham, Ala., to stage "Shifting Planes: Artists In and Out of the New South," featuring contemporary Southern artists who have emigrated from France, India, Ireland, Mexico and Singapore
The complete, unfiltered list of grantees is available at the NEA website.
MOUDOV WINS TRIESTE HONOR
Italy’s Trieste Contemporanea Committee has announced the winner of its 2006 Young European Trieste Contemporanea Award: Bulgarian conceptualist Ivan Moudov, known for his performances in the tradition of institutional critique. The honor means that Moudov gets his first solo show in Italy at the Studio Tommaseo in Trieste, scheduled to open Dec. 9, 2006, with two works: "Fragments," bringing together suitcases containing pieces of works of art taken from various European museums, and "Musiz," documenting an action Moudov performed in Sofia, Bulgaria, announcing the opening of a non-existent museum of contemporary art.
LACMA BOARD EXPANDS
Add three more to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board of trustees (there are 46 in all): finance kingpin Tom Gores, real estate magnate Geoffrey Palmer and tools-and-equipment retailer Eric Smidt. The new members join three others brought on since Michael Govan became director of LACMA earlier this year: technology entrepreneur David Bohnett, Yahoo chairman Terry Semel, and author and global warming skeptic Michael Crichton.
2001 IN CENTRAL PARK
L.A.-based sculptor Liz Larner just opened a new work of public sculpture in Central Park. Sponsored by the Public Art Fund, Larner’s giant, iridescent green-and-purple ball is stationed at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, near 60th Street and Fifth Avenue, and is at once gem-like and technological. The piece is titled 2001 because of its mysterious and futuristic presence (as well as in reference to the year of its completion).
NEW HOME FOR DIEU DONNÉ
Dieu Donné Papermill -- the 30-year-old nonprofit dedicated to promoting art using hand-crafted paper -- has inked a deal to move to a new headquarters at 315 W. 36th St., between 8th and 9th avenues in Manhattan. Images of the plans for Dieu Donné’s new and expanded headquarters are available at their website.
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