May 11, 2006 

INTERNATIONAL FINE ART FAIR 2006
Brian and Anna Haughton's 2006 International Fine Art Fair, May 12-17, 2006, opens at the Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Avenue at 67th Street on May 11 with a gala preview benefiting the Frick Collection. The 13th edition of the spring fair presents approximately 55 dealers from Europe, the U.S. and the Far East.

The lineup is illustrious, ranging from Didier Aaron (New York, London and Paris), Agnew's (London) and Daphne Alazraki (New York) to Whitford Fine Art (London), Adam Williams Fine Art (New York) and David & Constance Yates (New York). First-time exhibitors include E&R Cyzer (London), Univers du Bronze (Paris), Galerie du Post-Impressionnisme (Paris), Charly Bailly Fine Art (Geneva), Anderson Galleries (Beverly Hills), Avery Galleries (Haverford, Pa.), Babcock Galleries (New York), Peter Findlay Gallery (New York), David Findlay Jr. Fine Art Inc. (New York), Debra Force Fine Art (New York), Hawthorne Fine Art (New York), Owen Gallery (New York), Tom Veilleux Gallery (Farmington, Me.) and Pandora Old Masters (New York).

Among the highlights at the fair are a small version of John Everett Millais' Pre-Raphaelite The Order of Release at Agnews from London (priced at around $1.3 million), and paintings by both William Bouguereau (Reverie) and his wife, Elizabeth Bouguereau (La Becqueee), at Anderson Galleries. French & Co. is presenting Francis Guy's Winter Scene in Brooklyn (ca. 1818), showing the borough when it was still a village, while Richard Green is bringing from London an early pastel by Henri Matisse of Le Pont Saint-Michel, Paris. Among the Old Masters is Jacopo del Sellaio's tempera of the Madonna Adoring the Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist at Moretti, and Guercino's drawing of Angels at Pandora Old Masters.

General admission to the fair is $18. For details, see www.haughton.com.

MONUMENTAL INDIANA IN MADRID
Add another stop to your European jaunt this summer. An outdoor exhibition of monumental sculptures by Robert Indiana, including LOVE, AMOR, ART, IMPERIAL LOVE, LOVE WALL and the number sculptures ONE through ZERO, has opened on the Paseo del Prado in Madrid, the landscaped major avenue that runs by the city's major museums. A total of 15 sculptures are spread out along the urban landscape, in a show organized by Alexandra Schader and Simon Salama-Caro. The installation premiered on May 4 and is slated to run for two months. It subsequently appears in Valencia and Bilbao in Spain and Lisbon in Portugal.

AXA CONSERVATION AWARD TO TATE
AXA Art, the worldwide insurer of arts and collectibles, has given its third conservation research award to the Tate in London. The €225,000 grant funds Tate's participation in an international study of the conservation of acrylic paints. The new project is led by Tate senior conservation scientist Thomas Learner, with Dr. Bronwyn Ornsby, who has been named the AXA Art Research Fellow. An estimated 30 percent of Tate's modern and contemporary paintings include acrylic paints.

KIEFER IN CONNECTICUT
German Neo-Expressionist artist Anselm Kiefer comes to Connecticut -- or rather, a major exhibition of his works does -- when "Anselm Kiefer: Velimir Chlebnikov" opens at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, May 27-Oct. 1, 2006. A series of 30 paintings devoted to the visionary Russian thinker Velimir Chlebnikov (1885-1922), the works are housed in a steel pavilion designed by the artist, which has been installed in the new Aldrich sculpture garden.

A poet and leading figure in the Russian futurist movement, Chlebnikov was a co-originator of Zaum, an experimental language of sounds and images, and also wrote futurological essays; after the Russian Revolution, he refused to cooperate with the authorities and died during the 1921 famine. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, Velimir Chlebnikov and the Sea, that should be available in June.

ROME PRIZE WINNERS
The American Academy in Rome has announced the winners of the 2006-07 Rome Prize competition, an honor that includes a stipend, a study or studio, and room and board at the academy in Rome for a period of six months to two years. Visual artists included among the winners are Patricia Cronin (Musings on Harriet Hosmer's Roman Life, Work and Career), performance artist John Kelly (Inhabiting the Skin of Caravaggio), University of Pennsylvania art professor Joshua Mosley (a focus on animation inspired by the depiction of animals in ancient forms of art) and sculptor Richard Rezac (Shared Visual Language: Sculpture -- Architecture).

"BLOCK PARTY" IN BROOKLYN
Elisabeth Akkerman, curator for art collector, patron and real-estate mogul Francis Greenburger, has organized a show of 25 Brooklyn artists (originally hailing from 10 different countries) for 14 Townhouses, a new development in downtown Brooklyn designed by Rogers Marvel Architects. Dubbed "blockparty" and located at 267A State Street, the show shares space in the five-story townhouse with works by 46 Brooklyn-based designers, in a thorough exploration of "art and design in the new urban home." The exhibition is open during the weekend of May 12-14, 2006; for more info, see www.blockpartybrooklyn.com.

SURFBOARDS BY CLEMENT GREENBERG?
East Hampton artist Peter Dayton has hit on a theme that should prove irresistible to all art-loving flower children from the 1960s and '70s. His new show at Winston Wächter Fine Art in Manhattan, "Surfboards by Clement Greenberg," May 17-June 24, 2006, features paintings that resemble iconic surfboards designed by Greg Noll and Hobart "Hobie" Alter, but also "give a respectful nod" to abstract artists like Kenneth Noland and Barnett Newman. For further details, see www.winstonwachter.com.

ABSTRACT PAINTING STRIKES BACK
Hunter College art history professor and Artforum magazine contributing editor Katy Siegel has organized an ambitious new history of abstract painting in New York. Dubbed "High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975," the exhibition premieres at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, N.C., Aug. 6-Oct. 15, 2006, and subsequently appears at the Katzen Art Center in Washington, D.C. and the National Academy Museum in New York. Sponsored by Independent Curators International, the show focuses on the ways that abstract art was used in dialogue with larger political and social trends. These include the psychedelic "flower power" abstraction of ca. 1968, which gets its own gallery, as well as different experiments that stretch painting well beyond its typical function as wall-hung decoration.

Half of the artists in the show are female. Participants are Jo Baer, Lynda Benglis, Mel Bochner, Dan Christensen, Roy Colmer, Mary Corse, David Diao, Manny Farber, Louise Fishman, Guy Goodwin, Ron Gorchov, Harmony Hammond, Mary Heilmann, Ralph Humphrey, Jane Kaufman, Harriet Korman, Yayoi Kusama, Al Loving, Lee Lozano, Ree Morton, Elizabeth Murray, Joe Overstreet, Blinky Palermo, Cesar Paternosto, Howardena Pindell, Dorothea Rockburne, Carolee Schneemann, Alan Shields, Kenneth Showell, Joan Snyder, Lawrence Stafford, Pat Steir, Richard Tuttle, Richard Van Buren, Michael Venezia, Franz Erhard Walther, Jack Whitten and Peter Young.

MEL BOCHNER, FROM NEW YORK TO ALABAMA
Museum of Modern Art boardmember Werner "Wynn" Kramarsky is shutting down his exhibition space at 560 Broadway in Soho after the end of its current show, "Mel Bochner: Drawing from Four Decades," which runs through July 1, 2006. The exhibition of 28 drawings by the Conceptual Art maestro subsequently appears at the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art, July 9-Sept. 30, 2006, before traveling on to the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, N.C. and the San Diego Museum of Art.

SPEARS RESPONDS TO PRO-LIFE SCULPTURE
First, Britney Spears goes on the David Letterman show and announces that she's having a second child. Then, she hits the radio and gives her opinion of Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston, the much-publicized sculpture by Daniel Edwards that shows a naked Spears on hands and knees, apparently about to give birth [see Artnet News, Mar. 26, 2006]. "My assistant and I were totally dumbfounded when we saw it," she told something called WENN news. "We couldn't believe somebody actually did this." Asked if she would allow the sculpture in her home, the answer was a forceful no.

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