BAD REVIEWS ROLL IN FOR DOCUMENTA
The British art critics, admittedly a prickly group, don’t like Documenta 12, the contemporary art exhibition that has just opened in Kassel, Germany. "The worst art show ever" was the headline in the Telegraph over Richard Dorment’s report. "Freelance curator Roger Buergel and his art historian wife Ruth Noack," Dorment wrote, "have managed to stage the single worst art exhibition I have ever seen anywhere, ever."
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The Guardian did almost as well, titling Adrian Searle’s review "100 days of ineptitude," after the famous exhibition’s 100-day time span. Though Searle admitted to liking works by some of the artists (Zoe Leonard, Lu Hao, Nasreen Mohamedi, Annie Pootoogook, Atsuko Tanaka, Lidwien van de Ven), he called the custom-built Aue-Pavilion "ghastly" and the layout of the show "visual sludge."
PANZA
COLLECTION TO VISIT BUFFALO
The Albright-Knox
Art Gallery is now a big player in the contemporary art market, as amply
demonstrated by its recent sale at auction of a handful of art masterpieces
from its collection for a total of almost $70 million. Now, as if to indicate
the direction they want to take, Albright-Knox director Louis Grachos and senior curator Douglas Dreishpoon have organized "The Panza
Collection: An Experience of Color and Light," Nov. 16, 2007-Feb. 24, 2008. The
show includes more than 70 works by 16 artists, currently dispersed at sites in
Italy, New York and Los Angeles, ranging from Dan Flavin, Ruth Ann Fredenthal and Bruce Nauman to Anne Appleby, David Simpson, Phil Sims and Winston Roeth. The accompanying catalogue features
an essay by Saint Louis Dispatch art critic David Bonetti.
ARTISTS
ON VACATION
The perfect
show for the summer months opens in the coming weeks at the Smithsonian’s
Archives of American Art at 1285 Avenues of the Americas in New York. Dubbed "Wish You Were Here: Artists on Vacation," June 28-Sept. 21, 2007, the
display includes letters, travel journals, sketchbooks, snapshots, passports
and postcards from vacationing artists, including Cecilia Beaux, Sanford
Robinson Gifford, John Sloan and Mary Cassatt. For details,
see www.aaa.si.edu
NGA LAUNCHES
HOPPER OPERA
A new opera
inspired by five paintings by Edward Hopper premieres this fall, Nov.
15-18, 2007, at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith
Performing Arts Center in College Park, Md., with an encore performance
slated for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2,
2007. Later the Same Evening, as the opera is titled, is composed by John
Musto with libretto by Mark Campbell, and inspired by five Hopper
paintings, all of which are set in New York City. The opera is a joint project
of the NGA -- whose "Edward Hopper" retrospective is on view Sept. 16,
2007-Jan. 21, 2008 -- with the Smith center and the UM School of Music. For info
on tickets, click here
KEN
PRICE: NEW WORK AT XAVIER HUFKENS
Contemporary
ceramist Ken Price is well known in the U.S. -- he had his first solo
show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1960 and was included in
both the ’79 and ’81 Whitney Biennials, for instance -- but his work has been
relatively little-seen in Europe. Now, he debuts a body of new work at Xavier
Hufkens in Brussels, May 31-July 7, 2007, in what is Price’s first solo
show in Belgium and his first European solo in 30 years. The exhibition
features 15 of the artist’s "blob" sculptures, small biomorphic "things" whose
subtle hue requires about 70 thin coats of color. The show also features a
catalogue with an essay by critic Dave Hickey.
NEW
DIGS, CONTEMPORARY FOCUS FOR STEVE TURNER
Los Angeles dealer Steve
Turner, who since 1988 has specialized in American art and design from the
19th and 20th centuries, has moved the gallery to new quarters and changed the
focus of his program. Located at 6026 Wilshire Boulevard across from the new Broad
Contemporary Art Museum, currently under construction, the new Turner gallery is 3,000 square feet with two
exhibition spaces and a project room, plus a second floor with offices. And the
new program is a contemporary one, launched with "Past Over," June 2-Aug. 30,
2007, a group show featuring works by Michael Arcega, Zoë Charlton, Sam Durant, Ken Gonzales-Day, Mary Kelly, Marc Andre
Robinson and My Barbarian that deal with historical events that have
been sanitized or denied.
Why the change? Turner noted that he plans to continue to deal privately in mid-century 20th-century American moderns, but that the lure of the contemporary scene was irresistible. "I saw so many good artists," he said, "and I just wanted to be involved." Other artists who are showing in the coming months at the gallery include Deborah Grant, David Kinast, Pearl Hsiung and Jina Valentine.
BIG
BRITISH COLLECTION TO CLARK
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., has received a collection of British art works, plus $50 million for its endowment,
from the Manton Foundation. Highlights of the gift, which goes on view
at the museum this summer in "Gainsborough, Constable and Turner: The Manton
Collection," include J.M.W. Turner’s Off Ramsgate (1840) and John
Costable’s The Wheatfield (1816). The Manton Foundation was formed
by Edwin A. G. Manton, a benefactor of the Tate and a top
executive with AIG (the American International Group), who died in 2005
at age 96.
MET SHOWS GENERATED $377 MILLION: STUDY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that its two major
exhibitions last fall, "Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the
Avant-Garde" and "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900," generated $377 million in
spending by tourists to New York. The direct tax benefit to New York City and
state of all those visitors totaled $37.7 million, the Met said. The 490,002
visitors to "Cézanne to Picasso" and 311,700 people who saw "Americans in Paris" spent an average of $575 on expenses for lodging, dining, sightseeing and
entertainment, plus another $282 on shopping during their stay in New York.
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