Starkwhite Blog

Fears in Afghanistan that a finacial jackpot from copper mining could threaten its cultural heritage

2012-02-03T05:00:00.001+13:00

Archeologists are racing to save Afghanistan's cultural heritage at Mes Aynak, a mountainous, 9800-acre site studded with artifacts that archeologists believe are as significant as the Bamiyan Buddhas that were destroyed 11 years ago, as well as the remains of civilizations that stretch back to the time of Alexander the Great.

It's also the site of the second-largest copper deposit in the world, a resource the Afghanistan government is cashing in on through an estimated $3billion deal with a Chinese company to mine the the copper deposit over the next thirty years, starting in 2014. This leaves little time for the archeologists leading the excavations to extract as many treasures as possible before the drilling begins, raising fears that a financial jackpot for the poverty-stricken country could come at the price of Afghanistan's cultural heritage. Read more...
Image: remains of an ancient Buddhist monastery at Mes Aynek, Afghanistan

Maori heads from French museums now in Te Papa's meeting house

2012-02-02T05:00:00.003+13:00

Twenty ancestral heads of Maori held in French museums as a cultural curiosity have finally returned to the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Collected by European explorers, they were traditionally kept as trophies after tribal wars and later traded for modern weapons and European goods.

None of the toi moko will go on display to the public. The repatriation team at Te Papa will begin to trace the origin of each moko and then return them to their whanau, a process they say could take up to ten years. "We have to investigate Maori history and link the battles with the time the tupuna left to go overseas," repatriation manager Te Herekiekie Herewini said.

Three hundred and twenty toi moko have been returned to New Zealand from various countries since the 1980s but around five hundred remain in public and privates collections overseas.
Image: Portrait of a Maori man by Sydney Parkinson, published in 1784 by the Alexander Turnball Library, from the UNESCO site on Illicit Traffic of Cultural Property

Director of the 2013 Venice Biennale announced

2012-02-01T14:24:00.004+13:00

The New Museum's Massimiliano Gioni has been appointed artistic director of the 2013 Venice Biennale. Gioni is a seasoned biennale curator. He curated 10,000 Lives for the 2010 Gwangju Biennale in 2010 and co-curated the 2006 Berlin Biennale and Manifesta 5 in 2004.

MoMA Design Store's spring/summer collection

2012-02-01T05:00:00.002+13:00

This link takes you to MoMA Design Store's spring/summer collection, which includes Wilkinson and Hulger's Plumen 001. Touted as the first designer energy-saving light bulb, it consumes 80% less energy and lives eight times longer than a normal incandescent bulb.

Art and entertainment

2012-01-31T05:00:00.001+13:00

With their spectacular presentations, interactive exhibits, and children's activities, today's contemporary art museums imply a new visual economy for art. Similarly, within the academy there is an increased insistence on seeing art as part of a wider spectrum of 'visual culture' or 'creative industries'. The latest issue of Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art looks at the relationship between art and entertainment today. You can order the Journal from The Institute of Modern Art (IMA) Brisbane.

VIP Art Fair update

2012-01-29T06:00:00.009+13:00

ARTINFO reports on the VIP Art Fair's new programming and enhanced interaction opportunities.

Upstairs at Starkwhite

2012-01-28T07:00:00.005+13:00

Since 1994 Clinton Watkins and Richard Francis have worked collaboratively under the moniker 1000. They regularly perform and produce recordings that focus on creating stark and intense minimal/maximal compositions of electronically generated noise. One Step Further From Birth, which is part of our upstairs group show of works by represented artists, is a limited edition lathe-cut LP including a link to free mp3 downloads.
Image: 1000, One Step Further From Birth, Lathe-cut LP, 33rpm, edition of 30

Last few days to catch Mariana Vassileva's The gentle brutality of simultaneity

2012-01-28T05:00:00.002+13:00

Mariana Vassileva's exhibition The gentle brutality of simultaneity closes on Tuesday 31 January at 6pm. You can read a review of the exhibition here.
Image: Mariana Vassileva, Will they be friends one day?, 2011, two nails and pencil on wall

The proliferation of art biennales continues

2012-01-27T08:40:00.000+13:00

Ukraine has announced that it will launch a biennale in Kiev in May 2013 with David Elliot as the artistic director of the event. Elliot is a seasoned biennale director having directed the first Istanbul Biennale and last year's Biennale of Sydney. He also served as the founding director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and director of the Moderna Muset in Stockholm. Elliot has picked an epic title for his biennale: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art.
Image: David Elliot, director of the first international Biennale of Contemporary Art in the Ukraine

India Art Fair goes global

2012-01-27T05:00:00.005+13:00

This year's edition of the India Art Fair is likely to be remembered as the one where it moved from an Indian event to an international one. Now in its fourth year, the fair has attracted international artists and dealers keen to get a slice of the booming Indian art market. "We've bought Damien, Tracey, Mark and Antony," said Graham Steele, director of London gallery White Cube. Also in the line up are a raft of high-profile galleries such as Hauser and Wirth from Britain and the United States, Galleria Continua from Italy, Arndt from Germany and Kalfayan Galleries from Greece.

The fair has also internationalised its investor base. Last June Neha Kirpal, the founder and director of India Art Fair, sold a 49% stake in the fair and brought on board the co-founders of ART HK, Sandy Angus and Will Ramsay. This followed news that MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd, the organiser of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, would take a majority ownership in ART HK.

Abramovic's silent party at Sundance

2012-01-26T07:16:00.003+13:00

Marina Abramovic staged a high-concept event at Sundance in honour of the documentary Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. All guests wore white lab coats, noise cancelling headphones and (echoing the artist's silence during her MoMA retrospective performance) were forbidden to talk for an hour. Robert Redford, who spent an entire day at the MoMA show, called the event "fabulous".
Image: Robert Redford, documentary director Matthew Akers and Marina Abramovic

Art Los Angeles Contemporary restages Judy Chicago's Disappearing Environments

2012-01-26T05:00:00.001+13:00

Since starting his fair in 2010, Tim Fleming has wanted to host an event that's decidedly cultural, where commerce is key, but downplayed. "We have this enormous audience of almost 11,000," he said "and we can do pretty much anything with them, within reason." This year at the opening of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, audiences encountered a re-staging of Judy Chicago's Disappearing Environments. Read more...
Image: Judy Chicago's installation outside the Art Los Angeles Contemporary Art Fair, January 2012

Qatar presents Louise Bourgeois as its latest cultural initiative

2012-01-25T05:00:00.002+13:00

The first solo survey of the work of Louise Bourgeois in the Middle East has opened at the Qatar Museums Authority Gallery. Featuring 32 works spanning the artist's career, the exhibition Louise Bourgeois: Conscious and Unconscious is part of a series of cultural initiatives that are being rolled out under the watch of QMA chairperson Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani,who was positioned in a recent Power 100 list as the most influential person in the art world.

The Louise Bourgeois survey follows Cai Guo-Qiang's first solo exhibition in the Middle East at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art as the museum looked eastwards to consider the dynamics of the longstanding, but little-known relationship between China and the Arab world. Mathaf also works under the umbrella of the Qatar Museums Authority.
Image: Louise Bourgeois' Maman in Qatar

French museums hand over ancestral Maori heads

2012-01-24T08:31:00.005+13:00

France is returning 20 ancestral heads of Maori held in French museums as a cultural curiosity. For many years France resisted handing over the cultural artifacts, but a law passed in 2010 paved the way for their return to New Zealand where they will be returned to their home tribes or sit in storage at the National Museum, Te Papa Tongarewa "They are after all human remains, and in Maori culture they should not be publicly displayed," said Pou Temara, a university professor who chairs New Zealand's repatriation advisory panel.
Image: Repatriation ceremony at Quai Bramly, Paris

The Armory Show gears up for a competitive year

2012-01-24T05:00:00.000+13:00

As Frieze and NADA prepare to launch their debut editions in New York, The Armory Show is positioning itself as a new and improved fair. The 2012 gallery list has been pared back by 25% and most booths will focus on presentations by a smaller number of artists. New director Noah Horowitz says: "art fairs have a tendency to go bigger, but our mission is to make it more boutique and give the galleries a larger footprint. The re-vamped Armory also includes a new solo projects section for young dealers and a new media lounge presented in partnership with the Moving Image video fair. You can see the Armory's exhibitor list here.

Asia Society opens a satellite in China

2012-01-23T10:38:00.007+13:00

Scheduled to open next month, the Asia Society Hong Kong is the first American museum satellite to be launched in China. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects have transformed a campus of four heritage buildings built by the British army in the mid-nineteenth century and added a new wing connected to the heritage buildings by a double-decker walkway.

Following the vision of Asia Society founder John D Rockefeller to promote the understanding of Asian culture, the museum will open with Transforming Minds: Buddhism in Art showcasing 6th-century relics from Rockefeller's collection together with work by contemporary Asian American artists.
Images: The $49.5m Asia Society Hong Kong by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects

Entering the Year of the Dragon

2012-01-23T05:00:00.000+13:00

This year the Chinese New Year falls on January 23, marking the beginning of the Year of the Dragon. The only mythical creature among the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac and associated with the emperor in ancient times, the dragon is regarded as a symbol of might and intelligence.

Upstairs at Starkwhite

2012-01-21T05:00:00.000+13:00

We are showing works by represented artists in our first floor galleries.
Image: Trenton Garratt, Morning Sun, oil on linen, 1000 x 830mm

Profiteering hedge funds threaten Greek bailout

2012-01-20T07:30:00.000+13:00

As Greece races against the clock to avoid being the first nation to default on its debts and potentially plunge the eurozone into a further financial crisis, the Independent reports hedge fund financiers who bought distressed Greek debt are holding up the rescue attempt to ensure they profit from the crisis. Read more...

Review of Mariana Vassileva: The gentle brutality of simultaneity

2012-01-20T05:00:00.000+13:00

This link takes you to a review of Mariana Vassileva's exhibition The gentle brutality of simultaneity, which runs at Starkwhite to 31 January 2012.

Image: Mariana Vassileva, My old friends, 2010, installation view, Starkwhite

Seung Yul Oh at Art Los Angeles Contemporary

2012-01-19T05:30:00.003+13:00

Seung Yul Oh is in the lineup of artists presented at Art Los Angeles Contemporary this week by ONE AND J Gallery, Seoul. Oh is currently based in New York under the Harriet Friedlander Residency
Image: Seung Yul Oh, RaMyun, 2011

Jae Hoon Lee in Aotearoa Baroque at MUCA Roma, Mexico City

2012-01-19T05:00:00.002+13:00

Jae Hoon Lee's installation Tree Roots is part of El Barroco de Aotearoa at MUCA Roma, Mexico City. Co-curated by Richard Reddaway and MUCA Roma director Gonzalo Ortega, the exhibition runs to February 2012 (closing date yet to be announced).
Image: Installation view of Jae Hoon Lee's Tree Roots at MUCA Roma, Mexico City

Jae Hoon Lee on the frozen continent

2012-01-18T12:04:00.005+13:00

Jae Hoon Lee is at Scott Base under the Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellowship Programme. Each year Antarctica New Zealand invites artists to become honorary Arts Fellows and travel to the frozen continent to undertake specific projects that will help raise awareness of the scientific, aesthetic and wilderness values of Antarctica. Lee follows in the footsteps of Phil Dadson who was there in 2003, a visit that culminated in Polar Projects.
Image: Scott Base Antarctica

Like many other of the world's tallest buildings, Renzo Piano's Shard may herald a recession

2012-01-18T09:47:00.004+13:00

Scheduled to open in June and bankrolled by Qatari wealth, Renzo Piano's Shard will be the tallest building in Europe. The 301-metre-high (1,017ft) building includes 27 floors of offices, three floors of restaurants, an 18-floor five-star Shangri-La hotel with a spa, and 10 palatial apartments, two of which span the entire floor - these are expected to become London homes for members of the Qatari royal family. A four-story public viewing area is being built starting on the 68th floor and the developer is considering renting out the very highest room on the 78th floor for high-powered conferences and political talks - summits at the summit.

The building has been a source of pride and symbol of confidence for Londoners, but they may think again in light of a new report that says rather than being a sign of growing prosperity, high rises, especially those spearheaded by the next 'world's tallest building', herald a recession. Barcalys Capital has examined the cases of 18 'world's tallest buildings' in the past 150 years and links them to recessions. The Empire State Building was completed in New York in 1931 as the Great Depression got underway, while the world's current tallest building - the 2,717ft, 163 story Burj Khalifa skyscraper was built in Dubai in 2010 as the emirate came close to economic meltdown.

As Andrew Lawrence, the author of the report explains, the pattern is typically the same. Buoyed by an economic boom and the availability of cheap credit, property developers are emboldened to take on increasingly ambitious skyscrapers. By the time they are finished a few years later, the world is generally a very different place - the economic bubble has is bursting, reality has hit, the banks are nursing their losses on their loans and credit is much harder to come by. But by then, the building is built, providing a potent symbol of the excesses of recent years.
Image: Renzo Piano's Shard by London Bridge

Art Los Angeles Contemporary teams up with Paddle8

2012-01-17T09:24:00.016+13:00

Prompted by the arrival of the VIP, the world's first virtual art fair, partnerships between art fairs and online sites offering platforms for the viewing, curating and acquisition of art have been on the rise over the past 12 months. Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) is the latest fair to utilize the web through a partnership with Paddle8 that adds web-based exhibitor presentations and transactions to the mix, along with a fair preview. (You need to join Paddle8 to access the preview and online services.) Art Los Angeles Contemporary runs from 19 - 22 January and the online facility remains in place to 9 February.

Artist and art activist Michelangleo Pistoletto behind new prize for socially engaged art

2012-01-17T05:00:00.005+13:00

Recently the Serpentine hosted an awards show for a new art prize conceived of by artist and art activist Michelangelo Pistoletto with the Fondazione Zegna for artists and collectives who aim to bring about responsible social change through their practices. Read more...

Image: Michelangelo Pistoletto with one of the winners of the first Visible prize, Anna Maria Milan (of the collective Helena Producciones) and co-organisers Andrea and Anna Zegna

Keith Haring mural: conservation v. repainting

2012-01-16T10:43:00.018+13:00

Keith Haring's last surviving mural in Australia is at the centre of a conservation v. repainting debate. Arts Victoria is advocating conservation works including an investigation of the materials used by Haring, cleaning and "selective retouching", stabilisation and the application of a protective coating.

Others want to see the mural repainted saying it is in line with the artist's wishes. Director of the Keith Haring Foundation Julia Gruen says: it is more important that the work conveys Keith's ideals and respect for communities in which he worked, rather than to preserve a brushstroke." ACCA's artistic director, Julia Engberg agrees. "If we stabilise it now it would just be a vapid, dilapidated [piece] instead of a lively work."

Haring's Melbourne work is one of only 31 known murals across the world that have survived to this day.

Images: Keith Haring working on his Melbourne mural and a detail of the work showing the effect of time, neglect and the elements

This week at Starkwhite

2012-01-16T05:00:00.009+13:00

This week we continue with Mariana Vassileva's exhibition The gentle brutality of simultaneity downstairs and works by represented artists upstairs.

Images: Mariana Vassileva, Globe (2011) and Jin Jiangbo, Hidden (2011)

The new $2000 Swiss Army Knife

2012-01-15T06:00:00.010+13:00

In addition to the requisite blade, scissors and nail file-screwdriver, the latest Swiss Army Knife has a new utility - a jump drive that can hold up to a terabyte of information, which is enough to hold 220 million pages of text or two continuous years of music.

Image: Victorinox's new SSD pocket-knife with thumb drive combo

Chinese artists take first and second place on world auction market and Picasso drops from first to fourth place

2012-01-14T05:00:00.002+13:00

Chinese artist Zhang Daqian has ousted Picasso to take the No.1 position on the world auction market. Artprice reports Zhang generated $506m in auction revenue in 2011 followed by compatriot Qi Baishi on $445.1m. Warhol took third place with auction sales of $324.8m followed by Picasso on $311.6m. Fifth slot was occupied by another Chinese artist, Xu Beihong who tallied $212.9m.

The change reflects China's growing strength in the global art market. Of the approximately 11 billion total works revenue for fine art last year, China's share was 39%, up from 33% the year before. Artprice said. The USA was in second place with 25%.

Image: Lotus and Mandarin ducks by Zhang Daqian which fetched HK191m ($24.5m) at Sotheby's in Hong Kong in May 2011

Mariana Vassileva exhibition installation views

2012-01-13T05:01:00.036+13:00

2012-01-13T05:00:00.005+13:00

Staged in association with DNA Berlin, Mariana Vassileva's exhibition The gentle brutality of simultaneity runs at Starkwhite to 31 January 2011.

Images: Mariana Vassileva, The gentle brutality of simultaneity, installation views, Starkwhite, 2012. Photos: Sam Hartnett

Art Stage Singapore: putting the spotlight on collectors

2012-01-12T15:55:00.010+13:00

Art Stage Singapore's opening showcased works by big name artists, from an installation by Turner prize winner Antony Gormley to a painting that took Rikrit Tiravanija 20 years to complete. Read more...

Image: Yayoi Kusama's Statue of Venus

The second edition of Art Stage Singapore starts today

2012-01-12T05:00:00.016+13:00

This year's edition of Art Stage Singapore (12 - 15 January) includes a local platform curated by Eugene Tan. In a recent interview he talked about why Singapore art needs this push. Read more...

Tan was the curator of the Singapore pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale and co-curator of the inaugural Singapore Biennale in 2006. He is is former director of Singapore's Institute of Contemporary Art and in 2006 he curated Islanded: Contemporary Art from New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan. Currently he is director of special projects at the Singapore Economic Development Board.

Image: Eugene Tan

VIP launches three new on-line art fairs

2012-01-11T05:00:00.001+13:00

VIP has announced three new online fairs - VIP Photo, Paper and Vernissage - to take place later this year following the flagship VIP 2.0 fair which runs from 3 - 8 February. The new fairs will allow VIP to "showcase a wider range of works at a variety of price points" and "help the VIP brand solidify its position as the leader in online art sales," VIP CEO Lisa Kennedy said in a statement.

The new platforms have been financed by a $1m injection from a pair of art collectors: Brazilian Selmo Nissenbaum, partner in Personale Investimentos, and Australian Philip Keir, media and arts specialist and founder of NextMedia.

Given the technical glitches that dogged the inaugural edition of VIP the move to expand the franchise seems surprising, but co-founder Jane Cohan says one impetus for seeking backers was to allow them to re-architect their site and build a new tech team which includes internet retail specialist Kennedy and former artnet sales director Liz Parks. "The space for the contemporary art online is only just beginning to take shape," says Cohen. "The impetus to further develop the event, its capacity and its reach is ongoing."

The MONA effect

2012-01-10T08:42:00.007+13:00

Launched in January 2011 by gambling millionaire and maverick David Walsh, Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is on Australia's art map and is credited with having spared Hobart from the worst of the tourism declined triggered by the global financial crisis. During its first year MONA attracted about 400,000 visitors and is the state's number one visitor attraction. It was named Tasmania's best new tourism development of 2011 and is in the running for the national tourism awards in March.

Transforming Hobart's image from a sleepy backwater to a cultural playground comes at a cost. The $80m museum costs about $15m a year to run, which prompted Wash to start charging interstate visitors (entry remains free for Tasmanians). However the real money is to come from the sale of technology, such as the "O", the super-smart, iPod-like device that in the absence of wall labels provides information about artworks when pointed at them, and tracks visitors movements in the gallery.

Image: MONA, Hobart

Mob museum to open in Los Vegas

2012-01-09T09:12:00.006+13:00

A mob museum scheduled to open soon in Los Vegas will trace Hollywood's portrayal of mobsters from the birth of the silver screen. The museum is the brain child of former mob lawyer/Los Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman and has screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi amongst its advisors. Pileggi wrote the book Wise Guy and then adapted it into the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas. The National Museum of Organised Crime and Law Enforcement opens in February in a former courthouse where a famous mob hearing was held in 1950.

Image: Marlo Brando as the Godfather

Voina on why firebombing a police tank is a "piece of art"

2012-01-07T11:13:00.007+13:00

Voina have stretched the boundaries of art and politics by using Molotov cocktails to light a tank-like police transport vehicle used to relocate prisoners, describing the act as "a gift to all political prisoners of Russia." Read more...

Image: A member of Voina firebombs a police carrier

9th Gwangju Biennale's theme is Roundtable

2012-01-06T09:40:00.008+13:00

The team of six co-artistic directors appointed to organise the 9th Gwangju Biennale have announced the theme for their edition of the event. In a statement issued recently they say: "ROUNDTABLE allows us to reflect on our shared contemporaneity at a time when the tremendous momentum of ecological, political and economic change has radically transformed our global reality. The image of the round table is associated with political summit, where various urgent agendas are brought together and its participants convene to reach a renewal of understanding."

The six co-artistic directors are from Korea, China, Japan, Indonesia and Qatar. Nancy Adajania is a Bombay-based cultural theorist and independent curator. Wassan Al-Khudhairi is the director and chief curator at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Art, Dohan. Mami Kataoka is chief curator at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Sunjung Kim is a Seoul-based independent curator and professor at Korea National University of Arts. Carol Yinghua Lu is an art critic and curator who works in Beijing and is also a contributing editor for Frieze. Alia Swastika is a curator, project manager and writer based in Jakarta.

The 9th Gwangju Biennale runs from 7 September - 11 November 2012.

Starkwhite opening tonight

2012-01-05T05:00:00.002+13:00

Mariana Vassileva's exhibition The gentle brutality of simultaneity opens tonight at 5pm. The artist and her Berlin gallerist, Johann Nowak, will be present at the opening

Image: Mariana Vassileva, My old friends 2011. Image courtesy of the artist and DNA, Berlin

Starkwhite opens on 5 January with an exhibition by Mariana Vassileva

2012-01-03T05:00:00.009+13:00

We reopen the gallery this week with The gentle brutality of simultaneity, an exhibition by Berlin-based artist Mariana Vassileva. The exhibition opens on Thursday 5 January at 5pm.

Image: Mariana Vassileva, Will they be friends one day? 2011. Image courtesy of the artist and DNA, Berlin

Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays

2011-12-24T05:00:00.006+13:00

We'll be taking a break over the Christmas/New Year period and will resume our posts on 3 January. Happy holidays!

Image: Pohutukawa, a New Zealand native also known as the Christmas Tree for its brilliant display of red flowers over the Christmas period.

Download and print artist-designed Christmas paper

2011-12-23T07:00:00.008+13:00

Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Julian Opie and Gillian Wearing are amongst the artists commissioned by the Guardian to design wrapping paper in the run up to Christmas. You can download and print the wrapping paper here.

Image: Tacita Dean's Christmas paper designed for the Guardian

Starkwhite summer hours

2011-12-23T05:00:00.008+13:00

Starkwhite will close tomorrow at 3.00pm, reopening on Thursday 5 January with an exhibition by Berlin-based artist Mariana Vassileva.

Image: Mariana Vassileva, Will they be friends one day? 2011. Image courtesy of the artist and DNA, Berlin

Sign of the times

2011-12-22T05:00:00.006+13:00

Image: John Reynolds' Democratic Vistas, 2011, reflective vinyl on aluminium

The art of war

2011-12-21T05:00:00.001+13:00

As America withdraws from a misbegotten war in Iraq and the world wonders what will become of the country, ARTINFO looks back at 10 works addressing the conflict. View images

Image: Thomas Hirschhorn's Drift Topography

AK-47 takes its place as a design classic

2011-12-20T05:00:00.003+13:00

Mikhail Kalashnikov's AK-47 is one of the London Design Museum's 14 new acquisitions currently on view in This is Design, an exhibition of the world's most influential objects. Introduced to the Soviet army at the end of World War II, the AK-47 revolutionised the assault rifle and today continues to be one of the most widely used (and deadliest) weapons around due to its simple, rugged design (it only has 8 moving parts) and cheap production costs.

In a 2003 interview with the Guardian, Kalashnikov acknowledged his deadly legacy to the world. "I made it to protect the motherland," he said. "And then they spread the weapon [around the word] - not because I wanted them to." Now the question is should one of the world's deadliest killing machines be celebrated in a design museum?

9/11 architecture?

2011-12-19T06:00:00.000+13:00

Dutch architectural firm MVRD's plans to build two luxury residential towers connected by a cloud-like bridge in Seoul triggered a backlash of criticism when critics noted is resemblance to images of the exploding World Trade Centre towers. "A real media storm has started and we receive threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse", the firm stated in its Facebook page.

Image: MVRDV's design for two Seoul Skyscrapers

Gavin Hipkins billboard at Connell's Bay Sculpture Park

2011-12-18T05:00:00.002+13:00

Gavin Hipkins' billboard commission Waiheke Island (877C), 2011 for John and Jo Gow opens today at their Connell's Bay Sculpture Park on Waiheke Island.

Images: Gavin Hipkins, Waiheke Island (877C) 2011, billboard commission, Connells Bay

Marrakech Biennale curator Carson Chan on how the Arab Spring has influenced exhibition making

2011-12-17T05:00:00.001+13:00

The Marrakech Biennale's fourth edition, Higher Atlas, will reflect the effects of the Arab Spring that has swept though North Africa. Recently biennale co-curator Carson Chan spoke to ARTINFO Berlin about the fallout from protest, the challenges of reassessing post-colonialism and why its important to break the rules. Read more...

Image: Marrakech curators Carson Chan and Nadim Samman

Cai Guo-Qiang lights up Doha sky with daytime fireworks

2011-12-16T07:00:00.006+13:00

Cai Guo-Qiang lit up the Doha sky last week with an explosion event that shot rainbow coloured gunpowder into the sky near Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, which is presenting his first solo exhibition in the Middle East. View video

Image: Cai Guo-Qiang's daytime fireworks in the desesrt near Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art

Yuko Hasegawa selected as curator of the 11th Sharjah Biennial

2011-12-16T05:00:00.010+13:00

The Shajah Art Foundation has announced the selection of Yuko Hasegawa as the curator of Sharjah Biennial 11, opening in March 2013. Hasegawa is Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT), and a seasoned director, curator and advisor for international biennials.

For the biennial, Hasegawa has proposed a selection of artworks that reassess the Eurocentrism of knowledge in modern times and she has called for a gathering of architects, designers, creators and artists who will bring together different perspectives and challenge viewers to seek new knowledge by sharing ideas.

Image: Yuko Hasegawa

Too big to fail? Damien Hirst's mega-exhibition of spot paintings at 11 Gagosian galleries

2011-12-15T08:35:00.000+13:00

Damien Hirst certainly knows how to play the art market with moves like his $78 million diamond-encrusted skull, which is owned by a consortium of investors including the artist himself (and soon to be shown at the Tate Modern), or bypassing his galleries to go direct to Sotheby's where the auction smashed top estimates to reach a record total of $125m.

His latest art-market venture is to supply all of Larry Gagosian's galleries world wide with exhibitions of his spot paintings. It's the kind of move that once prompted critic Jerry Saltz to call Hirst "a symptom of the hype, the hubris and the money that have swamped the scene lately." When asked whether he worried about the art market's capacity to absorb another round of spot paintings, Hirst was quick to come up with several answers. Read more...

Image: Damien Hirst

Architectural heritage at risk in Christchurch

2011-12-14T05:00:00.000+13:00

Plans to demolish 50% of buildings in Christchurch city's Central Business District, including historic buildings, has conservation societies up in arms. Campaigners say that new disaster recovery legislation supercedes laws designed to protect historic structures. Read more...

Image: The Christchurch Cathedral, designed by Victorian architect George Gilbert Smith is to be partially demolished

The end of the controversy surrounding A Fire in My Belly?

2011-12-13T06:45:00.000+13:00

When David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly hit the headlines following the Smithsonian's decision to withdraw it from Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the Smithsonian's National Portrait, many commentators talked about a return to the culture wars of the 1990s.

However, this time the controversy has played out differently from the era when Jesse Helms was railing against gay rights and contemporary art.The video made it onto YouTube, reaching millions of viewers who were previously unaware of its existence, MoMA acquired it for its permanent collection, the New Museum showed it continuously in its lobby, it was featured in an event at the Tate Modern to reconsider Wojnarowicz's work in the light if efforts to distort its intentions and legacy, and when the Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn, Nicholas DiMarzio reignited the controversy calling for A Fire in My Belly to be removed from Hide/Seek at the Brooklyn Museum the director of the Museum refused to withdraw the work.

This link takes you to an article in the Financial Times Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture and the controversy surrounding David Wojnarowicz's work.

Image: David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly (1987), video still

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer to stage audience-sourced exhibition at the MCA, Sydney

2011-12-12T05:00:00.011+13:00

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is about to stage his first solo show in Australia at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Recorders will be an audience-sourced exhibition with the content collected from visitors using technologies such as heart rate sensors, motion detectors, fingerprint scanners, microphones and face recognition software.

The artist is no stranger to Australia. He had a piece in the 2006 Sydney Biennale, gave a keynote address at the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival and, last year, projected solar animations on to a giant balloon tethered over Melbourne's Federation Square.

Recorders opens at the MCA on 16 December and runs to 12 February 2012

Image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Room.

John Baldessari: the first $100,000 I ever made

2011-12-11T06:00:00.013+13:00

A new billboard by John Baldessari features the $100,000 bill that didn't make it into circulation. Forty-two thousand of these bills were printed during the Great Depression and Baldessari has re-issued it as the US economy faces the spectre of another deep global downturn. Titled The First $100,000 I ever made, the piece will be on display at New York's High Line until 30 December.

Old Genes: Artists reading Len Lye

2011-12-10T05:00:00.004+13:00

The exhibition Old Genes: Artists reading Len Lye presents the work of five contemporary artists, including Phil Dadson and Dane Mitchell, engaging with Lye's legacy and the role of language in his work. The exhibition opens tonight at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and runs to 26 February 2012.

Images: Phil Dadson, Osmosis (of Len's Universe), 2011, single channel video (still grab) and Dane Mitchell, Len Lye, 'Snow Birds' 2010, glass, spoken word

Review of Billy Apple®: A History of the Brand

2011-12-09T08:27:00.021+13:00

This link takes you to a review of our current show Billy Apple®: A History of the Brand.

Image: Billy Apple® A History of the Brand, installation view, Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam

Vincent Ward takes time out from filmmaking to stage an exhibition at the GBAG

2011-12-09T05:00:00.018+13:00

Filmmaker Vincent Ward is taking time out from Hollywood to stage an exhibition at New Plymouth's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. He says his films have been a starting point for fresh exploration in the new mixed media work featuring in the exhibition. "Somewhere between the world of motion, film and painting I am currently working to find an alchemical marriage between these different media".

The exhibition coincides with the publication of a new book Making the Transformational Moment in Film - Unleashing the Power of the Image (with the films of Vincent Ward) by Dan Fleming and distributed worldwide by US publisher Michael Wiese Books.

Breath - The Fleeting Intensity of Life opens tomorrow night at the GBAG and runs to 26 February 2012.

Image: Vincent Ward, Embryo 2011

Voina collective member stages daring escape from a Russian jail

2011-12-08T08:25:00.018+13:00

Earlier this year the radical art collective Voina won a contemporary art award sponsored by Russia's Ministry of Culture and the National Centre for Contemporary Art for a project that consisted of a 210-foot penis painted on a drawbridge in St Petersburg, pointed at the the headquarters of the state security service, the FSB. Last week it was announced they would help organise the Berlin Biennale as associate curators, a title given to them by artist/curator Artur Zmijewski.

Voina is back in the news following the arrest of group member Leonid Nikolaev at Pushkin Square in one of the mass protests against corruption in the Russian elections where he roused the crowd into a rendition of the socialist anthem Internationale. He was taken to jail, but after noticing the magnetic door to his cell area was unattended he slipped his finger in the door as the guard exited and staged a daring escape. You can read Nikolaev's journal entry on his arrest and escape at the Voina website.

Image: Leonid Nikolaev shortly before his arrest

Cai Guo-Qiang explores the relationship between China and the Arab world at Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art

2011-12-08T05:00:00.012+13:00

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art is showing newly commissioned work by Cai Guo-Qiang. It is Cai's first solo exhibition in the Middle East and the first single-artist exhibition presented by Mathaf as the museum looks eastwards to consider the dynamics of the longstanding, but little-known relationship between China and the Arab world dating back to the ancient maritime Silk Road.

The museum works under the umbrella of the Qatar Museums authority which is chaired by Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the daughter of the Emir of Qatar who was positioned in Art & Auction's recent Power 100 issue as the most influential person in the art world.

Image: Cai Guo-Qiang's Black Ceremony at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art

The long slide

2011-12-07T12:53:00.008+13:00

Jerry Saltz on museums as playgrounds, equating happy crowds with quality and experimentation. Read more...

Image: installation view, Carston Holler exhibition at the New Museum

Blake Gopnik's Art Basel Miami Beach shopping spree

2011-12-07T06:45:00.004+13:00

How art critic Blake Gopnik stopped being grouchy at art fairs by spending $10m in monopoly money at Art Basel Miami Beach. Read more..

Reflecting architecture in contemporary art photography

2011-12-06T05:00:00.005+13:00

Curated by Simon Rees, ENVISIONING BUILDINGS at MAK, Vienna engages with the work of contemporary artists who use the camera to reveal different perspectives about architecture and buildings. Gavin Hipkins is amongst the artists represented in the exhibition, which include Andreas Gursky, Pierre Huyghe, Thomas Ruff, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Jane & Louise Wilson.

The artists and the exhibition focus on iconic buildings of the 20th and 21st century, including the work of modernist architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Ernst Plishke and of contemporary figures such as Frank Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron and Peter Zumthor. Read more...

Image: Gavin Hipkins The Habitat installed at Artspace, Auckland

Charles Saatchi launches a surprise attack on the art world

2011-12-05T11:27:00.012+13:00

Charles Saatchi has launched a surprise attack on the art world in the Guardian saying, "even a show-off like me finds this new, super-rich art-buying crowd vulgar and depressingly shallow." This link takes you to another Guardian article by arts correspondent Mark Brown on Saatchi's view of the buyers, dealers and curators who populate the contemporary art world.

Image: a super yacht moored in Venice for the Biennale

Art for the Christmas stocking

2011-12-05T05:00:00.015+13:00

Each year California technology entrepreneur and art collector Peter Norton commissions an artist to make an edition to send to his friends as Christmas gifts. Commissioned artists include Christian Marclay, Vic Muniz, Takashi Murakami, Yinka Shonibare, Kara Walker, and Brian Eno and Pae White who produced a collaborative work. Norton has also donated some of the works to MoMA with the proceeds of sales going to PS1. You can buy the works here.

Image: Takashi Murikami's Oval, 2000

Comic book sale breaks through the $2m barrier

2011-12-04T06:00:00.000+13:00

A rare copy of the first issue of Action Comics, featuring the first appearance of Superman, sold recently for a record price of $2.16 million. The issue was published in 1938 and cost 10 cents.

Image: cover of Action Comics No. 1

The art opening experience made over as art

2011-12-03T05:00:00.009+13:00

Grant Stevens has been commissioned by Sydney's MCA to make a video work for the museum foyer to sit alongside the piece by Imants Tillers' featuring the names of the MCA's patrons. For between $1,000 and $20,000, a new generation of patrons can see their names in the video with its audio component echoing the conversations that might be heard at an opening.

Stevens says he is less interested in the politics of patronage than in drawing out the sometimes uncomfortable conversations between people in personal and social settings. "The starting point for the work is thinking about the experience of attending openings, specifically MCA openings, and my personal associations with the Imants Tillers painting in the foyer," he says. "Hovering above the crowds...the work has a slightly intimidating presence for me. It is a reminder that art's history is intrinsically linked with people and money."

Image: Grants Stevens, Crushing (2009), video still

Glenn Murcutt ruled out for Australia's new Venice pavilion

2011-12-02T09:14:00.008+13:00

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Glenn Murcutt has been ruled out of contention for Australia's new Venice Biennale pavilion because he doesn't have previous experience with similar cultural projects. Spokesperson Simon Mordant, who is coordinating the project, says: "This has to start with the credentials and go on to the design, not the other way around."

Image: Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre, NSW Australia, designed by architect Glenn Murcutt

Norman Foster reconstructs Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car for Design Miami

2011-12-01T09:00:00.005+13:00

Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car will be a feature of this year's Design Miami. The three wheeler, tear shaped vehicle that overturned and killed its driver at the 1933 World's Fair has been reconstructed by Norman Foster and will be shown alongside Fuller's Fly's Eye dome.

Image: Buckminster Fuller and his Dymaxion car in front of the Fly's Eye dome

Justin Paton picks up the 2012 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship

2011-11-30T10:36:00.009+13:00

Justin Paton has been awarded the 2012 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, which offers a residency of at least 6 months in Menton, France and $75,000. Currently senior curator at Christchurch Art Gallery, he is also well known as the author of How to Look at a Painting and presenter of the accompanying television series seen this year on TV1.

Another Power 100 list

2011-11-30T09:00:00.000+13:00

In its annual Power 100 issue, Art & Auction positions Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamid bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the daughter of the Emir of Qatar, as the most influential person in the art world. Shiekha Al-Mayassa is the chairwoman of the Qatar Museums Authority, an organisation overseeing the country's cultural initiatives including the world's biggest art buying spree.

You can see the Power 100 top ten here.

Image: Sheikha Al-Mayassa at the opening of Takashi Murakami's exhibition at Versailles in 2010

Hye Rim Lee's Crystal City goes under the hammer at Christie's HK auction

2011-11-30T06:00:00.000+13:00

Hye Rim Lee's Crystal City (Grey) sold for USD22,500 (against an estimate of USD17,900-23,100) at Christie's Asian Contemporary Art sale in Hong Kong on 27 November.

Image: Hye Rim Lee, Crystal City (Grey) 2007, C-type print, 182 x 182 cm, edition of 5

Art museum goes underground to take on bank loans

2011-11-29T09:00:00.001+13:00

Frankfurt's Staedel Museum is expanding underground to double its storage space and create room for bank loans. Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and DZ Bank agreed in 2008 to hand over more than 8oo works to the Staedel, including works by Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol. The loan includes an option to buy the art at 25% of its value, without interest over 25 years.

Image: Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt

Billy Apple®: A History of the Brand

2011-11-29T05:00:00.003+13:00

Billy Apple®: A History of the Brand runs at Starkwhite to 8 December 2011. The works in the exhibition record the artist's transformation from an individual artist into a brand. The process culminated in 2007 when Apple became a registered trademark, formalising his status as an art brand.

Image: Billy Apple® A History of the Brand, Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam

Does art need bankers?

2011-11-28T07:00:00.003+13:00

100 financiers, entrepreneurs, collectors, curators, dealers and academics gathered in Florence recently for a private conference on the future of art and finance. The cue for the conference was the exhibition Money and Beauty: Bankers, Boticelli, and the Bonfire of Vanities at the Palazzo Strozzi. The discussions ranged across a variety of topics including: whether financial centres necessarily became cultural centres, the shift of economic and cultural power from the West to the East, how art tracks money and power, and whether the art world has been hijacked by the same forces that possessed the world of finance. Read more...
Image: artworks from Andy Warhol's Dollar Sign series

Home Alone in Miami

2011-11-27T06:00:00.003+13:00

Hedge fund manager Adam Sender has joined the ranks of collectors who mount curated presentations of their art collections during Art Basel Miami Beach. Sender's collection manager Sarah Aibel is presenting 70 works from Sanders holdings of over 1000 works in his vacant 5,0000 square-foot Miami property.

Instead of attempting the transform the house into a gallery, Aibel says she made the entire exhibition about toying with the notion of displaying art in a domestic space. Even the bathrooms have been given over to art. One is dedicated to Ramond Pettibon and in another Richard Prince's image of Brooke Shields hangs above a real tub in the children's bathroom.

Image:Urs Fischer's What if the phone rings, 2003

Art that is completed when the viewer is drunk

2011-11-26T12:09:00.010+13:00

"For centuries, alcohol has played an important role in the art scene," says Erwin Wurm, so it seems entirely appropriate for his latest series, Drinking Sculptures, to be opened at the Bass Museum of Art on the same day as Art Basel Miami Beach, an art fair renowned for its partying, opulent dinners and champagne-fueled hobnobbing.

The sculptures in the series open to reveal bottles of liquor and the artist considers them complete only when the viewer is drunk. At this stage it is unclear whether visitors will be able to drink freely from the sculptures, or whether the museum will hire performers to get drunk. Museum officials say the decision will be made by the artist.

Image: Erwin Wurm's Drinking Sculptures (2011) at the Middleheim Museum, Antwerp

Prospect: New Zealand Art Now opens at the City Gallery Wellington

2011-11-26T11:00:00.000+13:00

Dane Mitchell is amongst the artists in Prospect: New Zealand Art Now which opens today at the City Gallery Wellington. The exhibition has been curated by Kate Montgomery who has since taken up a new position at Creative New Zealand.

Image: Installation view of Dane Mitchell's Radiant Matter Part II (2011) at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Mitchell is represented in Prospect with works from this exhibition

European Commission plans the world's largest cultural funding programme

2011-11-24T17:10:00.013+13:00

The European Commission is planning to introduce the world's largest cultural funding programme - a €1.8 billion Creative Europe fund to be administered between 2014 and 2020 as part of a larger pan-European goal to stimulate the economy through cultural enterprise.While approximately half will be allocated to the film industry, €500 million will be targeted directly to the visual and performing arts.

The accidental art mogul

2011-11-24T06:00:00.002+13:00

Her fortunes come from caring more about showing art than selling it. Newsweek's Blake Gopnik on Marian Goodman's path to success. Read more...
Image: Barbara Gladstone by Thomas Struth

Hou Hanru to curate the 5th Auckland Triennial

2011-11-23T11:47:00.003+13:00

Hou Hanru has been named as the curator for the 5th Auckland Triennial. "The Auckland Triennial interests me with the city's increasingly vibrant art scene, being one of the leading cities of the Pacific Rim with its Maori and Pacific influences," he says. "The Triennial can be a particularly inspiring and challenging context for artists: to engage themselves in reimagining the relationship between their work and the changing world, to generate more energy and new vision to an already dynamic art scene."

Damien Hirst's For the Love of God: a sign of the times?

2011-11-23T08:44:00.010+13:00

A little over three years ago Damien Hirst abandoned the traditional method of selling art going straight to Sotheby's instead where the auction smashed top estimates to reach a record total of USD125m. Ironically it was also the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, setting in train a credit crunch and global recession which in turn sent a booming international art market into freefall.

As the sovereign debt crisis plays out in Europe and the world stares down the barrel of another global recession, Hirst is in the news again. His $78 million diamond-encrusted platinum skull, For the Love of God, is back in London courtesy of the Tate. The piece, which has yet to enter a major public collection and is owned by a consortium of investors including the artist himself, will be displayed in a special viewing room in the Turbine Hall during the first two months of the artist's retrospective at Tate Modern.

Image: Damien Hirst's For the Love of God (2007)

Martin Basher: melding minimalist sculpture and retail display at the Rockefeller Apartments

2011-11-22T05:00:00.026+13:00

Martin Basher has installed two new works (Paradise Sale and The Everyday Solution for Shakey Hands) in the courtyard garden of New York's Rockefeller Apartments. The installation is a further development of his 9-month New York Public Art Fund project at the MetroTech Centre in Brooklyn, and the latest in an ongoing series of artists' presentations at the apartments.

Images: Martin Basher's Paradise Sale and The Everyday Solution for Shakey Hands (2011), installation views (day and night), Rockefeller Apartments, New York

Curator defends artist's use of imagery of Christ's crucifixion as a metaphor for human suffering

2011-11-21T08:57:00.013+13:00

The Brooklym museum is refusing to budge in the face of calls for David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire My Belly to be removed from the Hide/Seek exhibition, saying the artwork is "an expression of the artist's outrage at indifference to human suffering during the early years of the AIDS crisis.

The co-curator of the exhibition, Jonathan Katz, has also weighed in saying the work belongs to a centuries-old tradition of using the imagery of Jesus Christ's crucifixion as a metaphor for human suffering. "What gets lost in all this brouhaha is how thoroughly informed he is by a Catholic iconographic tradition and how he is reinvigorating it to describe new social realities" Katz said of the artist. "This is a work of art of great complexity and sensitivity."

Image: David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly (1987), video still

Brooklyn bishop calls for A Fire in My Belly to be banned

2011-11-20T06:00:00.014+13:00

The Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn, Nicholas DiMarzio, is fueling the furore over David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly, calling for it to be removed from the Hide/Seek exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum on the grounds that it is a disrespectful and blasphemous attack on their religion. In a strangely telling video statement on the web Bishop DiMarzio says that he admires Wojnarowicz's identification with the suffering Christ but that he shouldn't be allowed to express it publicly in art. Read more...

Image: Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio and David Wojnarowicz

Gavin Hipkins' film This Fine Island previewed at Centre Pompidu

2011-11-19T07:30:00.004+13:00

This Fine Island, a postcolonial ballad by Gavin Hipkins that revisits Charles Darwin's journey to the Bay of Islands in 1835, will have its first screening in Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, an event that aims to create a space between new cinema and contemporary art. In Hipkins' adaption, Darwin's nineteenth-century travel writing in The Voyage of the Beagle becomes a vehicle for present day tourisms, travel romance, and racial othering, against the backdrop of New Zealand's lush landscape.

Hipkins' experimental narrative screens at Centre Pompidu on 21 November in People's Television, a film programme curated for Rencontres Internationales by Laura Preston and Mark Williams.

Image: Gavin Hipkins, This Fine Island , 2012 (production still), 12 mins, 16mm transferred to Digibeta

MOCA gala raises $2.5m with Marina Abramovic's An Artist's Life Manifesto

2011-11-19T05:00:00.020+13:00

The controversy surrounding Marina Abramovic's An Artist's Life Manifesto didn't dampen the enthusiasm of guests at the recent MOCA gala, an event that Jeffrey Deitch said "fused an art experience with a social experience". Attended by more than 750 guests, the gala raised $2.5m for the museum.

Image: Deborah Harry and Marina Abramovic at the MOCA fundraiser

Review of Ann Shelton's in a forest

2011-11-18T10:40:00.000+13:00

You can read a review of Ann Shelton's exhibition in a forest here.

Image: Ann Shelton, Seedling, Imre Harange's Olympic Oak (These trees were awarded at the 1936 Olympics and are sometimes also called 'Hitler Oaks'), Nyiradony, Hungary. C-type print. 1.2 x 1.5m, 2011

Benetton's controversial "Unhate" campaign

2011-11-18T10:35:00.008+13:00

In Italian clothing label Benetton's ideal world, foreign dignitaries from opposing sides would lock lips. Benetton took the concept to heart, making it the subject of its controversial "Unhate" campaign, which features political enemies getting a little too close for comfort. The company debuted its ads recently at its flagship Paris store much to the chagrin of the world leaders it featured. Read more...

Image: The Pope and al-Tayeb share a kiss on the latest United Colours of Beneton advertisement

Putting a spin on plunder culture

2011-11-18T05:00:00.014+13:00

Artefacts of historical and cultural significance which are displayed in major museums around the world should not be returned to their country of origin according to British Museum director Neil MacGregor. During an address in Australia recently he sprang to the defence of museums holding contested cultural property "The value of an object is to explain history to as many people as possible and explain the present to as many people as possible and that may not be achieved by it being returned to the place where it was made", he said. "When you see these objects they will mean more to you in your own experience than they would in the place they were made."

MacGregor has an ally in British Prime Minister David Cameron who shares his view on the repatriation of cultural property. In a 2010 interview he explained why the Kohinoor diamond, which was seized by the East India company to become part of the Crown Jewels when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877, could not be returned. "If you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty", he said.

Image: Interior carving and panels in the Mataatua Wharenui or meeting house. Originally built as a symbol of unity and strength by Ngati Awa, it was uplifted by the New Zealand government and shipped overseas to represent the country at anthropological exhibitions. After enduring a century of foreign travel it was finally repatriated in 1925 to be housed at the Otago Museum where it remained for another 70 years. After being lost to its people since 1880, Mataatua Wharenui finally returned to its rightful place in Whakatane in the 90s. After 15 years of work to restore the house to its former glory, it opened on 17 September 2011 with a traditional dawn ceremony. The meeting house is now a central point in a complex that provides a maori cultural tourism experience for visitors, allowing them to hear the story of the wharenui and learn the traditions and history of the tribe - all brought to life with the latest interactive digital technology.

Australia's Indigenous Art Triennial back on the calendar

2011-11-17T05:00:00.004+13:00

After being put on the backburner twice, with National Gallery of Australia director Ron Radford pointing to "fiscal responsibility" as the reason for the last postponement, Australia's National Indigenous Art Triennial is back in the mix. The NGA has announced that the second Triennial, unDisclosed, will run from 11 May to 10 July 2012.

The theme of the Triennial alludes to the spoken and the unspoken, the known and the unknown, what can be revealed and what cannot, capturing the disclosed and the undisclosed embedded within the works in the exhibition. You can see the lineup of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists selected for the Triennial here.

Image: Vernon Ah Kee, Yidindji Tribe Circa 2007, 2007

Interview with Paolo Baratta on how he revived the Venice Biennale

2011-11-16T09:00:00.009+13:00

As chairman of the Venice Biennale foundation, Paolo Baratta has been credited with reinvigorating the Biennale and ensuring it is largely self-funded. With the news that his successor Giulio Malgara (an ally of Silvio Berlusconi) has withdrawn his nomination to head the Biennale, some expect to see him reappointed to the post. In an interview first published in Il Giornale dell'Arte, the man who gave Venice a new lease of life looks back on his tenure. Read more...

Image: Paolo Baratta, outgoing chairman of the Venice Biennale foundation

Shanghai Expo sites to house new art museums

2011-11-16T05:00:00.008+13:00

Two new art museums are to be created in Shanghai using former Expo sites along the Huangpu River. The former China Pavilion on the Pudong side will become a museum of modern art with 70,000 square meters of exhibition space and the former Pavilion of the Future on the Puxi side will become a contemporary art museum with 15,000 square meters of exhibition space.

Image: China Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo, Shanghai which is to house a new Museum of Modern Art

How can art compete with Hollywood?

2011-11-15T05:00:00.006+13:00

The Guardian's Jonathan Jones travels to Los Angeles to talk to Paul McCarthy about what it means to be a serious artist in the shadow of Hollywood. Read more...

Image: Paul McCarthy

Sacrilege and the sacred: round two

2011-11-14T05:00:00.022+13:00

David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly is drawing flak from Catholic groups as the National Portrait Gallery's Hide/Seek exhibition heads to the Brooklyn Museum. So far Brooklyn's Catholic Diocese has requested the work be censored from the show, the Daily News is fueling tabloid-ready outrage in advance, and Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman says he has received thousands of pre-programmed emails in protest.

This link takes you to our earlier posts on the Smithsonian's controversial decision to withdraw A Fire in My Belly from the Washington showing of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.

Image: David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly (1987), video still

Berlusconi's ally withdraws nomination to head the Venice Biennale

2011-11-13T06:00:00.005+13:00

Outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ally Giulio Malgara has withdrawn his nomination to head the Venice Biennale. Malgara was set to replace Paolo Baratta, a decision that sparked an outcry due to his lack of experience in the field of culture.
Image: outgoing Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi

Whitney Bedford with Dane Mitchell at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

2011-11-12T07:30:00.003+13:00

Museum of Modern Art dusts off its Diega Rivera murals

2011-11-12T07:00:00.009+13:00

In 1931 the Museum of Modern Art commissioned Diego Rivera to paint 5 portable murals for a 5-week exhibition. Now after 80 years in storage, the murals are being rehung. Read more...

Image: Diego Rivera, Agrarian Leader Zapata (1931), photograph from the MoMA website