10.31.13
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, has appointed Cathleen Chaffee as its curator, reports Annie Wang of Art in America. Chaffee previously served as the Horace W. Goldsmith assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the Yale University Art Gallery since 2010. Prior to Yale, she held curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Chaffee received her PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and was awarded a 2008 Fulbright fellowship to Belgium in order to complete research on her dissertation. She received her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and completed her undergraduate studies at Ithaca College.
10.30.13
Kevin W. Tucker has been promoted to senior curator of decorative arts and design. Tucker is currently coorganizing the first retrospective of industrial designer Peter Muller-Munk at the museum. In 2010, he wrote the catalogue for “Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement,” and cocurated various exhibitions at the museum, including “All the World’s a Stage: Celebrating Performance in the Visual Arts,” 2009, and “There and Back Again: Selections from the Graham D. Williford Collection of American Art,” 2005. “Kevin’s work over the last decade has firmly established the decorative arts and design program in Dallas as one of the finest of its type in the country,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, the museum’s director. “For his many efforts as a leader in his field, we are very pleased to recognize Kevin with this promotion.”
10.29.13
Jon Seydl has been named director of curatorial affairs at the Worcester Art Museum, reports Andrew Russeth of the New York Observer. Seydl, currently curator of European paintings and sculpture at the Cleveland Museum of Art, will assume his role in January. Said director Matthias Waschek: “We are excited for Jon to lead our talented, growing team of curators. While his Old Master focus is in keeping with one of the museum’s traditional strengths, his proven track record of working innovatively outside his field of specialization will be crucial to us as we work to better engage audiences with our own collection.”
10.29.13
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has granted $504,000 to the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, to establish a curatorial fellowship program for a six-year period. The program will provide opportunities for object-based studies as well as promote understanding of museum operations for art-history doctoral candidates. The gift will fund three positions in the museum’s department of prints and drawings and European paintings; modern and contemporary art; and Latin American art. Said director Simone Wicha: “By integrating the classroom experience with museum training, this program will transform the Blanton’s engagement with art history graduate students. Working closely with the museum’s talented staff will enhance their professional and intellectual preparation as the next generation of museum leaders.”
10.29.13
Latifa Echakhch has been named winner of the 2013 Marcel Duchamp Prize. The Moroccan-born artist was selected from pool of four nominees who also included Farah Atassi, Claire Fontaine, and Raphael Zarka. The award, established in 2000 by the Association for the International Diffusion of French Art with the Centre Pompidou, aims to promote international recognition of artists working in France. Previous winners include Thomas Hirschhorn, Dominque Gonzalez-Foerster, Tatiana Trouve, and Laurent Grasso. Echakhch has exhibited widely internationally at institutions including at the Hammer Museum, the Tate Modern, the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Portikus in Frankfurt.
10.28.13
The New Museum, New York, has announced its plans to transform a warehouse next to its Bowery location into an incubator for art, design, and technology, reports Julia Halperin of the Art Newspaper. The center will become home for more than sixty start-ups chosen by a competitive application process that will begin in January 2014. This is the first time an art museum has sponsored such an initiative involving start-up businesses. The architects SO-IL and Gensler will renovate the 11,000-square-foot space, which the museum previously used for site-specific commissions, to create conference rooms, screening rooms, and studio space for resident artists. The space is due to open next year in the summer.
10.28.13
The recent sixteen-day federal government shutdown cost the Smithsonian museums an estimated $2.8 million in lost ticket sales, reports Julia Halperin of the Art Newspaper. Around 800,000 visitors could not access the nineteen museums and the National Zoo from October 1 through 16, resulting in loss of revenue from the institution’s cafeterias, gift shops, and theaters. The estimate was based on the 400,000 visitors who attended the museums the week before the shutdown. The bipartisan Senate agreement that was struck last week will provide back pay for all furloughed federal workers, including 3,512 Smithsonian employees.
10.27.13
Musician Lou Reed has passed away at the age of seventy-one, reports Jon Dolan for Rolling Stone. Born in Brooklyn, Reed attended Syracuse University, after which he joined Pickwick Records as a staff songwriter. In the 1960s, he met violinist John Cale; together they founded the band that eventually became the Velvet Underground. The group became a fixture at Andy Warhol's Factory, and Warhol produced its iconic debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) which Rolling Stone, in 2003, called the “most prophetic rock album ever made.”
In the 1970s, Reed left the Velvet Underground and put out influential solo albums. Among them, Transformer (1972) featured an homage to life as part of Warhol's Factory, in the form of a song—“Walk on the Wild Side”—that became a radio hit. In his later years, married to musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson, Reed continued to release albums. His last, in 2011, was a rock collaboration with the band Metallica.
Music critic Lester Bangs once wrote, “Lou Reed is the guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock ‘n’ roll to smack, speed, homosexuality, sadomasochism, murder, misogyny, stumblebum passivity, and suicide, and then proceeded to belie all his achievements and return to the mire by turning the whole thing into a monumental bad joke with himself as the woozily insistent Henny Youngman in the center ring, mumbling punch lines that kept losing their punch.” In an interview with Bangs, Reed once remarked, “My bullshit is worth more than other people’s diamonds.”
10.27.13
Artist, curator, and writer Ian White has passed away at the age of forty-one. In his artistic practice, White often favored performance as a medium. Collaborating with the likes of Jimmy Robert, Pat Catterson, and Emily Roysdon, he appeared in venues including Tate Britain; London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. As a curator, White organized “The Artists Cinema” at the 2005–2006 Frieze Art Fair among other exhibitions. He worked as adjunct film curator at Whitechapel Gallery from 2001 through 2011. In 2009, he was a guest of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD.
Source:
http://artforum.com/news/