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What has 2014 brought us so far? The most important art news in a nutshell.

Centre Pompidou Málaga?

02-01-2014

Already in 2012, director Alain Seban from Centre Pompidou announced the coming of a network of satellite museums all around the world. Now rumors are spread that Centre Pompidou is planning a satellite branch in the southern Spanish city Málaga. The mayor of Málaga expects that around 70 works from the French collection will be shown in a new glass-and-steel building, called The Cube, in 2015. According to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, the annual €1 million cost of the five-year project will be funded by the city council, which is also seeking private sponsorship. A spokesman of the Centre Pompidou says that “nothing is confirmed and negotiations are still ongoing".

Renovation Fever

06-01-2014

Centraal Museum Utrecht will be renovated. The museum grows along with the city of Utrecht, the fastest growing city of the Netherlands, and therefore also the fastest changing city. Design and supervision of the renovation are in the hands of Soda +, a collaboration of several designers who are simultaneously working together from their own discipline and perspective. It’s an ambitious project that will have multiple results in visitor facilities such as the restaurant, the entrance, the shop and the auditorium. Furthermore it increases the exhibition area and optimizes the rental space. The goal is a more open and accessible appearance of the museum.

The Art World has a Diversity Problem

14-01-2014

More colors, please. Hyperallergic signals: The Art world in the US has a diversity problem. Nearly 80% of the museum workforce in the United States is white. Only guards tend to be people of color, curators are predominantly white. Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is making a start with a new fellowship that seeks to diversify the curatorial field by helping students from underprivileged backgrounds. They receive hands-on curatorial training in major art museums across the United States. We wonder what the situation in the Netherlands looks like.

Museum Night Rotterdam minus Two

14-01-2014

The two biggest Art institutions in Rotterdam, Kunsthal and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, have decided not to participate in the Museum Night this year. Even though the Museum Night brings a lot of (new) visitors and an interesting target audience to their exhibition space the costs are too high in comparison with the benefits (investments in an extra attractive program, safety, and a disappointing number of returning visitors). It’s a big loss for the Museum Night and in March. For the edition in 2015 the two institutions, together with other museums and the Museum Night are investigating the possibilities of a better profit for the two institutions. In an interview with Rijnmond TV, Mariette Maaskant from de Kunsthal indicates that they would like to have a conversation on how they can inspire the Museum Night visitors to come back, as a relatively small amount comes back for a repeat visit.

Three X King

16-01-2014

The Mondriaan Fund announces that artists Iris van Dongen, Rineke Dijkstra and Femmy Otten are selected to make an official state portrait of King Willem Alexander. An expert committee made this choice based on the submitted sketches by twelve pre-selected artists. They were unanimous in this decision since, in their words, these three sketches coincide the personality and the symbolic function of the king. After the selection a protest was heard from photographer Koos Breukel whose image was used by Iris van Dongen while he himself was allegedly not allowed to participate in the competition because he would be ’too old’. The competition was meant for younger artists.

The Dia Art Foundation Rocks

17-01-2014

DIA Art Foundation rules at the West Coast. LA MOCA hires Philippe Vergne, from the New York-based Dia Art Foundation, as their new director. Vergne is the second Dia director to make the journey west. The director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan, used to run Dia also. What’s their secret?

And the Winner is…

20-01-2014

Charles Esche, Van Abbemuseum Director and 2014 São Paulo Biennial Curator, receives Bard College Award 2014 for his curatorial excellence. The award will be presented by Lauren Cornell, curator of the 2015 Triennial, Museum as Hub and Digital Projects, and at the New Museum, at a gala celebration and dinner on April 2, 2014 at 6:30pm in New York City. Esche is the seventeenth recipient of the award.

Piracy is Everywhere this Month

20-01-2014

From Google image to Art piece. Piracy is everywhere this month. Tobias Rehberger had to defend himself in court after being accused of piracy by Bridget Riley, in a commissioned art work for the Berlin State Library. Iris van Dongen was accused of piracy by Koos Breukel in her sketch of Willem Alexander for the official national competition for a Royal Portrait. And third Luc Tuymans was accused of having repainted a photograph by a Belgian photographer. Rehberger accepted in court to mention the inspirational source of his work in Berlin. Van Dongen claims to have acknowledged the source and explains that she had to rely on Google images without the king posing himself. Tuymans fought back claiming “What’s the difference of using a floating picture on the internet or a self-made picture with my i-phone as a source of inspiration?”. We do not think this is the end of discussion.

Who has the Largest Network?

21-01-2014

The noise around the state portrait continues. The Amsterdam Fund for the arts came with the idea to let the public choose by means of a voting system on the internet which portrait of king Willem Alexander eventually may hang in the Council Chamber in Amsterdam. A new phenomenon that more often turns up in the art world lately. Curator and adviser Frank van der Stok opposes against this fake democratic system in a column in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool. “Thanks to the internet everybody can participate, however this online system is very easy to manipulate. It is not about a pure balanced judgment concerning quality and applicability, but about who has the largest network."

Assimilate or Emigrate

21-01-2014

At the end of 2013 Melle Daamen, director of the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, claimed that there is too much art in the Netherlands. As some sort of new year’s resolution he gave the Netherlands the advise that less will be more. He could voice his opinion in the newspaper, then on television and then again in the newspaper. The Dutch newspaper NRC had hoped for more responses and kept asking their readers to send in reactions. The story continues in 2014 in Belgium. On the 18th of January chief-editor of this same NRC, Peter Vandermeersch, claims in a column in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard that the substantial cuts in subsidies in the Netherlands have had no negative effects, only positive. “It separated the wheat from the tares.” Nonsense, reacts writer Christophe van Gerrewey in a response published in that same De Standaard. The consequence of budget cuts in the Netherlands is a dramatic loss of cultural experiment. “Those (young) artists who are unruly or daring have to give up, what remains is the accessible ‘one size fits all’. Long live blatant mediocrity.” According to Van Gerrewey, these Dutch opinions are not dominant yet in Belgium, but it is election time, so you never know.

Disqualification MVRDV for Design New Museum Depot Rotterdam

22-01-2014

Unintentionally, Sjarel Ex, director of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, counteracts the winning design for the museum depot he so badly wanted. In a conversation with MVRDV about plans to do a show with the office in the museum, Ex also talked about the depot building, for which design MVRDV was in the running. Any contact between commissioner and competitor during competition is not allowed and has a consequence that MVRDV is taken out of competition, while their design was everybody’s favorite. MVRDV went to court to fight this decision by the local municipality.

Pam Roos ten Barge

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