A frame-less Kline at MoMA (via Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)
The MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, Ann Temkin, is shaking things up in the permanent collection galleries by reframing (or more correctly unframing) many iconic works. Does this help to return to the works to their more radical past? Maybe, though her desire to experiment is definitely welcome. She’s also diversifying the galleries, and no one is more thrilled than I am that Lyubov Popova is getting the attention she has always deserved.
For the next few months, the Red Book Dialogues at New York’s Rubin Museum of Art will invite various personalities (incl. performance artist Marina Abramovic, musician/artist David Byrne, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, painter Philip Taaffe, and philosopher Cornel West) to join a psychoanalyst on stage in order to “respond and interpret” a folio of Carl Jung’s Red Book. The series coincidence’s with the Rubin’s The Red Book of C.G. Jung exhibition, which continues until January 25, 2010.
Pocket Utopia‘s underground stepchild, the Famous Accountants gallery opened last night during the “This Beat is Sick” Bushwick gallery festival. Expect great things and check out Jeremy Sapienza’s post about Brooklyn’s newest alternative space.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, is stunned by the success of the ArtPrize Festival, though why anyone would be surprised at the success of an arts festival that offered a $250,000 grand prize, a $100,000 second prize, and a $50,000 third prize in the middle of a major recession is beyond me. via USA Today
In other mega-bucks art news…Ryan Trecartin snags the Jack Wolgin Fine Arts Prize, which was announced by Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. “The Jack Wolgin Fine Arts Prize is the world’s largest prize given to a visual artist in a juried competition.” via ArtDaily
The stash of Mark Rothko paintings that were sold earlier this year will be exhibited at Moscow’s new Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in the spring. It will be Rothko’s first solo show in the Russian capital. via Lindsay Pollock
Detail of a letter from Paul Gauguin to Vincent van Gogh. November 10-13, 1889. via the van Gogh Museum
Amsterdam’s van Gogh Museum launched “Vincent van Gogh: The Letters,” an extensive and searchable website, which includes all of van Gogh’s correspondence, including text-only, facsimile and translated versions of each letter. via Two Coats of Paint
Early this month, Anatoli Ulyanov’s Ukrainian art website Proza (http://proza.com.ua) was shut down by its US host for displaying “child pornography” – and “Pavel Gudimov’s Ya Gallery in Kiev has been set fire to after the presentation and discussion there of a gay literary anthology.”
According to Matthew Bown’s IZO blog:
…Ulyanov himself seems to welcome the attention [one is led to deduce that all his activity is a deliberate provocation]:
I’m sure many liberals will disagree with me, but Ukrainian artists need repression and violence for the sake of the future, for the sake of development and life. An avant-garde without a Fuehrer is impossible.
