NEWS: Aegean Airlines Sponsors Documenta 14 and Announces Direct Flights between Athens and Kassel

POSTED March 11, 2016

Documenta 14 is scheduled to take place in Athens from April 8 to July 16, 2017, and Kassel from June 10 to September 17, 2017—a first in this exhibition’s sixty-year history. As part of the show’s extension to Athens, Aegean Airlines, Documenta’s first airline sponsor ever, will schedule two direct flights weekly between Athens and Kassel from April 2017 to promote travel for all of Documenta’s visitors. More details about the plan will be announced this summer.

“We are very proud that Athens, the metropolis of Greece will co-host with Kassel Documenta 14, one of the most prestigious international art exhibitions. We at Aegean are delighted to be able to support Athens, as it takes solid steps in establishing itself as a global destination for arts and culture. With our direct flights between Kassel and Athens, we hope to contribute to Documenta 14’s success…,” states vice chairman of Aegean Airlines, Eftichios Vassilakis.

March 11, 2016

The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum has announced the participants for their 2016 biennial, which will be up from October 6, 2016 through March 2017. This exhibition, organized by the deCordova’s Jennifer Gross and Sarah Montross, focuses on artists who live and work in New England.

This sixteen artists in this year’s exhibition are:

Academy Records
Ashley Bryan
Lois Dodd
Theresa Ganz
Carly Glovinski
Tanja Hollander
Timothy Horn
Fritz Horstman
Susan Howe
Heather Leigh McPherson
Youjin Moon
Kelly Nipper
Jason Noushin
Tobias Putrih
Cary Smith
Craig Stockwell

For more information on the biennial, please visit the deCordova’s website here.

March 11, 2016

Henri Neuendorf of Artnet reports that oil conglomerate BP, whose relationship with Tate Britain has caused years of controversy, will cut off their funding in 2017. The Tate’s received about $5.4 million in support from BP since 1990.

“We are facing an extremely challenging business environment and are reducing spending and taking many difficult decisions throughout BP,” said the company in a statement to Artnews.

“The end of Tate’s sponsorship deal with BP is hopeful news for us, for the art world, and for everyone whose lives are affected by climate change. BP can no longer use Tate’s art collections to mask or excuse the devastation its operations have caused,” said Anna Galkina of arts activism collective Platform. “We only hope that the British Museum, Science Museum, National Portrait Gallery, and Royal Opera House will follow in Tate’s lead.”

March 11, 2016

Artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset will be installing a large-scale new work at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center. Their piece, Van Gogh’s Ear, 2016, will be a 1950s-style upright swimming pool bedecked with a stainless steel ladder, lights, and a diving board. Organized by Public Art Fund and Tishman Speyer, the installation will travel to China with the help of the K11 Art Foundation.

“For many years, Elmgreen & Dragset have been masters of the unforgettably uncanny object. With its dramatic scale, wildly incongruous setting, and cleverly macabre title, Van Gogh’s Ear promises to be perhaps their wittiest installation yet,” said Nicholas Baume, Public Art Fund director and chief curator.

March 10, 2016

KW Institute for Contemporary Art has appointed Krist Gruijthuijsen as its new director. He will begin in July after the ninth Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art.

Along with his appointment there will be a restructuring of the institute. The former director of both KW and the Berlin Biennale, Gabriele Horn, will continue to run the biennale, and the directors will be supported by an administrative manager.

Gruijthuijsen is moving to Berlin after four years as artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein. He was also course leader in the department of fine art at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. He is a cofounder of Amsterdam’s Kunstverein, which he directed from 2009 to 2012.

March 10, 2016

Qatar is sharply reducing its public spending, including cultural spending, thanks to plummeting global oil prices, according to Georgina Adam in the Art Newspaper. Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, has slashed the Gulf state’s culture budget, as well as its budgets in the transport, energy, and health sectors. 240 staff members at the Qatar Museums Authority have been let go, and a further 400 jobs are under threat, according to one source. Katara Cultural Village, a complex of performance halls, cinemas, and other cultural institutions, has also witnessed cuts in its spending.

Adam suggests, however, that this pullback in cultural spending will remain independent from the Qatari royal family’s art collecting. She notes too that Qatar’s museum cuts also come at a time when the country is dealing with delays and cost overruns to other major projects, like the National Museum, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, as well as a push to complete infrastructure for the 2022 soccer World Cup.

March 10, 2016

The University of Iowa has canceled a public-private partnership with the Hieronymus family, the Hodge Group, and Mortenson Construction, to construct a new building for its Museum of Art in downtown Iowa City, reports the Press-Citizen’s Jeff Charis-Carlson, who writes that “the university will bear the costs for all architectural and other design work already done for the project.” The total costs for the museum are estimated at eighty million dollars.

The university’s art museum has been temporarily homeless after the Iowa River flooded in 2008.

“The costs forced us to look at it differently,” said Sean O’Harrow, executive director for the museum, speaking about the museum’s decision to pull out of its public-private partnership. “We realized, ‘Actually, you know what, there are really better ways of doing this from our perspective.’”

March 9, 2016

The Minneapolis Institute of Art announced today that Gabriel Ritter will be the new curator of contemporary art starting in May. Ritter has served as the assistant curator of contemporary art at the Dallas Museum of Art since 2012. He organized exhibitions that focused on internationally emerging and underrepresented artists.

“Gabriel’s energy and experience in curating internationally and nationally important contemporary art exhibitions make him a terrific fit for Mia,” director and president Kaywin Feldman said. “We are particularly excited about his expertise in contemporary Japanese art, given our extraordinary holdings in the historic Japanese collection.”

Prior to his appointment at the Dallas Museum, Ritter was a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles for three years. He also completed a Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship at the National Museum of Art in Tokyo where he did his dissertation on Japanese Surrealism.

March 9, 2016

The Canada Council for the Arts has announced seven artists and a curator will be honored with the 2016 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Each recipient was recognized for outstanding career achievements and will receive a $25,000 cash prize.

The winners include photographer Edward Burtynsky, filmmaker Philip Hoffman, textile artist Jane Kidd, visual artist Wanda Koop, visual artist Suzy Lake, media artist Mark Lewis, and visual artist William Vazan. Curator Marnie Fleming was selected for the outstanding contribution award.

“These artists have achieved an exceptional level of mastery of their art forms, to the point where they influence the way we Canadians understand our world and its challenges,” director and CEO of the Canada Council Simon Brault said.

The council—Canada’s national public arts funder—established the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts fifteen years ago. This year’s jury for the prize consisted of Lucie-Clair Chan, Pierre Dorion, Lee-Ann Martin, Susan McEachern, and Gerald Saul.

Source

http://artforum.com/news/id=58762
 
 
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