NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Fresh Meat for Whitney Museum

via NYTimes:
Whitney's Expansion Plans Are Shifting South, to the Meatpacking District
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: November 28, 2006

A month after the Dia Art Foundation scrapped its plans to open a museum at the entrance to the High Line, the abandoned elevated railway line that the city is transforming into a public park, the Whitney Museum of American Art has signed on to take its place and build a satellite institution of its own downtown.

The Whitney recently reached a conditional agreement on Wednesday night with the city's Economic Development Corporation to buy the city-owned site, at Gansevoort and Washington streets, officials at the museum said yesterday. Plans call for the new museum to be at least twice the size of the Whitney's home on Madison Avenue at 75th Street, they said, and to be finished within the next five years.

The deal, which has still to go through a public review process before it is final, puts an end to the Whitney's plan to for a nine-story addition by the architect Renzo Piano that would connect to the museum's original 1966 Marcel Breuer building via a series of glass bridges. It will be the third time in 11 years that the museum has commissioned a celebrity architect to design a major expansion to its landmark building, only to pull out.

"This is a more prudent step to take," Leonard A. Lauder, chairman of the Whitney's board, said by telephone yesterday. "Yet it is an adventurous step. We think the new site will have a big enough impact so that it will become a destination."[read on...]

Under Fire: Retort ("They make a desert and call it peace")

via <underfire> Retort's Opening Salvo"

Mon Nov 27 02:19:16 EST 2006 <underfire> Retort's Opening Salvo

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To: Under Fire
From: Retort

Opening Salvo
Week of November 26th

Retort's installation at the Seville Biennial (about which more in a later posting) had its origins in a broadsheet, Neither Their War Nor Their Peace, that we produced for the manifestations of Spring 2003 on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.  We well recall how many felt our prologue to be hyperbolic, even hysterical: "We have no words for the horrors to come, for the screams and carnage of the first days of battle, the fear and brutality of the long night of occupation that will follow, the truck bombs and slit throats and unstoppable cycle of revenge, the puppets in the palaces chattering about 'democracy', the exultation of the anti-Crusaders, Baghdad descending into the shambles of a new, more dreadful Beirut, and the inevitable retreat (thousands of bodybags later) from the failed McJerusalem." Who would now call this hyperbole?

We produced the broadsheet because we were unwilling to go into the streets under either of the banners we knew would dominate the marches - "Peace" and "No Blood for Oil". To the opponents of the war, we wished to say that a deeply militarized US state, and indeed the reality of permanent war, rendered inadequate the notion of "peace" as a rallying cry and a strategy. We had in mind the indelible line of Tacitus, "They make a desert and call it peace", which speaks to us across the centuries. These were words he put in the mouth of a Gaelic chieftain on the eve of battle against a Roman legion in the Scottish highlands, at the far north-western edge of the empire. Tacitus reminds us what kind of peace is delivered by the masters of war  – it is the peace of the "peace process", the peace of cemeteries. The anti-war movement, if it was not to evaporate again, had to recognize the full dynamics of US militarism – to understand that peace, under current arrangements, is war by other means.

Nor was it lost on us that the kind of planes which Atta and his crews refunctioned as missile-bombers to strike at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon actually originated as weapons of mass destruction. The Boeing Corporation took the old bombers used to create firestorms over European and Japanese cities during the Second World War and redesigned them for purposes of mass tourism and corporate air travel in the 1960s. Atta himself was an urban planner (in Cairo and Aleppo) disgusted with the disneyfication he saw coming in the wake of the failure of secular national development in Egypt and the Third World. He was right; Dubai is one face of neoliberal globalization, megaslums the other.  At the same time it is necessary to acknowledge al-Qaida's love affair with image-politics. Even in its rejection of the West, the Islamic vanguard displays a mastery of the virtual and of the new technics of dissemination. This is one aspect of the current moment that those in opposition to both Empire and Jihad, two virulent mutations of the Right, must take very seriously.

We intended to expand the broadside into a pamphlet, but it bloated into the book Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War.  Essentially we aimed to confront the strange doubleness of the new world situation – a seeming brute return to the 17th century Wars of Religion familiar to Milton, from whose Paradise Lost we took our title, twinned with an intensified deployment of the apparatus of the production of appearances. The U.S. in particular feels a dual threat, first, to the monopoly of the means of mass destruction, and second, to its management of the image-world [read on...]

Morality Crusaders (France?!) v. Contemporary Art

 

Larry Clark: Untitled, 1985; Nan Goldin: C in the Club, Bangkok, 1992

via Courrier international, 11/2/06:

Moral values against contemporary art
In the year 2000, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux organised an exhibition entitled, 'Presumed innocent - Contemporary art and childhood' that was subsequently attacked by an association for the protection of childhood. Six years later, Henry-Claude Cousseau, the director of the museum up until 2001, has been taken to court for 'the distribution of paedo-pornographic images'. The editorialist Gerard Dupuy considers that, "moral leagues have developed a strategy of judicial dissuasion regarding the forms of expression that displease them. ... Contemporary artists living in France are in an uncomfortable situation. They have the greatest difficulty getting themselves heard beyond the specialist spaces that they are allocated. Even there, some would wish to gag them, resorting if needs be to calumny. Not all the Taliban have stone Buddhas at their disposal. Sometimes they don't even wear a beard either."
Libération (France)

See also:
Artforum News;

and NYTimes, Arts briefly, 11/25/06; Ben Sisario:

Museum Directors Protest an Indecency Charge in France

A group of museum directors and curators signed a petition in London yesterday protesting the indecency charges against Henry-Claude Cousseau, director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Mr. Cousseau is under investigation for an exhibition, "Presumed Innocent: Contemporary Art and Childhood," at the Centre d'Arts Plastiques Contemporain in Bordeaux six years ago, when he was the director there. That show, with works by Mike Kelley, Cindy Sherman, Tony Oursler, Annette Messager, Nan Goldin and others, drew complaints from La Mouette, a child protection group, and Mr. Cousseau, along with two curators, faces charges in connection with exhibiting "works of a violent pornographic nature, unacceptable for a young public." If convicted, he could receive a fine and up to three years in prison, according to a statement released on behalf of the signers of the petition, who include Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery; Alfred Pacquement, director of the Centre Georges Pompidou; Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art; Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery in London; Claire Hsu, executive director of the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong; and 12 others.

Miami Art Fairs: Artnet's Interactive Map

via Artnet News, 11/22/06:

With the new fair, Miami boasts a "baker's dozen" of 13 different art fairs. Having difficulty keeping track of all the events? Be sure to check out Artnet Magazine's just-launched interactive map, pinpointing the various and sundry fairs, from the giants to the scrappy independents, perfect for plotting a route in advance! Enjoy!

Holiday Benefits: Exhibitions, Auctions + Performances

1 November 30: White Box Toy Box Holiday Benefit Auction

2 December 1 - 3: Visual AIDS, Postcards from the Edge Benefit

3 December 7: Monkeytown Holiday Party Benefit

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1 :
White Box Toy Box Holiday Benefit Auction {Link}

Hosted by Robert Miller Gallery
524 West 26th Street
Thursday, November 30, 6 - 9 pm

Discover exciting new art or select your favorite gift-giving work from 100 outstanding artists with 100 works with a start bid of $100!

The event is free and starts at 6 pm with a Silent Auction, Live Music, Beverage Bar and Hors d'Oeuvres, immediately followed at 7:30 pm with a Live Auction of 25 art works by Sotheby's Auctioneer Maarten Ten Holder

and/or:

View |  Bid and Buy Now

Use the newly added online feature and incentive to Buy Now at 25% off the retail price to help meet our goal.

Online bidding ends Tuesday, November 28th at 5 pm
Save the Date and Mark your Calendar

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2 :
Visual AIDS Postcards From the Edge Benefit {Link}
The countdown is on and here are some dates to remember:

Friday, December 1 from 6-8PM: 
Preview Party on World AIDS Day
Sneak peek only -- NO POSTCARD SALES. $75 admission includes one raffle ticket. One Lucky Winner will select any postcard that evening! Additional Raffle Tickets $25. Other prizes donated by Twin Palm Press, Steidldangin, PowerHouse Books, Printed Matter and more. Participating artists attend free.

SILENT AUCTION of specially selected artworks by Jenny Holtzer, Barton Lidice Benes, Richard Renaldi and others.

Saturday, December 2 from 12-6 PM:
Benefit Sale (Opens)
Over 1000 original postcard-size works of art! ONLY $75 EACH. Buy four cards and get one free. First come, first served. CASH and CHECK ONLY -- sorry no credit cards.  $5 Suggested Admission.

Sunday, December 3 from 12-4 PM:
Benefit Sale (Last chance)
Less crowds, but still plenty of great art! Still only $75 EACH – same as above.

Hosted by:
Sikkema, Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd Street, NYC

more information

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3 :
MONKEY TOWN HOLIDAY PARTY {Link}
A Benefit for Monkey Town
Monkey Town t-shirts and gift cards will be on sale.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7
9 pm to 2 am
at EUROPA, Polish-American Discothèque in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
98-104 Meserole Ave. (corner of Manhattan Ave.)
G train to Nassau
18+
Tickets, sliding scale $12-20

((If you're anywhere near New York, please come out for this
event on 12/7. As discussed earlier on Rhizome, Monkeytown is one of the few venues in the region supporting emerging artists (on a daily basis!), especially those using technology in their work. Their disappearance would be a major loss to this community. Plus the performers at this event are awesome!! ~ Marisa Olsen))
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featuring:

LIVE, in his only New York appearance for 2006:
MY ROBOT FRIEND

the "crackpot genius" of
DYNASTY HANDBAG

NO ORDINARY MONKEY DJs

Lightshow by Luke Dubois, Adam Kendall, Ray Sweeten among others...

Surprise Performances

emceed by Nicklcat