| | Once Divided Germany Marks Bitter 50th Anniversary of the Construction of the Berlin Wall
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A visitor looks at a model of the former inner city boarder at Friedrichstrasse during the special exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Wall at the Allied Museum in Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany. The exhibiton entitled 'Like a tinderbox! Berlin crisis and construction of the Wall' examines the international context of the construction of the Wall. EPA/JOERG CARSTENSEN.
By: Juergen Baetz, Associated Press
BERLIN (AP).- The Berlin Wall's construction 50 years ago must be a constant reminder to citizens today to stand up for freedom and democracy, the city's mayor said Saturday as a united Germany commemorated the bitter anniversary. Seeing Berlin divided by the wall tore apart the country as well as separating the city's streets, neighbors and families, mayor Klaus Wowereit said at a televised ceremony. "It is our shared responsibility to keep the memory alive and to pass it on to the coming generations as a reminder to stand up for freedom and democracy to ensure that such injustice may never happen again," Wowereit said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who grew up behind the wall in Germany's communist eastern part — also attended the commemoration in Berlin, where parts of the wall and an attached surveillance tower now form a museum. The road where the museum is located was divided in two on August 13, 1961, and some 2,000 east German residents were expelled from t ... More |
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| Art of the Western World: Illuminating PBS Documentary Series Release Announced | | Frank Stella: Wall Sculptures Inspired by Archaeological Sites in Ancient Anatolia | | U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar Announces Statue of Liberty to Close for Yearlong Repairs | 
Four years in the making and filmed at over 150 locations in 8 countries, this eye-opening tour through 2,500 years of Western art travels from sun-bleached temples to soaring cathedrals, palaces to villas, galleries to gardens, and Soho’s streets to the Arizona desert.
SILVER SPRING, MD.- Broadcast on PBS, the illuminating nine-part documentary series, Art of the Western World, debuts on DVD from Athena on September 27, 2011. Historian Michael Wood (Legacy, The Story of India) hosts this fascinating overview of painting, sculpture, and architecture, from ancient Greece to the postmodern era. Four years in the making and filmed at over 150 locations in 8 countries, this eye-opening tour through 2,500 years of Western art travels from sun-bleached temples to soaring cathedrals, palaces to villas, galleries to gardens, and Soho’s streets to the Arizona desert. Complemented by close-up views of masterpieces, walks through important buildings, and informative commentary by historians and scholars, the DVD 3-vol. set also ... More | | 
Frank Stella, Tell Shishara. Sandcast aluminum, 2002.
EAST HAMPTON, NY.- The works in Vered's exhibition, Frank Stella: Fully Volumetric Reliefs, are boldly entwined with lived experience and Stella's interests in archeology and architecture. These sculptures, from Stella's reflections on key archeological sites in ancient Anatolia, are energetic metal wall constructions made of industrial materials. One of the greatest artists of his generation, only he and Jasper Johns have had 2 retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Stella's instantly acclaimed 1958 Minimalist paintings, contrasted sharply with the era's Abstract Expressionist, emotional canvases. Stella was an early advocate of making non-representational paintings, rather than artwork that alluded to underlying meanings, emotions or narratives. He wanted his audiences to appreciate color, shape and structure alone and then he proceeded to challenge the very notion of a painting by declaring his flat canv ... More | | 
The Statue of Liberty is seen in New York harbor. AP Photo/Richard Drew.
NEW YORK, N.Y. (AP).- The Statue of Liberty will close for a year at the end of October as it undergoes a $27.25 million renovation that will make the interior safer and more accessible, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced Wednesday. The renovations are limited to the monument, and Liberty Island will remain open and the statue itself will be mostly unobstructed from view, officials said in a statement. Tegan Firth, a spokeswoman for Statue Cruises, which on an average Saturday during the summer ferries about 18,000 people to Liberty Island, said the renovation won't have a significant impact on visitation. "The entire experience of visiting these national landmarks of the United States remains absolutely the same," she said. The National Park Service, which manages the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island, said it will close the monument on Oct. 28, after ... More |
| Dirty Pictures Exhibition by Nathaniel Ward and Timothy Bergstrom at the HungryMan Gallery | | Marrakech Art Fair Announces It will Offer a Broader View on The Artistic Emerging Scenes | | Yoshua Okón Blurs the Lines Between Documentary, Reality, and Fiction at the Hammer Museum | 
Timothy Bergstrom, The truth is out there, 2010, Oil, glue, string and floss on burlap, 36 x 30 inches.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- HungryMan Gallery presents the exhibition, Dirty Pictures featuring the work of Chicago based painter Timothy Bergstrom and New York based photographer Nathaniel Ward. The “dirty picture” is one that is impure and incites lust. It challenges conventionality and creates something desirable outside the boundaries of what is acceptable. Dirty Pictures explores what happens when an artist challenges the conventional forms of his practice. Both Bergstrom and Ward do this by exploring the spacial nature of surface. Bergstrom's practice revolves around the use of materials to blur the intention of his paintings. Layers of glue or plexiglass are used to create distance in his paintings, sometimes hiding unreadable text within a pastiche of color and texture. Ward, on the other hand, uses large format images to transform the flat quality of photography into works more referential of painting. Thi ... More | | 
Turan Aksoy, Motif-Caktirmadan Gostermek, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 230x200cm, courtesy Pi Artworks
MARRAKECH.- For its second edition, the modern and contemporary fair Marrakech Art Fair is back at the Palace Es Saadi from September 30th to October 3rd 2011, with 45 international galleries exhibiting their major artists. About 20 additional galleries join the Marrakech Art Fair 2010 exhibitors. Besides the important representation of the Turkish contemporary scene, and for the very first time, 6 galleries from Istanbul participating to an international art fair outside Istanbul (CDA Projects, PI Artworks, Empire Project, CAM Gallery, PG Art Gallery, and Merkur), Marrakech Art Fair also welcomes two major actors of the New-Yorker scene: Metro Pictures and Edwynn Houk Gallery. Another front rank gallery has just announced its participation to the fair : Galleria Continua, which is established in San Gimignano (Italy), Beijing (China) and Le Moulin (France). All these renowned galleries reinforce the internationa ... More | | 
Yoshua Okón, Still from Octopus, 2011. Multi-channel video installation, color, sound. Image courtesy of the artist.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Mexican artist Yoshua Okón’s videos blur the lines between documentary, reality, and fiction. He collaborates closely with his actors (often amateurs who are also the subjects of the work) to create sociological examinations that ask viewers to contemplate uncomfortable situations and circumstances. He works with marginalized groups such as pit-bull owners, Nazi-war memorabilia collectors, and Venice Beach homeless people, in order to reflect back onto mainstream culture. For this show, Okón debuts a new two-channel video installation which was produced during his residency at the Hammer. The work, shot on location at a Los Angeles Home Depot store, explores the relationships amongst Guatemalan day laborers who at home fought on opposite sides, yet here in the U.S. are working together in their efforts to find work. Yoshua Okón was born in Mexico City in 1970, where he currently lives. He received his B ... More |
| New and Recent Works by Ruth Ewan in First Major Show at Dundee Contemporary Arts | | Dual Nature: Science Illustrations of Dan Otte at the Academy of Natural Sciences | | Guggenheim Museum's Ultra Rare "Art Car" Inspired BMW to be Sold at Quail Lodge | 
A jukebox hosting over 2000 progressively themed or idealistic songs, entitled A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World.
DUNDEE.- Dundee Contemporary Arts presents new and recent works by Ruth Ewan in her first major solo show in the United Kingdom. For Brank & Heckle, Ruth Ewan explores notions of enforced silence and vocal protest by combining her ongoing interest in creative forms of agitation with new work responding to Dundee’s social heritage. Ewan is interested in viewing history as alive, relevant and capable of configuring the future. Conceptually led but socially realised, her work takes specific historical images and sounds and renders them ‘active’ through use. The exhibition title combines two conflicting ideas: ‘Brank’ refers to the Scottish word for the Scold’s Bridle, used to silence and torture women, while ‘Heckle’ refers to an act of spontaneous vocal engagement, said to have originated in Dundee’s jute mills. Born in Aberdeen, Ruth Ewan grew up in Fife and studied at Edinburgh Col ... More | | 
Three hoppers from Dual Nature: Science Illustrations of Daniel Otte. Photo: Daniel Otte.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- For one Philadelphia scientist, grasshoppers and beetles are more than objects of research: they are works of art. In an exhibit opening Saturday, Aug. 6, scientist Dan Otte has turned his study specimens into beautiful scientific illustrations. Dual Nature: Science Illustrations of Dan Otte features original insect drawings and paintings by Otte, senior curator of entomology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, where the exhibit will be shown through Dec. 4. Otte uses colored pencil, graphite, ink, and watercolors to capture in exquisite detail the intricacies of grasshoppers, beetles, crickets and weevils. He also is a pioneer in recording and interpreting sound-producing insects. The Academy owns one of the largest collections of insect songs, and visitors will hear some of these in the exhibit. Otte (OT-ee) has travelled the world for more than 40 years to study and collect insects. He is a world expert on ... More | | 
This is the only BMW car ever painted by an authorized BMW Art Car artist for a private client. Photo: Bonhams.
CARMEL, CA.- In anticipation of its 14th annual summer sale at Quail Lodge (the longest running auction during the famed Pebble Beach Car Week), Bonhams is delighted to announce that it has been selected to represent the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's singular 1979 BMW M1 Pro Car painted by Frank Stella. The famed BMW Art Cars series began in 1975 when artist Alexander Calder was commissioned by BMW to paint a car that was to be raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Since then, the impressive roster of modernist artists employed by the company works has included such illustrious names as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and David Hockney, to name a few. Included in that exclusive guild of artists was Frank Stella who, in 1979, used his series "Polar Coordinates" as inspiration for the unique, one-off BMW race car offered here. Special ordered by seven-time world champion IMSA racer Peter Gregg, the car was built ... More |
| Los Angeles' Most Famous Landmark, the Hollywood Sign, Has Neighbors Fuming at Tourist Invasion | | New York Photographer Richard Rothman Announces New Book: Redwood Saw | | First Institutional Solo Exhibition of Swiss Artist Marianne Flotron at Kunsthalle Bern | 
Tourists photograph each other on a hill with a view of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes.
By: Christina Hoag, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES, CA. (AP).- Robert deVico can't help but laugh at the irony: a 1920s advertisement for his Hollywoodland neighborhood lured homebuyers by promising sylvan hills "above the traffic laden arteries, congestion, smoke and fog of the metropolis" and branded the community with a giant mountainside sign. Today, the Hollywood sign is Los Angeles' most famous landmark and deVico's ridge-top street, which offers the best view around, boasts New York City-worthy gridlock. "It can take me 40 minutes to get out of my driveway. What if I had an emergency with my child?" sputtered the production designer, who bought his house 12 years ago. "It's like being in Times Square." Featuring postcard-perfect close-ups of the iconic sign, this tranquil neighborhood of winding roads dotted with hideaway homes and panoramic vistas ... More | | 
The body of work, made over a five-year period, is gathered together in the artist's monumental first book, Redwood Saw.
NEW YORK, N.Y.- In the summer of 2004, the New York photographer Richard Rothman traveled west with a 4x5 camera to explore the remaining fragments of ancient old-growth forests in Northern California. He pitched a tent amid the mammoth stands of redwoods and began making formal, intricate portraits of the forest, which he describes as "the most visually stimulating environment I had ever been in." Unexpectedly, he also began developing an interest in the neighboring town of Crescent City, an economically depressed logging and fishing community. Rothman was affected by the town's architecture, its emotional tenor, its political and religious culture, and the sometimes unconscious relationship that the townspeople had with the corralled forest to the east and the Pacific Ocean, which represents the end of the Western frontier. The contrast between the radical, spectacularly ornate environment of the forest and the trashed, disposable landscape of the town that abutted it became t ... More | | 
The exhibition features major recent works by the artist as well as a new video-installation, called Work, produced by Kunsthalle Bern.
BERN.- Kunsthalle Bern presents the first institutional solo exhibition of Swiss artist Marianne Flotron. The exhibition features major recent works by the artist as well as a new video-installation, called Work, produced by Kunsthalle Bern. Because of her interests in the interrelationship between political or economical systems and human behaviour, Marianne Flotron attempts to find the traces of manipulation, which could potentially influence this behaviour. Through therapies, trainings and self-help books, the "self" gets dramatized and fictionalized. Authenticity is lost when emotions are produced and deployed in order to improve social competence and access to the social market. Flotron's video works tackle in a progressive and accumulative way the different strategies of the fictionalisation of the self in our post-capitalist society. That's why recently for her subject matter the artist is ... More |
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 MOCA GA Working Artist Project Winner, Micah Stansell, to Premier The Water and The Blood Exhibition ATLANTA, GA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) announces the opening of the second installment in the series of the 2010/2011 Working Artist Project exhibitions - Micah Stansell: The Water and The Blood. There will be an opening reception for Stansell's exhibition on Friday, Aug. 26, from 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. There will be an Artist Talk by Stansell on Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. with a reception beforehand at 6:30 p.m. The Artist Talk is free to the public. Micah Stansell: The Water and The Blood runs Aug. 27 - Dec. 3, 2011. In addition to moving images and sound, Stansell's work includes a water component. The artist states, "This is a multi-channel video and sound installation with some very analogue elements of interactivity. My hope is that it is an experiential exhibition." MOCA GA Director Annette Cone-Skelton added, "We are excited to see another Georgia artist benefit directly from the Working Artist Proje ... More Polish/Canadian Artist Andrzej Maciejewski Presents Garden of Eden at the Camerawork Gallery in Portland PORTLAND, OR.- An interesting photographic exhibition titled "Garden of Eden", by Polish/Canadian artist Andrzej Maciejewski, will take place in the Camerawork Gallery in Portland, Oregon from August 20th to September 23rd, 2011. Garden of Eden is a series of still-life photographs, inspired by classic old masters paintings, but showing our modern fruits and vegetables from supermarkets, with PLU stickers or plastic wraps on them. This project is an invitation to the reflection on our attitude towards the nature, on the direction in which our civilization is going and on our way of looking at the reality. One of the interesting features of the project is the mixture of modern and traditional (or even outdated techniques) that were used to realize it. The photographs were taken with 4x5 view camera on colour transparencies and developed in the darkroom. After that they were scanned and the prints for an exhibition ... More New Website Targets Teachers and Students to Study Native Responses to Environmental Challenges WASHINGTON, D.C.- Developed in collaboration with the Akwesasne Mohawk of northern New York, the Campo Kumeyaay Nation of southern California, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe of northern Minnesota and the Lummi Nation of Washington state, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian launches a new educational website, “American Indian Responses to Environmental Challenges,” that will target middle and high school teachers, students and the general public. Users can see how tribes use their traditional culture, values and indigenous knowledge in combination with contemporary science and technologies to inform their environmental work. One of the primary objectives is that students everywhere will see a connection to their own lives and the communities in these stories. Visitors to the website can watch up to 20 videos, explore images and objects from the museum’s vast collection, learn Native term ... More Eras Clash on Nevada's Comstock VIRGINIA CITY, NV (AP).- More than 150 years after the discovery of one of the world's richest silver veins touched off a mining frenzy that drew thousands of people west and made Virginia City a wealthy boomtown, a mining company wants to resume digging for riches in the dusty hills southeast of Reno. But unlike the scrappy miners who used picks and shovels to chisel away at the massive, underground pocket of silver and gold known as the Comstock Lode, the company's plans are for open pit mining. They aren't being met with open arms. Residents in the historic Comstock region embrace the catacombs of century-old mines with pride and purpose. But these days, it's not wealth from gold and silver but the mining of tourists lured by the rich history of the Old West that keep the town humming. Tours are conducted in an old underground mine beneath a saloon, and More Artist Pablo Bronstein Introduces Ballet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts LONDON.- Contemporary artist Pablo Bronstein (born 1977, Buenos Aires), whose critically acclaimed exhibition Sketches for Regency Living continues at the ICA until 25 September, presents Plaza Minuet / The Birth of Venus, an original ballet devised by Bronstein and co-commissioned by the ICA and Tramway, Glasgow, at both venues in September. Classically trained dancers, including Matthias Sperlinger and Rosalind Masson, perform the two-part ballet wearing costumes designed by Mary Katrantzou. In Plaza Minuet, Bronstein develops ideas explored in his contribution to the Tate Triennial 2006, in which performers obey a series of rules of behaviour. They follow lines marked out on the floor that might represent an architectural void or an imagined piazza. Part two, The Birth of Venus, opens with the entry of the King symbolising the birth and triumph of Venus. London-based Pablo Bronstein creates drawings, models ... MoreSouth Mountain Museum Upgrades Planned in Maryland BOONSBORO, MD. (AP).- Maryland's Department of Natural Resources says it's upgrading museums in the South Mountain Recreation Area near Boonsboro in time for the Civil War sesquicentennial. Park Manager Dan Spedden told a news conference Monday in Hagerstown that the agency will refurbish buildings at Washington Monument State Park and Gathland State Park to add exhibits focused largely on the Sept. 14, 1862, Battle of South Mountain. At Washington Monument, exhibits will be added to an existing museum that was once the park concession stand. At Gathland, a lodge building will house exhibits about the fighting that occurred in several gaps along 12 miles of the mountain ridge. Spedden says $187,000 has been awarded for building rehabilitation. The agency is seeking bids for exhibit construction. ... More |
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