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curated by sierra gonzalez 
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Banking on the arts

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Dancer Sayako Tomiyoshi from the English National Ballet displays a Damien Hirst-designed sign at the British Museum. Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

British artists, performers, museum directors, and leaders in theater and film rallied at the British Museum last week for the release of Cultural Capital: A Manifesto for the Future, a new report that demonstrates the economic contributions of the arts and culture sector. These leaders hope to discourage the British government from slashing funding in response to the country's huge deficit, arguing that the arts—especially theatre, music, and museums—both create jobs and contribute to the nation's GDP.

Last year, similar worries over arts funding in America prompted Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein to publish a study takes the argument one step further: artists contribute directly through their own fields, but they have also historically played a major role in scientific and technological innovation. What's more, the most successful scientists are more likely to pursue artistic expression:

...almost all Nobel laureates in the sciences actively engage in arts as adults. They are twenty-five times as likely as the average scientist to sing, dance, or act; seventeen times as likely to be a visual artist; twelve times more likely to write poetry and literature; eight times more likely to do woodworking or some other craft; four times as likely to be a musician; and twice as likely to be a photographer. Many connect their art to their scientific ability with some riff on Nobel prizewinning physicist Max Planck words: "The creative scientist needs an artistic imagination."

Their succinct article in Psychology Today gives many examples of scientific discoveries and technological innovations borne of artistic pursuits. "Successful scientists and inventors are artistic people," the authors argue. "Hobble the arts and you hobble innovation. It's a lesson our legislators need to learn."

Filed under  //   art   britain   economy   innovation   science  

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Soap opera as performance art

If you bake some bread in a museum space it becomes art, but if you do it at home you're a baker.
—Marina Abramović in conversation with James Franco, about the importance of context in performance art

In today's Wall Street Journal, James Franco gives us an overview of performance art in the 20th century, noting that recent recognition by the Guggenheim, Art Basel Miami, and MoMA's P.S. 1 lend credibility to an art form earlier considered frivolous and pretentious.

Just as the art world is reconsidering the stature of performance art, Franco hopes that his appearance on General Hospital will encourage people to "ask themselves if soap operas are really that far from entertainment that is considered critically legitimate was panned by traditional art critics."

[A Star, a Soap, and the Meaning of Art | WSJ]

(Also, Palo Alto represent! Though Franco and I went to the same high school, we never crossed paths.)

 

Filed under  //   art   film   performance art  

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Trash gets a second chance

If you throw everything away, there will be just a big pile of garbage, and you won’t have anything to make collages with.

Alexandra Lehrer, 5, a student at Beginnings Nursery School in Manhattan. The school's Materials Center collects unwanted materials (everything from LPs to champagne corks to seashells) and uses them in the children's art projects. [ Where One Man's Trash Is Preschoolers' Art Material | NYTimes ]

Filed under  //   art   education   green   recycling  

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Sugimoto as scientist

To be a good photographer you have to be a scientist as well.

Hiroshi Sugimoto on his latest project, "Lightning Fields." Sugimoto uses a Van de Graaff generator (capable of creating 400,000 volts) to charge a metal ball that he uses to shock large sheets of film. [Lightning Fields | Modern Painter ]

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Above: "Lightning Fields 013" (2006). Gelatin silver print, 59 x 47 in.

Below: Self-portrait by Hiroshi Sugimoto, 2008.

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Filed under  //   art   photography   science  

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Is anybody buying art these days?

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine includes an interesting profile of the Mugrabi family, New York art dealers whose collection of Warhol, Hirst, Basquiat and other modern artists, is one of the largest and most valuable in the world. The Mugrabis' collection of Warhols (around 800 pieces last year, according to the Wall Street Journal) essentially singlehandedly controls the price of the remaining Warhols on the market. According to that WSJ article, "Most people don't realize that Warhol is the Dow Industrial Average" for the art world, said Richard Polsky, a longtime private dealer in Sausalito.

The article looks at the economic climate through the Mugrabis' eyes—they attended a record-shattering Sotheby's auction on the same day Lehman Bothers declared bankruptcy. I encourage you to read the whole article, but here are a few teasers of the things I found most interesting (emphasis mine, of course):

Jose [Mugrabi, the patriarch] had been talking about the incongruity between the day’s financial news and the auction frenzy, and ventured an interpretation: “When the empires fall — Roman, Greek — all that is left is the art.”
“You can’t have an impact buying one or two pictures per artist. We’re not buying art like Ron Lauder — just to put it on a wall. We want inventory.” [Older son Alberto] equated inventory with liquidity: “It gives you staying power.” In the commodities sector, the analogue would be making a run on a precious metal — in order to manipulate the price.
Last year, when Jose learned that a sculpture by the Cuban duo Los Carpinteros he’d just donated to the Guggenheim was requisitioned to storage, he bought it back. “From now on, if I make a gift, I tell them, ‘You have to expose the art,’ ” he said.

The sheer volume of the family’s collection strikes some people as something that is in opposition to the public good. “It’s not that they don’t love art,” Charlie Finch, a columnist for Artnet.com, said. “They’ve just been hogging everything. Come on, let someone else in on the game.”

[Artist George Condo] considered [the Mugrabis' interest in his works] a pretty big stamp of commercial approval: “They’re prestigious collectors. To see your own paintings in one of their apartments, hanging next to a beautiful Basquiat — it feels great.”

“They said it was Black Monday — well, not for Damien,” Tony Shafrazi, a gallerist from New York, said. “It was magic, it was. It was rainbows. This proves that art is more important than money.”

“Damien Hirst should be running Lehman Brothers,” Alberto said.

Related note: The De Young in San Francisco just opened Warhol Live, an exhibit that showcases Warhol's relationship with music. I haven't checked it out yet but have heard that it's enjoyable.

Filed under  //   art   art business   auction   collector   economy   new york  

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Penelope Cruz: protect art, our universal language

Art, in any form, is and has been and will always be our universal language and we should do everything we can, everything we can, to protect its survival.

Actress Penelope Cruz, on receiving the Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Filed under  //   art   awards   film   pop culture   quotes  

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Stimulating the arts

Are you suggesting that somehow if you work in [the arts], it isn't real when you lose your job, your mortgage or your health insurance? We're trying to treat people who work in the arts the same way as anybody else.

On Friday, Wisconsin Representative David Obey (a Democrat, unsurprisingly) successfully argued on the House floor to include the arts in the stimulus plan.  Though the earlier plan that passed through the Senate did not include any arts funding, the plan that Obama will sign includes $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, which would be able to pass the money along to museums, theaters and art centers. (Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had tried to bar these organizations from receiving stimulus money in an amendment that lumped them with casinos, golf courses, and swimming pools as "wasteful, non-stimulative" projects.)

While arts funding has long been a point of contention and a part of the culture war between Democrats and Republicans, the arts industry provides 6 million jobs, $30 billion in tax revenue and $166 billion in annual economic impact; it's also at a 12.5% unemployment rate, according to the NYTimes article that reported NEA's stimulus funding. As in other sectors, the full impact of the current economy on the arts is still unknown, but likewise, the stimulus funding—though it won't be a quick fix—will be a step towards recovery.

Filed under  //   art   economy   museum   politics  

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MoMA Atlantic/Pacific

Momaspan

Photo: Chester Higgins Jr. for the New York Times

Until mid-March, Brooklyn's Atlantic/Pacific subway station will host over 50 masterpieces from the MoMA... sort of. The glossy reproductions of Pollock, Picasso, and others (complete with the same wall text seen at the MoMA in Midtown) are part of the museum's ad campaign designed to remind New Yorkers of the masterpieces in their backyard and drive membership sales. The project, which occupies every single ad space in the station, also includes a microsite with video tours, a Flickr-generated gallery, and resources to learn more about the art on display. [NYT]

Filed under  //   advertising   art   brooklyn   museum   new york   public art  

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Prado and Google Earth

This shows you the body of the painting, but what you won't find here is the soul.

Miguel Zugaza, director of the Prado museum on its partnership with Google Earth. Fourteen of the museum's masterpieces have been photographed at a resolution of up to 14,000 megapixels and can be viewed using Google Earth's 3-D buildings layer. (If, like me, you don't have Google Earth installed you can also take a peek on Maps.)

Filed under  //   art   google   museum   technology  

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Economy & Culture: Museums taking a hit

Regardless of whether big-name donors like Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch make good on their pledges, many cultural institutions are already facing tough decisions to cope with big losses in their endowment funds or other financial losses.

  • While the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles has become the poster boy of troubled museums, it seems like the economic downturn merely exacerbated that institution's management problems. Lee "CultureGrrrl" Rosenbaum has an excellent play-by-play, including her take on separate offers by philanthropist Eli Broad and local museum LACMA to "bail out" MOCA.
  • Rosenbaum's blog also looks at questionable deaccessions at the National Gallery (the LA Times arts blog also has a look at how the deaccession took place).  The American Association of Museums, Association of Art Museum Directors, and the New York State Regents' Cultural Education Committee all quickly responded by denouncing the practice of selling artworks to cover operating costs.
  • Closer to home, SF Supervisor Aaron Peskin caused quite a stir by proposing 50% funding cuts to the San Francisco Opera, Ballet, and Symphony.  The city fund that dispenses the money, Grants for the Arts, also supports other educational and cultural programs.  The SF Board of Supervisors will vote on Peskin's proposal in January.
  • Lastly, the New York Times looks at a few museums who recently expanded and how they're coping with the economic downturn. The article puts some numbers to the situation, which helps give a sense of the scale of these museums' losses.


So, what can you do? Become a member of a museum, or pick up last-minute gifts at museum stores, where revenue often goes directly to support educational programs, exhibition development, and other operating costs.

Filed under  //   art   culture   economy   museum  

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