Vancouver
The Home Front | Sid Dickens etches memories Sid Dickens’ three dimensional memory blocks have been best-sellers for the past two decades, since they were first discovered in Vancouver by a Hong Kong designer in the early ’90s. With each collection produced in a limited run, they have become international collector items. The Sun caught up with Dickens’ to chat about his latest collection, just launched in Paris. Vancouver Sun, March 6, 2015
Lego artistry is awesome Paul Hetherington, 44, is a real life Master Builder — or Lego artist, as he prefers to refer to himself. Each intricate creation can take between 20,000 and 30,000 pieces to create and two months to build. Vancouver Sun, March 8, 2015
Victoria
Robert Amos: Artistry flares behind the lens I walked into the Gage Gallery (2031 Oak Bay Ave., 250-592-2760) to catch the last days of a show of photographs by Francis Sullivan and Cameron Kuntz. Kuntz has a number of closeups of rusting iron, good professional work, but it was the roadside scenes by Sullivan that drew me in. Sullivan is a professional custom printer of photography, and last year I employed him to create new prints from old photographs for my exhibition of the work of Harold Mortimer-Lamb (francissullivanphoto.com). Sullivan’s skill brought a velvety lustre and a sensitive period tone to what had sometimes been pretty scrappy prints. Times Colonist, March 6, 2015
Montreal
La ville, la nuit, le doute La pénombre dans laquelle sont plongées les salles de la Galerie de l’UQAM, en cette première semaine de mars, a des airs de cinéma. Ce n’est pas un hasard. Le Devoir, March 7, 2015
Toronto
Meet the photographers competing for this year’s $50,000 Scotiabank Photography Award Three Canadian artists – two females, one male – are vying for this year’s Scotiabank Photography Award. Globe and Mail, March 9, 2015
Canada
List of nominated titles for the Melva J. Dwyer Award / Liste des publications en nomination pour le Prix Melva J. Dwyer Established in recognition of the contribution made to the field of art librarianship by Melva Dwyer, former head of the Fine Arts Library, University of British Columbia, the award recognizes the creators of exceptional reference or research tools relating to Canadian art and architecture. The award will be announced and presented during convocation ceremonies at the annual ARLIS/NA Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, in March 2015. Press Release/ARLIS CANADA, March 10, 2015
Los Angeles
Matthew Barney, Artist and Ex-Boyfriend, Gets Museum Show in Los Angeles The show, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, will consist of sculptures, photographs and other material plucked from Mr. Barney’s film “River of Fundament.” New York Times, March 11, 2015
New York
Who Stole (And Then Returned) An Oscar Murillo Painting From The Floor Of MoMA? “Doyle said that the painting was unharmed, adding that ‘no action such as an arrest was taken.’ The painting was returned to the floor of the gallery, where, she said, ‘the museum will assure that there is the appropriate level of security in the exhibition.’ She did not say how the museum was able to identify the person who took the work, describing that as a ‘security matter.’” New York Times, March 6, 2015
London
Winston Churchill paintings accepted for nation in lieu of tax The 37 paintings by former PM were offered following death last year of wartime leader’s last surviving child, Mary Soames. The Guardian, March 10, 2015
Hans Ulrich Obrist: ‘Everything I do is somehow connected to velocity’ Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist talks and travels incessantly, barely sleeps and never cooks. He’s far too busy keeping London’s Serpentine gallery at the pinnacle of conceptual art with his eccentric brand of intellectualism. The Guardian, March 8, 2015
Maastricht
Van Gogh Landscape To Be Shown For First Time In 100 Years “Le Moulin d’Alphonse Daudet à Fontvieille, which depicts vivid green grapevines leading up to a windmill with broken wings in the distance, is a work on paper that he created with graphite, reed pen and ink and watercolour shortly after he reached Arles, in the south of France.” They will be unveiling it at TEFAF Maastricht, arguably the world’s most prestigious art fair, opening in the Netherlands on Friday. They have set the price “in the region of $10m (£6.6m)”, which tallies with the figure fetched by a comparable work sold by Sotheby’s a decade ago. The vast majority are in public collections. The Guardian, March 9, 2015
Rome
U.S. tourists arrested for carving initials into Rome ColosseumTwo American tourists have been ordered to appear in court for carving their names into the Colosseum, the latest act of vandalism sustained by the ancient monument at the hands of tourists. CBC, March 9, 2015
Vatican City
Vatican receives ransom demand for stolen Michelangelo letters <href=”#commentwrapper”>read The Vatican said on Sunday it had received a ransom demand for the return of two rare documents written by Renaissance master Michelangelo that were stolen from its archives nearly 20 years ago. CBC, March 8, 2015
Nimrud
ISIS Destroys Third Ancient Site In Three Days “On Friday, the group razed 3,000-year old Nimrud and on Saturday, they bulldozed 2,000-year old Hatra – both UNESCO world heritage sites.” On Sunday, they reportedly went after Khorsabad, which “was constructed as a new capital of Assyria by King Sargon II shortly after he came to power in 721 BC.” The Telegraph, March 9, 2015
“They Want To Turn The Clocks Back To Year Zero”: Why ISIS Destroys Ancient Monuments “Destroying some of the world’s greatest archaeological and cultural treasures is something that flows from a fanatically purist interpretation of Sunni Islam as first laid down in 7th-century Arabia and revived more than a millennium later.” The Guardian, March 10, 2015
International
Russell Smith: When does photojournalism cross the line into fiction? Italian photographer Giovanni Troilo’s series The Dark Heart of Europe was stripped of its prize from the World Press Photo Awards after being revealed as having crossed photojournalism’s ethical line. Globe and Mail, March 5, 2015
Cheryl Siegel
Librarian/Archivist
Vancouver Art Gallery 750 Hornby St. Vancouver BC, V6Z 2H7 604-662-4709