Visual Arts News Digest, Compiled by the Vancouver Art Gallery Library, May 2, 2018

Vancouver

Last chance to see ‘The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg’ at the Vancouver Art Gallery. If you haven’t had a chance to go check out the first-ever art retrospective in Canada by Japanese international art icon Takashi Murakami at the Vancouver Art Gallery, this week is your last chance to do so.  Murakami’s exhibit, called The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg features over 50 works, some of them never-before-seen.  Daily Hive, May 1, 2018

The problem with PPP: mediocre buildings.  The new East Vancouver campus of Emily Carr University of Art and Design should be a showpiece. This is an art school, after all, committed to creativity. You’d think lead architects Diamond Schmitt would get a chance to do something great for the faculty and students.  But for this 289,000-square-foot campus on Great Northern Way in East Van, the university didn’t hire architects. They hired Applied Arts Partners, a consortium of private companies that includes architects, builders, developers and building managers (such as Chernoff Thompson, Diamond Schmitt, EllisDon and Brookfield Infrastructure) who will finance, design, construct, operate and maintain the facility for 30 years…Over the past few years, I have seen a number of buildings produced through the PPP (Public Private Partnership) process, among them the new CHUM hospital in Montreal. All have been competent, and each comes with a story about being built on time and on budget. Not one has been excellent architecture. Not even Emily Carr.  Globe & Mail, April 29, 2018

ART SEEN: Heterosexism alive and well in new documentary on Caravaggio.  A new documentary about the great Baroque painter is an example of heterosexism in action. You could call it straightwashing.   Why would I say something so provocative? Because I’ve seen Caravaggio: The Soul and the Blood and its silence about a key part of Caravaggio’s life and work is so glaring it calls into question everything else in the 90-minute documentary.  As I watched it with my partner Leon, we grew increasingly incredulous. Twenty minutes in, 40 minutes, 60 and then right to the end. Nothing. No mention of Caravaggio’s homosexuality. We were so upset we were yelling at the TV.  Maybe, you might say, his private life bears no relation to his work. It’s an argument that could be made about some artists – but not him. Who he was and who he painted are inextricably linked…  Caravaggio: The Soul and The Blood is screening at three Cineplex Theatres in Metro Vancouver on two days this month. It’s at 7 pm on Wednesday, May 2 at the Park Theatre in Vancouver and at Silver City Riverport in Richmond and Cineplex Cinemas Coquitlam. On Saturday, May 13, the film screens at noon at all three theatres. Vancouver Sun, May 1, 2018

Toronto

Gordon Parks’ photo captures an ambiguous moment from a tumultuous era. It’s the look on the women’s face, front left, that gets you: Dubious but hopeful, a seen-it-all weariness behind those sunglasses that’s still left room for a glimmer of optimism, however faint. We don’t know what she’s looking at or who she’s listening to, but the young man behind her, whose broad grin conveys an unleavened joy, offers a clue: He holds an issue of Muhammed Speaks, a weekly newspaper produced by the Nation of Islam under Malcolm X; the adoration in his eyes suggests they’re focused on the man himself.   It’s Harlem, 1963, a time and place Gordon Parks was photographing with deep commitment and purpose.  Toronto Star, April 30, 2018

A Queen West arts centre’s failure to launch. Waiting and seeing, more than anything, has been the hallmark of the Toronto Media Arts Centre, a coalition of non-profit arts organizations that the couple have led through a three-year legal standoff with the city over the right to occupy this, a 38,000-square-foot purpose-built space.    Toronto Star, April 30, 2018

Ottawa

The New Ottawa Art Gallery Promises to Welcome All.  Free admission. Open every night until 9 p.m. A barrier-free environment. Gender-neutral washrooms. Haptic tours for people with vision loss. And free childcare during opening receptions, as well as from 4 to 7 p.m. every Wednesday.  For some galleries about to debut a major renovation or expansion, the architecture is the main attraction.  But the Ottawa Art Gallery—whose new KPMB-designed cube, opening to the public April 28, is home to all of the above features—is touting accessibility just as much as its soaring ceilings and dramatic staircases.  Canadian Art, April 26, 2018

Why the Chagall Debacle Still Matters, and What to Fix Now.  On Thursday—after weeks of public outcry, and also what the Globe and Mail reports was a “heated” board of trustees meeting on Wednesday evening—the National Gallery of Canada officially announced that it would be pulling Chagall’s La Tour Eiffel from a May 15 Christie’s New York auction.  The board’s Wednesday decision was a triumph for many Chagall fans across Canada, especially the ones who had been petitioning the gallery and the government for a reversal—a reversal that comes at no small cost, being estimated at some $1 million in auction-withdrawal fees.   It should still concern many folks, both in and out of arts-policy-wonk circles, that a gaffe of this scale happened at Canada’s national art museum—which also happens to be Canada’s best-funded art institution, to the tune of at least $48 million in federal appropriations per year—and that seemingly all along the way, many measures for both accountability and transparency were either weakened, refused or resisted at multiple points.  Canadian Art, May 2, 2018.  See also: Shhh…agall: National Gallery CEO silent as questions surface about Chagall debacle.  Ottawa Art Gallery, April 30, 2018

Fredericton

Beaverbrook Art Gallery stays dry despite rising waters on St. John River. Though the water has crept up around the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, none of that water is coming inside. The gallery and its valuable art have managed to stay dry so far.   “The good news is the flood is staying on the riverside of the building, and all of the systems that have been built to safeguard the gallery are working beautifully,” said gallery director Tom Smart.  Staff at the gallery have been doing flood drills since January, making sure the generators work, flood gates are ready, and the art is able to be moved quickly.   CBC News, April 28, 2018

Halifax

Revenue Canada demotes Halifax sculptor to ‘hobby artist’ and gives him $14K tax bill. An established Halifax sculptor says he was shocked and insulted by a Canada Revenue Agency ruling demoting him to the status of “hobby artist” and giving him a $14,500 tax bill.  Installation artist Steve Higgins, also a part-time instructor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, was notified his expense claims from a 2013 art project were rejected because the work was funded by public grants and not sold for profit. The basis of the ruling has some Canadian arts groups concerned about what they see as a dangerous precedent.  CRA notified Higgins that “Most of the income generated is from grants, honorariums and awards, and not the sales of artwork. Therefore, all income and expenses related to the business has been removed.”  Some observers say the Higgins reassessment reveals a profound misunderstanding about contemporary art in Canada.    CBC News, April 30, 2018

Los Angeles

“I Wanted to Make Art that Told a Story”: Alison Saar on Her Eloquent Sculptures.  The artist Alison Saar set a goal for herself long ago: to clearly communicate her ideas and emotions through the power of form. Her sculptures have their own personal vocabulary that speaks in a direct language about history, race, and mythology. If her sculptures are the melodies that capture one’s soul, the narratives behind them are the lyrics.   Hyperallergic, May 1, 2018

New York

Frieze Artist Award winner Kapwani Kiwanga takes on colonialism  Visitors venturing to Frieze New York this week will see a site-specific installation by the emerging, Canada-born artist Kapwani Kiwanga, the winner of the Frieze Artist Award, which launches this year in New York. Kiwanga’s open-air piece, entitled Shady, is an imposing structure made of shade cloth, a material used in large-scale farming in Africa. The cavernous installation, punctuated with holes and passageways, sparks debate about issues ranging from the colonial appropriation of land to freedom of movement.  The Art Newspaper, May 1, 2018

This Artist’s AR Junkyard Is a Seductive Meditation on What You Throw Away. Welcome to the philosophical playground that is Objects in Mirror AR Closer Than They Appear, an installation by archivist Jamie Boyle and designer Steven Dufala, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Storyscapes” in April and will be reprised at the New York Theatre Workshop from May 9th through the 19th. Of the 31 immersive media pieces at the festival, it was the only one that gave participants physical agency to wander through a real-world environment and interact with objects enhanced by augmented reality (AR)—an impressive technical and social experiment, given the nascent stage of both AR hardware and software.  Artsy, May 1, 2018

Baltimore

‘It Is an Unusual and Radical Act’: Why the Baltimore Museum Is Selling Blue-Chip Art to Buy Work by Underrepresented Artists.  The museum is selling seven works to build a “war chest” that will fund acquisitions designed to make its holdings less white and less male.  Artnet News, April 30, 2018

London

Rubens painting written off by Met Museum and valued at £22,000 now expected to make millions at auction.  When New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art decided to sell off a portrait of Rubens’s daughter, Clara Serena, they were convinced it was the work of a mere “follower” of the Old Master.   So, in 2013, the painting was given the modest auction estimate of between £14,500 to £22,000 ($20,000 to $30,000). But, a British collector who bought it for £457,500 ($626,500) appeared to know something the Met’s scholars did not.  Now the painting has been accepted as a Rubens original, exhibiting a uniquely intimate and spontaneous style, and is going up for auction at Christie’s in July with an estimate of between £3 million and £5 million.  London Telegraph, April 30, 2018

Elne, France

French museum discovers half of its collection are fakes.  A state-owned French art museum has discovered that more than half of its collection consists of worthless fakes and experts fear that other public galleries may also be stuffed with forgeries.  An art historian raised the alarm after noticing that paintings attributed to Etienne Terrus showed buildings that were only constructed after the artist’s death in 1922.   Experts confirmed that 82 of the 140 works displayed at the Terrus museum in Elne, the artist’s birthplace in southern France, were fakes.  London Telegraph, April 2018

Qatar

Jean Nouvel’s National Museum of Qatar Unveils New Images as It Nears Completion.  The National Museum of Qatar has been in the works since 2010 and now, as the cultural hub designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel is nearing completion, a beautiful array of new images have been released. The French architect’s design for the Doha museum was inspired by the desert rose, a type of crystal formation found in arid, sandy environments, and features an interlocking disk motif. Constructed of steel, glass, and fiber concrete, the 225,000-square-foot complex will boast a 220-seat theater, a research center, laboratories, two shops, two restaurants, and a café. The grounds include a park landscaped with indigenous plants, and there will also be 70-seat forum dedicated to preserving Qatar’s culinary traditions.  Architectural Digest, May 1, 2018