July-August 2010

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1. Guggenheim to cut 8% of its jobs:

The Guggenheim Museum in New York has announced that it will cut 25 positions from its full-time staff, following an 18% reduction in the museum’s endowment in the last year. A record high attendance this year has helped to ensure that no exhibitions will be cancelled and the opening hours will remain the same, despite the recession.
- New York Times article

2. Dartmouth receives $50m donation for new Arts Centre:

An anonymous family has given Dartmouth College $50m, the institution’s largest ever donation, towards a new arts centre. The donation has been described as ‘inspiring’ by President James Wright. The new building is planned to be 99,000 square feet, with a 500-seat cinema and will cater for the 1,100 students who study arts courses at the college.
- Dartmouth Website article

3. Judge chides Guggenheim and MOMA over Holocaust Picasso settlement:

A judge has chided MOMA and the Guggenheim for settling the questionable ownership of two Picasso paintings out of court. Both paintings were sold by the ancestors of Julius H. Schoeps under duress in Nazi Germany, and eventually worked their way into the museums’ collections. Judge Jed Rakoff said that the museums had pursued the case ‘to clear their names (or so they said)’, but by settling out of court this supposed aim was avoided. He suggested that the Schoeps family had settled out of court for no reason other than ‘concealing the amount of money going into their pockets’. The two paintings involved were Boy Leading a Horse (above) and Le Moulin de la Galette.
- New York Times article

4. Charitable giving to the arts down 6% in 2008:

The Giving USA Foundation’s annual survey has shown that charitable giving in the USA has fallen by 2% as a result of the recession, with the Arts suffering disproportionately with a drop of 6.4% in 2008. Adjusted for inflation, this is the largest drop since the survey started in 1956.
- Google article

5. Unseen Turner and Constable paintings to go on sale at Sotheby's next month:

Two unseen paintings depicting classic English scenes by two of England’s most revered artists, Constable and Turner, will go on sale at the Old Master Paintings sale at Sotheby's in London on July 8. The Turner is believed to have been painted in the late 1820s to commemorate St. George’s Day, and depicts a boat bearing the Royal Standard on a lake in Berkshire. The Constable is, Storm Clouds over Hampstead, is believed to have been painted while the artist was caring for his dying wife in London in 1822. The paintings have been estimated at £500,000-£700,000 each.
- Telegraph article

6. Arts Council £100k prize to Wedgwood Museum, despite voting irregularity:

The Art Fund Prize for Museums and Galleries 2009, the art world’s biggest single cash prize, has been awarded to the Wedgwood Centre in Stoke on Trent, despite earlier irregularities in a public online poll via the Guardian website. The poll, which counted for one vote against the seven votes given to a panel of judges, was corrected after an ‘attempt to tamper with the results’ and was closed 12 hours early. It has been suggested that before correction, the poll had favoured the Ruthin Craft Centre from north Wales.
- BBC News article

7. LA MOCA receives much-needed $3m donation:

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art has this week received a $2m donation from one of its board members, Fred Sands. This, coupled with an anonymous donation of $1m and the $5m gifted last month, will ensure that regular service will resume at the troubled institution. The museum had been facing an uncertain future, and has already cut jobs and cancelled exhibitions in the past month.
- Los Anglese Times article

8. 15% of collapsed Cologne archive still missing:

85% of the archive’s collection has been pulled from the rubble of the devastated building following the collapse on 3 March of the municipal archive in Cologne, which contained 65,000 original documents, many from the Middle Ages. The 15% that is still missing is immersed in the groundwater of the site, and therefore difficult to access. 25% of the works that have been reclaimed have been torn or damaged in some way and experts say that it could take 30 years to restore them.
- The Art Newspaper article

9. Naked Mona Lisa goes on show near Florence:

In Vinci, the birthplace of Da Vinci, the largest exhibition of the artists work began this week at the Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci. One of the highlights of the show is the Naked Mona Lisa, once attributed to the Italian master but now considered to have only been influenced by his most famous work. The exhibition contains over 5,000 works that have been influenced by the Mona Lisa, spanning over 500 years.
- Telegraph article

10. Tory Shadow Arts minister promises there will be no budget cuts:

The shadow arts minister, Ed Vaizey, has promised that there will be no budget cuts to the arts if the Conservative government takes power. He has even suggested that the Tories would be able to reclaim an extra £50m back from the National Lottery for the arts. He hopes that his reassuring comments mean that ‘if the Tories win on a Thursday, there will be far fewer people in the arts world waking up in a cold sweat on a Friday’. Similar promises were broken by Thatcher the last time a Tory government was on the brink of victory.
- Guardian article

11. Sir Richard Rogers calls Prince Charles’s intervention in Chelsea Barracks design 'unconstitutional':

Sir Richard Rogers, one of the UK’s leading architects, has reacted angrily to Prince Charles’s comments about the unsuitability of his design for the Chelsea Barracks, which resulted in two and a half years of work being dismissed by his Qatari employers. This is the third time Prince Charles has intervened with the progress of one of Rogers’ designs, and now the award-winning architect is calling for a public inquiry into the ‘unconstitutional’ influence that the unelected Prince is exerting in the private sector of architecture. Rogers has received widespread support in his opposition to Prince Charles’s actions, most notably from Turner Prize-winner and Royal Academician Anish Kapoor.
- Guardian article

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12. Art teacher wins BP portrait prize:

Peter Monkman, an art teacher at Charterhouse School in Surrey, has won one the annual BP portrait prize, having entered pieces for the prize for 13 years straight without success. The painting of the artist’s 12-year-old daughter, entitled Changeling 2, won Monkman £25,000, a sum that he says will be going into a savings account for his children. The exhibition of the best of the prize’s entries, one of their most popular exhibitions of the year, opened at the National Portrait Gallery this week.
- Guardian article

13. Top Christie's executive resigns:

Guy Bennett, the co-head of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern art department worldwide, has resigned. He said he would ‘take some time off’ until the autumn. The other co-head, Thomas Seydoux, will now run the department.
- New York Times article

14. Louvre curator appointed to Dallas Museum of Art in senior role:

Olivier Meslay, a curator from the Musée du Louvre, has been appointed the head of Dallas Museum of Art’s departments of European and American art. During his 16 years at the Louvre, he held the positions of Curator of British, American, and Spanish painting and since 2006, Chief Curator of the Louvre Lens.
- Resnicow Scroeder article

15. Mark Coates wins the Daiwa Art Prize:

Mark Coates has won the inaugural Daiwa Foundation Art Prize of £5,000 for his fantastical, surreal photographs. The Anglo-Japanese foundation was set up in 1988 to foster closer ties between Britain and Japan in areas such as the visual arts, and the winner will have his work exhibited in a number of high profile galleries in Japan.
- Aesthetic Magazine article

16. Baroness Andrews appointed Chair of English Heritage:

New Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has moved quickly to appoint Baroness Andrews as the new Chair of English Heritage. Andrews was formerly Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and her appointment will run for four years from 27 July 2009.
- English Heritage article

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