Weekly News Round-Up | Art and Art History | 13th July 2016

Vesna Pavlović, GREEK: ARCH: ATHENS GEN: ACR: PARTHENON: EPEDIMENT GODDESSES, Endura metallic color print, 30 by 30 inches.

Vesna Pavlović, GREEK: ARCH: ATHENS GEN: ACR: PARTHENON: EPEDIMENT GODDESSES, Endura metallic color print, 30 by 30 inches. via http://burnaway.org/review/vesna-pavlovic-at-whitespace/

The Art Newspaper has a story about Orhan Pamuk’s keynote address to the ICOM conference in Milan. In his talk Pamuk reflected on the museums we have and the museums we need, saying that in the future we need ‘small and economical museums that address our humanity. All museums are genuine treasures of humankind, but I am against these precious and monumental institutions being used as models for the institutions to come. Museums should explore and uncover the population as a whole and the humanity of the new and modern man that emerges from the growing economies of non-Western countries. I address this manifesto in particular to Asian museums that are experiencing an unprecedented period of growth. The aim of the great state-sponsored museums is to represent a state and that is neither a good nor innocent aim. Here are my proposals for a new museum, some themes on which we must reflect now more than ever.’ - Read the rest here.

Another reflection on the changing role of museums comes from Martin Roth (director of one those ‘monumental institutions’, the V&A which on the UK Art Fund Museum of the Year. Roth refleected on the political role of public institutions in the wake of the recent Brexit vote saying ‘There was something from the government – which we always have before elections – to say you’re not supposed to talk about politics in public. Don’t use your institution for propaganda.’ That instruction was misguided in the context of the EU referendum campaign, he feels. ‘I think that cultural institutions in general are a kind of public forum, so if you want to have a public debate – not a party political debate – about a European idea, I thought it was the wrong recommendation. […] Let’s say it loudly: the “Leave” campaigners worked with a lot of lies, and cheating, and doing the wrong things, and trying to convince us with the wrong numbers and so on. It was not a fair public debate. We should have done more in cultural institutions.’

Yesterday NAVA released a statement detailing a meeting between a delegation of art industry professionals led by peak national industry body, the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) and the University of Sydney to discuss alternative options to closing SCA and moving staff and students to UNSW. One member of the delegation Agatha Gothe-Snape (SCA graduate and internationally successful artist) said, “We challenge Sydney University to demonstrate a genuine commitment to tertiary art education in Australia in line with the pledge of responsibility they made 25 years ago to act as custodian of this cultural institution. The establishment of an on-campus Art School would represent an acknowledgement of the value of visual arts within both the university context and Australia, as well as creating opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration within the University of Sydney.”

Germany has passed a controversial cultural protection law aimed at tackling illegal trafficking in looted antiquities and protecting German national heritage. Dealers have largely opposed the new law, calling it ‘the most stringent import and export restrictions on cultural objects in the world.’ They argue that it will adversely affect private collectors and that many ‘collectors were already moving valuable works abroad before the law’s passage to avoid the new regulations.’

Apollo Magazine has a report on the use of technology to help solve art theft - though in this case it is partly the art thieves ignorance of technology, specifically geolocation, that is helping investigators to track stolen paintings.

Reviews

In The Conversation Ian McLean reflects on Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori’s painting ‘Dibirdibi Country – Topway’ (Gabori is currently the subject of two exhibitions one at Alcaston Galleries and another at Queensland Art Gallery). ‘There is no doubting the painting’s style: it ticks all the boxes of abstract expressionism. On either side of the oval, as if holding it up or wedging it in, are large triangular white shapes painted in broad sweeps spilling across the magenta ground. A rectangular slab of violet dominates the bottom half of the painting, its curved right side edged in lemon yellow with a squared left top corner edged in red. More lemon yellow lines – some mixed in with the violet – give this shape form and weight but one could only guess at what it might represent. A swathe of orange swooping along the bottom edge and up the right completes the picture. While this description suggests a formal complexity, the main impression is of the artist’s sheer verve, not of a judiciously arranged composition. It is difficult to believe she was in her 80s when she painted this.’

Christopher Allen has a review of the latest Nicholson Museum exhibition, which is the last at the current site. Allen urges us to visit ‘before this unique place ceases to exist and is replaced by a large, no doubt impressive but inevitably less atmospheric institution that unfortunately will bear a corporate sponsor’s name. Make sure you experience this singular environment of curiosity and attention, patience and delight before it is gone forever.’

A review of an exhibition on in Atlanta in the US of work by the artist Vesna Pavlović in which she uses recovered slides culled from art history department slide collections across the United States. ‘Once the center of visual resource archives for art history and humanities departments everywhere, these collections have been displaced by digital image databases and equipment, thus turning the slide collection into an expired site of institutional history and educational memory.’

Archibald reflections

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