Wednesday News Round Up | 15th June 2016 | Writing about art, Arts Funding, Australian Museum Director’s salaries + more

Julia deVille’s prize-winning entry: Neapolitan Bonbonaparte. Via ABC News: Photo by Tom Fedorowytsch

A new column from Burnaway will examine ‘Artspeak’ - the first column takes apart that the arts press release, the forum where I personally read some of most breathlessly nonsensical statements about art. Matthew Terrell observes that ‘A bit of simple explanation goes a long way in engaging the public. Tell us what it is: a dance show, an art installation, a DJ performance, an online event, etc. Don’t overinflate your words until your sentences are bulging at the seams. Keep it short. Keep it simple. Keep it clear.’ Yes!

Fisun Güner in the Spectator observes that good art writing is not necessarily simple, while she agrees that ‘art-speak should be blasted, I dread the spread of the far more cynical and bland approach’ of dumbed-down accessible writing.

Pac Pobric’s review of Liam Gillick’s new book Industry and Intelligence, drawing attention to his ‘breathless non-sequiturs’ and draws attention to Gillick’s careless attitude towards words that evacuates rigour and clarity.

Latest on the funding the arts campaign during the federal election. After the Wheeler Centre hosted a debate on Arts Funding the audience was left none-the-wiser as to whether the Coalition has an arts policy. You can listen to the debate here, and also hear Esther Anatolitis’s analysis of the debate here. The coalition has promised money for the new Shepparton Arts Museum. Steve Eland, director of the  Australian Experimental Art Foundation, tells us it could be time to pack our bags and move to Canada if we work in the arts. Ben Eltham on the ‘noisy critics’ that missed out on funding. This Friday 17th June has been nominated as a day of action with artists and arts workers across the country planning to mobilise to highlight the fact that the arts matter to Australia.

Andrew Taylor and Inga Ting have written a story for SMH on what arts bosses in Australia are paid and the noticeable discrepancy between men and women. Tony Ellwood at the NGV is the higest paid arts boss in the country, on almost half a million a year, while the MCA’s Elizabeth Ann Macgregor is on less than half that. Taylor and Ting also compare the wages to the median wage in Australia and point out that while some directors are earning 6 times the median wage (a wage likely earned by more than a few of their own employees) they earn proportionally less than directors of the top US museums such as the Getty and the Met.

Victoria Laurie in The Australian on a new report on Aboriginal Art Centres - ‘Aboriginal art centres are facing an uphill battle for sustainability, according to a report that found the majority of centres in remote communities have been losing money over a decade to 2013, with signs of uneven recovery and smaller loss-making by some centres in only the past two years.’

The Wurundjeri people are ‘shattered’ after artwork they describe as their ‘Bible’ sells at auction. Djon Mundine observes that ‘It’s just weird that some national institution didn’t take this on and buy the work, it should be in a national institution. Other countries collect their own stories and considering it’s of the Yarra, the images talk about a place just outside of Melbourne, it’s amazing. Art like this doesn’t come by every day. They are very special to the South East. Art by South East Aboriginal people wasn’t produced in great numbers pre-1900, so they are very valuable in that sense.’ One of William Barak’s descendants Colin Hunter Jr points out that had it been sold in Victoria it would have required a permit, while the sale in Sydney did not.

A new whitepaper has been released that discusses the copyright (in the US) of 3D scans of existing buildings and works of art. According to this summary in many cases scans won’t be copyright protected as 3D scans that attempt to create a perfect digital replica of the model being scanned don’t have enough original content to be copyrighted. people who make scans can still, of course, control access to their files, but they can’t copyright them.

Julia de Ville has won the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize for her work Neapolitan Bonbonaparte, Canberra- based artist Dan Power won the emerging artist category.

An explanation of how museum sponsorship deals come about, Alexandra Peers examines the new Guggenheim/Lavazza partnership in Artspace.

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