1.
Plagiar-Hirst
British artist Damien Hirst is being sued by Canadian artist and jewelry designer Colleen Wolstenholme for copyright infringement under the laws of Canada and unfair competition. The objects in question are prescription pill-inspired charm bracelets. She is taking legal action against Hirst and his e-commerce website Other Criteria which sells jewellery including Pill Bracelet with Diamond Skull, in yellow gold for £25,000. Her lawyers claim that “Hirst knew of Wolstenholme and the Wolstenholme Works as early as March 1998, if not earlier, and had access to the Works” but went on to “knowingly and wilfully” violate her copyright.
2.
Two of the world’s greatest art museums in floodwater danger
The Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay closed their doors to the public for one day as rising floodwaters threatened the irreplaceable works of art inside. The waters of the river Seine rose over 15 feet above normal levels, thanks to heavy rains across France. The aim was to evacuate tens of thousands of paintings and sculptures that are usually held in the Louvre’s underground storage rooms. On the other side of the river, the d’Orsay took similar measures.
3.
Artists take over former BBC TV headquarters
Eight artists and cultural organisations moved into the former headquarters of the BBC in west London – where shows such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Doctor Who were once filmed – for an exhibition which draws on the 94-year history of the BBC and the surrounding area. The site-specific works are installed in the 12-storey, 1960s East Tower, which is due to be demolished later this year. The most dramatic installation by the Turner Prize nominee Catherine Yass involves suspending a grand piano across the exterior of the East Tower.
The exhibition runs until July 31.
4.
The first Russian Triennale
Moscow’s Garage Museum, Russia’s first contemporary art museum, has announced that it is organising the first triennial dedicated to Russian art, kicking off on March 10, 2017. Garage’s chief curator Kate Fowle will lead the triennial team, which consists of fellow museum curators. The announcement was made on the one-year anniversary of the opening of the Koolhass-designed Garage Museum, and during the 100th anniversary year of the Russian Revolution.
5.
Tunga, 1952-2016
When in 2006, his monumental installation A la Lumiere des Deux Mondes was installed beneath the glass pyramid at the Musée du Louvre, Tunga became the first contemporary artist to have a work exhibited in the Parisian museum. The Brazilian artist Antônio José de Barros de Carvalho e Melo Mourão, popularly known as Tunga, died in Rio de Janeiro from cancer at the age of 64. Tunga’s work – poetic, metaphysical, and even alchemical, some would say – came into being as sculptures, installations, performances, or films. Through rigorously constructed structures, the symbolic and the imaginary of his practice performed a decisive role conveying new meanings to familiar objects.
6.
Non-profit Gilbert & George
The artist duo plans on opening a non-profit gallery/cultural venue in East London’s Spitalfields, where they have lived and worked for over four decades. Sir Solutions, on behalf of the Gilbert & George Centre, a charity created in 2010, states that the site will be “a nonprofit foundation for contemporary art that operates purely for the public benefit with the aim to promote the education of the public in the arts”. The building where the future center will be is located on Heneage Street. It was previously the studio and private residence of artist Polly Hope, who died a few years ago.
7.
Walking on Christo’s waters
For sixteen days Italy’s Lake Iseo has been reimagined. 100,000 square meters of shimmering yellow fabric, carried by a modular floating dock system of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes, undulate with the movement of the waves as The Floating Piers by the bulgarian artist Christo rose just above the surface of the water. The runway was 3-kilometer-long and accessible during the daytime (the original project envisaged a 24/7 fruition but due to use the authority decided to introduce night maintenance). The experience attracted millions of people.
8.
Paul McCarthy’s success in Art Basel
The 47th edition of Art Basel attracted an attendance of 95,000 across the six show days. Paul McCarthy was particularly popular for Hauser & Wirth this year. The artist’s Tomato Head (Green) (1994), shown in Art Basel Unlimited, the fair’s sector for institutional-scale works, sold to an American private collection for $4.75 million, followed by the sale of McCarthy’s Michael Jackson Inflatable Drawings (2003) for $650,000 and sculpture WS, White Snow Flower Girl #3 (2016) for $575,000 on opening day. Another sculpture, Picabia Idol, Black (2016), was sold for $750,000.
9.
Olafur Eliasson takes Versailles
The Danish-Icelandic artist has opened his summer installations in Versailles Castle and gardens, which includes a triptych of site-specific, water-related projects in the palace gardens, and hopefully will stimulate reflection on climate change. Eliasson has imported 150 tons of glacial rock flour from Greenland to create his land art-inspired Glacial rock flour garden, arranged around the statue of Persephone, the goddess of spring, in the Colonnade grove. Elsewhere in the gardens, Eliasson’s Fog assembly emits clouds of mist, while Waterfall is a vast cascade of water falling from a construction crane at the basin of the Grand Canal. On view until October 2016.
10.
Private museum to be opened thanks to The Scream‘s sale
At an art auction held at Sotheby’s in New York City in May, Edvard Munch’s The Scream was sold for a record $119,922,500. The item is one of four known versions of the painting, with the other three all in Norwegian museums. The painting was owned and put up for auction by Norwegian businessman Peter Olsen who has just announced that the sale of the painting will go toward opening up a new art center, hotel and museum on his farm in the Norwegian village of Hvitsten.
Silvia Meloni
Featured image: Waterfall (2016), Olafur Eliasson
CuratingtheContemporary (CtC) 