10facts: What happened in the art world in October

1.
An Alternative Art School Fair
The inaugural edition of the Alternative Art School Fair will be hosted by Pioneer Works in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighbourhood. The fair will feature more than fifty alternative art schools located across the United States and around the globe. It will be an occasion to create a better freedom of expression for institutions often run as free, artist-run initiatives. It is scheduled to run the 19th and the 20th of November.

 2.
The Biennale online
The Venice Biennale has renewed its partnership with Google to feature the fifteenth edition of the International Architecture Biennale. More than 3,700 images of the main exhibition, curated by Alejandro Aravena, three special projects, forty-three pavilions, and eleven collateral events are available online on Google Arts and Culture.

3.
No Art History high school classes in UK
Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced level art history courses will be dropped from high school curriculum’s across the UK in 2018. The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) cited the low number of students taking the exam, the high cost of offering the test, and a lack of teachers for the subject among the reasons why it will be cut. A petition that was launched on 38 Degrees has more than seven thousand signatures calling for a reversal of the decision to eliminate the subject.

4.
Healing Central Italy
The Comando Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, Italy’s cultural heritage force, has recovered 900 artworks, including altarpieces, mosaics, frescoes and paintings, from the ruins of the museums, chapels, and other historic sites that were destroyed by an earthquake that struck central Italy in August. The pieces have been taken to Rieti, not far from Rome, for restoration.

5.
Dali’s surrealist cookbook
Published only once in 1973, Les diner de gala, was a dream fulfilled for surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who claimed at the age of 6 that he wanted to be a chef. It features exceptionally strange illustrations and collages for 136 recipes. Only around 400 copies of the book are known to survive. Taschen has made it available for the first time after 43 years.

6.
More art funding for France
French minister of culture Audrey Azoulay promised a great increase of funding for museums and acquisitions next year, realising the difficulties the institutions are facing in the wake of terror attacks. Azoulay announced a 5% increase in funding to museums – to a total of €2.9 billions, and, notably, an increase of 12% for acquisitions budgets for regional and national museums. The government is also organising a conference on cultural tourism in December to try and revive the sector.

7.
Raphael found in Scotland
Art historian and art dealer Bendor Grosvenor discovered a Madonna by Raphael while visiting Haddo House, in north-east Scotland, earlier this year for a BBC show called Britain’s Lost Masterpieces. In mid-XIX century it was attributed to another painter, Innocenzo Frannucci da Imola, but after analysis by the National Trust, it was declared work by the Italian master and valued £20 millions. The piece needs further examination by other Raphael scholars before it officially re-joins the pantheon of his work.

8.
A new museum in Lisbon
The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), by Amanda Levete’s firm AL_A, has opened to the public, coinciding with the start of the Lisbon ArchitectureTriennale. Covered in 15.000 white ceramic tiles, the building boasts an undulating form that connects its grand rooftop terrace with the waterside promenade. The gallery spaces and finishing of the building will not be fully complete until 2017.

9.
Expansion of museum dedicated to queer art
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art has announced that it has begun construction on a major expansion project that will double the size of the institution’s footprint in New York. It has also raised $40,000 for its Hunter O’Hanian Diversity Art Fund, which launches this summer. The fund will support the acquisition of artworks primarily by transgender and female artists.

10.
The Restoration of Rothko Chapel
The New York–based Architecture Research Office has been selected to renovate Rothko Chapel, a windowless, octagonal-shaped building located in Houston, Texas, that houses fourteen monumental panels created by American painter Mark Rothko from 1971. The firm plans to improve the Chapel’s skylight, interior light baffle, electric lighting, and acoustics.

Silvia Meloni

Feature Image: Les diner de gala (Artist book) (1973), Salvador Dali.