The Museum as Hub, a partnership of five international arts organizations that was initiated by the New Museum in 2006, has launched a special website. It features content and news from this global network, which was established as a new model for curatorial practice and institutional collaboration and wishes to enhance our understanding of contemporary art. Both a network of relationships and an actual physical site located in the fifth-floor Education Center in the newly built New Museum, Museum as Hub is conceived as a flexible, social space designed to engage audiences through multimedia workstations, exhibition areas, screenings, symposia, and events. Besides the New Museum, the partnership includes Insa Art Space (Seoul, South-Korea), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, Egypt), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City, Mexico) and Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Netherlands).

Visit the Museum as Hub website

The interactive timeline for Be[com]ing Dutch

In 2007 the Van Abbemuseum already launched the project Be[com]ing Dutch, starting with a weekend of talks, debates and art projects in January and leading up to an intensive three week international Caucus from 9th November until 2nd December 2007. Several collaborative projects will run through November 2008 with the partners. The final phase will be a large-scale exhibition of newly commissioned works in the Van Abbemuseum in May 2008 and a publication due November 2008.

Go to website Be(com)ing Dutch

A former curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum was acquitted Tuesday of conspiring to acquire an ancient funerary wreath that Greek officials say was illegally removed from Greece about 15 years ago, judicial officials said.

The former curator, Marion True, 59, was not present at the hearing. But the ruling, issued unanimously by the three-member criminal appeals court, followed a motion of dismissal that her lawyer, Yannis Yannides, submitted at the start of the trial last week, citing the statute of limitations.

“The rule of law was applied,” said Yannides. “That’s all we wanted. That’s all we asked for.”

True, who is also on trial in Italy for trafficking in artifacts, faced up to 10 years in prison.

Greece first laid claim to the 2,500-year-old crown in the mid-1990s, but its precise site of excavation was not established for years.

Read full article

Art rarely carries a public health warning even when the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin try to push the boundaries of taste.

However, the casualties have been mounting up at Tate Modern in London, where 15 people were hurt viewing Shibboleth 2007in the first four weeks after its opening.

Beginning as a crack, Shibbolethwidens and deepens as it snakes across the gallery’s Turbine Hall, until in some places it is large enough for a toddler to fall into. Staff have been detailed to monitor visitors wandering around the hall, but a Freedom of Information request by The Times has revealed that their efforts have not been entirely successful.

Read full article (Times, November 26, 2007)

Museum director Amira Edan gives US Army Lt Col Kenneth Crawford, commander of the 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, a tour of the galleries. Photo: Sgt First Class Kap Kim, USA

Nearly five years after the museum was ransacked, two main galleries should go on view this month; funding has come from Italy.

The National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad is due to reopen at the end of December, nearly five years after the looting. Italian officials assisting the Iraqis told The Art Newspaper that work on two main galleries has now been completed. “Barring any last minute security emergencies, the museum will reopen in December,” says Roberto Parapetti, of the Turin-based Centro Ricerche Archeologiche e Scavi.

The two galleries which are set to reopen, with Assyrian and Islamic antiquities, contain large and almost immovable objects. This means that the security risks are lower than with smaller items in glass cases. The rooms are on the ground floor, near the main entrance, and lie on either side of the central courtyard.

Read full article (The Art Newspaper, November 25, 2007)
The Iraq Museum
The Iraq Museum on Wikipedia
Read Iraq and ruin (Guardian, May 2, 2003)

Cecilia Bartoli during the presentation of her Maria Malibran Museo Mobile

This year a “mobile museum” is accompanying the concert tour by Cecilia Bartoli, one of the most successful singers in the international opera and concert halls. The Museo Mobile is dedicated to Maria Malibran, an exponent of bel canto at the start of the 19th century. An articulated truck has been especially converted to house Bartoli’s personal collection of artefacts. Cecilia Bartoli has curated the exhibition to give her concert audiences the chance to enter the extraordinary world of Maria Malibran and to bring a further dimension and context to the music.

The exhibition is presented by the Cecilia Bartoli Music Foundation and truck company MAN. With her foundation Cecilia Bartoli has been conducting music archeology by researching numerous archives and collections relating to the legendary operatic star Maria Malibran (1808-1836), thus assembling an informative exhibition on show in an elaborately designed specialty vehicle. The vehicle comprises furniture and costume jewellery which belonged to Malibran and rare music manuscripts, letters, newspaper articles, pictures and other documents of this then world renowned singer.

The travelling exhibition will visit all the cities where Cecilia Bartoli sings and will be open to the public – for free – outside or near the major concert venues of each city.

Go to Maria Malibran Museo Mobile website
Read article (The Independent, November 21, 2007)
Watch Cecilia Bartoli talking on Maria Malibran on YouTube

The old shop of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The museum is closed for renovation and will reopen in 2009. (photo by _Art’s)

The new Stedelijk Museum on the Museumsplein in Amsterdam will not be complete until the end of 2009. But that hasn’t stopped people from taking guided tours. As Het Parool’s Astrid Melger reports, over three hundred local residents toured the construction site last week. Since only small groups were allowed at a time, visitors had to wait for up to an hour to get a peek at the new building. Despite the wait, locals were happy to be directly “involved” in the project. Stedelijk director Gijs van Tuyl promises that the 2009 opening will be accompanied by festivals. “Not just one,” said van Tuyl, “but several.” While the walls are still being built, the Warhol exhibition installed at the temporary space, Stedelijk CS, may be an example of shows to come.

 Taken from Artforum.com (November 19, 2007)

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will remain light gray.

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission decided today that the Guggenheim should maintain the same off-white paint shade that it has had since 1992, when a major expansion of the museum by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects was completed, rather than the original light yellow.

The spiraling museum on Fifth Avenue, a 1959 masterpiece by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, is in the midst of a $29 million renovation. As part of the project, conservators stripped away 11 layers of paint from the original building’s exterior and found that it was originally coated with vinyl paint in the brownish yellow shade known as buff. Some critics believe the more striking brown hue more closely matched the intent of Wright, who was not especially fond of the color white. But the original color was only used for a few years; since the early 1960s, the Guggenheim has been clad in various shades of off-white.

Read full article (New York Times, November 20, 2007)

The Smithsonian Collection for the Home includes dining and bedroom sets, chandeliers, sinks and even fireplace accessories modeled after those from the Smithsonian Institution’s museums, libraries and archives. (Photo by Bernhardt)

The Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex and research organization composed of 19 museums and 9 research centers, is now offering furniture and home decor products inspired by its own collections. The Smithsonian Collection for the Home includes dining and bedroom sets, chandeliers, sinks and even fireplace accessories. The Smithsonian collection is being offered through licensing agreements with several manufacturers that will distribute products to retailers such as department store chains. The initial furniture line of mostly wood and leather pieces, is based on designs found in the original Smithsonian Castle building and the institution’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.

This isn’t the first time the Smithsonian has offered merchandise under its name. Its catalog includes such items as clothing and jewelry, some under the Smithsonian name. Some of the corporate deals have drawn scrutiny from historians and nonprofit watchdogs in recent years, but the Smithsonian says they are necessary. Some branding experts urge caution in lending a revered name like the Smithsonian to retail products. Those responsible for the collection emphasize the positive side of it: “Not only do you have beautiful furniture but you get to do something good for the country by supporting this American museum. It really makes (consumers) feel like they’ve got a piece of the museum.”

Read article (Miami Herald, November 17, 2007)
Read press release (Smithsonian Institution, November 6, 2007)
Smithsonian Collection by Bernhardt

Charles Saatchi, the iconoclastic art collector, is in talks to open a gallery in the United Arab Emirates, in the latest sign of the booming desert region’s race to create a cultural hub in the Middle East.

Mr Saatchi told the FT he had turned down offers from the Gulf and venture capital groups to buy his Saatchi Online site, a social networking site for the art world. However, he is understood to have held talks with three potential partners in Dubai and elsewhere in the Gulf about investing in an Arabic-language version of Saatchi Online.

Read full article (Financial Times. November 17, 2007)

Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building, William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building, Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building. If New Yorkers once saw their skyline as the great citadel of capitalism, who could blame them? We had the best toys of all.

But for the last few decades or so, that honor has shifted to places like Singapore, Beijing and Dubai, while Manhattan settled for the predictable. Perhaps that’s about to change.

A new 75-story tower designed by the architect Jean Nouvel for a site next to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation. Its faceted exterior, tapering to a series of crystalline peaks, suggests an atavistic preoccupation with celestial heights. It brings to mind John Ruskin’s praise for the irrationality of Gothic architecture: “It not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle.”

Read full article (New York Times, November 15, 2007)