Presenting a portico

LONDON. London's Victoria & Albert Museum is due to host a talk on the late-12th-century Portico da Glória at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain in June 2012. Focused on the methods used to restore the portico, the talk is set to be followed by a show staged at another London location on the conservation work, and by a three-dimensional video exploring the portico.

Published at Conservation (27), The Art Newspaper - International edition Vol. XX No. 231, January 2012

Long loan makes Barcelona a Matta-Clark centre

BARCELONA. The collector Harold Berg has agreed to lend “indefinitely” a cache of photographs, taken by US artist Gordon Matta-Clark in the 1970s, to the Museu d’Art Contermporani Barcelona (Macba).

The loan consists of 46 images documenting Matta-Clark’s the famous “building cuts”, including Splitting, 1974 (above). The photographs, formerly known as the Bex archive, were acquired by Berg from Florent Bex, the director of the International Cultureel Centrum in Antwerp.

The collection joins the 17 Matta-Clark works Macba already owns (13 videos, two photographs and two photocollages). Thus means the museum now holds one of the largest Matta-Clark collections in Europe, along with the Generali Foundation in Vienna, the Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Reina Sofía in Madrid. An exhibition of Matta-Clark’s works, including those loaned by Berg, is due to open at Macba at the end of 2012.

Meanwhile, the Barcelona museum is currently negotiating the acquisition of 7,000 volumes from the late Catalan poet Joan Brossa’s library. Macba is in discussion with the Fundació Brossa and the city of Barcelona over the possible acquisition, which also includes 40,000 items, including letters, object poems, visual poems and installations.

The Fundación Brossa has been forced to sell the volumes and archive of the poet’s work owing to the harsh financial climate. One of the foundation great endeavours has always been that Brossa‘s work should not be dispersed.

Earlier this year, Macba accepted a loan of 80,000 photographs, taken by Xavier Miserachs, between 1954 and 1998, for a renewable 25 years period. Other recent loans include 800 pieces by the English-American collective, Art & Language, loaned by the French art collector Philippe Méaille for a period of five years (The Art Newspaper, May, p.20).

Published at Museums (20), The Art Newspaper - International edition Vol. XX No. 226, July/August 2011

Thyssen in Catalonia

The project to build the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Centre for Catalan Painting in Sant Feliu de Guíxols was unanimously approved by the city council in May. The project on Spain's Costa Brava is the latest regional offshoot of the baroness's galleries. It has a construction budget of €1.5m and will be housed in a converted cork factory. On show will be a collection of 19th- and 20th-century Catalan paintings, which is currently housed in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Published at Museums (14), The Art Newspaper - International edition Vol. XX No. 226, July/August 2011

Barcelona gains Art & Language collection

The French art collector Philippe Méaille has lent the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Macba) a substantial group of 800 pieces by the English-American collective, Art & Language, for a period of five years. “The deposit of the collection of works by Art & Language is a major qualitative and quantitative leap for the museum”, said Bartomeu Marí, the museum’s director.

Méaille has been buying the collective's work for 15 years, and displaying them at his home, the Château de la Bainerie in the French Loire region. He started to collect when he was a 21-years-old student (he is now 36). The collection includes the most representative pieces made by the conceptual group including documents, texts, magazines and books as well as more conventional works of art.

Méaille was advised by collective members Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden. The French collector's holding include pieces from the group's inception, in the late 1960s, including 100% Abstract, 1968, to Flags for an Organisation, 1978, and more recent works, such as Tell Me, Have You Ever Seen Me?, 2003. The collective has included, at various times, the American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth and the Oscar winning film director Kathryn Bigelow.

“This is an unique archive”, said Marí, "and this loan has made [Macba] the international museum with the largest number of works by the collective."

The Macba study centre will make accompanying documentation available to researchers, with a major exhibitions planned for 2014, curated by Art & Language expert Carles Guerra.

Published at Museums (20), The Art Newspaper - International edition Vol. XX No. 224, May 2011

MadridFoto

The third edition of MadridFoto (5-8 May) moves back to the Ifema building, having experimented with the more central Feria de Madrid venue last year. "In the last edition we worked hard to improve the quality of the photographs on show, but we didn't have the outcome we were expecting with the move to the city centre," said Giulietta Speranza, MadridFot's artistic director. For this edition Speranza wants to establhis the event as a serious international fair in a market that has picked up significantly in the last few years: Ifema is the same venue used by Spain's Arco contemporary fair. The firs two editions of the fair attracted 12m500 and 15,000 visitors respectivelly.

Published at Art Market (6), The Art Newspaper - International edition Section 2 Vol. XX No. 224, May 2011

Madridfoto contemplates move

The Spanish international photography fair, Madridfoto, is debating whether it should stay in the centre of the capital city at the Palacio de Deportes de la Comunidad, or return to the peripheral Ifema exhibitions and fairs park located near the city's airport. Barajas. Considered a good alternative to Parisphoto for young photography galleries, Madridfoto's next edition is scheduled to open one week earlier than this year, between 5 and 8 May 2011.

Published at News in brief (2) (The Art Newspaper Art Basel Daily Edition), 15 June 2010 Madridfoto 2010. Photography: Eduardo B.

Lively start for Arco satellite Just Madrid

Madrid's main trendsetter was the new satellite fair, Just Madrid (18-21 February) which attracted "young collectors with an interesting profile - miles from the crowd that has characterised Arco," according to Jorge Viegas of 3+1 Arte Contemporânea, one of the 25 galleries exhibiting. With prices ranging from €500 to €20,000, Just Madrid was an "excellent complement to Madrid's main art fair", said Cristina Navarro from Berlin's Invaliden1 Gallery whose sales included a Santiago Ydáñez painting for €5,000 to a private collector. Meanwhile, the fifth edition of Art Madrid (17-21 February) focused on Spanish artist and drew a crowd of 37,000.

Published at Art Market (71), The Art Newspaper - International edition Vol. XVIII No. 212, April 2010

Lisbon’s “sleeping beauty” awakens

Isabel Carlos, the new director of the Centro de Arte Moderna, on revitalising the Gulbenkian’s modern art museum

Isabel Carlos, the new director of the Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) in Lisbon, compares the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s modern art museum to a “sleeping beauty”. Carlos, only the third director of CAM since it opened in 1983, talked to The Art Newspaper about her plans to reinvigorate the museum. Her inaugural show is “Jane and Louise Wilson: Suspending Time”, until 18 April.

The Gulbenkian Foundation’s modern art collection includes many works by British artists ranging from Henry Moore and Peter Blake to Gilbert and George alongside their Portuguese contemporaries. There is also a small collection of work by artists of Armenian origin, including Arshile Gorky. This reflects the life story of Calouste Gulbenkian, the Armenian businessman and philanthropist who bequeathed his fortune to the Anglo-Portuguese foundation.

This year Carlos is a member of the Tate’s Turner Prize jury. She was artistic director of the 2004 Sydney Biennial and curated the Portuguese pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Carlos also co-founded Lisbon’s Instituto de Arte Contemporânea and was its deputy director from 1996 until 2001.

The Art Newspaper: CAM was Portugal’s first museum of modern and contemporary, but it has been rather overshadowed by newer museums.
Isabel Carlos: Thankfully it lost visibility [because] we have more museums in Portugal working with contemporary art. I would like CAM to be a reference to something that these museums don’t do, which is show art from the early 20th century. We have the best collection of art until the 1950s. On the other hand, it must be an active space in terms of showing contemporary artists who work with major issues.

TAN: Is that why you wanted to work with the Wilson twins?
IC: The reason we started with Jane and Louise Wilson was precisely because it is embedded in CAM’s identity and its special relationship with the UK. We have here a British art collection that is a treasure. The Wilsons were a good reason to look again at the works we already have.
Their work is about ideas of abstraction and human figuration. With these two ideas we chose works to create “Abstraction and the Human Figure in CAM’s British Art Collection" [Until 18 April].

TAN: In what other ways do you plan to draw upon the collection?
IC: The permanent collection is important as CAM has an educational duty. It is important to show works from the collection for a long period so that schools throughout the year can work with the multiple ideas that derive of art of the 20th century, particularly in Portugal. The proposed programme is designed so that when walking through CAM visitors can always see an Amadeu de Sousa Cardoso or a Paula Rego: the biggest names in 20th-century Portuguese art.
Essentially, I want a balance between international and Portuguese art, whether it is in the collection or in a temporary exhibition. The Ana Vidigal retrospective [later this year] is an example of that line of planning.

TAN: How do you want to CAM be a more “active space”?
IC: Because of its scale, it allows artists to experiment. It can have an almost laboratory side. It is no coincidence that this exhibition by the Wilsons has five new sculptures that were created specifically for this space, and which were produced by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s technicians. This is a real asset.
CAM will never be a MoMA, or a Tate, but it can be a contemporary art museum that allows contemporary artists to research, and to create experimental exhibitions. These are not Jane and Louise Wilson's first sculptures, but it is something that they haven’t explored much, and this exhibition has allowed them to deepen that aspect of their work.

TAN: Do you want to support Portuguese artists in the same way?
IC: In their case, there is another strand of the programme. The centre should be a space for Portuguese artists to mount their first retrospectives. I’m thinking of mature artists. Today we have a lot of spaces for young artists, and we have museums that organise retrospectives for artists who are 60 or 70 years old. What is missing are mid-career retrospectives for 40- to 50-years-old artists not yet fully established. Because of its size, CAM is the perfect place to do such shows. Of course, the centre should also allow more senior Portuguese artists, such as Ana Vieira or Carlos Nogueira, to show their work.

TAN: Do you intend to work in partnership with other institutions and spaces?
IC: The Jane and Louise Wilson exhibition will go to the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela. I’m interested in collaborations and partnerships. In our first year, I am happy to have an exhibition produced here travelling to another international museum right next door in Spain. Next we will receive an exhibition by the Galician artist Jorge Barbie, produced by Marco [Museo de Arte Contemporáneo], Vigo, also in Spain. Following this, our Vasco Araújo and Javier Téllez exhibition will go to Marco. Merely importing exhibitions is something that can happen, but it’s not something that I would prioritise.

Because our collection begins in 1913, we are constantly lending works. Soon we will lend a series of works to a retrospective of [Madeira-born artist] Lourdes Castro at the Serralves Museum [in Porto]. We are also lending to museums abroad.

Another program that I want to start in 2011 will be called “Arte Itinerante”, taking the idea from the Gulbenkian’s old “Bibliotecas Itinerantes” [mobile libraries]. Instead of books, there will be works of art. Or rather, a programme of exhibitions with works from our collection shown in several places across Portugal.

Building the Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) in the park that surrounds the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian along with the Gulbenkian foundation's concert hall and offices was controversial, leading to a debate in the press and parliament in the early 1980s. British architect Leslie Martin designed CAM in a brutalist style, but the building partially succeeds in blending with its surrounding thanks to its roof gardens, low profile and well tended soft landscaping. CAM has promoted dance, poetry and music as well as visual art, and overlooks a concert bowl used for jazz. However, it has tended to play second fiddle to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, which opened in 1969 and contains the oil tycoon's eclectic collection of art, archaeology and jewellery.

Published at Museum (18), The Art Newspaper - International edition Vol. XVIII No. 211, March 2010. Jane and Louise Wilson, Songs for My Mother (video still), 2009 Courtesy : Centro de Arte Moderna/Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

Spanish fair Puro Arte returns with new name and new director

Strong work by Galician and international artists at Espacio Atlántico

VIGO. Espacio Atlántico is the new name for the Puro Arte contemporary art fair, held in the city of Vigo, in the region of Galicia, northwest Spain. The fair, which ran from 14-17 January, also had a new artistic director this year, David Barro, and general director Marta Scarpellini said this fourth edition was fundamentally different “in terms of quality, and the galleries attending brought the best works they have”.

A total of 52 galleries attended, including Fernando Pradilla and Fúcares, both from Madrid, and 15 galleries from Portugal, including Galeria Graça Brandão. Brandão also took part in Art Basel Miami Beach 2009, showing works by Portuguese duo Pedro Paiva and João Maria Gusmão, and Brazilian artist Lygia Pape. Gallery director José Mário Brandão said that during the first day at Espacio Atlántico he sold an installation by Brazilian artist Albano Afonso to a Galicia-based private foundation, Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, for €15,000. The foundation bought work totalling €329,000 at the fair.

Espacio Atlántico profiled a high number of Galician artists as well as international names. Of the German artists on show, for example, Lisbon gallery Pedro Cera presented a work by Tobias Rehberger, on sale for €50,000, Madrid gallery Heinrich Ehrhardt showed a work by painter Georg Baselitz for €300,000, while Fúcares offered a photograph by Candida Höfer for €65,000.

For collector Carlos Rosón, president of the local Rosón contemporary art foundation, Espacio Atlántico “is important for Galician collectors, and it is also important that an art fair like this happens in Galicia”.

Published online at Market, The Art Newspaper, 20 de Janeiro de 2010 Photo : Miguel Calvo Courtesy : Espacio Atlántico 2010