Vancouver fosters Paris impressionism

By chance, "Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay" at the de Young Museum runs concurrently with "The Modern Woman: Drawings by Degas, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Other Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay" at the Vancouver Art Gallery, less than two hours away by air.  San Francisco Chronicle, July 18, 2010

Picture and a thousand words

“Northwest Coastism styles are being revisited, revised and rethought in all kinds of ways,” says Charlotte Townsend-Gault, a professor of art history at University of British Columbia and an expert in indigenous art. “The ideas and issues are being contested and being exposed as never before. There is great interest in indigenous art and finding out what it is all about because there is interest in finding out about indigenous people.”  Toronto Star, July 18, 2010

The big Booooooom theory
On a website called Booooooom. com ( that’s seven Os, folks) new ideas are traded like camels in the desert. Started by Vancouver blogger Jeff Hamada, an Emily Carr graduate who initially just wanted to “ share some art with friends,” the site now gets over 2.5 million page views per month, and has evolved in the last couple of years to become a tastemaker of the art world, and general “ go-to” spot for advertising industry types trolling for new ideas in art, film, design, music and photography. Vancouver Sun, July 17, 2010

Toronto

Staging A Sleep-In (Or, Rather, A Sleep-Out)

This weekend in Toronto, two "multimedia artists are staging Z's By The C, a 'radical crafting and public napping project,' wherein people will be invited to decorate their own sleeping masks and then be given access to a 'safe sleeping zone' in an undeveloped patch of grass." Says one of the artists, "'We started doing this in Calgary, in 2008, and at first it was sort of terrifying for people, even though we provide a safe area for them." Globe and Mail, July 17, 2010  

Just the right headspace for public art

Ted Bieler’s crowd-pleasing metal heads at the Toronto Sculpture Garden have got people talking.  Globe and Mail, July 17, 2010

Los Angeles

Eli Broad Has Competition For The Land For His L.A. Museum

"A potential roadblock to Eli Broad's plans for a downtown museum housing his contemporary art collection sprang up Thursday." Shen Yun Performing Arts, a Falun Gong-affiliated organization which presents touring spectacles based on traditional Chinese music and dance, has proposed "a rival plan to build a 3,000-seat theater and training center … on the same parcel at Grand Avenue and 2nd Street." Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2010

Colorado

Christo, Jeanne-Claude, And An Environmental Impact Statement

The US Bureau of Land Management has just finished an Environmental Impact Statement for the artists' project Under the River, in which a stretch of the Arkansas River in Colorado will be covered by (what else?) fabric panels. And Christo is delighted: "The identity of our project is built in the permitting process. We were banging our heads and asking to have an environmental impact statement for such a long time." New York Times, July 17, 2010

 New York

Zwelethu Mthethwa at Studio Museum in Harlem

An exhibit of the work of the South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa provides a refreshingly intimate look at life in his country as well as his foray to New Orleans.  New York Times, July 18, 2010

Matisse at MoMA: Carving With Color

 “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917” at the Museum of Modern Art offers a view of the artist as driven, even tormented.  New York Times, July 17, 2010  

NYU Passes On Larry Rivers's Nude Photos Of Daughters

"After it came to light last week that films and videotapes made by the artist Larry Rivers included footage of his two daughters naked, New York University informed his foundation that it did not want those materials included as part of the archive it was purchasing." New York Times, July 17, 2010

Philadelphia

A Restored ‘Gross Clinic’ at Philadelphia Museum

After a revealing restoration, Thomas Eakins’s masterpiece “The Gross Clinic” will go on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  New York Times, July 19, 2010  

Washington, D.C.

Sackler Gallery to Present First Major US Exhibition of ...
“Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall” is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery will be the only US venue for the exhibition.  Art Daily, July 18, 2010

The Marine Corps’s Combat Art Program

The Marine Corps isn’t the only service to have a combat art program, but many regard it as the one most deeply committed to its artistic mission.  New York Times, July 19, 2010  

London

A Dead Art: Sculpture Meets Taxidermy In Polly Morgan's Studio

"She has made robins draped across prayer books under tiny chandeliers, lovebirds gazing at their reflections in miniature mirrors above tiny splayed-out mouse rugs, as well as wilting pheasant chicks suspended from resin-coated balloons." The Observer (UK) July 18, 2010  

Paris

X-rays reveal da Vinci's shading secrets

Scientists in France believe they've cracked the secret of how Leonardo da Vinci created subtleties in his paintings, including that of the Mona Lisa.  CBC, July 18, 2010

Rome

All-nighters mark Caravaggio anniversary in Rome

Churches and a gallery in Rome housing works by Caravaggio will stay open overnight to mark the 400th anniversary of the Italian painter's death.  CBC, July 17, 2010

Venice

A Canadian brings the light to Venice

This weekend, members of Philip Beesley’s team leave Toronto for Venice to begin construction in the Canadian pavilion. Beesley joins them next week, along with some 30 architecture-and art-student volunteers from across Europe. They’re gathering, says Beesley, to participate in a labour intensive “quilting bee” that will produce an inhabitable kinetic sculpture.  Globe and Mail, July 17, 2010

Damascus

The Great Palimpsest Of Damascus: The Umayyad Mosque

Syria's greatest monument, one of the world's preeminent mosques, sits on a site that once housed a temple to Jupiter and then a great Byzantine church. In fact, for decades after the Arab conquest of Syria, Muslims and Christians shared the building, and when a caliph finally built a dedicated mosque, he incorporated many of that church's building materials and hired Christian craftsmen to decorate the space with Islamized Byzantine-style mosaics. Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2010  (includes slideshow)

Today’s art birthday:   Edgar Degas, 1834

Cheryl Siegel | Librarian | Vancouver Art Gallery | 750 Hornby St. | Vancouver, BC | V6Z 2H7 | 604-662-4709  | fax 604-682-1086 | www.vanartgallery.bc.ca