Vancouver

Jamelie Hassan's At the Far Edge of Words explores the cultural power of language

As you’re approaching the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, you’ll see a billboard mounted high on its façade. It’s been there for a while, yes, but serves now as a terrific introduction to the Jamelie Hassan retrospective on view inside the building.  Georgia Straight, July 22, 2010

Douglas Coupland goes techno-pop to punk up Roots

If there’s one thing Roots does really, really well, it’s rustic Canadiana. And if there’s one thing Generation X author Douglas Coupland does really, really well, it’s multidisciplinary postmodernism. Put these two Great White North icons together and you get one of the coolest odd-couple collaborations in Canuck fashion history.  Georgia Straight, July 22, 2010

Queer Arts Festival's Queertopia is open to wide interpretation

Painted ironing boards, supersized paper dolls, and wall-mounted chairs: the search for identity takes a wild array of forms in the visual-arts exhibit at this year’s Queer Arts Festival. The show, at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre from Tuesday (July 27) to August 14, has grown, along with the multimedia festival, from a small community exhibit more than 10 years ago to a juried, 23-artist production with installations that will fill the facility’s sizable exhibition hall. Georgia Straight, July 22, 2010   

Toronto

Nuit Blanche plans art that rocks

Dan Graham, a New York artist known for his mirrored cubicle installations, is building a new work that he promises will recreate the quasi-hallucinogenic effects of rock show light displays.  CBC, July 22, 2010

Books For $75,000 Anyone?

It's "a trend that has seen book publishers creating evermore insanely expensive collector's items - usually very large coffee-table picture books about celebrities or the kinds of luxury items only the very rich can feel devoted to - printed in small batches."  Globe & Mail, July 22, 2010

Los Angeles

SF-MOMA Selects Architect For $250M Expansion: Snohetta

"Can an art museum in this economic climate raise $480 million for an ambitious expansion and endowment campaign without a world famous architect like Frank Gehry or Renzo Piano attached to the project? SFMOMA has just placed a very big bet that it can, by selecting the critically acclaimed but not so commonly known Oslo-based firm Snøhetta," which is best known for Norway's new national opera house. Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2010

YouTube Removes Work Of Art For Nudity

It's Susan Mogul's landmark 1973 video, "Dressing Up". "Please understand that this work has been shown world wide and is in countless museum collections. This is a work of art that uses the artist and her body as the work. This is an important issue in the preservation of important art made in the late part of the 20th century and should not be wrongly presumed to be offensive." LAWeekly, July 19, 2010

Cleveland

Cleveland Museum Of Contemporary Art Gets Design Approval

MOCA's design was one of five presented to the commission for the district, a $150-plus million development project in University Circle. Akron Beacon-Journal, July 22, 2010

London

UK Culture Funder To Lose Half Its Staff?

"Cuts to staff numbers of between 35 and 50 per cent are expected after all departments were told by the Treasury to slash budgets by up to 40 per cent." The Guardian (UK) July 21, 2010

Vienna

Gun sculpture exhibit altered after complaint

Creators of an art installation featuring The Gun Sculpture, by Edmonton artist Wallis Kendal, are 'gobsmacked' that part of the exhibit was removed because of a complaint from China.  CBC, July 22, 2010

International

Why Are Museums Allowed To Sell Off Their Work? "This is not the time to forget the true value of our collections: a historical and aesthetic resource held in care for future generations. Let's keep the doors open to the public but closed to the salesman. Losing these treasures is too high a price to pay for short-term financial gain." spiked-online 07/22/10

Today’s Art Birthday:  Alexander Calder, 1898

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