Vancouver

MUSIC: Gurl Twenty Three keeps the ‘Beat’. “A generation of artisans quietly came of age over the last few years at Vancouver’s grunt gallery. They produced the Beat Nation project …and last week launched a full-scale, mainstream exhibit at the venerable Vancouver Art Gallery. One woman in particular caught my eye… Larissa Healey, AKA Gurl Twenty Three, is a street artist who made her rap debut just a few weeks ago at the PuSh Festival.”  We Vancouver, February 29, 2012

Family Fuse at the Vancouver Art Gallery. If you’ve got kids on your hands this weekend, a visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Family Fuse event on Saturday and Sunday (March 3 and 4, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) is a must. Georgia Straight, March 1, 2012

Text takes on new definitions at trio of shows.  “Every so often, a cluster of exhibitions seems to signal—or re-signal—our cultural fascination with text-based art. Graham Gillmore at the Monte Clark Gallery, Bratsa Bonifacho at the Evergreen Cultural Centre, and the late Enn Erisalu at Trench Gallery have all lodged their distinctive paintings at the interface between the visual and the verbal.”  Georgia Straight, March 1, 2012

Guo Fengyi: Mystic Markings. “Chinese artist Guo Fengyi, who passed away in 2010, is not well known—to the point where a publication attached to a current show at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery is called Who Is Guo Fengyi?” Canadian Art (Online), February 23, 2012

City of Vancouver creating arts and culture policy council. “City staff members are to put out a call for nominations to the new committee, which will have up to 13 voting members, as well as a nonvoting council liaison and nonvoting staff liaisons. The committee will meet six times per year.”   Georgia Straight, February 29, 2012

Edmonton

Celebrate the Modernist icons who inform our visual vocabulary. “The Art Gallery of Alberta’s opening for Icons of Modernism drew 800 viewers, all eager to lay eyes on the iconic works of Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Salvador Dali, Piet Mondrian, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger and Georges Braque.” Edmonton Journal, March 1, 2012

Toronto

Tasman Richardson: Stations in the Dark. ““Necropolis” is a coming-out for Tasman Richardson, whose career in the Toronto art scene has been more group-show-and-festival underground than solo-show overground in the past decade.”  Canadian Art (Online), February 23, 2012

Montreal

Fictive Nunavut. The drawings of Ningeokuluk Teevee and Shuvinai Ashoona, two artists from Cape Dorset, Nunavut, trace a fictive portrait in their new exhibition, Ciel Ecchymose at La Centrale.  Montreal Mirror,  March 1, 2012

New York

Hennessy Youngman Offers Offbeat Art Criticism  As Hennessy Youngman, the Brooklyn artist Jayson Musson mixes hip-hop slang and profanity with high-minded criticism in a series of YouTube videos.   New York Times, March 1, 2012

London

British galleries buy Titian Renaissance masterpiece  Britain's National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland have raised $70 million to buy the Renaissance masterpiece Diana and Callisto.  CBC, March 1, 2012

Qatar

Qatar's Royal Patronage of the Arts: Glittering but Empty Critics of the Qatar royal family say it is behaving as a facilitator of the international art scene while at the same time using it for self-promotion.  New York Times, March 1, 2012

In Qatar, Artists and Collectors Find a New Market  As Qatar develops a sophisticated art scene, a number of Qatari collectors are becoming major investors in art.  New York Times, March 1, 2012