Vancouver

Matisse, Picasso, van Gogh and other masters spend summer at Vancouver Art Gallery. Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore opens May 26 at the Vancouver Art Gallery and features nearly 50 paintings, sculpture and drawings from one of the world’s great holdings of early European Modernism.  Vancouver Sun, April 17, 2012

Colour your world: Student artists liven up a Downtown Eastside mission.  Installations by Emily Carr University of Art +Design students enliven the Union Gospel Mission. Globe & Mail, April 17, 2012

Calgary

City loses philanthropist, supporter of the arts. Calgary's arts community is mourning the passing of one of its most stalwart supporters following news that philanthropist Lola Rozsa died Sunday.  Calgary Herald, April 16, 2012

Toronto

Laura Kikauka: Garage-Sale Gold. “What defines a guilty pleasure? Laura Kikauka, whose art often consists of collected objects she arranges, alters and presents, has purged her pleasurable practice of all guilt.” Canadian Art (Online), April 12, 2012

Sheridan College students pioneer the art of illustrationism.  “This year’s Sheridan illustration program graduates are part of a new movement. Illustrationism is a collaborative effort that encourages illustrators and admirers to document and share their work through social media.” National Post, April 16, 2012

True Tom Thomson revealed in West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson. “Veteran documentary producer-director Peter Raymont had been fascinated by the most famous painter associated with the Group of Seven ever since the 1960s when, as a teenager, he went camping in the wilds of rural Ontario.” Toronto Star, April 17, 2012

Ottawa

Amy Schissel: Art in a digital time.  “Amy Schissel’s status as a rising artist of national repute was stamped last fall, when she was a finalist for the $25,000 RBC Canadian Painting Competition. Her show, titled Systems Fever, is a series of seemingly frenetic and vivid abstractions, as if someone had carved a data port in a Jackson Pollock painting and pumped it full of random data.”  Ottawa Citizen, April 17, 2012

Halifax

Patrick Rapati: From Here to Infinity. Mathematics and “philosophical conundrums come to the fore in “Duality,” an exhibition of drawings and paintings by Halifax artist Patrick Rapati currently on view at Gallery Page and Strange.”  Canadian Art (Online), April 12, 2012

Rosenberg’s vision of Halifax endures in major exhibition.  Henry Rosenberg brought a European approach to art making at a time when it wasn’t a regular thing in Canada Chronicle.  The artist lived in Dartmouth from 1896 to the 1930s and was principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design (now NSCAD University) in Halifax for 12 years.  120 works by the artist are on display in Reinvention: The Art and Life of HM Rosenberg, currently at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Chronical Herald, April 18, 2012

Sao Paulo

São Paulo biennial to explore the “illusion of connectivity”  At a press conference, the chief curator also announced his list of artists, which has a strong South American leaning.  Art Newspaper, April 2012

Rio de Janeiro

Attendance survey 2011: Brazil’s exhibition boom puts Rio on top Escher worked his magic in Rio, McQueen reigned supreme in New York, but Tokyo's shows hit by after-effects of earthquake in our annual worldwide survey.  Art Newspaper, April 2012

Berlin

Found in Translation: Missing Links. “Featuring the work of nine international contemporary artists Found in Translation presented an alternative index of discrepancies and interpretations, wherein the distance between what is said and what is heard is not only an unavoidable space, but also a productive one.”  Artists included Brendan Fernandes and O Zhang.  Canadian Art (Online), April 12, 2012

Stockholm

Bomb threat closes modern art museum. A bomb threat closed Stockholm’s modern art museum on Tuesday, two days after an exhibit about degrading stereotypes that black people have endured prompted one Swedish organization to demand that the nation’s culture minister resign. Globe & Mail, April 17, 2012

Abu Dhabi

Is Abu Dhabi Ready For A Contemporary Art Museum? With all the delays in the construction of the planned museums on the emirate's Saadiyat Island - including a Guggenheim branch - some observers are wondering if the whole idea was a good one. After all, both the government and the population are very conservative, and the Gulf already has Qatar pouring big money into museums and the art market. The Guardian (UK) April 17, 2012

Beijing

Chinese Government Can Never Defeat The Internet, Declares Ai Weiwei The artist/activist writes, "[In] the long run, [China's] leaders must understand it's not possible for them to control the Internet unless they shut it off - and they can't live with the consequences of that. The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It's as simple as that." The Guardian (UK) April 16, 2012

Ai Weiwei Sues Beijing's Tax Bureau "Chinese artist and government critic Ai Weiwei said Friday he was suing Beijing's tax bureau for violating the law when it imposed a multi-million tax evasion fine on a company he founded." (That company's name: Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd.) Agence France-Presse, April 13, 2012

Mexico City

An Artistic Response: Destroy A Mexican Museum? "Eduardo Abaroa imagines that the only response to the Mexican government's failure to improve the lot of its indigenous peoples in the past half-century is to raze one of the regime's most significant symbols, the Museo Nacional de Antropología." Adobe Airstream, April 16, 2012