Santa Barbara City College Ceases Plans for New Media Arts Department Facility
Plans to build a state-of-the-art facility to house Santa Barbara City College’s multifaceted media arts department have been placed on the back burner indefinitely after state officials reduced funding for the project due to budget issues, according to the
Daily Sound
SBCC officials said the state had originally promised to contribute thirty-two million dollars toward the new School of Media Arts, but recently dropped that amount to twenty-two million dollars. With no guarantee that those funds would be delivered anytime soon, college administrators decided to direct bond money received through Measure V toward other critical projects.
“In a difficult economic environment like this, we owe it to our students, faculty, staff, and the voters who supported Measure V to achieve the greatest good that we can for our campus and the community who benefit from our programs,” Dr. Andreea Serban, president and superintendent of the college, said in a prepared statement. “We will use the remaining funds toward as many other capital projects as possible.”
Passed by 70 percent of the voters in June 2008, the bond issue brought SBCC a total of seventy-seven million dollars, including $9.3 million that had been earmarked for the new media arts building.
Prior to the election, officials had touted the sixty-five-thousand square-foot facility—which would have housed journalism, photography, graphic design, film, and television programs—as one of the featured benefits of passing the bond measure.
Combining those departments under one roof would have also freed up much-needed space on the college’s main campus. However, after the state cut its funding commitment, college officials would have been forced to use twenty-eight million dollars of Measure V funds to keep the project moving forward.
August 31, 2009
University of Western Ontario Art Gallery Hires New Curator-in-Residence
For the first time, the McIntosh Gallery on the University of Western Ontario campus has hired a contemporary curator-in-residence, according to the
London Free-Press.
Western has a long-standing tradition of hiring a writer-in-residence and now has found funding for a curator. An art historian, critic, and art professor, Toronto’s Jessica Wyman has recently taken up this position and will be at the gallery through December.
“It’s a pretty unique position, particularly for the McIntosh, which has not had a dedicated contemporary art curator before,” says Wyman, who has received awards including the Emerging Curator Award and a nomination for Best Art Writing by the Untitled Art Awards. Her writing on contemporary art has been published internationally in magazines and journals.
Wyman is developing a thematic exhibition from the gallery’s collection to highlight its contemporary holdings.
August 26, 2009
New Committee to Plan for Future of University of Iowa Museum of Art
The
Press-Citizen reports that the University of Iowa has established an envisioning committee to consider options for the future of the UI Museum of Art, as the university announced Tuesday.
The art collection was removed from the museum because of the 2008 flood, and then university officials decided the facility was too vulnerable to ever house art again. The collection is scattered with some pieces on campus but most, including the famed Jackson Pollock
Mural, are at the Figge Museum in Davenport.
UI president Sally Mason, who established the committee, said in an interview last week that it was too early to say what might come from the committee but she asked its members to keep an open mind.
“I want people to think about all of the possibilities,” Mason said.
Carroll Reasoner, UI interim vice president of legal affairs and general counsel, will serve as chairwoman of the nineteen-member committee, which includes faculty, community members, and students and will be assisted by a five-member advisory committee. Mason said last week she expects a preliminary report from the committee by Christmas.
UI officials don’t yet know how to pay for a new museum, which makes it different from virtually every other major flood recovery project on campus.
August 26, 2009
George Fox University Professor Named Oregon's Art Educator of the Year
The Oregon Art Education Association will honor Mark Terry, an assistant professor of art at George Fox University, with its 2010 Oregon Higher Education Art Educator of the Year award at the OAEA's fall conference in Redmond, Oregon, on Sunday, October 11.
Terry, now in his twenty-fifth year as a full-time teacher and thirteenth year at George Fox, earned the award both for his work at the university, where the art major, launched just eleven years ago, has grown to more than one hundred students—one of the largest majors on campus—and for his efforts to facilitate art education at public schools throughout the region.
Terry also oversees the university's connection with the Noble Hill Anagama Kiln in Forest Grove, Oregon, the focal point of the school's ceramics program since it was first fired in April of 2004.
"The award took me by complete surprise," Terry said. "I suspect that our long-standing commitment to mentoring elementary and secondary art teachers, and partnering with their programs, may have played some part in it. We have long sent both teachers and undergrads out into elementary schools to do art programs, and alums from our program have become influential teachers in at least a dozen middle and high schools in the region. We also have active partnership programs with nearby high schools."
Among other projects, George Fox has hosted the "All-Northwest High School Art Show," the only juried event of its kind in the Northwest, since the mid-1990s. The university also has a long-standing partnership with C.S. Lewis Academy art students, providing lab and instruction during May Term. And last January, the university hosted an exhibition in its Minthorne Gallery of area elementary and secondary teachers' work, entitled "Artists Who Teach."
"We are missional about bringing light to the world through art and understand that seeds need to be planted and nurtured long before students reach the university if we are to be successful in preparing young artists for careers in the arts," he said.
To this end, Terry supervises annual cooperative firings of the Noble Hill Anagama with students from Lake Oswego high schools. Requiring three years to build, the Noble Hill Anagama is a large hill-climbing, wood-fueled kiln that is modeled on the ancient kilns and firing traditions of Korea and Japan. Firing it is a cooperative and communal event that takes several days.
August 25, 2009
New Parsons Professor Appointed Director and Chief Curator of Design Center
Parsons has announced the appointment of Radhika Subramaniam as the new director and chief curator of the school's Sheila Johnson Design Center. Subramaniam has also begun as assistant professor of art and design history and theory, as of July 1. Subramaniam is an independent curator, editor, and writer based in New York. Most recently, she held the title of director of cultural programs at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, where she ran a program of art and ideas, including symposia, dialogues, public art, and performance, that advanced the organization’s mission to galvanize downtown with innovative and critical artistic and cultural programming.
Subramaniam was the founding and executive editor of _Connect: art.politics.theory.practice_, an interdisciplinary art journal published by Arts International.
Through her professional activities, Subramaniam has established a network of collaborations and partnerships including with the Vera List Center at the New School. Her upcoming public art festival in October, “Art in Odd Places” on Fourteenth Street, includes a project by Eugene Lang students under the direction of Lang professor, Simonetta Moro with artists Eve Mosher and Tattfoo Tan.
Subramaniam has many years of teaching experience at the university level, at Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University.
August 19, 2009
Multimillion-Dollar Gift Lets Rice University Install Turrell Artwork
Thanks to a multimillion-dollar gift from Rice University alumna Suzanne Deal Booth, Rice will install a work by celebrated American artist James Turrell on its campus. This is the single largest gift by a Rice alum for a piece of art and another milestone in the university’s one-dollar billion Centennial Campaign.
An initial gift from Deal Booth allowed Rice to commission the artwork last year. Turrell has submitted designs for the “skyspace,” an experiential work of art that fuses light and space.
The artwork will stand in the green space in front of Rice’s Shepherd School of Music. One of the most important features of the installation will be its visibility, with the site deliberately selected because of the nearby parking and the open space around it. It can be seen from some high-rises around Houston and in the Texas Medical Center.
“When I thought about making this gift, it was never a question of whether or not this art would be public,” Deal Booth said. “Of course it would be public. Access to art is so important, especially at a university. I want students and the community to be able to experience this extraordinary artwork as part of their everyday life.”
Booth serves on Rice University’s board of trustees, on the board of directors for the Center Pompidou Foundation, and as a board member of the American Academy in Rome, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. She also serves on the US national committee on the International Council on Monuments and Sites ( US/ICOMOS ) and the Art Committee for the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
August 18, 2009
Three New Directors Appointed at Montana State University College of Arts and Architecture
The Montana State University College of Arts and Architecture has announced that it will have new directors in all three of its schools when school resumes later this month.
Susan Agre-Kippenhan, dean of the college, said that the three directors assumed their duties July 1. The new directors are: Robert F. Arnold, a filmmaker who comes from Boston University, director of the MSU School of Film and Photography; Vaughan Judge, a fine art photographer from the Glasgow (Scotland) School of Art, director of the MSU School of Art; and Fatih A. Rifki, former dean of the School of Architecture and Design at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, director of the MSU School of Architecture.
It is the first time in the history of the college that the leadership in the three schools has turned over concurrently, providing an opportunity for the college, Agre-Kippenhan said. Music is also an academic unit in the college, however it is a department and not a school. Alan Leech is the head of the department of music.
August 17, 2009
UCLA Considers Closing Arts Library
Facing drastic budget reductions this year, the University of California, Los Angeles, has begun implementing cuts across its departments to make up for an estimated $131-million shortfall, reports the
Los Angeles Times. Among the proposed victims is one of Los Angeles’ largest cultural resources—the arts library on the Westwood campus. The university has confirmed that it is looking at eliminating the library, which contains more than 270,000 volumes in the fields of art, architecture, design, film, television, theater, and more. If the plan is approved, UCLA will shut down the arts library in the Public Policy Building and move some of the collection to a facility shared with another library.
“This doesn’t mean we would stop serving the arts community,” said Gary Strong, the university’s head librarian. “We would do this from a different location. The fact is that we cannot support all of the separate libraries that we currently have.”
The UCLA library system supports twelve facilities on an annual operating budget of about forty million dollars, according to the university. A spokeswoman at UCLA said study teams are being organized to examine the operational effect of closing the arts and chemistry branches. “What will not change, however, is the library’s steadfast focus on offering collections and services,” she said in a statement.
August 17, 2009
Speculations Surround Neo Rauch’s Successor at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst
It seems that replacing Neo Rauch as a professor is not going as smoothly as planned at Leipzig’s academy Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst. As _Die Tageszeitung_’s Robert Schimke reports, via Artforum.com’s Jennifer Allen, the Cologne painter Heribert C. Ottersbach has been selected as the successor to Rauch. This appointment came after Rauch, the international star of the Leipzig School decided to give up his professorship, due to his workload. According to Schimke, Rauch had his own favorite replacement: the Belgian artist Michael Borremans. Yet Borremans fell through the hiring process because he does not speak German well and lives too far away from the academy.
After convincing Borremans—both a painter and a filmmaker—to apply for the Leipzig position, Rauch reportedly believed that the artist’s twin specializations would be a nod to a portion of the faculty that has no warm feelings for the traditional Leipzig school of painting, apparently including the academy’s rector Joachim Brohm. While Brohm insists that he was not involved in the hiring process, it doesn’t help matters that Ottersbach is a friend of Brohm and one of three painting professors who come from the Brohm’s Rhineland home in western Germany. “Already in the past,” writes Schimke, “the rector had earned the reputation of taking his network into the Leipzig professorships.” Schimke doesn’t believe that the conflict represents a mere East-West career skirmish but rather a “cultural clash” which began as a formalist debate in the 1950s in former East Germany and in the vilifications between state-branded German Democratic Republic painters and liberal-minded painters from the West. Another antagonism lies in the marginalization throughout the 1990s of the Leipzig painters by new media art and more discursive artistic practices. Schimke speculates that Brohm—a photographer socialized by the arts scene in the Rhine region during the 1970s and ‘80s—might just be quickening the end of the Leipzig School.
August 17, 2009
Yale University Press Bans Controversial Cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad
According to
Patricia Cohen in the New York Times, it’s not all that surprising that Yale University Press would be wary of reprinting notoriously controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a forthcoming book. After all, when the twelve caricatures were first published by a Danish newspaper a few years ago and reprinted by other European publications, Muslims all over the world angrily protested, calling the images—which included one in which Muhammad wore a turban in the shape of a bomb—blasphemous. In the Middle East and Africa some rioted, burning and vandalizing embassies; others demanded a boycott of Danish goods; a few nations recalled their ambassadors from Denmark. In the end at least two hundred people were killed.
So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: the book, _The Cartoons That Shook the World_, should not include the twelve Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the nineteenth-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s _Inferno_ that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin, and Dalí.
The book’s author, Jytte Klausen, a Danish-born professor of politics at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, reluctantly accepted Yale University Press’s decision not to publish the cartoons. But she was disturbed by the withdrawal of the other representations of Muhammad. All of those images are widely available, Klausen said by telephone, adding that “Muslim friends, leaders, and activists thought that the incident was misunderstood, so the cartoons needed to be reprinted so we could have a discussion about it.” the book is due out in November.
John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, said by telephone that the decision was difficult, but the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was “overwhelming and unanimous.” The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.
August 15, 2009
University of Maine at Farmington Unveils Revised Design for Arts Center
The University of Maine at Farmington has unveiled the revamped design for their proposed Emery Community Arts Center, after an earlier design was roundly criticized in community meetings, according to the
Maine Sun-Journal. The university’s president, Theo Kalikow said a lot has changed since a site walk in late July.
"We listened to everything everyone said," she said.
Even if the university went through the process with the design presented earlier and got all the approvals, Kalikow said, UMF would lose "because the resulting Emery Arts Center has to be welcoming to the community."
The new design will still honor Ted and Marguerite Emery's wishes, Kalikow said. The couple left the university five million dollars to build an art center to be shared with the university and the public.
August 12, 2009
Art Institute of Chicago Joins ArtBabble Partnership
The Art Institute of Chicago joined in a cyberspace partnership of world-class art museums, officially becoming a partner of the online art video site ArtBabble.org.
The site is a Web channel that showcases high-def art-based video, providing up-close and personal access to works of art, video interviews with curators and artists, art documentaries, poetry readings, videos of art installations, and full-text transcripts of all on-site videos.
Started by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in April, the site includes Art21, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Rubin Museum of Art, the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Museum of Arts and Design, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
“We are thrilled to be joining ArtBabble,” Sam Quigley, vice president of Collections Management, Imaging, and Information Technology at the Art Institute, said in a statement. “ArtBabble is really a great leap forward both for museums and for Web users looking for information related specifically to the visual arts. It offers content of extremely high quality, technological innovation, and the opportunity for us to dynamically and directly engage those who share our interests.”
August 12, 2009
