University of North Texas Launches Institute for the Advancement of the Arts
The University of North Texas has launched its new Institute for the Advancement of the Arts, providing opportunities for artists and musicians to showcase their work through exhibits and concerts. According to
Pegasus News, the new facility, on Denton Square, is twenty-four thousand square feet. Academy Award–nominated screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga is the institute’s first artist-in-residence.
Arriaga, whose screenplays include Babel and twenty-one Grams, recently completed his directorial debut, the Burning Plain, starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger. The story, told out of order, takes place in a small New Mexico border town.
A committee comprised of Warren Burggren, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; James Scott, dean of the College of Music; and Robert Milnes, dean of the College of Visual Arts and Design, oversees operations of the institute and appoints the artist-in-residence.
“We have set a wonderfully high standard with the appointment of Guillermo Arriaga as our first artist-in-residence,” Burggren said in an e-mail. “I look forward to continue with individuals of his caliber.”
The committee also selects two applicants from the faculty and awards them an opportunity to concentrate on their artistry by relieving them from their teaching responsibilities for a semester.
October 26, 2009
Philip Monk Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from Ontario Association of Art Galleries
Despite receiving the first-ever lifetime achievement award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, Philip Monk, director and curator at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) has no intention of slowing down. “I’m gratified to get a lifetime award, but I’m not near the end of my career,” he said in a recent interview. “That’s usually when these awards come.”
Monk began his career studying architecture, but eventually found himself studying art history at the University of Toronto. Intending to only ever be an arts writer, he immersed himself in the art community as a critic and author of articles. Monk wrote for a wide range of magazines, from small, art-centric to large, commercial magazines such as
Macleans.
After being immersed in the artistic community for a length of time, Monk was offered the opportunity to become a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and he took it as a way to augment his written work and allow himself to continue writing while maintaining the security of a “real” job.
After working at the AGO for eight years as a curator, Monk moved on to another highly regarded Toronto art gallery, the Power Plant, and assumed a position there as curator for ten years. From there, his next position was the one he holds now, as the director of the AGYU.
More can be read on Monk’s award
here.
October 22, 2009
Rice University Students Develop Storage Prototype for Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts
Rice University students have developed a storage-system prototype developed by Rice University students for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which is adopting the new system, according to the
Houston Chronicle.
The museum’s conservation director, Wynne Phelan, said the modular, transparent design could revolutionize art storage. It would replace wood crates and cardboard boxes, which prevent museum staff from seeing the artworks inside—requiring additional unpacking and repacking of delicate objects—and emit harmful acids. The new system could even enable museums to invite visitors into areas now closed to the public.
“This adds an incredible freedom of visiting experience to a museum,” Phelan said. “If you don't have things in crates and cardboard boxes or closed cases, there is something to show, and you don't have to handle the artwork.”
The four students developed the system as part of the inaugural engineering and design for art and artifact conservation program at Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen.
The system combines an easily assembled armature of metal rods with Plexiglas windows. Because artworks come in different shapes and sizes and are usually fragile, it also lets conservators customize how they secure each object.
October 22, 2009
Art Institute of Chicago Awarded $2 Million Mellon Challenge Grant
The Art Institute of Chicago has been awarded a two-million-dollar challenge grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to aid the museum’s efforts in conservation and scientific research on its collections. Of this generous grant, $1.5 million, to be matched by $500,000, will be used to endow a new position for an associate conservation scientist within the museum’s department of conservation. The remaining $500,000 of the grant will support, over a four-year period, the continuation and expansion, in both depth and scope, of the art conservation and scientific research collaboration the museum has recently undertaken with colleagues at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory.
October 14, 2009
Anne Friedberg (1952–2009)
Anne Friedberg, historian, theorist of modern media culture, and USC School of Cinematic Arts professor, whose work pioneered the field of visual studies, died on October 9. She was fifty-seven.
Friedberg’s work integrated film studies, art history, architecture, and media studies into what is now a wider and richer discussion about visual culture.
“Anne was one of those rare individuals, who with her remarkable intellect, could integrate past, present, and future,” said dean Elizabeth M. Daley. “She was always challenging her colleagues and students to move forward and embrace change and innovation with courage and integrity. Both her colleagues and her students were inspired by her intellectual curiosity and her rigorous scholarship.
At the time of her death, Friedberg was professor of critical studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, with joint appointments in English and art history. Having joined the school in 2003, she was appointed chair of the critical studies program in 2006. She was a principal architect of the new interdivisional Ph.D. program for iMAP (media arts and practice) and was on the steering committee of the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate Program.
Friedberg is perhaps best known for her book _Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern_ (1993, University of California Press), and, more recently, _The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft_, published by MIT Press.
She launched the Virtual Window Interactive, a translation/extension of the book created in collaboration with designer Erik Loyer. She was also the coeditor of _Close Up 1927–1933: Cinema and Modernism_, an anthology of critical and theoretical writing.
Named as a 2008 Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, her next planned project was a work of digital scholarship on Slavko Vorkapich, a special effects cinematographer, montage expert, and former dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
October 13, 2009
UCLA Gains Shakespeare Collection
A trove of volumes related to William Shakespeare and dating as far back as the fifteenth century is headed for a new home at UCLA, reports the
Los Angeles Times.
The collection, which will be stored at the university's Clark Library in the West Adams district, features seventy-two books related to Shakespeare, includes a 1685 fourth folio of his works.
It also includes two histories that Shakespeare is said to have used as the basis of his plays, a second edition of the King James translation of the Bible published in 1613 and a 1603 book by French essayist Montaigne.
The books, which were published between 1479 and 1731, belonged to a collection by Paul Chrzanowski, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California. The volumes are worth an estimated two million dollars.
October 13, 2009
Carleton University Art Gallery Curator Wins Writing Award
Sandra Dyck, curator with the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG), was recently presented with an Ontario Association of Art Galleries’ Curatorial Writing Award in Toronto, reports
Exchange Magazine.
The award was conferred for a catalogue essay, "A Pilgrim’s Progress: The Life and Art of Gerald Trottier," which Dyck published in 2008. The catalogue accompanied a larger project that included a retrospective exhibit of the same name at the Carleton University Art Gallery in 2006-2007.
“The curatorial writing award is a major honour for me because it was awarded by a jury of my peers,” says Dyck. “The Gerald Trottier project was both challenging and rewarding, and this recognition is thrilling for me and for Carleton University Art Gallery.”
Diana Nemiroff, director of CUAG says: “We’re so proud of Sandra, as she was up against competition from public art galleries all over Ontario.”
The Ontario Association of Art Galleries Awards are presented in recognition of excellence and achievement in exhibitions, curatorial writing, education programs, and community partnerships. The province-wide juried awards are conferred and presented annually.
October 07, 2009
Broad Art Museum Names Advisory Board
Organizers of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum will gain some additional expertise in the form of an advisory board whose members include art experts from across the country.
University officials last week announced the names of board members, including Graham W.J. Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts; Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Carl Koivuniemi, deputy chief planning and budget officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, among others.
The museum, which will be located on East Circle Drive, is set to break ground on March 16, 2010, and open sometime in 2012.
The board will give advice on the museum’s programming and operation, among other things, Stanford said.
“We wanted a board that had a perspective that was far-reaching,” she said.
Board members visited campus in September to discuss the project, said Lisa Mulcrone, senior communications manager in university relations.
“They visited the site, they toured campus, they were briefed on the project itself and then they had brainstorming sessions on some things,” she said.
Dean of the Michigan State University’s College of Arts and Letters Karin Wurst said an advisory board will add to the museum’s prestige. “The Broad Art Museum is going to be a really high-profile affair and it’s going to be a world-class museum,” she said.
For the names and full biographies of all the advisory board members, click
here.
October 05, 2009
