Art News For The Week of April 22, 2012
This Week In Art News From Around The Web
Here are the top stores in art news for the week of April 22, 2012:
Museum looks at Mormon life
Many Americans may not know much about the Mormon faith, but that could all change in the coming months with Mitt Romney a lock for the Republican presidential nomination.
There has been controversy, confusion and concern about how Mormonism fits into American society.
For a glimpse of how Mormons see themselves, it’s worth visiting the Church History Museum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. Created by believers, for believers, the museum shows how close to the center of American life Mormons consider themselves to be.
In January a poll of Mormons conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 68 percent of Mormons believe Americans don’t see Mormonism as “part of mainstream American society,” and that 46 percent believe there is “a lot of discrimination” against them. The church, which claims 14 million adherents worldwide, knows it has a perception problem, and it developed an ad campaign to counter it.
Read more: New York Times
Italian art museum in trouble
The Italian art museum, the Maxxi opened just two years ago, but its fate hangs in the balance.
The Italian government has 20 days in which to decide the fate of the country’s national contemporary art museum in Rome and was designed by the Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid.
Lorenzo Ornaghi, the culture and heritage minister in Mario Monti’s non-party government, has opened proceedings that could lead to the Maxxi being put under special administration.
Officials said he decided to act following the discovery of a €800,000 (£654,000) hole in the 2011 accounts and a prediction that losses could reach €11m in the next three years.
The Maxxi crisis is the latest symptom of the funding crisis which is sweeping southern Europe and wreaking havoc on the arts.
The administrators of the museum said last year’s losses were in part due to a 43% cut in government funding and had, in any case, been covered by profits carried over from the previous year. They expressed “surprise and concern” at the minister’s decision which “damaged the international credibility” of the museum.
Read more: Guardian.co.uk
China: Art-world leader?
China is trying to become a world leader in the arts, a push that is resulting in showing of more the nation’s works in the United States.
In Shanghai, the nation’s financial center, the city government recently gave its blessing to a museum of contemporary art to be called an “art palace” — actually an expansion of the China Pavilion of the 2010 World Expo — that will bring the space to some 2.1 million square feet.
The project will make it the largest art museum in China and will put it among the largest in the world when it opens on Oct. 1, said Li Lei, the executive director of the Shanghai Art Museum, which will move into the new art palace.
Not to be outdone, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing is holding an international competition to choose the architect for a structure of almost 1.4 million square feet to be built next to one of the capital’s new landmarks, the National Olympic Stadium. The three finalists are the American architect Frank Gehry, the Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid and the French architect Jean Nouvel.
The boom in museum construction, which some Chinese art experts liken to the expansion of museums in the United States at the end of the 19th century, has much to do with national pride. It comes with the full support of the national government as part of a cultural strategy known as “Going Out, Inviting In,” under which the government is giving its blessing to museums’ taking the initiative in offering an array of modern Chinese art for show abroad, including in the United States.
Read more: New York Times
Photo Credit
Image via Image: Tina Phillips
About Brittany O'Donnell
As the founder of Artistically Connected I am passionate about art and business. I enjoy working with artists at all stages of their craft and learning along the way.
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