After a break for holidays the blog is back online… jobs were updated today, and a post to come soon on the budget woes facing the sector…
IMOCA: This Must Be The Place
2 April 2009Popped along to the opening of IMOCA’s new exhibition ‘This Must Be The Place‘ :
It’s great to see artists getting together and creating new spaces for exhibition and activity, even if some of the work in this particular show felt a bit slight to me (perhaps a consequence of the ‘contemporary budget’ as was described?) Clearly there’s some ambitious aspirations with the space (although the name itself I think is a bit misleading), and I look forward to seeing what they get up to next…
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Posted by Emily MFG
Hiatus for the holidays
19 December 2008The blog will be quiet from today until early January– may all your holidays be bright!
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Posted by Emily MFG
Berlusconi tampers with Truth
7 August 2008
In other fascinating, hilarious yet somewhat disturbing news: minions attached to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi have taken the initiative to cover up the nipple of a nude figure (‘Truth’) in a reproduction of a Tiepolo painting which hangs behind the minister during press conferences, as reported in the Guardian:
Slap in the middle of the painting is a neat, round female breast. During press conferences, as a commentator writing for the daily La Stampa noted, the breast floats above the prime minister’s head “like a halo”. This, it was felt, was too much for the sensibilities of a nation that – long before Berlusconi came along – had been feasting its eyes on half-naked Magdalenes and Minervas, not to mention the blatantly erotic statuary of Antonio Canova. Tiepolo’s breast, with attendant nipple, had to go.
Photos taken of the most recent press conference at Palazzo Chigi show the central figure has been retouched. An extra fold of clothing has appeared that covers the offending breast.
Berlusconi’s chief spin doctor, the junior minister Paolo Bonaiuti, told Corriere della Sera it was “an initiative of those on the staff of the prime minister who take care of Berlusconi’s image”. He went on: “That breast [and] that nipple ended up right in the shots the news bulletins used [for coverage of] the press conferences.”
He added that the prime minister’s image advisers feared that such a sight might offend the sensibilities of some television viewers.
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Posted by Emily MFG
IMMA’s collections in crisis
7 August 2008
A Tain tapestry by Louis le Brocquy, one of the IMMA works suffering from poor storage conditions
IMMA’s storage crisis made the front page of the Irish Times over the weekend, as a report obtained by the IT through Freedom of Information detailed the extent of damage that’s been done to the permanent collection due to inadequate storage facilities. This is the second revelation in recent months of serious mismanagement of national collections (following a damning audit of the National Museum’s collections by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General). The five-year-old IMMA report, authored by collections curator Catherine Marshall, details buckling of artworks, prints adhering to glass, and bloom appearing on metal sculptures– such damage making the works in storage ‘dangerous to handle’ unless absolutely necessary.
A second piece in the IT continued the IMMA story further:
Imma’s own on-site stores at its home at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (RHK) were crammed with artworks, constituting a serious hazard as they could not be evacuated in the event of a fire and had no proper environmental controls to protect fragile works of art. With well over 1,000 works in its permanent collection by then, the vast bulk was being housed in “temporary” and “interim” warehouses and stores sourced off-site by the Office of Public Works (OPW), none of which were really suitable for storing art.
So critical had the storage situation become that Imma was forced to store works in a shipping container in the car park. The use of the shipping container was described as an emergency solution. But the “emergency” lasted four years. In September 2007, Imma’s director Enrique Juncosa wrote to Sean Benton, the chair of the OPW, again highlighting its storage problems.
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Posted by Emily MFG
Back again!
24 July 2008Apologies for the hiatus in postings– had to take a break from blogging to get caught up on things at the day job 
Still to come: an overview of Points of Alignment — but in other news:
- Olive Braiden is stepping down as Chair of the Arts Council
- Another three year Arts Council initiative is in the works for the traditional arts
- Another pamphlet was published in the AC’s ‘Value of the Arts’ series, this time written by Kevin Whelan: Between filiation and affiliation: the space of art. The essay trots out the usual references to Ricoeur, Arendt, and Benjamin in its comments on the ‘fusion of art and memory’, but appears to have very little to do with the prompt of the series (but then I’m not a fan of Ricoeur, who in my opinion mistakes verbiage for insight– not entirely dissimilar from this essay…)
- A new director of the Model : Niland centre was announced
- I was digging this article on the future of the humanities in the Wilson Quarterly — these issues preoccupy us here at UCD a lot these days…
- … and thinking that Christopher Hitchens goes pretty far to prove a point about waterboarding…
- … and marvelling at Chanel and Zaha Hadid’s chutzpah with their latest ‘artistic’ project to be launched in Central Park, NY…
- … and in completely unrelated arts management news, wondering if my blog is at all necessary, seeing as how I’ve discovered this one.
Thanks also to everyone at the conference who had nice things to say about the blog– I’ll try not to let y’all down!
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Posted by Emily MFG
Theatre Forum responds to Arts Plan
9 May 2008At the end of last week Tania Banotti of Theatre Forum Ireland published the organisation’s response to the Arts & Culture Plan unveiled by Minister Brennan at the end of February, available on TF’s website and in Friday’s Irish Times. The piece expressed concerns about the purpose of the plan (given that an Arts Council plan is already currently active) and questioned its emphases on economic benefits and symbolic (rather than strategic) gestures:
On closer examination, the Minister’s document is not so much a plan as an extended statement on the current artistic landscape, and the activities of the national cultural institutions (such as the Abbey, the National Concert Hall, National Library, National Gallery and IMMA) in particular. One big question it raises is how much his Department, and by extension the State, values the arts for their intrinsic worth, and how much they see the arts as a social tool or as a plank of cultural tourism. The arts are an important economic contributor, and they can – and do – play an important role in terms of social inclusion. However, the arts are not primarily an instrument of economic or social policy. This can’t be allowed to become their primary function, or the only basis on which they are funded.
While the Minister comes under criticism for the instrumental tenor of his department’s plan, I think it less convincing to counter with the ‘art for art’s sake’ argument. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Emily MFG
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