Category: Museum

Wednesday round-up (27 Oct 10)

Ok, so technically it’s Thursday, but the baby’s gotta eat sometime.

Here’s what’s caught my eye this week:

  • Locally, Professor Michael Shanks from Stanford University’s visiting UCD– as the blurb goes: ‘His lab at Stanford, Metamedia, is pioneering the use of Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate collaborative multidisciplinary research networks in design history, media materialities and long-term historical trends.’ He’s giving three seminars, the last two of which on 18 November (Museum Design and the Humanities / Design and the Humanities) may be of interest to readers here? Click here to download more info.
  • As Sue Sylvester opined in last night’s Glee, ‘art’s gotta push boundaries’: see some folks doing just that at a gathering of top Irish performance artists on November 4 at Kilmainham Gaol.
  • Did you know next week is Design Week? No? Get thee to the website…
  • The RHA is hosting a swanky evening fundraising do next Friday.
  • Dnote’s launched a Cultural Map of Dublin (iPhone app to follow, huzzah!)
  • Do you dream in 140 characters? Business to Arts is looking for a social media intern to join their team.
  • And finally: can Beckett Bran be far behind? Americans for the Arts cook up a new ad campaign:

Upcoming seminar – Whose Culture is it? Social Inclusion and Diversity in Ireland’s Cultural Spaces

The Council of National Cultural Institutions is hosting an upcoming seminar on the subject of social inclusion and diversity at the Chester Beatty Library in November. There’s an interesting line-up of speakers from IMMA, the Crawford Gallery, the CBL and the Arts Council, amongst others.

Keynote for the day is Mark O’Neill, from Glasgow City Council, who should be especially interesting given Glasgow’s renown for its progressive policies in the area (especially at its fantastic public museums, including the newly reopened Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum). Email mail@heritagecouncil.ie to book!

Here’s a pdf of the programme, by the way.

Irish Museums Association annual forum

IMA_Forum_2009

‘Blow Your Own Trumpet’ — IMA’s annual practitioners’ forum — is set to take place on Friday, 10 July from 10-4 pm at Daniel O’Connell House (58 Merrion Square South).

The day promises to be a very interesting one, with presentations from museum professionals around the country on recent initiatives in their institutions. It’s a great way to get a snapshot of what’s happening across Irish museums, and have an annual chinwag with others in the biz.

For a full line-up of presentations click here, or on the image above.

For further information or bookings contact the IMA Administrator, Carla Marrinan, at 01 4120939 or office@irishmuseums.org

The masses mass for Picass(o)

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Having my daily breakfast of espresso and Euronews, I was amazed to see a story on the public response to the Picasso exhibition currently on at the Grand Palais in Paris… the show’s about to close, and tens of thousands of people apparently queued overnight to catch a last glimpse of the works. To facilitate the crowds the Grand Palais hosted a marathon 83-hour viewing session. According to the accompanying article on the Euronews website, more then 700,000 people have visited the exhibition since it opened in October.

And yet the spirit of liberté, égalité, fraternité has not graced all quarters, with detractors late last year describing the populist shows as ‘a cancer’ in the Parisian art world.

Elsewhere the arts democracy has gained stronger footing, as the BBC last Wednesday announced its intent to put 200,000 paintings in public ownership online, and the imminent appointment of a new arts editor and arts board to enhance coverage. This follows on too from the innovative move by the Prado in early January to place some of its greatest paintings on Google Earth in extreme high resolution, allowing online viewers to see the works in astonishing detail.

And yet, I can’t help but feeling a mixture of exhilaration and depression at such news… imagine an RTE arts board? The public queuing for hours to see a National Gallery exhibition? Irish paintings in the public ownership actually (gasp!) online? What happens to a dream deferred…

MOCA in financial crisis

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Yesterday’s New York Times reported on the budget crisis looming at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, one of the most important centres for contemporary art on the west coast of the US:

The museum has operated at a deficit in six of the last eight years, and its endowment has shrunk to about $6 million from nearly $50 million in 1999, according to people who have been briefed on the finances.

Now the California attorney general has begun an audit to determine if the museum broke laws governing the use of restricted money by nonprofit organizations. And local artists, curators and collectors, including current and former board members, are lobbying to remove the museum’s director, Jeremy Strick, its board, or both.

The museum’s tailspin has brought an outpouring of grief and disbelief in a city that has recently cast itself as a rival to New York as the nation’s art capital. The closing of such a respected museum, or even its merger into another institution, would leave a formidable hole not only in the city’s psyche but in the national cultural landscape as well.

(read the rest of the article)

The philanthropist Eli Broad wrote an opinion piece in the LA Times in November offering $30 million to the museum, if his donation could be matched by other donors– but so far, no bites. The LA Times’ arts blog CultureMonster has been keeping tabs on developments, with interesting comments from the blogosphere following quickly on its heels. Will this be the first major museum to face closure in the economic downturn?