Tag: 03.15.00

• The Rubell Family Collection of contemporary art, with more than 1,000 works by Jeff Koons, Chris Ofili (of “Sensation” fame), Cindy Sherman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and others, is housed in one of the art world’s unlikeliest of galleries: Miami’s former Drug Enforcement Agency contraband warehouse. The Rubells’ masterpieces hang in “a big yellowish cinderblock fortress with a security cage for an entryway.” An ironic sign of the times?  – NPR [Real audio clip]

“There is pitifully little well placed modern sculpture in London, or in most British cities. There are pieces hidden away in parks and buildings, but nobody is commissioning the really big public pieces by the most important contemporary sculptors – and if they did they’d be stuck in a quagmire of planning problems.” So the best artists have been seeking commissions outside the country. – The Guardian

Hans Haacke’s record proves he’s not anti-Semitic, no matter what the charges whirling ’round his controversial Whitney work. How did the press get such a definitive sense of what Sanitation will look like, when it’s not even finished yet? One theory is that the Whitney is responsible. The museum’s director, Maxwell Anderson, has acknowledged that he informed City Hall about the Haacke installation ‘as a courtesy.’ The Whitney is battling a conservative image, and its director is widely dismissed as a newcomer to the New York scene. ‘Now he’s demonstrating that he’s young enough, strong enough, and activist enough.’ The Haacke affair is ‘the first counteroffensive by the New York museum world, telling Giuliani to keep his hands off.’ How does this theory account for the outburst from the Whitney heirs? “They’ve been out of running the museum for some time, so they may be feeling aggrieved, and this may be the way to show their anger.” – Village Voice