The Tate Museum commissioned a web artist known as Harwood. “He proposed to make a mock version of the existing Tate website, to which one in three visitors to www.tate.org.uk would be diverted. Clicking through the various categories of the museum’s site, visitors would be dropped into Harwood’s version produced in the same structure and design, but with ‘hacked’ artworks” – work changed digitally by the artist. The work was to debut this week, but that’s been postponed, perhaps to straighten out some reservations about the concept. – The Guardian
Tag: 05.25.00
DOME DEFENSE
Despite public outcry, shoddy attendance, and the dissenting opinions of 64 MPs, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has defended the UK government’s decision to pump £29m into the Millennium Dome. – BBC
DESIGN FOR LIVING
Israel’s architecture exhibit at the upcoming Venice Biennale attempts to answer the beguiling question: What, exactly, is a city? “In curator Hillel Schocken’s view, modern urban planning has been an utter failure; not one successful city was created in the 20th century. He proposes a new definition of the city, one that fulfills the idea of intimate anonymity.” – Haaretz (Israel)
COSMIC SHIFT
For the first time since Washington DC’s Air and Space Museum opened in 1976, the museum is not the most popular museum ticket in town. In the battle of Smithsonians, Natural History is winning. “In the first four months of 2000, 2.3‚million people visited Air and Space. In the same span, 2.8‚million have gone through Natural History. Last month 1‚million visitors walked through Air and Space, compared with 1.3‚million at Natural History.” – Washington Post
THE MOST-STOLEN WORK OF ART IN THE WORLD —
— goes on display. – Ananova
BELLAGIO TO CLOSE SUNDAY
The Bellagio Hotel gallery will close this weekend and its art will be sold. The hotel plans to reopen the gallery later with traveling exhibitions. – Las Vegas Sun
FLAG FIASCO
Charleston’s Spoleto Festival is hurting. A boycott protesting South Carolina’s flying of the Confederate flag is having its effect. “Overall ticket sales are down 20 percent and group sales down 45 percent from last year. ‘The silence of artists is the most painful thing for me,’ said Spoleto’s general manager and director, Nigel Redden, who has argued to his artists that they should register their opinions through their performances, not their absence.” – Newark Star-Ledger
MUSCLE BEHIND SAG
The AFL-CIO’s national leaders have publicly backed the month-long actors strike being waged in New York and Los Angeles against the commercial production industry. – Backstage
FENG SHUI CHIC
New Yorkers are frantically jockeying to pay $500 to $1,000 for Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s stone lions to solve their feng shui woes. “It’s difficult to get one of Mr. Cai’s lions. Some museum goers just don’t have enough bad energy. Some keep returning to the Whitney to reapply, even though only 27 of 99 of the Cai (pronounced “sigh”) lions remain unreserved. They put on their best co-op board-meeting faces to enter into a process that plays on some basic New York neuroses: the need to succeed, the impulse to throw money at a new trend and the urge to make the apartment a thing of beauty.” – New York Observer
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
Hispanics make up 11.5 percent of the US population but “rarely occupy more than 2 percent of the available jobs in the film and television industry,” according to a study by the Screen Actors Guild. Minorities have tried to make their case to Hollywood as a social cause. “Studio executives will lend half an ear to a social case, but the bottom line is that the corporate suites are running a business, and business is about profits or potential profits. Develop a business case, and you will bring about change.” – Dallas Morning News (AP)