Monster Mash: Breaking arts news and headlines
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• The Saatchi Gallery in London is set to officially open its new 70,000 square-foot location to the public on Thursday following a three-year hiatus. In 2005, the gallery was forced out of its previous home on the River Thames. Its new three-story location in Chelsea offers free entry and features an inaugural exhibition dedicated to contemporary Chinese artists. (Pictured at left: An employee walks through one of the exhibits.)
• New York’s Paul Taylor Dance Company has lost the lease on its headquarters of nearly 20 years, located on the second floor of 552 Broadway in SoHo. A Banana Republic store on the first floor wishes to expand upward, and the building owner, Milton Steinberg, has agreed. The dance company has until April 15 to find a new home.
• Iraqi authorities are refusing to fully reopen the Baghdad Museum until they have guarantees that security is completely stable in the city and the area surrounding the museum. The Baghdad Museum, which houses the world’s greatest collections of Mesopotamian treasures, has remained mostly closed since television footage showed Iraqis looting the museum during the 2003 U.S. invasion.
• Sotheby’s announced it will open an office in Doha, Qatar, saying that the first series of major sales in the Persian Gulf capital city are planned for early 2009. Bill Ruprecht, the CEO of Sotheby’s, cited the upcoming Museum of Islamic Art as well as other museums planned for Doha as reasons for the auction house’s presence.
• The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York is moving forward with the renovation and expansion of its Fifth Avenue mansion, having raised $37 million of the $64 million needed for the project. The new design for the museum, by Gluckman Mayner Architects in collaboration with Beyer Blinder Belle, will increase the museum’s total exhibition space to 17,000 square feet.
• The Atlantic Theater Co. in New York has lured a major fundraising talent from the Roundabout. Jeffory Lawson will take over as the Atlantic’s managing director on Dec. 1, replacing Andrew D. Hamingson, who recently joined the Public Theater as executive director. Lawson told reporters that the credit crisis will make it ‘a challenging year’ for arts fundraising.
• An artist faces possible jail time for defacing his own mural in a Detroit suburb. In 1997, artist Ed Stross painted the word ‘love’ across his mural based on Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Man.’ A court has convicted Stross on the grounds that using letters in the mural violates a sign ordinance. The artist faces 30 days in jail unless the American Civil Liberties Union succeeds in overturning his conviction.
— David Ng
