“For centuries, alcohol has played an important role in the art scene,” says Austrian artist Erwin Wurm. It has certainly been integral to the success of champagne-fueled art fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach. So it’s appropriate that the artist’s latest series, “Drinking Sculptures,” is getting its United States premiere at the Bass Museum of Art in a solo show, “Beauty Business,” that opens the same day as the fair. The sculptures appear to be reconstructed vintage nightstands, credenzas, and closets that open to reveal bottles of liquor. But there’s a catch: Wurm considers them complete only when the viewer is drunk.

Before the exhibition's opening, the artist will stock the sculptures with whatever liquor he chooses. (Extra bottles of alcohol will be stored in the back, just in case.) Museum guards will act as bartenders. It’s unclear at this point whether visitors will be able to drink freely from the sculptures, or whether the Bass will hire performers to get drunk in the galleries instead. According to museum officials, it's all up to Wurm.

But why make an artwork that is, essentially, a bar? “Drinking was always an artistic tool,” explains Wurm, pointing to artists like Martin Kippenberger and Jackson Pollock, who struggled with alcoholism. “I found it interesting to address this in a specific art piece.”

In “Beauty Business,” the “Drinking Sculptures” join other sculptural works, made specifically for the exhibition, that focus on the home or dwelling. “Erwin has always been fascinated with the domestic and how to change things up,” says Dallas Contemporary director Peter Doroshenko, who curated the exhibition. After the show finishes up in Miami, it will travel to Dallas, were Doroshenko promises all museum visitors of proper drinking age will be able to imbibe. “I believe Texans might be able to hold their liquor a little better [than Floridans],” he says.

The works have already begun to cause a stir. When they made their world premiere in Antwerp’s Middleheimmuseum in May, intoxicated visitors got so rowdy that some of the sculptures were damaged and a portion of the exhibition had to be closed. (The Bass needn’t worry; the show still achieved record attendance, drawing an estimated 130,000 people.) Wurm was unfazed by the destruction. “It came with this expectation and a certain habit and change of personalities with alcohol,” he says of the work. “I like this idea very much.” 

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Adam Sender’s first-ever exhibition of his private collection, coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach, slyly imagines what kind of mischief might ensue when a collector leaves his art at home alone. Many of the 70 items, culled from the hedge-fund manager’s holdings of more than 1,000 artworks, are making their United States debut in the show, which is being held in the now-vacant 5,000-square-foot North Bay Road property that he used to inhabit before his recent move to another Miami estate. “It’s totally unlivable conceptually and logistically,” Sender Collection curator Sarah Aibel said of the display, running from November 29 to December 4. “The only furniture is the art.”

Many of the illustrious private collections that call Miami home, such as the Rubell Family Collection and the Margulies Collection, mount their finest and most carefully curated presentations during Art Basel. For Sender’s show, Aibel wanted to play with the fact that “a private collection isn’t a museum,” she said. Instead of attempting to transform the house into a white-walled gallery, she made the entire exhibition about toying with the notion of displaying art in a domestic space.

Three wax-candle sculptures of nude women by Urs Fischer greet visitors at the door — “almost as if they were occupants,” according to Aibel. A speaker system by Banks Violette eats up half of one room. The bathrooms, too, have been given over to art: one is entirely devoted to American artist Raymond Pettibon. In another, Richard Prince’s "Spiritual America," depicting a nude, prepubescent Brooke Shields leaning on a bathtub, hangs above a real tub in the children’s bathroom. (Aibel noted that the Senders will rent a separate bathroom outside the house for guests to use as, well, a bathroom.) The master bedroom will feature a presentation of the British painter Sarah Lucas — who has never had a solo museum show — consisting entirely of works never publicly shown in the U.S.

Such a ruckus seems only fitting for the art world’s most festive gathering. “It’s almost like the art is having a party,” Aibel said.

WHAT: “Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters, 1973, 1977,” curated by Mike Kelley and Dan Nadel

WHEN: Through January 7, Tuesday-Saturday 11AM-6PM

WHERE: Prism, 8746 West Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, Los Angeles

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: Pacific Standard Time sets its sights on the former Ann Arbor-based performance group that birthed some of the West Coast’s most prominent and prolific artists: Destroy All Monsters. Mike Kelley, Cary Logan, Niagara, and Jim Shaw formed the anti-rock-punk-goth-horror-pop performance outfit that together produced films, sculptures, and played some distant cousin of rock music from 1973 to 1977.

The early work of these artists puts in context the Mike Kelley who recently showed the neon illuminated “Exploded Fortress of Solitude” at Gagosian, and a Jim Shaw, whose refined figurative paintings are represented by Patrick Painter­–also with an exhibition that closed last June.

Together, the group worked on zines, taking cues from the Japanese Horror flicks they screened. Carey Logan’s photographs are dark and compelling, wrapped in a gritty fog of youthful cigarette smoke, torn tights and shaggy hair. Their performance subject matter consists of fake scenes of gore and debauchery, that contrast well with Kelley’s grotesque but punchy monster drawings and Shaw’s drawn nudes clad in leather.

The most refreshing and timeless portion of the show comes from its sole female member, Niagara, whose colored pencil drawings are soft, surreal, and seemingly without agenda portraits of women. The exhibition is a great mix of 70s pop cultural infused work with an edge, putting the Punk in Pacific Standard Time.

To see images from “Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters, 1973, 1977,” click on the slide show.

To summarize the Triennale Québécoise 2011 in 500 words requires unjust brevity.

Housed within the Musée d’art Contemporain, the Quebec Triennial is a large-scale survey of emerging artists in and around the Montreal area. The exhibition involves the work over 40 artists selected by five curators, complimented by a series of performances and talks. The whole thing is the product of extensive research into what art in Montreal looks like today. The exhibition takes its name, “The Work Ahead of Us,” from a recent installation by Tennessee-born, Montreal-based artist Grier Edmundson, who himself lifted the title from an essay by great Russian Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin, thus setting up a theme of the play between history and the present that continues throughout.

One highlight in this vein is Myriam Yates’s video “Racetrack Superstar Ghost” (2011), which documents the construction of a pavilion created for rock band U2’s recent 360 tour at the site of the Hippodrome de Montréal, a legendary racetrack that is currently scheduled for demolition. Both precise and disinterested, Yates’s camera drifts over the landscapes with a melancholic grace. By documenting the scaffolding assemblage on the abandoned Hippodrome, Yates weaves a complex narrative between these two architectures, the one deliberately temporary, the other more lasting but doomed. In the parting shot, as fireworks signal a grand finale, a lone skunk runs across some grass a kilometer from the venue. “Racetrack Superstar Ghost” nicely captures a sense of transient spectacle.

For his contribution, Francois Lemieux placed two small trees within the exhibition space and surrounded them with a large wall painting. The trees sit within matching hexagonal pots. Lemieux has affixed two accompanying letters explaining the trees’ original locations and the institutional activities he undertook to procure them from their previous locations within the city. The work is at once romantic in its reference to nature, and institutional — in the gallery the trees appear orphaned. The surrounding wall paintings have a familiar uncomfortable/comforting pastel palette reminiscent of a neglected hospital ward. Lemieux’s work encourages a reflection upon the gallery's ability to re-frame the everyday world — both inside its spaces and beyond.

Grier Edmundson's installation centers around a small monochromatic painting of Italian Futurist F. T. Marinetti. Like Tatlin, Marinetti produced more ideology than art. The echo of Marinetti’s 1909 exhortation to “destroy the museums, the libraries, every type of academy” rests bemusedly within the ethers of its present context, a contemporary museum. Stenciled simply onto an unstretched canvas curtain, a text reads “Sometimes I am content.” The statement's simple duality speaks volumes: it is reflective, modest, and self-aware. Rather than declaring some revolutionary ambition, it remains a soft and restrained puzzle.

Other highlights in the exhibition include a towering paper installation by Seripop, performances by Eve K. Trembley & PME-Art, abstract paintings by Chris Kline, photos by Jessica Eaton, sculptures by Valerie Kolakis and Fabienne Lasserre, and an immersive video installation by Julie Favreau. Laura Bauer’s project “Éminence Grise (How to Sell Burroughs Paintings)” (2011) incorporates a text both instructing one on how to sell works by William S. Burroughs and explaining these paintings’ historial relationship to Brion Gyson, thereby standing out as a consideration of the re-appropriating and reframing tendencies of contemporary work suggested by the Triennial's title.

Overall, the show touches on a variety of human emotions: There is something ominous, something upbeat, something about the inevitable passing of time. Appropriated from elsewhere, the title “The Work Ahead of Us” comes to frame and modify the local present. In the end, it seems to offer a positive mantra to emerging artists, in Montreal and elsewhere: its time to get down to work.

The Triennale Québécoise 2011 runs from October 7, 2011 to January 3, 2012. 

Names: Mera & Don Rubell
Ages: 68 & 71
Occupation: Hoteliers; Founders of the Rubell Family Collection
City/Neighborhood: Wynwood, Miami

What project are you working on now?
“American Exuberance,” the new show at the Rubell Family Collection.

Your exhibition "American Exuberance," opening during Art Basel Miami Beach, features artists reflecting on and engaging with the American experience. How would you describe your own American experiences?
Don: My father was a postman and teaching tennis pro, and my mother was a schoolteacher. I played competitive tennis as a child and young man, and the first art collectors I ever met were the parents of my doubles partner when I was a kid. Before that, I didn't even know that private individuals collected art. Seeing their collection gave me a concrete dream, and being an American gave me the possibility of actually realizing that outrageous ambition.

Mera: I came to the United States at the age of 12 as a poor immigrant who didn't speak English. I experienced endless generosity, especially from teachers, who immediately began to ingrain the idea of the American dream in me. I am very much the product of American public education, and I myself was a teacher in the first Head Start program. What I came to understand is that your individual talents and strengths can triumph over whatever weaknesses, real or perceived, you might have.

This is Art Basel's 10th edition in Miami. As longtime residents of Miami, how have you seen the fair change the city's art scene? Has it been all for the better?
Together: We opened our foundation about eight years before Art Basel arrived, so it's very easy for us to see the changes that have come about as a direct result of the fair. The strongest impact has been in Miami's perception of itself as a center of contemporary art.

What advice do you have for collectors coming to the fair this year?
Wear sneakers.

What are you especially excited for this year?
Discovering things we haven't seen before.

You're working on opening a space for your collection in Washington, D.C. Are there any similarities at all between the D.C. art scene and the one in Miami?
Every city is unique, and every art scene is unique. What makes D.C. so unique are the great museums and the many educational institutions; plus D.C. has 35 million visitors a year, and the majority of them visit museums. There is also a growing base of collectors and working artists.

What's the last show that you saw?
Sherrie Levine at the Whitney in New York.

What's the last show that surprised you? Why?
Maurizio Cattelan's retrospective at the Guggenheim, because he had the courage to forego a victory lap. Instead, he turned his retrospective into a new piece that both sums up his entire life's work and creates a whole new conversation about the vulnerable nature of art and artists.

What's your favorite place to see art?
The Prado Museum in Madrid and the Flemish Primitive Collection in Bruges.

What's the most indispensable item in your office?
The computer.

Where are you finding ideas for your work these days?
The art world is a far larger place than when we started collecting art, and since the only way to understand art is to go to the place where the art is made, we spend more and more of our time traveling to places as diverse as Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

Do you collect anything?
Contemporary art.

What's the last artwork you purchased?
It’s a dead heat between work by Joel Kyack and new works by Kaari Upson and Rashid Johnson.

What's the weirdest thing you ever saw happen in a museum or gallery?
Our daughter's head made out of cheese, melting onto a pedestal of crackers at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

What's your art-world pet peeve?
Museums that are closed when you get there.

What's your favorite post-gallery watering hole or restaurant?
Dim Sum Go-Go, in New York’s Chinatown.

Do you have a gallery/museum-going routine?
In a new city, we always go to galleries first to warm up our palette.

What's the last great book you read?
“Curious George,” with our grandchildren, and “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman.

What work of art do you wish you owned?
The next one we're going to collect.

What would you do to get it?
Remain open to new ideas.

What international art destination do you most want to visit?
India, because we've never been there.

What under-appreciated artist, gallery, or work do you think people should know about?
Some of the artists who are over 50 years old in our “American Exuberance” show like John Miller and Richard Jackson.

What’s your favorite artwork?
Gerard David’s “Flaying of the Unjust Judge” that we saw in Bruges.

What are your hobbies?
Grandchildren, tennis, cooking, reading, and Ken-Ken.

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Wim Delvoye has never been afraid of tweaking taboos. The Belgian artist made a name for himself in the 1990s with "Cloaca," a feces-producing machine, now in its 10th version. Until 2010, he worked with a pig farm in China where he had swine tattooed with intricate pictures, selling their skins were as artworks after their natural death. The artist even tattooed and sold the back of a human being, Tim Steiner, in 2008.

The great provocateur is also behind X-rays of rats in a mock crucifixion position, tires hand-carved like precious wood, and gothic structures made from laser-cut steel. More than a 100 of his pieces are to be shown starting December 10 at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Australia, a new institution that is the brainchild of collector and gambling genius David Walsh.

Delvoye was in the news recently for having publically invited Ai Weiwei to rebuild his studio, destroyed last year by the Chinese authorities, in the grounds of his mansion in Ghent, Belgium. He talked to ARTINFO UK  about the failure of modernism, his hatred of nostalgia, and why he would feel less oppressed in China than in Europe.

You are about to open a very large exhibition at MONA, in Tasmania. How have you been working on this, and what can we expect?

MONA is a new museum. It doesn't have a reputation or a long history; it doesn't have the quality stamp yet. The museum and I have to work on this together. Nothing comes for free. Being a young museum also means that the attention is on them: it keeps them very focused, and it keeps me very focused. It's an interesting experience because it's not an established institution and things like decision-making and consensus-making are easier. Everything goes extremely quickly — no compromise.

How has it been working with David Walsh?

Sometimes I think: If I wasn't Wim — I'm very happy to be Wim — but if I wasn't Wim, I wouldn't mind being him. He's a very interesting character. I adore him. I cannot be like David because you need to be very good at maths. But I wish he could teach me how he's done it. He amassed a fortune gambling. I like that.

I take into account what David likes, and what he doesn’t like. The process is more about consensus than it would be in an institution where they couldn't care less about what you do. And he always explains why he is against something. For example, he didn't like my ironing boards painted with medieval coats of arms because he thought heraldry wouldn't work in Australia, that it wouldn't have the effect it has in Europe.

Jerome Sans has described your work as a "re-zeroing," a tabula rasa of art. What do you make of this statement?

Of course, I want to go back to basics — but for me going back to basics means going back to the genetic basics of us liking art. Genes have created something: we like to make art, we want to see art, we buy art, we pay money for it. This is more basic, more truthful than a square.

Do you mean that it's more universal and "back to basics" to look at social interactions around art than to consider primal shapes and forms?

Yes. People think that abstract art is more universal: a square, a circle, boring minimalist art, is more universal because it doesn't have any culture itself, it doesn't have any ethnic ties. But it is as ethnic as anything else, and if it was so basic, and so essential and cosmopolitan, how come people I see in the streets don't like it, or don't regard it as being wonderful, or special, or artful? How many more centuries do we need to realise that going back to something simplistic, like a square, has nothing to do with international or cosmopolitan values, nothing to do with going back to something pure, or essential? It's another of these 20th century obsessions. The modernist project failed because people don't like it. On a social level, the society, the experiments of the 20th century are completely irrelevant.

Do you see your own work as more universal than modernism? Is universality something that you are trying to achieve?

Of course! Every generation is trying to do this and say: Ok, that's the universal thing, that represents my time, or my place. We want to find universal values. When I grew up in the 20th century, the values were the square and the circle. I think it could just as well be children's drawings, or medieval paintings. This is how MONA approaches things as well.

Your work is full of art-historical references, particularly to the Middle Ages in your gothic sculptures. Why do you think these motifs are relevant to our contemporary world?

Contemporary art is completely victorious and dominates everything. Even the Louvre and Versailles have to get contemporary artists to be relevant today. It is victorious on a market level, but still irrelevant to society and uninteresting for the people. Old art is not victorious at all. Old Masters, top names, are affordable. Nobody wants these paintings in a loft, so they don't buy them.

Are you using gothic elements as a symbol for going back in time — or are they present in your work in and for themselves?

Actually, I'm never going back in time. Everything I use is what still exists today. A lot of things look historical, but they are actually of today, ordinary, banal things. I use all this, I'm aware of history, but I'm not going back in time. There's no nostalgia involved. Works that wouldn't look like going back in time could be much more nostalgic. The worst is nostalgia. I always try to avoid that.

You've been working in China quite a lot. You had the pig farm there, and you have also recently invited Ai Weiwei to rebuild his studio in the grounds of your Ghent mansion. Has his incarceration changed your vision of China? Are you as willing to work in this country as you have been working in the past?

Ai Weiwei and I are very good friends. And we have this ongoing, joking discussion about China. It goes more or less like this: he would say, "Oh man, you are so naïve, you think China is this, and this, and this." And then I would say, "But China is really great, blah blah." I would exaggerate my admiration for China a little bit to oppose him. He is a very, very angry man, very angry in China. They have done things to him, and he cannot forgive. I'm a foreigner, I'm an outsider, I see things more with rose-colored glasses. But he doesn't see a great future for China. So even my argument "at least you have a great future" doesn't work with him.

We are afraid of China. And he gives us hope. Every night in the newspaper or other media, we are told that we are in a good country, that Europe is safe, that we can get on with our lives, that we are better here than in China — which I do not agree with. I think I would be very happy in China. I think I would be less oppressed.

Have you heard back from Ai? Do you know if he will accept your invitation and rebuild his studio in Ghent?

If he would come to my studio, I could show him how many fines I have to pay the government. If it's true what the government claims about Weiwei, that he has to pay — what is it? $1.7 million? — in America, he would still be in jail. But he goes to jail for three to four months, and people say, "Where is Ai Weiwei? We are a democracy and these people have such a terrible lives!"

It's true, a lot of work has to be done, and Weiwei is completely right about his job. I'm very happy that he chooses to do that — so many Chinese artists are just doing candy-coloured paintings with smiling people. Weiwei is a very interesting artist. But when I last spoke to him, he gave me the impression that he didn't really care about art anymore. Instead of concentrating on art, he is more into politics.

But is he going to re-build his studio in your garden or not?

Well, it's like he foresaw it. When the government broke his studio down, he kept all the main pieces. He could ship all this to Belgium, and we could build it without permit. And then, at least at my provincial level, I would show how autocratic my country is — because they would have to destroy it. My country loves Ai Weiwei, everybody loves him, everybody wants to be in pictures with him. They gave him a medal. And Weiwei loves Belgium a lot because in 2005, he did his first retrospective exhibition in Belgium — and the Belgians were extremely quick in assimilating him, getting him shows, buying his work, and so on. We were very aware of what he was doing. So this is also about Ghent. He would love to be in Ghent, but it's not in his mind to leave China.

Is it going to happen?

Well, we might build his studio, and then see if he lives in it or not. He cannot really leave China, but just building the studio would be a great idea. It was broken down by the Chinese government, and if we rebuilt it, the Belgian government would have to break it down too — that's the law. So I say, "go ahead: show how much better you are then the Chinese." Ai Weiwei is half-unconsciously used by the West for anti-Chinese propaganda nowadays. Ai Weiwei's work is very good, but it doesn't help his work that he is playing the hero all the time. He knows I'm his friend. That's why I'm not saying the usual clichés. It's much more complex.

The city of Ayutthaya, the former Siamese capital, was destroyed by Burmese invaders in the 18th century. Two centuries later, in 1991, its Ayutthaya Historical Park complex of over 400 temples dating as far back as 1350 was painstakingly restored and was named a UNESCO World Heritage site. But now, following historic flooding in the region, the temples have sustained severe damage and may even be in danger of collapsing.

Monsoons hit the country in July and last month floodwaters reached Ayutthaya, which is 50 miles north of Bangkok. Although seasonal flooding is common in this region, "the monuments' construction was not designed to carry this much weight" from floodwaters, the historical site's director, Chaiyanand Busayarat, told AFP. "The floods have also softened the ground, making it unstable. Buildings could sink, or, in the worst case, they might collapse." The waters have mostly receded, but some outlying temples are still flooded. After visiting the area on Thursday, UNESCO investigators stated that it was still too early to tell the extent of the damage.

According to People's Daily, the flooding affected 420 of 505 temples in the region. Damages to the temple complex, which is one of Thailand's biggest tourist attractions, have been estimated by various sources between $20 and $30 million. Many homes and factories were also casualties of the flooding, which left behind a death toll of 600 people across Thailand.

The British director Ken Russell has died in his sleep at the age of 84. He had suffered a series of strokes in recent years.

The possessor of an unbridled visual imagination, Russell was responsible for some of the most flamboyant and outrageous films of the '60s and '70s, including "Women in Love" (1969), "The Music Lovers" (1970), "The Devils" (1971), "Savage Messiah" (1972), "Tommy" (1975), and "Listzomania" (1975). As an ageing enfant terrible, he continued to shock audiences and provoke critics in the late summer of his career, making "Crimes of Passion" (1984), "Gothic" (1986), the hyperbolic cult horror classic "Lair of the White Worm" (1988), and "Whore" (1991). "Crimes of Passion" and "Whore," both deliberately sleazy films, angrily critique the commercial objectification and exploitation of women in America — though they partake of it, too.

Russell was born in Southampton in 1927, and as a child sought escape in the movies from his abusive father. After serving with the Merchant Navy and the Royal Air Force, he trained as a ballet dancer for five years but was told he wouldn’t make the grade. He subsequently worked as a photographer for the magazine Picture Post and made prizewinning amateur films that brought him to the BBC. He directed prolifically for the arts programmes "Monitor" and "Omnibus," in many ways the most fruitfully inventive period of his career.

Attempting to make high culture accessible through his sensationalistic approach, Russell specialized in increasingly fanciful biopics of classical music composers. Over the course of his 50 years as a filmmaker, he tackled Elgar, Debussy, Bartok, Delius, Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Lizst, Mahler, and Arnold Bax, as well as the dancer Isadora Duncan, the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and the painter Henri Rousseau. "Dance of the Seven Veils" (1970), his violent, comic-strip Strauss film portrays the composer as a Nazi and has long been suppressed.

Restraint was foreign to Russell, which is why some of the most frequent epithets hurled at him included “vulgar,” “tasteless,” “trite,” “camp,” “cruel,” and “misogynistic.” He had Oliver Reed’s Gerald Crich brutally raping Glenda Jackson’s Gudrun Brangwen and Crich nude-wrestling with Alan Bates’s Rupert Birkin in "Women in Love." He had Helen Mirren’s dilettante, as stark naked as a Rubens, ostentatiously walking down a staircase in "Savage Messiah." He had Ann-Margret writhing in a sea of baked beans in "Tommy" (his film of the Who’s rock opera). In "Gothic," his feverish account of the night Mary Shelley conceived "Frankenstein," he replaced the nipples of Lord Byron’s mistress with eyes and paraded a medieval knight with an armor casing over his huge erection. Excessive Russell’s films may have been, but they were never dull.

Most notorious of all was "The Devils." Based on an Aldous Huxley novel and a John Whiting play, it grotesquely depicts the fate of the Catholic priest Urbain Grandier (Reed), whose control of a fortified town is an irritant to Richelieu in plague-ridden 17^th-century France. Grandier’s spurning of the deformed nun, Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave), who is sexually obsessed with him, causes her to denounce him as a warlock and all hell breaks loose. Russell’s original version contained an orgy in which possessed nuns hysterically rape a statue of Christ and the specter of Jeanne masturbating with Grandier’s charred femur after he is burned at the stake. Russell was forced to remove these scenes to get the film past the censors, but it was released with an “X” certificate in Britain and America (where it was further depleted) — and widely vilified. Believed lost, the cut scenes have been found and restored, and the full version of "The Devils" will be released on DVD in the UK for the first time in March.

Less aesthetically morbid than his other works, Russell’s adaptations of D.H. Lawrence’s novels — "Women in Love," "The Rainbow" (1989), and the genuinely sexy four-part miniseries "Lady Chatterley" (1993) — served the author’s primitivist philosophy well. He was at his best on "Clouds of Glory," the pair of seldom-seen 1978 television films he made on the Lake Poets: the pastoral "William and Dorothy," about the Wordsworths, and the more extravagantly symbolic "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his addiction to opium.

"Valentino" (1977), Russell’s biopic of the silent star Rudolph Valentino, enfolded a swingeing attack on the movie capital’s mores. Ever a maker of excessive images, he had his greatest American success with the 1980 science-fiction movie "Altered States," though his fights with Paddy Chayefsky, the author of the source novel, led to him being ostracized by the movie capital. He mustered, though, for "The Russian House" (1990), starring Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Russell himself.

Russell’s main subjects were artistic passion and sexual freedom. Though not a political filmmaker (and the opposite of a politically correct one), he consistently attacked hypocrisy and prejudice in his films. "Mahler" (1974) and "Prisoner of Honor" (1991), a television film about the Dreyfus Affair, both address anti-Semitism.

Russell was married five times. He had four sons and daughter with his first wife, the costume designer Shirley Ann Russell, and a son with his third wife, the actress Hetty Baynes.

To mark the end of its 25-week run yesterday, the Venice Biennale held a series of talks about — what else? — the Venice Biennale. The event's organizers also announced the winners of the online competitions for the best photograph, essay, and video about this year's exhibition. The photography competition, which is open to all accredited photographers, was a four-way tie between Richard Duebel, Giulia Iacolutti, Bertram Kober, and Monica Silva. No prize was awarded for a video this year, and the essay prize was conferred on Hendrik Pieter Jeroen Visser for his meditation on "The Importance of Being Artist."

Biennale president Paolo Baratta and "ILLUMInations" curator Bice Curiger (read our review of the show here) were joined by other art-world figures for three talks titled "Let's Talk About Us," meant to allow the participants "to put ourselves on the line... [and] discuss what has been done and what might be done in the future," Baratta said in a statement. The differences between curating for museums and for biennials were discussed by speakers including Germano Celant, Massimiliano Gioni, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Letizia Ragaglia, Diana Baldon, Giovanni Carmine, Okwui Enwezor, Beatrix Ruf, and Vincente Todoli. In a statement, Francesco Bonami, who organized the 50th Biennale in 2003, mused that "every director marries the Biennale but he is then forced to divorce, though being in love for the rest of their lives."

Over 440,000 visitors attended the Biennale this year, an increase of 18 percent from 2009. The Biennale also set a record for the number of countries participating: 89, compared to 77 in 2009. Andorra, Bangladesh, Haiti, and Saudi Arabia were represented for the first time, while seven other nations returned after a long absence: India, Congo, Iraq, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Costa Rica, and Cuba.

When the Biennale opened in June, Germany took home the Golden Lion for best national pavilion for its three-part display of the work of Christoph Schlingensief. The artist died of lung cancer in August 2010, and curator Susanne Gaensheimer completed the exhibition on her own. Honorable mention went to the Lithuanian pavilion for Darius Mikšys's "Behind the White Curtain." British artist Haroon Mirza received the Silver Lion for most promising young artist, with Berlin-based artist Klara Lidén awarded an honorable mention. The Golden Lion for best artwork in the main exhibition went to American artist Christian Marclay for his immensely popular video piece "The Clock." The Austrian artist Franz West and the Paris-based, American-born artist Elaine Sturtevant were honored with Golden Lions for lifetime achievement.

Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum has just opened a new chapter in the distant past, unveiling its new galleries dedicated to Ancient Egypt and Nubia. This £5 million ($7.7 million) refurbishment has allowed the re-housing of 40,000 artifacts collected over the last 300 years, including coffins and mummies that haven't been displayed since the Second World War.

Designed by Rick Mather Architects, the six new galleries lead visitors from Egypt's origins in the Paleolithic period to the annexation of the country by the Roman Empire after the suicide of Cleopatra in 30 BC. Liam McNamara, lead curator for the redevelopment of the new galleries, told ARTINFO UK: "We hope that by presenting the galleries in a chronological sequence we will enable our visitors to understand the great length of time that the Egyptian civilization covers — three millennia — but also the aspects of continuity and change that occurred during those 3,000 years."

This "change in continuity" so particular to ancient Egypt is demonstrated early on, with the first gallery's two colossal statues of the Egyptian fertility god Min. Dating from the late pre-dynastic period (c. 3300 BC), these are among the earliest representations of the deity. They are presented with a limestone relief of Min, excavated at the same site of Koptos and dating from 700 later. "In essence, the god is represented in exactly the same way," said McNamara. "He has the same attributes. The artistic style has changed, but it is the same symbol, or icon if you like."

The new display includes the Shrine of Taharqa, once part of the temple complex of Kawa in ancient Sudan, and the only freestanding Pharaonic building in Britain. There is also a display of breathtakingly lifelike Roman-era mummy portraits. But the real showstoppers are the nested coffins and mummy of a Theban priest, the catchily named Djeddjehutyiuefankh, dated from 770-712 B.C. A CAT-scan of the mummy at the local hospital has recently revealed stones in his throat, as well as half-moon stones covering his eyes. "We are slowly beginning to learn more about who he was, how old he was when he died, why he might have died," said McNamara.

Over the last ten years, human remains in public collections have caused heated debate in Britain, with museum professionals struggling to agree on the most adequate way display them – or, indeed, whether it is appropriate to display them at all. Some coffins have been closed, or half-closed. In 2008, the Manchester University Museum even covered three mummies completely with white sheets, but later relented. The Ashmolean's strategy is to allow visitors to peer into the coffins while attempting to deal with the body according to the principles of ancient Egyptian religion.

"The ancient Egyptians believed very strongly that to ensure that the deceased moved to the afterlife it was fundamental that the human body was preserved," explained McNamara. "This is why the Egyptians went to such great length to mummify and preserve the body. It was to give the individual's soul something to live in. By providing state-of-the-art display cases that are fully climate controlled, we are actually continuing to ensure that those bodies are well preserved. It's in full respect of the ancient Egyptian belief."

"With the mummy of a singer in the cult of Amun, we actually included the ancient Egyptian 'offering formula,'" he continued. "The ancient Egyptians encouraged passers-by to read out this offering formula, requesting an offering of bread and beer and all the other good things that the deceased person would need in order to continue living in the afterlife. Essentially, we point out to our visitors that reciting this offering formula would allow this person to continue in the afterlife."

Below, find ARTINFO's very selective list of parties and events people will be talking about today in Miami as Art Basel Miami Beach week gets going. Enjoy!

THE EVENTS

Royal Rumble at Waffle House Opening
4-6 p.m.
45 Northwest 31st Street, Miami, FL 33127
Curated by Michael Nevin, Vita Zaman, and Olivier Babin, this group show features 13 up-and-coming artists — offering a chance to see some new talent before the heavy hitters of the main fair suck up all the oxygen.

Early Bird BBQ at SEVEN
5 - 7:30 p.m.
2637 North Miami Ave. at Northeast 27th Street, Wynwood, Miami
Guests are invited for an early look at this year's mini-art-fair exhibition, put together by BravinLee programs, Hales Gallery, Pierogi Gallery, Postmasters, P.P.O.W., Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, and Winkleman Gallery.

Kreëmart celebrates Art Basel Miami's 10th Anniversary
5-7 p.m.
W Hotel South Beach, 2201 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
Food Art outfit Kreëmart invites six artists to “interpret the idea of dessert to create an Art Happening.” The results range from Paola Pivi’s "Free Tibet Candy" to Richard Tuttle’s “Healthy Cookies.”

Fernando Mastrangelo's "Black Sculpture"
6-8 p.m.
Charest-Weinberg, 250 NW 23rd Street, Miami
New York-based artist Fernando Mastrangelo presents a new series of sculptures that recreate classic works by Frank Stella and Ad Reinhardt using hard-packed bricks of gunpowder. Look out!

Art Miami Opening Night VIP Preview
7-10 p.m.
3101 NE 1st Avenue, Miami 
The first view cocktail reception of the giant Art Miami fair benefits the local Lotus House Women’s Shelter — in fact, women from Lotus House have also been employed by Art Miami to work at the fair. The event is open to VIPS, with $25 donation at the door for others.

Sender Collection's "Home Alone," curated by Sarah Aibel
7-11 p.m.
5763 North Bay Road, Miami Beach
Hedge funder Adam Sender turns his empty Miami home into a showcase for his fabulous art collection, including works by Matthew Barney, Sarah Lucas, Banks Violette, and other stars. (See ARTINFO’s report here.)       

MOCA and Vanity Fair International Party
Musuem of Contemporary Art, 770 NE 125th Street, North Miami
7-9 p.m.
The beautiful people will be celebrating 10 years of ABMB and 15 years of MOCA, as well as the opening of shows of work by Mark Handforth and Teresita Fernandez.     

Party for Luca di Montezemolo
8:30 p.m.
1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach
Interview magazine, Peter Brant, and Sotheby’s Tobias Meyer host a party to honor Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo, and unveil the new Ferrari 458 Spider. The party also features a new video installation by superslick video artist Marco Brambilla, inspired by Formula One racing. Word is there is also a “surprise musical guest.”

“The Power Issue: 100 Most important Players in the Art World” Party
10 p.m. - midnight
The Shore Club 1901 Collins Ave.
Art+Auction and ARTINFO — yes, that ARTINFO — present a swanky party to unveil the annual list of the 100 most powerful people in the art world.

Art Basel Kickoff — Favela Beach
11:00 p.m.
WALL Lounge, W South Beach 2201 Collins Avenue
Billed as an Art Basel kick-off event, this late night affair features a DJ set by HOLY GHOST.

THE FAIRS

Art Basel Miami Beach
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive, Miami Beach
December 1-4

NADA Art Fair
The Deauville Beach Resort
Deauville Beach Resort, 6701 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
December 2-5

Design Miami/
Meridian Avenue & 19th Street
Adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach
November 30-December 4

Art Miami
Art Miami Pavilion
3101 NE 1st Avenue, Miami
November 30-December 4

Pulse Art Fair
The Ice Palace
1400 North Miami Avenue, at Northwest 14th Street, Miami
December 1-4

Scope Art Fair
Scope Pavilion
Northeast 1st Ave at Northeast 30th Street, Miami
November 29-December 4

Art Asia
Art Asia Pavilion
Northeast 1st Ave Northeast 30th Street, Miami
November 30-December 4

ZOOM Elite (invitation only)
W South Beach
2201 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
November 30-December 3

Aqua Art Fair
Aqua Hotel
1530 Collins Ave, Miami Beach
December 1-4

Ink Miami Art Fair
Suites of Dorchester
1850 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
November 30-December 4

Red Dot Miami
3011 Northeast 1st Avenue, at Northeast 31st Street, Miami
November 30-December 4

Seven Miami
2637 North Miami Avenue at Northeasy 27th Street, Miami
November 29-December 4

Fountain Miami
2505 North Miami Ave at the corner of 25th Street, Miami
December 1-4

Verge Art Miami Beach
Greenview Hotel
1671 Washington Avenue at 17th Street, Miami Beach
December 1-4

PooL Art Fair Miami Beach
Carlton Hotel
Sadigo Court
334 20th Street at Park Avenue, Miami Beach
December 2-4

Burst Art Fair
Art Deco Center
1001 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach
November 30-December 5

Art Now
Catalina Hotel
1732 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
December 1-4

Arts For a Better World
Surfcomber Hotel
1717 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
November 30-December 4

Zones Art Fair
47 Northeast 25th Street, Miami
November 29-December 3

– Lady Gaga, America’s Picasso?: Crooner Tony Bennett is an unlikely art critic, but he’s dared to go where no critic has gone before. Lady Gaga’s been called a performance artist more times than we care to count, but this may be the first time she’s been likened to a Cubist master. “I’m starstruck over Lady Gaga right now,” Bennett said in an interview. “I think she’s going to be America’s Picasso....She changes every day, and she has unlimited energy. And each thing she does is wilder and greater than the thing she does the day before.” [Reuters]

– Tenants on Frank Gehry's "Poncey" Skyscraper: Kate Taylor, art reporter extraordinaire turned City Hall scribe, returns to her roots with an amusing look inside the starchitect's gleaming residential tower downtown. [NYT]  

– British Museum Acquires Picasso's Most Famous Etchings: A £1 million gift from London fund manager Hamish Parker has allowed the British Museum to buy a complete set of 100 Picasso etchings never before seen in public. The so-called “Vollard Suite,” produced between 1930 and 1937 — “a critical period in Picasso’s career,” according to the museum — is the first complete set held by a public museum in the UK. [BBC]

– Ai Weiwei’s Wife Questioned: The wife of dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained for three hours for questioning by police. Ai was out at the time, but posits that the police could be gathering information to lodge another complaint against him. “It seems they are doing broader research or something — I have no idea,” he said. [Guardian]

– Canadian Artists Demand Droit de Suite: A national group representing Canadian visual and media artists is calling for the federal government to enact a law that guarantees them a 5 percent royalty when their works are resold. Currently, 59 countries (and the state of California) have a droit de suite law in place. [CBC]

– The British Library Launches its "Digital Aladdin's Cave": Four million pages of 18th- and 19th-century newspapers are being made available online thanks to a partnership between the British Library and the digital publishing firm Brightsolid. Forty million more pages will be scanned over the next decade. The British Library holds the largest collection of newspapers in the world. Its 750 million pages are currently only available on microfilms or in bound volumes, which take up 20 miles (32 kilometers) of shelf space in the North London newspaper archive. [Businessweek]  

– Art Dealers Among Victims of Worldwide Scam: Thousands of British art and antiques dealers, fair organizers, and auction houses have been targeted in a global extortion scam that involves victims being subjected to months, or even years, of threatening demands for money. Dealers receive letters that purport to confirm business details for a free international trade listing, but the fine print commits them to paying thousands of pounds for placing an “advertisement” in the guide. [Guardian]

– Minimalism Comes to Newport?: A fierce debate has broken out over a minimalist memorial to philanthropist Doris Duke in Newport, R.I. designed by Maya Lin. “The fight has taken on the intensity of a debate over the soul of Newport itself, a city that — largely because of the efforts and example of Ms. Duke — has painstakingly preserved its colonial and Gilded Age heritage over the last four decades and has kept most incursions of contemporary commercial culture and design at bay,” reports Randy Kennedy. [NYT] 

– Scottish National Portrait Gallery Gets a $27.3 Million Makeover: Thanks to a 60 percent increase in public spaces, many of the 3,000 paintings previously held in storage are now on view. In addition to galleries devoted to themes such as "the Reformation" and "the Enlightenment," the revamped Edinburgh museum also includes portraits of celebrities such as "Britain's Got Talent" singer Susan Boyle and racing driver Dario Franchitti. "My feeling is they are part of what makes Scotland today," said director James Holloway. "It's important for the first things that people see to be people they have heard of, rather than the 14th earl of something." [Guardian] 

–  Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Names New CEO: Sean Malone has been named the next president and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. For the last 10 years, Malone has served as the CEO of Ten Chimneys Foundation in Wisconsin. He will begin his new post in February 2012. [Press Release]

– Velazquez Shines While Old Masters Market Slows Down: London auction houses have streamlined their forthcoming Old Masters sales, reducing the number of middle-range paintings and focusing on some high-end pieces instead — including a newly identified Velazquez portrait at Bonhams, estimated at £2 to 3 million ($3.1 to 4.6 million). Philip Hoffman, chief executive officer of the London-based Fine Art Fund said, "There are Russians and Americans buying at the top end. The classic European collector is staying away at the moment. Works priced at under $200,000 are difficult to shift. Tastes have changed." [Bloomberg] 

– “Hide/Seek,” One Year Later: The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott considers the controversial exhibition “Hide/Seek” one year after uproar from the Catholic League caused a video by David Wojnarowicz to be censored from the exhibition. Now that the show has opened at the Brooklyn Museum, what’s different? Kennicott posits one theory: “The pace of cultural change on gay and lesbian issues is so rapid that even a year may have transformed the dynamics.” [WaPo]

– Mary L. Levkoff Wins Frick Book Prize: The Frick’s Center for the History of Collecting has awarded Mary L. Levkoff its Sotheby’s Book Prize for her 2008 monograph “Hearst the Collector.” The $25,000 biennial award is given to the author of a distinguished publication on the history of collecting in America. [Press Release]

– Occupy ABMB?: A PR manager at Art Basel Miami Beach sent out an email to participating gallerists warning of a possible Occupy protest planned for the fair. [ITA]