Spencer Tunick Dresses Up for Dead Sea Protest, Pussy Riot Trial Begins, And More Must-Read Art News

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by ARTINFO

Published: July 31, 2012

— Spencer Tunick Will Lie Down — Clothed — To Save the Dead Sea: The famous photographer of large crowds of naked people laying down in famous urban and natural locales will take part in a protest in September that aims to save the quickly-shrinking Dead Sea — where he photographed more than 1,000 nude Israelis last year — in the name of those suffering from skin conditions like psoriasis who use its waters and mud as treatment. Last year's project was the best funded art-related Kickstarter campaign to date. This year, Tunick will participate in the mass clothed floating event, Save Our Sea, and may even photograph it. [Bloomberg]

— Pussy Riot Trial Begins: Court procedings began yesterday for Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, the three members of the anti-Vladimir Putin punk rock group Pussy Riot, who were arrested following a performance at a Moscow cathedral in February where they called for the Virgin Mary to remove the longtime Russian leader from power. If deemed guilty of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," the three women could face a maximum prison sentence of seven years. [TAN]

— Women's Museum Opens in Dubai: Some of the United Arab Emirates art world's most powerful figures, despite the predominant patriarchal culture, are women, and though scholar, psychiatrist, and former Arabian Gulf University president Rafia Obaid Ghubash doesn't wield as hefty a purse as Sheikha Mayassa Al Thani, she has just opened the Women's Museum of the United Arab Emirates in Dubai's Deira neighborhood — after turning down a free site in the official heritage district of Bastakya. Her new three-story institution aims to connect the work of contemporary Emirati women with their historical predecessors: "Part of the tradition is kind to women," she says. "But part is very negative. Those who are not educated just utilise the negative part." [TheEconomist]

— Newly Discovered Goya Going to Auction: A religious painting by Goya from the late-1770s, when he was an unknown 30-something designing wall hangings for palaces, is headed to the auction block in September at Zurich's Koller Auctions. The painting depicting Lot and his daughters was only recently confirmed to be a Goya, and though his works from this period typically only fetch a fraction of the value of later pieces, the "new" painting is expected to fetch between 600,000-800,000 Swiss Francs ($613,000-817,000). [Telegraph]

— Archaeological Findings Push Stone Age Back 20,000 Years: Artifacts discovered in a cave in South Africa indicate that the late Stone Age started earlier than originally thought, a conclusion drawn from the bone tools, pigments, and poisons created by people living in the area 44,000 years before, filling the void between 40,000 and 20,000 years ago that previously existed in the history of South Africa. Researcher Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, said in a statement that this would set the Later Stone Age at “about the same time as the arrival of modern humans in Europe,” or at Europe’s Upper Paleolithic Period. [MSNBC]

— Three Men and a Boy Plead Guilty in Fitzwilliam Museum Heist: A 15-year-old boy and three men in their twenties have pleaded guilty to stealing 18 ancient Chinese artifacts from Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum in April, and will be sentenced at Cambridge Crown Court in September. Police estimates place the value of the stolen sculptures and objects, which have not been recovered, at several million pounds. [BBC]

— Scotland's National Museum Nets Major Lottery Grant: Edinburgh's National Museum of Scotland will receive a £4.85 million ($7.6 million) grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help pay for its expansion masterplan project to create eight new galleries for its science and technology collections, and its holdings of European art and design. The grant covers over a third of the masterplan's anticipated £11.85 million ($18.6 million) cost, the rest of which the museum — which has received a whopping 2 million visitors since it reopened a year ago — will raise through donations from individual, corporations, and foundations. [ArtDaily]

— Artist Uses QR Codes to Preserve Chile’s Indigenous Culture: After seeing the resemblance between the patterns on the textiles of the Mapuche in Chile and the scannable pixels in QR codes, Los Angeles-based Chilean artist Guillermo Bert was inspired to start his “Encoded Textiles” project to help preserve their endangered culture. Bert records interviews and then links them to encoded QR codes which he works with several Mapuche women to weave into textiles that can be scanned by any smart phone, instantly connecting anyone to the Mapuche’s stories through both the traditional medium of the textiles and their high-tech message. [Wired]

— Honorary Chairs Resign From Venice in Peril Fund Board: The prominent preservationist organization was founded after the city’s catastrophic flood in 1966. Remaining trustees say they want to redirect the fund’s efforts from broader policy issues for the The Floating City to more pressing ecological concerns as they relate to art and architecture. [TAN]

— DreamWorks Makes Major Donation to Inner-City Arts: A four-year-old non-profit arts education organization specializing in digital arts, animation, graphic design, and filmmaking programs will receive $250,000 from the entertainment giant. In addition to offering participating youth extensive tours of their studios in Glendale, a select group of students will be offered internships at the company to apply their skills in performing and visual arts. [LATimes]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Report on the beginning of Pussy Riot's trial in Moscow