Pompidou Preps Surreal Dali All-Nighters, Kanye Hobnobs at TEFAF, and More

Published: March 15, 2013

— Pompidou Does Dali Day and Night: The Centre Pompidou's current blockbuster retrospective devoted to Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí will remain open 24/7 for its final four days and nights, from March 22 to 25, in hopes that it will become the museum's best-attended show ever. To take that honor, it would have to surpass the current record (840,600 visitors) held by none other than its 1979-80 retrospective of... Salvador Dalí! The current exhibition has been seen by over 800,000 visitors to date, with an average daily attendance of 7,000. [Libération]

— Kanye Joins TEFAF VIPs: Rapper Kanye West was among the prospective buyers strolling the aisles at Maastricht's art and antiques fair TEFAF, along with Qatar's Sheikh Saud al Thani and businessman Ronald Lauder (sadly, Kanye's other half Kim Kardashian was nowhere to be seen). A collected $5.2 billion worth of goods are being exhibited (see ARTINFO's first look, here) — on preview day. [Bloomberg]

— Met and Crystal Bridges Share Custody of Credit Suisse Trumbull: The Metropolitan Museum and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art have received John Trumbull's full-length 1792 portrait of Alexander Hamilton as a gift from Credit Suisse, with each museum owning a half share of the iconic work, which is currently on loan to Crystal Bridges, but will travel to the Met this summer, and return to Arkansas in 2014. Thereafter the institutions will trade off custody in two-year chunks. "As the greatest known portrait of Hamilton and one of the finest civic portraits from the Federal period, this painting is a splendid addition to our fine collection of portraits of American political leaders," said Met CEO and director Thomas P. Campbell. "We are pleased and honored to share this remarkable work with Crystal Bridges." [Press Release]

— Museum Killed the Video Star: In what must be a sure sign of the form's demise, music videos will be treated to a historical retrospective at New York's Museum of the Moving Image, where visuals for songs including Madonna's "Like a Prayer," the Beastie Boys's "Sabotage," and Devo's "Whip It" will be shown alongside the drawings from A-ha's "Take on Me" video and original sculptures created for Bjork's "Wanderlust" video (which will be screened in 3-D) in "Spectacle: the Music Video," which runs April 3-June 16. The exhibition, curated by Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells, will celebrate the music video for "its important role as an experimental sandbox for filmmakers and its lasting effects on popular culture globally," as an exhibition press release put it. [NYT]

— Broad's Stakes in MOCA Merger: Many have speculated that billionaire art collector Eli Broad's courtship of Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art for a partnership with the ailing Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles — rather than signing off on a merger with LACMA — has been motivated by competition with the cross-town rival's director Michael Govan, but others suggest the reasons may be motivated by a desire to see the smaller institution maintain its curatorial edge and institutional independence, and that doing so will make it easier to coordinate programming with the forthcoming Broad Collection museum directly across Grand Avenue from MOCA. "It's not because Michael wouldn't do a great job, but because L.A. as an art capital needs as much diversity as it can get," LACMA's former curator of American art Bruce Robertson said. "MOCA's vision has always been different from LACMA's." [LAT]

— Are Emirates Fairs and Artists Self-Censoring?: Censorship has been a foremost concern among members of the art community in the United Arab Emirates, particularly this month as the region plays host to both the Art Dubai fair and the Sharjah Biennial, the latter of which was rocked by scandal in 2011 when an installation by Algerian artist Mustapha Benfodil on the issue of rape was removed and the exhibition's director, Jack Persekian, fired. Four works addressing the Arab Spring uprisings were also removed from last year's Art Dubai fair. "By articulating its boundaries, the state has made it clear what is and is not acceptable," said the editor of the Middle East edition of Harper’s Bazaar Art, Arsalan Mohammad. "Looking at the booths coming to Art Dubai, I think that perhaps there might be less work of a political nature than last year — which is interesting, given the ongoing situation in the Middle East." [Herald Tribune]

— Art Disposal Pro Passes Torch: For the alst four decades Bob Matheny, who is now 84, has run the Art Disposal Service in San Diego, offering to take artists, curators, gallerists, and collectors' excess art off their hands and to the dump, but now he is retiring and passing the business on to curator Dave Hampton in a formal ceremony tomorrow. "Business has been bad," Matheny said. "It’s almost impossible to get artists to dispose of their own work because of, you know, the ego." [KPBS]

— Smelly Upkeep on an Ofili Dung Painting: When a Danish furniture magnate and collector needed some maintenance work done on Chris Ofili's "Blossom," a 1997 painting made partly of elephant dung, he called up Christian Scheidemann of New York's Contemporary Conservation Ltd. — at the artist's recommendation — who flew to Copenhagen to replace a piece of feces that had fallen from the canvas with a fresh dollop of dung that he acquired from the London Zoo. "Ofili always used dung from a particular group of elephants there, like he was collaborating with them," Scheidermann said. In another feat of unconventional conservation, he restored a Matthew Barney pound cake sculpture that a negligent collector had let become overrun with rats. [Bloomberg]

— Smithsonian Moves to Make Masterplan: The Smithsonian Institute has picked the New York-based architecture firm BIG—Bjarke Ingels Group to design a masterplan for its various institutions and buildings on the south side of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., including the Freer Art Gallery, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of African American Art, and the Smithsonian Castle. "Everything BIG designs is innovative, analytical, unexpected and intelligent," said Smithsonian project manager Christopher Lethbridge. "We believe they can develop a plan that will enable us over the next decade to transform a disparate group of much-loved buildings and outdoor spaces into a place that is more dynamic, social and active." [Artdaily]

— Canucks Consider Resale Royalties: Canadian artists are holding their collective breath as the country's federal finance minster, Jim Flaherty, ponders a pre-budget proposal that would award them a percentage of the value of their work anytime it's resold. While many countries have implemented resale royalties laws, they have been the subject of much debate in the U.S. and Canada. "Artists, from the time that they make the work, they continue to build their careers, build their reputations, and in a sense build value into the artwork by continuing to make art over their life," said Grant McConnell, the president of Canadian Artists’ Representation, who has been lobbying for a five percent resale royalty law on works selling for over $1,000 for years. "In an economy where there’s not a lot of loose money, this is one where the government could do something that is really of no cost to them, that could benefit those of us in the cultural sector." [Globe and Mail]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

The interminable line for the Pompidou's current Dali show