Displaying items by tag: performance

The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts will be represented exclusively by the international gallery Hauser & Wirth, the organizations announced Thursday.

The foundation, established by Kelley in 2007, issues grants for challenging and novel projects in Kelley's favored mediums, which included textiles, drawing, painting, video, photography, sculpture, installation and performance.

When Kelley died of an apparent suicide in South Pasadena in 2012, the foundation took on the role of shepherding his legacy. Hauser & Wirth said it will seek to reinforce Kelley's stature as one of Los Angeles' most influential artists, expand the foundation's programs and exhibit Kelley's work at its galleries worldwide.

The Saint Louis Art Museum will present a free exhibition presenting new works by artist Nick Cave, the Missouri native who has captivated audiences with artworks spanning sculpture, fashion, installation and performance.

The exhibition, "Currents 109: Nick Cave," opens Oct. 31 and runs through March 8, 2015. The exhibition will include installations in Galleries 249 and 250 in the museum’s new East Building; a new media installation in Gallery 301; and an intervention in Gallery 102, a large gallery devoted to historical African art.

Lynn Orr, the former curator of European art at San Francisco’s Fine Art Museums, is suing the institution for illegally dismissing her. Orr claims she was let go for supporting a union demonstration and protesting financial deception. Orr has worked for the museums for 29 years and served as a curator for 11 years until her firing on November 20, 2013.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 in San Francisco superior court. In her claim, Orr stated that the museums’ human resources director told her that she was being dismissed because of her performance but she had never been confronted about her work in the past. Orr did say that museum officials criticized her attendance at a demonstration held on September 7, 2013 at San Francisco’s M.H. de Young Museum, which was organized to oppose the museums’ management’s stance in labor negotiations.

Orr’s lawsuit also touched on an incident during which she and other employees claimed that the museums were undervaluing a painting that was to be shipped overseas, which she considered to be deceitful. A fellow employee who objected to the situation was fired within a few months of the incident. Orr is seeking unspecified damages from the city of San Francisco and the private corporation that runs the museums.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which includes the modern-leaning M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the neoclassical California Palace of the Legion of Honor, has been involved in a number of recent uproars. The tumult has included tense labor negotiations, firings of senior staff member such as Orr, and scathing criticism of the museums board’s president, Diane Wilsey.

London’s Tate Modern announced that 5.3 million patrons visited the museum in 2012, a record for the institution. In fact, the number of visitors was up a considerable 9.5 percent from the previous year.

An exhibition devoted to the work of contemporary artist Damien Hirst (b. 1965), which ran from April 4 to September 9, 2012, contributed significantly to the Tate’s record attendance. The show, which featured some of the controversial artist’s best-known works, attracted 463,000 visitors making it the most popular solo show ever organized by the museum. The Tate’s recently opened performance space, The Tanks, also contributed to the increase in patrons. The Tanks, which opened in July, is a permanent space for not only performance, but installations and video art as well.

Tate Modern, which opened in 2000, is Britain’s national museum for modern and contemporary art. Located along the Thames River in the former Bankside Power Station, the museum expects another stellar year. Exhibitions planned for 2013 include a major retrospective of the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) and a show devoted to Swiss-born painter Paul Klee (1879-1940).