Digitization project to take place at the Frick collection
The Frick collection is to lead a major digitization initiative in collaboration with 13 art institutions which will make available 25 million images of artwork online. The group of participating institutions will come to form PHAROS Art Research Consortium and includes the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome; Bildarchiv Foto in Marburg in Germany; the Courtauld Institute in London; Fondazione Federico Zeri in Bologna; Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles; I Tatti in Florence; Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris; Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz; National Gallery of Art in Washington DC; Paul Mellon Centre in London; RKD—Netherlands Institute for Art History at The Hague; the Warburg Institute in London; the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven; and the Frick Art Reference Library in New York.
The project was launched in 2013 and hopes to have made seven million images available by 2020, including a number of previously unseen work as well as details on provenance and exhibition history. More via Art Forum
The effort to digitize art will link works like the one at left, Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1527 portrait of Sir Thomas More, with similar attributed to the same artist and others. © Frick Collection
New acquisitions at the Tate
The Tate and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia have acquired five new works within the framework of a joint acquisition program launched in 2015 with the support of the Qantas Foundation who gifted $2.1 million towards the purchase of work by Australian artists. The works include three paintings by Melbourne-born artist Helen Johnson, an installation by Richard Bell and a video by Peter Kennedy in collaboration with John Hughes.
The new works will be exhibited at the MCA next year before travelling to the Tate. More on The Art Newspaper
Helen Johnson's A Feast of Reason and a Flow of Soul (2016) (Courtesy of the artist and Chateau Shatto, Los Angeles; © the artist)
Volksbühne theatre in Berlin announces new direction with next season’s programming
Incoming artistic director Chris Dercon has announced the 2017 - 2018 programming at Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre beginning in November. The upcoming season will feature performances by English spoken-word artist Kate Tempest and artist Tino Sehgal, a trilogy of Samuel Beckett works directed by his former collaborator Walter Asmus, Susanne Kennedy’s Women in Trouble; Filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Fever Room and Red Pieces.
Dercon, whose interdisciplinary approach and lack of experience in the sphere of theatre has garnered much criticism, will be replacing long-term artistic director Frank Castorf who created a unique identity at the theatre over his 25-year career. More via The New York Times
Chris Dercon
The Brooklyn Rail journal disbands and expands
Last Friday reports were released that the journal The Brooklyn Rail was to lose a significant portion of its staff leading to rumours that the well-respected arts publication was to be discontinued. A statement was published by the journal stating “The independent members of the Board of Directors of the Brooklyn Rail, along with its day-to-day senior staff and six additional full- and part-time staff members, will part ways with the nonprofit publication, effective Friday, May 26, 2017.”
The journal has since made clarifications to its statement with Phong Bui, a central figure within the publication’s staff, adding “We have already and seamlessly hired a new and enlarged staff team, as well as secured additional board support.” He insists that the split was amicable and that the changes are for the overall good of the publication. Read more on artnet News
