Travel Ban: the art world resists, but Trump’s goes even further
The US president has announced that its infamous travel ban has now been extended to three new countries: North Korea, Chad and Venezuela. For its part, Sudan is no longer subjected to the ban. More via The Guardian.
A couple of weeks ago, Nancy Spector, director of the Guggenheim, had announced the museum’s opposition to the US administration’s policy: “While art may seem to some like mere entertainment or, worse, a privilege that only the elite can access and enjoy, it is, in reality, a powerful educational tool that helps expand hearts and minds. Within the art world, the ‘Muslim ban’ has threatened the values of cross-cultural exchange that lie at its very core.” Spector’s full letter is accessible here.
Eight artists for the ninth edition of the KölnSkulptur biennial
Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of Cologne’ Skulpturenpark, this year’s edition of the KölnSkulptur biennial brings together eight artists, selected by curator Chus Martínez, who formerly worked at New York’s Museo del Barrio and on documenta 13.
Titled “The End of Babylon. I wonder, that I’m so happy!”, the biennial’s ninth edition will take place from October 15 through June 2019, featuring new works by Andrea Büttner, Claudia Comte, Jan Kiefer, Eduardo Navarro, Solange Pessoa, Lin May Saeed, Teresa Solar and Pedro Wirz. The biennial’s overarching theme will be the relationship between art and nature. More via the Skulpturenpark’s website.
© Skulpturenpark
Münster’s Skulptur Projekte is again the target of vandals
As the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) gained seats in the German parliament for the first time since its foundaiton, Münster’s Skulptur Projekte becomes the target of Nazi vandals. Nicole Eisenman’s work Sketch for a Fountain was in fact defaced in the night between September 22 and 23 with blue spray and tagged with a swastika.
On her Facebook page, the artist has said: “Last night my piece in Skulptur Projekte Münster was spray painted with a swastika and further vandalized, they broke the fountain pumps. This, on the eve of the election in Germany where it’s predicted that the AfD will enter the German Parliament for the first time… real Nazis in the German Reichstag for the first time since the end of World War Two.”
In July, one of the five figures making up the installation had been defaced by vandals. The organizers of the event have expressed their dismay in a statement, noting that a statue devoted to the feminist 18th-century poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, which is placed close to the work of Eisenman had also been smeared with graffiti. “Both artworks were exposed to a fascist form of violence, a violence that homo-, trans-, and intersexual people have to face in real life everyday in many places.”
Nicole Eisenman - Sketch for a Fountain
