From Indepth Arts News:
"Call for Artists: Portfolio Review"
Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit
Detroit, MI, USA United States of America
Request for Portfolios - Open from December 3, 2007 to January 31, 2008. The Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID) invites artists, musicians, performers, architects, poets and other creative individuals or groups to submit portfolios for consideration of the 2008 Exhibition and Program Season. In addition to the general review there will be some exhibits focusing on the following themes: Hunger, Shelter, Clothing and Size vs. Scale, defined loosely to allow for exciting new approaches.
During the 2008 Exhibition and Program Season (March 1, 2008 - February 29, 2009) the works of hundreds of local and international artists will be presented in over 10,000 square feet of CAID exhibition and performance space, at four distinct venues throughout Detroit. The venues include CAID's Carriage House Gallery, Ladybug Gallery, MassiV at the Russell Industrial Center and the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit-main campus. MassiV is ideally suited for large sculpture, and the Carriage House Gallery for installation specific works.
The Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit is a community based non-profit organization. CAID fosters and promotes the essential link between contemporary arts and contemporary society through its exhibitions, performances, critical and public discourse and the funding of contemporary arts and art related activities.
Local and Internationally based artists and groups working in all materials including but not limited to painting, sculpture, photography, digital media, performance, music, video and film may submit the completed application below along with any of the following support materials:
· Visual Artist Portfolio (sent via e-mail or snail mail - see application)
· Website links (for visual, performance & music artists - see application)
· Press Kits (for performance and music artists - see application)
Portfolios will be accepted & reviewed between December 3, 2008 & January 31, 2009.
Submit completed application (found below) to:
CAID
Portfolio Review
5141 Rosa Parks Blvd
Detroit MI 48208 Or portfolio@thecaid.org
from The artnewspaper
Nazi associations of collection "not relevant" says founder of new museum
The art on show includes works by artists collected by Hitler and displayed in exhibitions sponsored by the Third Reich
Jason Edward Kaufman | 13.12.07 | Issue 186
NEW YORK. The new Grohmann Museum, which is dedicated to art showing "the evolution of human work", has been called to account for failing to display any information about the art's association with the Nazi regime. The institution opened in October at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE).
While the school celebrated the opening of its first cultural asset, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel asked why works of
art produced under the Third Reich are displayed without texts explaining their historical background.
The museum houses more than 700 paintings and sculptures, most by little known 20th-century German and Northern European artists, but includes works attributed to Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Jan van Goyen, Max Liebermann and Frederic Remington. Subjects include farming, mining, glassblowing, construction, iron and steel production and heavy industry.
The museum's founding benefactor is MSOE regent and Milwaukee industrialist Eckhart G. Grohmann, 71, who was born in Silesia, Germany (today part of Poland) and emigrated to the US in 1962 where he bought a small foundry that he built into Aluminum Casting & Engineering Co.
He joined the board of MSOE in 1974 and donated his "Men at Work" collection in 2001, stipulating that none of the works ever be exchanged or sold. He also provided funds to purchase and renovate the museum that bears his name, and acquired an adjacent building providing rental income that will support the museum. Mr Grohmann named John Kopmeier, an engineer whom he knew socially, to serve as director.
The three-storey brick building, originally an automobile dealership, has a new glass turret inspired by architect Sir Norman Foster's addition to the Reichstag in Berlin. Mr Grohmann says this "Kaiserdom" was his idea, as was the rooftop phalanx of a dozen nine-foot bronzes that he commissioned based on statues of muscular workers in the collection, and the ceiling paintings of inventors and a stained-glass window depicting workers commissioned for the atrium. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's verdict is that: "the effect is rather like Old World Berlin as reinterpreted by Walt Disney".
Mr Grohmann amassed his collection over four decades, buying from auction houses in Germany and Switzerland, as well as various other sources. "I have very little competition because [the paintings] are not the sort of things you hang over your sofa," he says.
The most heavily represented artist, with 81 works, is Erich Mercker (1891-1973) whose images of German industry were endorsed by the Third Reich and exhibited in the annual Nazi-sanctioned "Great German Art Exhibition" in 1937. The museum labels cite only his name, dates and titles and the museum website does not refer to his Nazi ties either. Other artists in the Grohmann collection known to have worked with the Nazis are Ferdinand Staeger-whose work was collected by Hitler-Ria Picco-Rückert, and Otto Hamel. All of them participated in the annual Nazi exhibitions. The collection also includes work by Magnus Zeller, a German who opposed the Nazis.
The art on display includes a Mercker painting of a U-boat building facility (left) and a 1942 Picco-Rückert picture of Nazi steel manufacturing, but Mr Grohmann denies that any of his paintings glorify the Third Reich. "Propaganda pictures would show flags and swastikas," he contends, apparently ignoring scholarship that suggests otherwise. Art historian Mark Antliff, for example, has written that "the Nazis propagated a 'myth-image' [through] imagery devoted to 'the sanctification of creative work'," and cites Staeger and Picco-Rückert as portraying workers engaged in their "'sacred' effort to create 'the eternal Germany.'" Others have noted that labourers depicted in Nazi paintings are likely conscripts from concentration camps.
Mr Grohmann and Mr Kopmeier say that historical context is irrelevant to the museum. "The mission is to educate MSOE students primarily about art, what industry was like years ago, why we are where we are right now," says Mr Kopmeier, adding that Mr Grohmann is responsible for the institution's content. "He's the one that collects the art, and what goes on the wall is a decision he would make," he told The Art Newspaper . "We don't know that any was actually commissioned by the Third Reich," says Mr Grohmann, "and to be honest I wouldn't care. It is a totally subject-oriented collection for the purpose of teaching at the technical university. I don't politicise pictures."
US Jewish organisations have not voiced strong objections to the museum, but some have asked for disclosure of provenance and historical context. University president Hermann Viets says he is not concerned with the allegations of whitewashing the artists' Nazi pasts. "We are perfectly open about it," he says, citing a catalogue that includes more information than appears on the museum walls. Asked if he personally condemns the Nazi regime, Mr Grohmann replied: "I do not make any political statements. I just don't do it."
from The artnewspaper
Berlin auction house finds rare early Beckmann
Only three still-lifes from 1914 are known to exist
 BERLIN. Irene Lehr, director of Irene Lehr Kunstauktionen in Berlin and an expert in the art of the former German Democratic Republic, astonished the German market with a sensational discovery of a very rare early work by Max Beckmann. Still-Life with Gladiolus, 1914, was offered with an estimate of e40,000 ($59,000), but sold to a Berlin buyer on 27 October for a hammer price of e270,000 ($400,000)-the highest price for one of his paintings from this period.
In December 2006 Dr Lehr was offered a collection, including a series of minor paintings, but she says, one work caught her eye immediately. It was a still-life dated 1914, in an expressive style, but dirty and with an illegible signature.
After careful inspection of the signature, Dr Lehr believed that it said "Beckmann" but with a missing "k" in the middle of the name. This convinced Dr Lehr that the still-life could be a rare work by the German artist. She took the work to the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, to be examined by principal conservator Rüdiger Beck, who says he also believed it was by Beckmann. Dr Lehr commissioned pigment and x-ray analyses from Munich's Doerner Institut, and sought the opinion of another Beckmann expert, Mayen Beckmann, the grand-daughter of the artist. The consensus was that the work was authentic.
According to the catalogue raisonné, Beckmann painted two still-lifes in 1914, one with a syringe and one with roses. Experts believe he forgot to mention the Still-Life with Gladiolus in his records, because during the period he left for the front in Eastern Prussia. The painting may be the last of the artist's early works. Partly as a result of his wartime experiences, he radically changed his style in 1915.
|
