Author: Darko Topalski

BERN.- Subsequent to the “Mahjong” exhibition
(2005), efforts were made to organize an artists’ exchange with China. As of
2007, with the help of the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei an apartment-studio was set
up in Beijing and made available for six months at a time to young Swiss
artists. Over a period of two years, the GegenwART foundation and its
patron Dr. h.c. Hansjörg Wyss supported this initiative and financed the stay of
five artists/artist-couples there. These included the Geneva artists Marc Bauer,
Sharyar Nashat and Pierre-Philippe Freymond, the Zurich artist Christian Vetter
and the artist-brothers Cyril and Gregory Chapuisat from Founex.

PARIS.- “I’m starting to know how to paint. It has taken me over
fifty years’ work to get this far and it’s not finished yet,” declared the
artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) in 1913, at a time when a major
exhibition of his work, including the large nudes painted at the turn
of the twentieth century, was on show at the Bernheim Jeune gallery in Paris. It
was a revelation. Guillaume Apollinaire was lavish in his praise for the man he
considered “the greatest living painter”: “Renoir grows greater all the
time. His latest paintings are always the most beautiful. And the most
youthful.” Exhibition running from Sept. 23 until
Jan. 4, 2010 at the Grand Palais, Paris.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.- The MacDowell Colony, the nation’s
leading artist residency program, will present its 50th Edward MacDowell Medal
this year to visual artist Kiki Smith. The MacDowell Medal is awarded annually
to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to his/her field and
this year marks a half-century of recognizing pivotal artists. Smith
joins an impressive list of past recipients, including Georgia O’Keeffe, John
Updike, I.M. Pei., and Aaron Copland. The award will be presented in a public
ceremony during the Medal Day celebration on Sunday, August 9, 2009, beginning
at 12:15 p.m. on The MacDowell Colony grounds in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Robert MacNeil, chairman of The MacDowell Colony, will award the Medal, along
with Carter Wiseman, president of the board, and Cheryl Young, executive
director. Novelist, critic, and Colony Fellow Lynne Tillman will be the Medal
Day speaker.

HARTFORD, CT.- A new collaborative exhibition
featuring the works of Willie Cole and Hank Willis Thomas, entitled Digging
Deeper, will open this fall at The Amistad Center for Art & Culture at the
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art . Both Cole and Thomas were invited to
explore The Amistad Center’s extensive collection of art, artifacts, and
archives which document the African American experience and respond with new
works inspired by this rich source material. The show will also include
additional objects from The Amistad Center’s collection to highlight the common
threads between historical characterizations of race and present-day conceptions
of African American culture. Digging Deeper is on view from September
19, 2009 through April 4, 2010.

NEW YORK, NY.- Two versions of Ansel Adams’s
iconic image of “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico”, 1941, sold to collectors at
Swann Galleries’ auction of Photographic Literature & Fine Photographs on
December 8. A very rare vintage print created in 1948 that was signed
and inscribed by Adams to Valentino Sarra, a photographer and W.P.A. poster
designer and friend of Adams, sold for $360,000. It was one of only
approximately 10 vintage prints Adams rendered with a delicate tonal quality.

ZURICH.- In 2010 the Kunsthaus Zürich will celebrate
its hundredth anniversary. Switzerland’s oldest combined collection and
exhibition space opened its doors in Karl Moser’s late Jugendstil museum
building on the Heimplatz in 1910, and now, in honor of the centenary,
the Kunsthaus will showcase its opulent collection, including many donations,
and mount a major Picasso show in tribute to its tradition of key exhibitions.
In 2015 the artistic idea of a dynamic museum for the 21st-century will become
reality, and the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft’s success story, which owes its
inception in 1787 to the initiative of local burghers, will have been continued
in a further exciting chapter – the Kunsthaus extension.

LONDON.- Nat Finkelstein was one of the most
respected photojournalists of modern times. Renowned for his iconic and intimate
documentation of Andy Warhol’s infamous “Factory”, and later
for his political activism including an allegiance with The Black Panthers that
forced him to live abroad for 15 years, Finkelstein remained at the heart of the
cultural zeitgeist up until his death aged 76, 2nd October 2009. This
retrospective brings together Finkelstein’s diverse portfolio of work achieved
across five decades: from the Factory scenes, to the civil rights and anti-war
protests of mid-60s America, to his continuing exploration of the subcultures of
80s and 90s New York; Nat’s photographs not only depict their subjects and
scenes, but also provide a visual record of the life and times of the
photographer himself.