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LOUISVILLE, KY.- At its first annual Legacy Society Dinner honoring donors who have included the Speed Art Museum in their estate plans or given or pledged more than $100,000 in art or cash contributions during their lifetimes, Dr. Elizabeth Pahk Cressman announced that she and her husband, Dr. Frederick K. Cressman, have pledged $10 million to the Speed Art Museum’s upcoming renovation and expansion project. The Cressman gift is among the largest donations ever made to the Museum since its founding in 1927. The Cressmans are avid art enthusiasts and since moving to Louisville in the 1980s have been long-time supporters

NEW YORK, NY.- Although the McKee Gallery has mounted many Philip Guston shows over the last 35 years, it has never exhibited the small oil panels together as a group. The early figurative acrylic panels were begun in 1968, but the date of the first smaller oils is undetermined. The dated oil panels begin in 1969 and the last ones in 1973. Many are undated. These small oils, ranging in size from 9 x 10 to 12 x 16 inches, have always been special. Their diminutive size does not diminish their pictorial strength, whether as complex compositions of hooded figures in conversation, studio interiors, still-lifes or as paintings of single objects, such

WACO, TX (AP).- A site where dozens of prehistoric mammoths died in a landslide and flooding some 68,000 years ago has opened to the public in Waco, Texas. The fossils were discovered in 1978 by two men hunting for snakes. They took one of the bones to a Baylor University museum official who identified it, triggering an archaeological dig. Baylor and the city preserved the remains for two decades and, following a community fundraising effort, a permanent pavilion was built over the site, which opened to the public for the first

BARCELONA.- Galeria Joan Prats is presenting ‘Adult Contemporary’, Carles Congost’s first solo exhibition in Barcelona since 2005. The new works of multifaceted artist Carles Congost bring forth a variety of ways to approach the production of images related to the miscellaneous imaginarium of pop culture. In his recent photographic works he combines the sketch with the photo romantic novel in stories that allow aesthetic and character association in dissonant social circumstances. His visual references go from the comic strip genre, portraying camp super heroes, to celebrities from the European show

GHENT.- Ben Benaouisse (b. 1971, Familleureux) is a dancer, performer, visual artist and especially difficult to place precisely under one of the abovementioned categories. In S.M.A.K. he presents the performance “Jan Fabre Revisited”, a re-enactment of Fabre’s Bic-Art Room in 1981. The Bic-Art Room by Fabre was a performance lasting 72 hours in which the artist had himself locked up in a white room lit by artificial lighting. Closed off

LONDON.- An innovative art project developed by the National Gallery is giving a group of stroke survivors the chance to get their creative juices flowing. Ageing Creatively is an outreach programme that aims to make it possible for people who may be isolated, vulnerable or unable to visit the Gallery independently, to access and enjoy the collection. During November, members of the Greenhill Aphasia Group took part in four outreach workshops at the Greenhill Centre in Newham. Aphasia is a difficulty speaking or understanding speech, reading or writing. It occurs following damage to the brain and is most common after a stroke. Participants worked with artist Viyki Turnbull to create still-life drawings and paintings. For this project – titled “The Real and Unreal” – the group looked at images of still-life paintings in the National Gallery’s permanent collection and compared and contrasted the different ap

MURCIA, SPAIN.- La Conservera will open its third series of exhibitions by Valentin Carron, FOD, Manu Muniategiandikoetxea, Eva Rothschild and Gert & Uwe Tobias. These five artists, for the most part sculptors, share a set of common concerns and interests and are all engaged in redefining, revising, appropriating or deconstructing concepts and forms grounded in the various movements associated with modernism, focusing their work on an exploration of new materials and conventional techniques. Valentin Carron works across sculpture, painting and installation. He reproduces real objects or elements with a symbolicly charged meaning from his own environment as well as from broader cultural contexts. For his first exhibition in Spain, he is presenting in “Space 1” a work called “Fibre fibre, austère austère” produced by La Conservera. The work comprises twelve elements, each a large wall-like object. These walls look like rough

LIVERPOOL.- Four short films inspired by art at Tate Liverpool and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Mike Figgis will be broadcast on Channel 4’s Three Minute Wonders. From Monday 14 – Thursday 17 December 2009 Channel 4 will broadcast four art films that show the people of Liverpool reacting and responding to renowned artworks from the Tate Collection, currently on display at Tate Liverpool as part of “DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture”. The short films are a Red Mullet Production with Tate Media for Channel 4 and will be broadcast at approximately 19.55 each evening. In addition to their broadcast on Channel 4 the films are also available to view alongside the artworks in the current DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture display at Tate Liverpool and will be available to view on the Tate website. The first film sees Carl Andre’s “144 Magnesium Square “(1969) relocated to Rapid, a hardware store in Liverpool City