Cats Hole

Construction workers accidentally drilled a hole through a 17th-century painting worth euro 250,000 while renovating the Dutch upper house of parliament, officials said Friday.
The painting, a Portrait of Jacob Cats by Baroque Dutch painter Ludolf de Jongh, was on loan from the Hague Museum.
The accident occurred a "couple of weeks ago" when the 1679 painting, which had been taken down and was leaning up against a wall in the legislature's Noon Hall, was pierced by workers who drilled through from the next room.
Irish Art

New Royal Academy top dog

Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, a boyish 65-year-old with a floppy haircut and a pair of those trademark bottletop electric blue spectacles that architects wear to tell the world what they do for a living, describes the ritual of being elected president of the Royal Academy as a life-changing experience.
With just a 20-minute break to celebrate, Grimshaw sat down to deal with his first official duties, trying to clear up the messy and drawn-out aftermath of the allegations made about the head of the Royal Academy's painting school and his use of an unauthorised bank account. Rather than allow a vote based on nothing more substantial than newspaper reports, he pushed through a move to have Brendan Neilland suspended, and set up an independent inquiry into the affair, leaving the painter's reputation under a cloud for a little longer.,,
For the rest of the story - click the title
Irish Art

Memo to Tessa

So what actually happened to the funding settlement last week? The Arts Council asked for a small increase above inflation. The government announced that the arts budget would be frozen between 2005 and 2008. Treasury officials are not quick to return calls on this subject, but apparently Brown's men stipulated that the arts line in the DCMS budget had to be fixed on the grounds that 'they had had their turn'. This leaves a shortfall in arts funding of £30 million (roughly two helicopters, or a week's worth of troops in Iraq) over three years and sends the very clear message that the Treasury does not take the arts industry seriously. If an industrial board followed five years of successful investment with real terms cuts, the shareholders (that's us) would be baying for their resignation.
Jowell's DCMS has responded to this idiotic constraint with a mixture of frustration, wit and old-fashioned guff. No one accepts her claim that fur ther efficiencies could create a huge surplus to spend on artists. But one element within the frozen arts budget (the ring-fenced, focus-group-friendly Creative Partnerships fund) remains underspent and Jowell has told the Arts Council to use that money to dodge the cut as best they can. By jiggling funds, they might at least keep funding at present levels, albeit with no flexibility for further strategic investment, until 2008. More worrying is what might happen after that...
For the rest of the story - click the title
Irish Art

Urinal Shock

Duchamp shocked the art establishment when he took the urinal, signed it and put it on display in 1917.
The choice of Duchamp's Fountain recently as the most influential work of modern art by 500 art experts ahead of works by Picasso and Matisse came as a bit of a shock to art experts and collectors alike.
Irish Art

The Art of Dying

A month long exhibition and silent auction featuring works by 50 local artists to benefit Kairos Dwelling, a nonprofit home for the terminally ill opens Jan. 7, at Little Cities Gallery, Michegan. Artists have donated their works for the silent auction.
All the proceeds from the auction will go to Kairos, whose attempt to "unplug" death from institutional constraints and regulations has drawn visitors who want to do something similar in their communities.
Lauri Holmes, a member of the Kairos board of directors, said that although it's unusual to link art and a place for people who are dying, a fund-raising partnership makes sense.
Little Cities Gallery's Ted Schnur said:"Art is a fun thing, a life-affirming act, a rejuvenation of the spirit. We think it's a nice tie-in."
Irish Art