In Brief: Warwick Arts Centre awarded major capital funding for new gallery; Creative Scotland reinstates five organisations after backlash over cuts

Warwick Arts Centre awarded £4.2m in funding for 20:20 Project Arts Council England grant is part of its Large Capital Fund, with the redevelopment set to be complete by October 2020. It will include the demolition of the site’s existing cinema and Mead Gallery, creating a new building to house three new digital auditoria, a large ground floor gallery and new-look foyer and café bar. The centre will remain open throughout the project continuing to run a full programme of events.

Professor Stuart Croft, vice chancellor, University of Warwick, said: “Warwick Arts Centre has been the jewel in the crown of the University for 44 years and symbolises our values of open-ness, innovation and inquiry. The University plans to invest in this well-loved building to ensure it remains at the forefront of artistic and creative practice for the benefit of our region and our communities.”

Creative Scotland fund five extra organisations following backlash over cuts – although high-profile names still miss out £2.6m of additional funds will be allocated to Regular Funding 2018-21, with Birds of Paradise, Catherine Wheels, Dunedin Consort, Lung Ha and Visible Fictions all reinstated having previously been dropped from the RFO portfolio. However, Transmission Gallery, Ayr Gaiety, Fire Exit, and NVA still miss out, with the decision-making process coming under fire.

Meanwhile, Creative Scotland’s head of visual arts, Amanda Catto, has said that Glasgow’s Transmission has transitional funding in place until October 2018. However, details of a mooted new Creative Scotland fund for artist-run initiatives remain undisclosed with no date yet set for its launch or any indication of what it will involve.

Writing in the Herald Scotland, Phil Miller claims staff at Creative Scotland are furious “with its communication to companies and artists, and ultimately with the board for voting on a raft of major decisions (life changing ones for the artists involved) which have been reversed in 10 days.” He also points out that it is rare for any public body to “go back on its, presumably, well-considered plans so quickly”.

Meanwhile, Neil Cooper, writing in Bella Caledonia claims we are witnessing the last days of Creative Scotland. He said: “It’s time for artists to seize the power back from an organisation that has never been fit for purpose. Creative Scotland in its current guise is in its final days.”

Not Surprised call for boycott of Artforum over handling of Knight Landesman harassment allegations The group criticise Artforum’s publishers and lawyers of filing a motion to dismiss Amanda Schmitt’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Knight Landesman.

It is calling on signatories of its original letter on sexual harassment in the art world to not read, work with, or advertise in Artforum or its affiliates until various steps are taken. These include that “Knight Landesman must be fully removed from co-ownership of the magazine. He must not benefit financially in any capacity from Artforum’s new ‘intersectional feminist’ editorial mission.”

Not Surprised also demand that Artforum “retract its motion to dismiss Amanda Schmitt’s lawsuit, as well as its request to strike all allegations of Landesman’s harassment from the case.

“Artforum’s publishers and lawyers must proceed along the same ethical line that its editorial department now espouses: remember, an intersectional feminist ethics is dependent on processes of accountability. Artforum, we want to be your readers, your supporters, your community. This is what a community accountability process looks like.”

Artists sign letter objecting to prototypes of Trump’s border wall being called art 25 artists and cultural workers have signed an open letter that criticises various art institutions’ support for the prototypes of President Trump’s border wall being designated as a national monument.

Gelare Khoshgozaran, the LA-based artist and writer who spearheaded the open letter, told Hyperallergic: “Seeing how casually, not just one, but two US art institutions were participating in the promotion or facilitation of the wall prototype tours, and thereby normalising the project as ‘art’ — as if we just forgot who had published the call for proposals in the first place — I could not afford to remain silent.”

Last year, the Swiss-Icelandic artist Christoph Büchel launched the MAGA project, which includes taking paying customers on a tour from a meeting point outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego to Tijuana, and then on to the prototypes which are located near the Otay Mesa border crossing.

Amongst those who have signed the letter criticising Büchel’s project are: Sasha Ali, the manager of exhibitions and communications at the Craft & Folk Art Museum; artist and curator Matthew Lax; artist and Los Angeles City College instructor Oscar Miguel Santos; Geneva-based art adviser Myriam Vanneschi.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has issued a statement stressing that it is in no way involved in or affiliated with Büchel’s project.

Two rediscovered Salvador Dali paintings to appear at auction in the UK for the first time The works, titled Gradiva and Maison Pour Érotomane, were painted for and acquired by Argentinian Countess de Cuevas de Vera in the 1930s.

Although Gradiva featured in an exhibition in Lausanne, Switzerland, in the 1980s, Maison Pour Érotomane has not been seen publicly since the 1930s. The artworks, which will go on auction at Sotheby’s, London, on 28 February, have an estimated value of between £1.2m and £1.8m.

Temporary export ban placed on works by Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron Work by pioneering photographer is set to leave the UK unless a buyer willing to pay £3.7m can be found. The album features some of her best-known photographs, including images of Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Although arts minister Michael Ellis has placed it under a temporary export bar, the Guardian reports that according to the most recent annual report, in 2015-16, ministers imposed 21 temporary export bars on artworks, and only nine, together worth £7m, were saved from going abroad. The decision on whether to grant an export licence for Cameron’s album has been deferred until 5 May.

Image:
1. Warwick Arts Centre after redevelopment

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