ISIS’s Venice Biennale pavilion arrives in the Venetian lagoon (all images courtesy the ISIS in Venice pavilion)

ISIS to Exhibit Floating Pavilion of Art Destruction at Venice Biennale

VENICE — The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has announced that it will have its first-ever Venice Biennale pavilion when the international art exhibition opens next month. The announcement was made at a press conference held Wednesday morning aboard the Raqqa, a boat moored outside the Giardini, where the global art event takes place. The watercraft arrived in Venice late Monday and attracted attention from Venetians when it began to endlessly play the 1982 song “Rock the Casbah” by the Clash throughout the day. (By the Way…April Fools, Sorry).

Leading art libraries pull together to make research available on the web

More than 30 million images of paintings, drawings and sculptures could soon be available on one website if art history photo archives across the world agree to a joint digitisation project. Inge Reist, director of the Frick Collection’s Center for the History of Collecting, says it would “revolutionise” art history.

The Art Newspaper

Oil and Art Fortune Heir Andrew Getty Found Dead in Home, Age 47

Andrew Getty, grandson to J. Paul Getty, the oil baron and storied art and antiquities collector who founded Los Angeles’s Getty Museum, was found dead yesterday afternoon in his Hollywood Hills home. Initial reports from authorities and family members indicate that Getty likely died as the result of an accident or natural causes. “This does not appear immediately to be a criminal act,” Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson Andrew Smith told the Los Angeles Times.

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MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN, THE GODFATHER OF BRITISH CONCEPTUAL ART, COMES TO DALLAS

I’m going to madness,” said Michael Craig-Martin, when reached at his studio in London in late January. “Every day I’m on the verge of being overwhelmed.” At 73, Craig-Martin, a former teacher who several so-called Young British Artists (YBAs) have credited as an influence, is having the busiest year of his life. In March, a series of his large Pop-inflected sculptures (a stiletto, a pitchfork, scissors, etc.) was erected in the gardens of Chatsworth House, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, in England.

As its director quits, Tate Britain must find the fun factor – or shut its doors

Tate Britain has been in the news this week – but the biggest story was the least reported. Amid all the excitement about Tracey Emin’s My Bed returning “home”, the Millbank museum more quietly revealed that its director Penelope Curtis is to leave after just five controversial years. Curtis had become the focus of interest at Tate Britain in a way that wasn’t healthy for her or the museum. Her record was actually mixed: she improved the main collection displays, putting more of the Tate’s collection on view. That was good.

These Women’s Photographs Are Taking Over The Streets of Casablanca

During the first two weeks of April, the city of Casablanca, Morocco will become a haven for public art. The Billboard Festival, an art festival of epic proportions, will take over 63 billboards throughout the city to showcase photography produced by 63 female contemporary Moroccan and Scandinavian artists.

Carsten Holler’s giant slides to arrive at the Hayward Gallery

Carsten Holler will be bringing his enormous spiral slides back to London this summer as part of an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. The Belgian artist first installed five slides in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2006, where they proved popular with the public. Now he is adding them to the outside of the gallery on London’s South Bank as a means of exiting his summer show.

Market News: charity art auctions give back

It’s spring, and Britain’s sculpture parks are gearing into action. First out of the blocks is the Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood, Sussex, a commissioning and selling organisation that was founded in 1992. This season it is featuring a number of rising stars such as UK born, Miami based Mark Handforth who is in the leading private contemporary art collections of François Pinault, Don and Mera Rubell, and Howard Rachofsky. Handforth’s three-metre high aluminium sculpture, Two Old Bananas, is from an edition of three and is priced at £170,000.

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