From Art Daily: The Museo del Prado and Google are today presenting the project “Masterpieces from the Prado on Google Earth”, which will allow users to see details invisible to the naked eye of 14 of the Museum’s masterpieces. Las Meninas, Gentleman with his Hand on his Breast and The Three Graces are among the paintings that have been photographed and which can now be seen on Google Earth by activating the buildings layer in 3d and clicking on Prado.

An upclose image of “Descent of Christ from the Cross” by Dutch Renaissance painter Rogier van der Weyden. Image: nationalpost.com

Check it out HERE

Why would curator Jeffrey Spalding, described as “a genius…a guy who actually gets things done and makes things happen” in THIS Globe and Mail article, recently hired to head up Alberta’s Glenbow museum, leave and be replaced so suddenly? With no explanation?

Jeffrey Spalding. He seems a nice enough fellow, no? Image: cbc.ca

It once seemed a perfect fit. Curator extraordinaire hired to revamp one of the country’s largest institutions not currently on the contemporary cultural map (that we know of). The Glenbow comprises a museum, art gallery, library and archives and holds over a million artifacts and some 28,000 works of art in its vast collections.

Also from the Globe: Spalding, 57, came to the Glenbow Museum from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, where he spent five years as director and chief curator. He is well-known across Canada and has been involved in arts and museum circles since the mid-1970s. Last year, he was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada.

JEFFREY SPALDING RESPONDS!  CLICK TO READ MORE…

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Here Now or Nowhere
Throughout January 2009
Grande Prairie, Alberta
Presented by the Prairie Art Gallery

Jon Sasaki, The Destination and the Journey, 2007, video still

Here Now or Nowhere and is an exhibition of temporary public interventions taking place throughout downtown Grande Prairie, in Alberta.

Where is Grande Prairie? It’s located 456 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. The population of Grande Prairie is currently over 50,000 people and it’s deemed the second-fasted growing city in the oil and (increasingly culture) -rich province.

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An exhibition by young Vancouver artist – and 2008 Sobey Art Prize winner – Tim Lee opens at the Hayward Project Space at the Hayward Gallery, London. The show is on from today until Sunday, 8 February 2009.

Comedian Steve Martin. Image: reneeashleybaker.com

In Untitled (Steve Martin), 2008, Lee re-enacts a 1970s stand-up routine by Steve Martin, a comic who once famously informed his audience that his entire act would consist of one joke, repeated over and over until the final curtain.

On Steve Martin’s first comedy album, Let’s Get Small, recorded live at San Francisco’s Boarding House in 1977, Martin says, now famously, “You just can’t play a depressing song on the banjo.”

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Street Poets & Visionaries: Selections from the UbuWeb Collection
Craig Leonard: Amusicology
January 09, 2009- February 14, 2009
Mercer Union Centre for Contemporary Art, Toronto

January 9, 7 pm: Talk by UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith.

A work by Henry Darger. Image: cvr.ai.uiuc.edu

STREET POETS & VISIONARIES: SELECTIONS FROM THE UBUWEB COLLECTION
This exhibition, billed as “formally striking, emotionally charged and bizarre beyond belief”, includes posters, mad scribblings, political screeds, religious rants, and paranoid raves that expand the notion of the Outsider arts to include the written word.

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1. “Word Up?”: Ghost, Papermonster, Dixon, Omen, Scam and Case.
January 9th – Febuary 1st 2009
Le Gallery, Toronto

A work by Omen. Image: Omen514, Montreal/graffitti.org

LE Gallery and Simon Cole of Show & Tell Gallery are pleased to present this exhibition of work by some of the best – world renown – artists whose primary practice is street based.

For more info, please click HERE.

2. Max Dean
January 8 to 31, 2009
Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Reception for the artist: Thursday January 8, 6 to 8pm
Artist talk: 7pm
Saw Box performance: 6:30, 7:00 and 7:30 pm

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In light of the recent awarding, to Art Gallery of Ontario Director Matthew Tietelbaum, of the annual MOCCA award – $20,000 that recognizes a Canadian active in the art world for a contribution of “national or international significance”, a blog entry from Time.com seems relevant.

In it, Richard Lacayo writes about the “emergency de-accessioning” (bailouts for museums) that is emerging south of the border, as museums struggle along with the rest of the economy.

Read it HERE and former Whitney Museum curator David Ross’s response HERE.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, designed by Isozaki Arata (1986). It received a bailout by billionaire collector Eli Broad last month. Image: britannica.com/Ken Biggs—Tony Stone Images.

(Come to think of it, how much longer will these corporate-sponsored arts awards be around? The MOCCA award is underwritten by BMO, EllisDon and others…)

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Here’s my piece on the New York artist Ryan McGinness, who showed his graphic paintings and incredible perspex sculptures – which, we think are a near-perfect marriage of dynamic form, colour and transparency delivered with frothy lightness – at Artcore in Toronto in October. It’s in the current issue of Azure magazine.

Ryan McGinness, In-progress maquettes for sculptures, acrylic on acrylic, 2008. Image: ryanmcginness.com

Click the thumbnails, and click again to enlarge the text:

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