ArtscapeJust over a month after Vallejo Gantner's last gig as director of the ESB Dublin Fringe Festival comes word of his appointment as artistic director of Performance Space 122 in New York, a building synonymous with East Village avant-garde theatre and dance, writes Michael Seaver.
Artists first moved into the abandoned school building (Public School 122) in 1979 and it has since supported artists as diverse as The Wooster Group, Diamanda Galás, Meredith Monk and Eric Bogosian.
In December, founder-director Mark Russell announced his resignation after 21 years. Though his decision was officially voluntary, it was well-known that he had difficulties with the board, and president Dan Guarnieri has admitted that his aggressive style "may have contributed" to Russell's resignation.
Gantner, however, told The Irish Times he has had "nothing but encouragement from the board. Everything is artist-centred and they are open to giving me a free hand at making the place work". Nor is he worried that the recent election result will have an effect on the type of art he presents (in the 1980s PS122 regulars such as Tim Miller and Karen Finley had grants revoked by the National Endowment of the Arts under pressure from right-wing groups).
"The right-wing thinks it has won the 'war against art'," says Gantner. "But these artists are still working and I look forward to continuing these ideological arguments."
A changed executive structure means that he will solely concentrate on artistic issues while administration and fundraising will fall to executive director Anne Dennin. Recovering from a post-9/11 funding dip, a $5 million grant from the city will fund renovation work.
New ways with olden days
Throughout the last 20 years or so, museums have had to cope with a radically changing world, writes Aidan Dunne. The idea of museums as repositories of stable canons of work invested with cultural authority has been superseded by a more pluralist, problematic view of their role, just as the belief that they should be insulated from hard economic realities has all but disappeared. Marketing, sponsorship, attendance figures and the other trappings of commercial life are now part and parcel of what is, more and more, a business.
One of the people at the centre of this transformation is the outspoken Sir Timothy Clifford, director-general of the National Galleries of Scotland, who will be in Dublin next week to deliver the Irish Museums Association's annual White Memorial Lecture (named after its late chairman, James White). He has taken the bit between his teeth and called his lecture 'What Does the Future Hold for Museums?'. His views on the subject will be worth hearing, whether or not you agree with them.
Most recently, Clifford has overseen completion of the £30 million Playfair Project in Edinburgh, a major exhibition space based on an underground link between the National Gallery of Scotland and the Royal Scottish Academy building. A move to one of the top posts in London seemed a logical development for Clifford, and may yet happen, though one possibility, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, didn't materialise. The National Gallery has been mentioned, though not by Clifford himself.
The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. next Thursday in the National Gallery of Ireland's newly refurbished lecture theatre. Tickets cost €10 (€5 for Irish Museums Association members) on the night, or in advance from Karin Stierle at 087-2790518. A reception precedes the lecture at 6.30 p.m.
Moore at the movies
As part of the About Time arts festival, the five-minute film, Civic Life: Moore Street, will be shown with two feature films at UGC Cinemas in Dublin, writes Michael Dwyer. It can be seen with all screenings of the new Irish film, The Halo Effect, at UGC Cinemas, Dublin, from now until Monday night, and with the new US film, Taxi, from next Friday for the duration of its run at UGC.
Civic Life takes the form of a single tracking shot along Moore Street, with members of the Dublin-based African theatre company, Arambe. It follows the thoughts of a young African woman in Ireland and her unfolding sense of identity as she walks along the street at night. According to Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, who made the film, it "documents this iconic street at an interval in its official redevelopment where already the everyday hopes and dreams of new communities are reshaping the city as home". Dubliners Molloy and Lawlor are based in the UK, where they have worked in digital arts, video, film, radio and performance. They received the Best British Short Film award for Who Killed Brown Owl? at this year's Edinburgh Film Festival.
Talk your art out
The reality TV craze creates the impression that everyone is bursting to air their opinions - not to mention their ugly mugs - on the box, writes Arminta Wallace. But when it comes to climbing into the video booth at the National Gallery, people have been boxing a bit shy. Installed in collaboration with RTÉ, the video booth was designed to give the Irish public a chance to record their personal experiences of the building and its collection. The vignettes will be archived as part of the gallery's 150th birthday celebrations, and a small number will be shown on a special Christmas edition of The View.
Since it opened last week the booth has been attracting about 30 art-lovers a day - a respectable number, but less than the organisers had hoped for. And it's not as if it's tucked away out of sight somewhere.
"When you come in the Clare Street entrance, you can't miss it," says the gallery's press officer, Valerie Keogh.
She isn't wrong. Oddly reminiscent of Dr Who's spaceship, the Tardis, it's big, it's red, and it's right next to the information desk. So what's the problem?
"People are a bit camera-shy - or maybe art-shy," says Fidelma King, who's there to explain the drill and sort out the signing of a release form. "But we're not looking for art criticism - unless they want to volunteer some. We're looking for stories. I had a woman the other day who met her husband for the first time in the gallery. Another person was a friend of Samuel Beckett."
Come on, folks; you have until December 3rd to talk yourself on to the telly.
Children in residence
An east Galway school which is best known for its wonderful butterfly and organic garden and heritage trail unveiled its contribution earlier this week to Galway's TULCA Visual Arts Festival, writes Lorna Siggins. Pupils of Carnaun National School, in Athenry, joined artist Elizabeth Porritt at the opening of a joint exhibition of their work.
Porritt has been artist-in-residence at Carnaun for the past six months, and the school has been enriched by the experience, according to its principal, Finbarr O'Regan. The residency came about as a result of contact between O'Regan and John Langan, a lecturer at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, and was supported financially by Galway County Council. Entitled 'Transcending the Territory', Langan's project aimed to link the security of the school environment to the experiences of broader society by introducing a professional artist and "creating experiences that the children could take with them into the world". Part of the residency involved taking pupils to the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
The Carnaun exhibition remains on display until December 3rd, with viewing between 12 noon and 2.30 p.m. daily and on Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. by appointment with the school (tel: 091-844668). On the evening of December 2nd , just before the show ends, the school will hold a seminar on the place of art in the school and classroom, on children's creativity, and on the value of residencies in schools with particular reference to the Galway experience.
Participants on the night will include Helen O'Donoghue, senior curator at the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Marilyn Gaughan, arts officer on Galway County Council; and Michael Dempsey, of Galway Arts Centre, in Dominick Street, which is coordinating TULCA with eight arts organisations.
Marilyn Gaughan will also take part in a panel discussion on the state of visual arts in Galway, which takes place today in Galway Arts Centre's new premises at 23 Nun's Island. Other participants include Aideen Barry; the aforementioned John Langan; Fergus Delargy; and French artist Michaele Cataya. The discussion takes place from 3 p.m. to 4.30 p.m., and admission is free.
A separate TULCA panel discussion on artists and architects has been rescheduled for December 9th at 3 p.m. More information is available from Galway Arts Centre (tel: 091-565886).