From the BBC:

Downing Street has said there will be no exemption from anti-discrimination laws for Catholic adoption agencies.

But Tony Blair said they would get 21 months to prepare for change, calling this a "sensible compromise".

Adoption agencies had warned they would close rather than place children with gay couples, saying that went against their beliefs.

...

The proposed measures are likely to face a vote in Parliament next month before coming into effect on 6 April.

Mr Blair said he believed ministers had found a "way through" to prevent discrimination and protect the interests of children, which all "reasonable people" should be able to accept.

"There is no place in our society for discrimination. That's why I support the right of gay couples to apply to adopt like any other couple.

"And that way there can be no exemptions for faith-based adoption agencies offering public funded services from regulations that prevent discrimination."

This sort of thing seems pretty unlikely in the USA, and we don't even have a head of state who is also the head of the official church!

At Black and White Gallery:

Andrew Piedilato
Untitled, 2006
oil on canvas
83 × 78 inches

A new step in this artist's evolution. I love his paintings, and first wrote about him in 2003.

Ina Geissler
Lost, 2003
Egg tempera on canvas
80 × 70 inches

She is a new discovery for me. She lives in Berlin.

At Cynthia Broan Gallery:

Rachel Rampleman
Poison (My Sister Fucked Bret),
video
30 minutes

Sad and disturbing -- the story of a woman's obsession with Bret Michaels of Poison, filmed in her apartment in southern Ohio.

[All images provided by the galleries]

Art benefits are always a good bet for finding new art to buy. We have discovered a number of artists that way. On January 30, CUE Art Foundation is having a cocktail party plus silent and live art auctions. Tickets are $75 each. Even if you don't buy any art, the list of food and wine supporters

Moët & Chandon Champagne, Xellent Swiss Vodka, It's Your Event, Inc. Distinctive Caterer and Windsor Vineyards

sounds like a good reason to go!

Go here to see the live auction works, and here for the silent auction works.

Live auction artists include: Polly Apfelbaum, Christopher Brown, Cameron Martin, Bruce Nauman, Thomas Nozkowski, Catherine Opie, Gary Panter, Susan Rothenberg, Kiki Smith, Art Spiegelman, Trevor Winkfield

Silent auction artists include: Richard Allen Morris, Stephen Andrews, Thomas Ashcraft. Lee Baxter Davis, Sue Chenoweth, Mike Childs, Ian Cooper, Veronica De Jesus, Josh Dorman, Anthony Dubovsky, Tina Girouard, Juan Gomez, Valerie Hammond, James Hayward, Karl Jensen, Aristides Logothetis, Mara Lonner, Gary Monroe, Brian Moss, Cheol Yu Kim, Jeff Schlanger, George Schneeman, David Storey, Augusta Talbot

For the Paul Auster fans (which includes me), there is also this in the live auction: lunch for two with novelists Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt at Tocqueville restaurant, hosted by poet William Corbett.

Spotted on 27th Street in Chelsea

The developers, and the so-called art world, are the new conquistadors.

Filip Noterdaeme of the Homeless Museum alerted us to a screening tonight at Anthology Film Archives that sounds great. His description included "the movie loosely revolves around the art scene as if captured by a younger (and perhaps gayer) Godard..." We are already scheduled for something else, unfortunately, or we would be there. Here is the trailer:

L'eau De Vie
Un Film De Jean Luc Godard
8pm | Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
Anthology Film Archives | 32 2nd Avenue
free

Wow! Check out the upcoming schedule for the new location of their gallery on West 37th Street of The Horticultural Society of New York.

January 30 – March 9, 2007
Opens January 30, 6-8pm
Rowena Dring and Jude Miller, The Artificial Kingdom
Co-curated by Jodie Vicenta Jacobson and Joseph Wolin

March 23 – June 8, 2007
James Welling, New Work
In conjunction with a concurrent exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery, New York

June 21 – September 7, 2007
Peter Coffin, Tree Pants

March – May, 2008
Paul Morrison
In conjunction with a concurrent exhibition at Cheim & Read, New York

The Horticultural Society of New York
148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018-6909
Tel: (212) 757-0915

[photo from the Society's website]

Again from newyorkbusiness.com...

NYC Investment Fund offers arts loans

The New York City Investment Fund, an affiliate of the Partnership for New York City, said Monday that it has teamed up with the state Arts Council to launch a new $2 million loan program.

The initiative -- dubbed the Arts Entrepreneurial Loan Fund -- aims to fund arts and nonprofit groups, including dance troupes, art, music and theater groups and other art-related programs, throughout the five boroughs.

The loans, which will range from $25,000 to $500,000, will provide funding aimed at lowering the nonprofit's overhead.

"Arts groups frequently contribute to revitalization of the city's most blighted neighborhoods, but this sector is threatened by rising costs and growing competition for scarce philanthropic dollars," said Maria Gotsch, co-chief executive and co-president of the $100 million New York City Investment Fund.

...

From today's newyorkbusiness.com:

Art fairs seek more city marketing aid

Some organizers of the upcoming art fairs running Feb. 22-26 say the city could do more to promote the event.

The two main fairs, The Art Show and The Armory Show, recently scheduled their events at the same time, in an effort to create a major art week in the city. A number of smaller fairs will take place as well. Executives at the Art Show are trying to get Mayor Bloomberg to open their show at the very least.

“In the art world, things are more event driven then ever before and New York needs to be promoted now that we have so much competition from London and Miami and Switzerland,” says Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Show. “It’s really important that the city take on ownership of this.”

The city did help The Armory Show secure its new venue at Pier 94 for that week. And NYC & Co. banners advertising The Armory Show and a smaller fair called Scope, will go up this week.

Michael Rakowitz
Headless Male Figure (Kh. IV 112) (Recovered, Missing, Stolen Series), 2007
middle eastern packaging and newspapers, glue
9.65 × 4.72 × 2.76 inches

Michael Rakowitz's latest show, at Lombard-Freid Projects, deals with the destruction of Iraq's cultural treasures. Part of the project is an attempt to reconstruct the archaeological artifacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq in the aftermath of the American invasion in April 2003. They are made from Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic newspapers found in Arab communities in America, I believe primarily in New York and Chicago.

It also has information about the story of Donny George, the former Director General of the Museum. New York Magazine has a profile of him in the latest issue. He now lives on Long Island and teaches at Stony Brook. He moved after his children received death threats. Two of his children, Marian, 21, a medical student, and Steven, 23, a computer scientist, are in Damascus, as the US government wouldn't give them papers to come to America.

The University of Chicago has more information including a complete database of the Museum's holdings before 2003.

I first heard of Michael Rakowitz via his paraSITE project for providing temporary shelter for homeless people.

[photo from the gallery's website]

Chancellor Schröder's portrait by Jörg Immendorff

Bill Clinton's portrait by Simmie Knox

I think we can argue that the Germans are a bit more adventurous when it comes to official portraits. Chancellor Schröder's portrait is by Jörg Immendorff. This English translation of an article from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung describes it.

Niklas Maak has had a look at at Jörg Immendorff's official portrait of ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The portrait, executed by the ailing artist with the help of assistants (see our features on Immendorff here and here), has Schröder looking gold-plated: "Never has a chancellor's portrait looked so emperor-like, so Bismarckian, and immensely powerful as in Immendorff's Schröder. Schröder issued in new policies and new images, the portrait announces, showing not the man but the icon, the iron media chancellor, the ruler transformed as image. Yet the picture has some peculiar elements and an unparalleled iconographic programme, as if Schröder's chancellorship needed explaning. A horde of monkeys cavort round his shoulders. Immendorff says he painted them as an homage to the chancellor, who 'did a lot for artists.'"

[Schröder image from faz.net and Clinton image from simmieknox.com]

JT Kirkland of the Thinking About Art blog is having a guerrilla art show in his hotel room in NYC for three days. The last session is tonight, 7:30-9:30, so email him at jtkirkland@gmail.com if you're interested in visiting.

Go here if you have trouble with the slide show above.

See also: James

I love this flickr group. I wonder if there is an its vs. it's one. That drives me crazy.

Spotted in Brooklyn after our fabulous visit to the Homeless Museum.

The show is up through January 27, 2007. Art Fag City likes her work too.

Kate Valk looking at art, photo by Andrew Andrew

James and I ran into Kate Valk of The Wooster Group at the Isidro Blasco opening at DKCT Contemporary last Saturday. We hadn't realized that she does a radio show called "The Next Hour" on WBAI with Andrew Andrew. They were accompanied by our friend Eric Doeringer and had spent the day look at Chelsea art shows. The show is archived for easy listening, and it's a lot of fun. Go here and scroll down to January 7, or just use this link to stream it. The recording times are a a little off, so skip about 2 minutes and 50 seconds to get to the beginning.

You can see Kate, one of the most brilliant performers I have ever seen, in The Wooster Group's "Hamlet" in DUMBO at St. Ann's Warehouse beginning February 27. Buy your tickets now, as it will definitely sell out.

This story reminds me of this video.

Mark Creegan, Download Smurfette (detail), 2006

Mark Creegan (an ArtCat artist) is the latest entry in J.T. Kirkland's artist interview series. He was interviewed by Zachary Stadel. Mark (as part of a collective) is in the show that opens Friday at 3rd Ward. [different Mark it turns out]

In other ArtCat artist news:

• Jonathan Podwil has a solo show up now at Plane Space.
• Joe Ovelman has a solo show at Oliver Kamm/5BE opening Friday.
• Bari Ziperstein has a solo show in Los Angeles at Bank, opening Saturday.
• Susan C. Dessel is in a group show called Access: A Feminist Perspective at Rhonda Schaller Studio opening January 20.
• Meredith Allen is in Silicone Valley at PS1, opening February 10.

The website Daily Kos is one of the most influential political blogs / communities on the 'net. Their second convention, called YearlyKos will take place in Chicago August 2-5, 2007.

There is a new way for artists to get involved with this year's convention.

Calling all artists, poets, performers, musicians and art lovers at DailyKos to check a new Yahoo group, ArtKos, which has been formed to develop and plan some arts and politics related activities and events for this year’s Ykos in Chicago. The idea was spawned recently in KingOneEye’s diary Join the Art Insurgency This groupsite is also a place to make connections, share art related political news, events, exhibitions, websites, and whatever strikes people's interest, not to mention discussion and inspiration!  This group and our plans are not officially affiliated with or endorsed by the Ykos organization, though they have been informed of our existence and our ideas.

[image from Join the Art Insurgency]

This was one of my favorite shows in December. It's closed now, but here is a slideshow with some not-so-great images of Kate Levant's work along with some installation shots. We met Kate when she came to Dam Stuhltrager to help Jacques Louis Vidal install his big lightbox for our show. The one up in the ceiling by the fluorescent light had a sound component too.

The other artists in the show were Brian Clifton, Jeffrey P. Porterfield, Joshua Smith, Mike Smith and Ned Vena.

Why do so many gallery sites insist on resizing my browser? I know what size my screen is, and this isn't 1992 with 800px wide screens.

Thomas Eller and Hans Neuendorf, video still from VernissageTV

I just watched a video interview of Artnet founder and CEO Hans Neuendorf and Thomas Eller, the Editor-in-Chief of Artnet Magazine, on VernissageTV. The biggest story I found in the interview was the discussion of Artnet planning to launch an online art auction platform, a kind of eBay for the art world. The reason this would be a big deal for the auction houses, should they pull it off, is that they are talking about commissions in the 5-10% range. Neuendorf suggested that artists might use it, not just collectors and dealers.

Other highlights:

• Hans Neuendorf is very interested in the idea of market transparency, so that artists, dealers, and collectors have a better idea of how certain artists and works are really being priced.
• The importance of online platforms for art, since there are a large number of artists without access to the market. In an age with very high real estate prices, galleries can't afford to rent more space to show more artists and works even if they wish to.
• Liquidity is a problem for the art market - galleries with big inventories have significantly more financial risk than auction houses.
• At least 40,000 artists graduating from art schools in USA each year.

I also like this point (paraphrasing): "There are easier ways to make money than being an art dealer, despite all the talk of money -- they're idealists."

having one's windows rattled by NYPD helicopters. Perhaps they should spend some of those fuel dollars on giving the NYPD better salaries. The starting salary for a new cop? $25K.