The New York Times-20080125-Inside Art- -Movies- Performing Arts-Weekend Desk-
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Inside Art; [Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk]
Full Text (905 words)BRUCE NAUMAN CHOSEN
For Venice Biennale
The multifaceted conceptual artist and sculptor Bruce Nauman, a pioneer of Post Minimalist video and performance art, will represent the United States at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Mr. Nauman, 66, who lives in New Mexico, was chosen by the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions, a group of arts professionals organized by the National Endowment for the Arts to advise the State Department.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art was chosen as the commissioner for the 2009 United States Pavilion. Carlos Basualdo, its curator of contemporary art, and Michael R. Taylor, its curator of modern art, will organize the Nauman exhibition. He's an immensely interesting artist because he's somebody whose work makes us think, Anne d'Harnoncourt, director and chief executive of the Philadelphia Museum, said.
After the museum acquired one of Mr. Nauman's early neon works -- The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967) -- the curators began considering Mr. Nauman's career and proposed an exhibition of his work for the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Michael Taylor and I were astonished that he'd never been represented by the United States, Mr. Basualdo said. He's so influential, and lately his work has been so strong.
Mr. Basualdo said that it was too early to say which pieces would be shown in Venice, but that he expected the selection would span Mr. Nauman's career. We are looking at things that have not been shown for a long time or haven't received much attention, he said. And when you're working with a living artist, there's always the possibility of showing things no one has seen at all.
This is not the first time the Philadelphia Museum has been chosen as the United States commissioner for a Venice Biennale. In 1988 it organized Jasper Johns: Work From 1974-1986, which won the gold medal for painting that year.
Nor will it be Mr. Nauman's first appearance in a Venice Biennale, where his work has been shown five times since 1978 in exhibitions organized outside the national pavilions. In 1999, when he and Louise Bourgeois won Golden Lions for lifetime achievement, he exhibited a 1994 video installation that depicted him poking his own face, a comment on human vulnerability.
Last summer his sculpture of a fountain, with molded plastic heads spraying water into industrial sinks, was part of a group exhibition at the biennale.
The State Department is contributing about $500,000 to the Venice installation, its highest grant to date.
A PLUGGED-IN FOUNTAIN
A giant fountain created from 1,729 feet of neon tubing and 3,390 LED bulbs will transform the plaza at Rockefeller Center next month into a light-show spectacle. Electric Fountain, a 35-foot-tall work by the British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster that is their first public artwork, will be on view from Feb. 27 through April 4.
The fountain is one of the earliest forms of public art, said Jerry I. Speyer, chairman and chief executive of Tishman Speyer Properties, an owner of Rockefeller Center. Another reason the artists chose a fountain is because it represents a place where people gather.
It took three years to plan and design the project; given the season, issues like wind and snow had to be considered.
It is like building a small building, said Doreen Remen, a co-founder of the nonprofit Art Production Fund, which organized the exhibition. It has been fabricated like the most intricate, refined jigsaw puzzle.
Made in Aachen, Germany, the fountain was also designed to be energy efficient. The LED bulbs will use about 70 percent less energy than tungsten bulbs, Ms. Remen said.
The lights, which mimic flowing water, will probably be turned off from midnight to 6 a.m., she added, unless there is a special event.
LONG-TERM LEWITT
The Yale University Art Gallery, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and the Williams College Museum of Art have teamed up to present Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, a 25-year-long show to be installed in a newly renovated building at Mass MoCA in North Adams. In 2004, three years before LeWitt died, he and Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale gallery, began talking about the care and disposition of LeWitt's wall drawings. This led him to give Yale about 40 of these drawings, along with the wall-drawings archives.
Mr. Reynolds, realizing that Yale would never be able to show a large number of them at one time, initiated a discussion with Joseph C. Thompson, director of the 13-acre Mass MoCA campus.
Mr. Thompson took LeWitt on a tour of Mass MoCA, and the artist set his sights on Building 7, an abandoned 30,000-square-foot three-floor industrial building.
He placed every drawing and drew every wall, Mr. Thompson said.
When the project opens in November, nearly 100 wall drawings will be on view, dating from 1968 until LeWitt's death at 78 in April. About half are from Yale; the rest from public and private collections. The three institutions have raised more than $9 million, Mr. Thompson said. About $3.5 million will renovate Building 7 and $2.5 million will provide an endowment related to the exhibition. A catalogue raisonne will also be produced.
Williams College is providing the educational programs tied to the show. Students from Williams, Yale and other institutions will work for six months as intern apprentices, installing the works with professionals from LeWitt's studio.
[Illustration]PHOTO: Electric Fountain, sans water, will visit Rockefeller Center. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ART PRODUCTION FUND)