Art Newspaper

Salary:                  Set at an attractive level to reflect the ambition and breadth of the role


Location:               London




The ICA  is seeking to appoint a new Director who will set the agenda for the ICA as it enters the next decade of its 70 year history.


Founded in 1946, the ICA is one of the world's best known multi-disciplined arts organisations dedicated to contemporary art and culture.  Through a vibrant programme of exhibitions, films, performance, talks and events, the ICA examines art as it happens and has been at the forefront of contemporary art and culture for the past 70 years.


The new Director, who will succeed Gregor Muir, will work closely with the ICA Council, the Senior Management Team and staff to develop, articulate and deliver the ICA's vision and strategy for the next decade and beyond.  They will set  the agenda for the next chapter of the ICA's history which includes the delivery of the exciting, well-advanced capital project which will create a world class space for artists and audiences alike. They will devise the means to support and promote the latest and most relevant art and culture across disciplines, engaging new generations of artists and audiences alike. They will work with multiple stakeholders ensuring that the ICA's business plan, strategic goals and targets, including financial targets, are met annually and that the ICA programme is relevant to both a general and specialist audience.


In the new Director, the ICA seeks a charismatic, inclusive and visionary leader with a deep understanding of contemporary art and culture both within the UK and internationally. They will be able to engage with a diverse art audience and possess the resourcefulness and enterprise to meet challenging fund-raising targets. Candidates for this role will have a track record of innovative programming and will also be compelling communicators with excellent people, stakeholder, financial and resource management skills. They will have good networking and relationship building skills with the ability to manage the organisation and its governance and continue to grow the ICA's reach, success, resilience and relevance.


A once in a lifetime opportunity, if you think you have what it will take to lead this historic, cutting-edge organisation in the next era, please be in touch with Liz Amos or Mary Deegan of Liz Amos Associates on +44 (0)20 7464 4351 or at liz.amos@lizamosassociates.com, mary.deegan@lizamosassociates.com



CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: Monday 15th August 2016 (18:00 BST)  



 

London's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) was awarded the Art Fund's 100,000 prize and named the UK's Museum of the Year last night (6 July). The award was presented by the Duchess of Cambridge at a ceremony held in the Natural History Museum's great central hall.

Martin Roth, the director of the V&A, sounded suprised when the national museum was declared the winnerin the past smaller institutions outside London have typically been chosen. He used the opportunity to announce that the V&A would revive its Circulation department, its national loan service that pioneered contemporary collecting and education, which it controversially closed in 1977 as a cost-cutting measure after a reduction in government funding.

The V&A has had an outstanding year, staging the record-breaking fashion exhbition, Savage Beauty, a successful adaptation of the Alexander McQueen show organised by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2011. Other high-profile temporary exhibitions included Fabric of India. The year was capped by the opening of its Europe 1600-1815 galleries, a 12.5m project designed in partnership with the London-based architectural practice ZMMA.

The judges, which included the artist Cornelia Parker, and the broadcaster and former head of Tate Media, Will Gompertz, praised the four runners-up for their excellence and spirit of innovation. These are: Bristol's Arnolfini, a leading contemporary art space in the west of England, and York Art Gallery, which reopened last year after a 8m expansion and modernisation project, one of the last projects of the architect Kathryn Findlay of London firm Ushida Findlay before her untimely death.

The other nominees on the strong shortlist included Jupiter Artland, a private sculpture park near Edinburgh, which features works by the architect Charles Jencks, among others, and the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, in south London, which tells the history of treating mental health in the once infamous asylum. Its art collection includes works by Richard Dadd, as well as many Outsider artists. 

The Danish-Vietnamese artist Danh Vo is creating a new work for his first show at White Cube in Hong Kong in September.
 
The site-specific installation will be installed in the entire gallery, its corridors and stairwells and will crystallise all of the vocabulary Danh has built up over the past ten years of his practice, says Mathieu Paris, the director at White Cube who is organising the exhibition. The work is likely to be a continuation of Danhs usual practice, Paris adds. The exhibition runs from 7 September to 12 November.
 
White Cube does not currently represent Vo, but in a statement the gallery says it hopes the relationship will continue to build from strength to strength. Paris, who has a long-standing friendship with Vo, says galleries are having to rethink [their] relationships with artists.
 
This exhibition is more about Hong Kong. It's a project for this specific location and building, Paris says, adding: an artist like Danh speaks to anyone in any part of the world. He is very well respected by the major collectors in China, Japan and Korea.
 
Vo is currently represented by Marian Goodman and Chantal Crousel, Kurimanzutto, Daniel Buchholz, Vitamin Creative Space and Take Ninagawa. The artist and his former Berlin dealer Isabella Bortolozzi parted ways in September 2014.

Commuters and holidaymakers anxiously pondering the impact of Brexit as they head to the Eurostar may welcome the distraction of Ron Arads shiny new sculpture for Londons St Pancras International station. The Israeli designer, architect and Royal Academician has dangled an 18m-long rotating aluminium blade from the vast transport hub roof as part of Terrace Wires, the stations public art programme. Thought of Train of Thoughtthe second in a four-year series of commissions by the Royal Academy of Arts and station owners HS1will be on show until January 2017. The works hypnotic effect is greater than the means, so will hopefully be the delight of the public at St Pancras, Arad says.

Each summer weekend, New York's elite turn the Upper East Side into a ghost town as they migrate east to the vacation towns a few hours into Long Island that comprise the Hamptons. Art Southampton, the premier fair serving that demographic in those months, kicks off its fifth edition with 70 galleries and a number of high-profile attractions, among them an exhibition co-curated by New York Academy of Art (NYAA) president David Kratz and the actress Brooke Shields. The fair, which is in the grounds of Bridgehampton's Nova's Ark Project, opens today (7 July) and runs until 11 July. 

Shields's contribution represents a longstanding relationship the fair has had with the NYAA, and will include more than 30 paintings, prints and sculptures by the college alumni on the animal kingdom (Call of the Wild). And she isn't the only celebrity attraction. The actor Adrien Brody, star of The Pianist, will show another installment of his Hooked series, for which he plastered posters around Manhattan during Frieze New York, while the Shark Tank host Kevin O'Leary will present his own photography offerings.

This year's Art Southampton includes 70 galleries, fewer than last year's edition, which featured more than 90. The director Nick Kornilofffounder of Art Miami, which presents Art Southampton said this edition could have had as many galleries but "we turned away a lot because they didnt meet the criteria or quality level we were looking for." Most dealers come from the US, with a handful from Europe and Asia, including Cynthia Corbett gallery in London, Rademakers Gallery in Amsterdam and iPreciation from Singapore.

Korniloff cited the current performance of the stock market, the impending US election, and Brexit as factors affecting the art market, though pointed out that anecdotally he had noticed more people staying in the Hamptons rather than travelling to Europe this year.

"The balance of the work is much more in tune with what is being created today in the contemporary market, by younger, living artists," Korniloff says. The balance of secondary market and primary is pretty much even whereas in the past its been a little more heavily weighted on secondary market material. Theres still great representation by Hamptons artists, he adds, referring to artists such as Willem de Kooning and Eric Fischl who have lived and worked in the area.

The Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami, who died in Paris earlier this week aged 76, was hugely influential in world cinema having won the Palme dOr at Cannes in 1997 for his film A Taste of Cherry. Kiarostami was born in Tehran in 1940, and studied fine art at the citys university. His other noteworthy films include Certified Copy (2010) and Close-Up (1990)but crucially his photography also met with critical acclaim. 

Earlier this year, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto presented 50 full-scale images of doors by Kiarostami (Doors Without Keys). Curators selected the pictures from 200 works made by Kiarostami over 20 years. He found and photographed the doorsall lockedin Iran, France, Morocco and Italy. The images were displayed at the museum in a maze-like configuration.

In an interview, the artist explained what sparked his passion for photography. He told us: I owe it to the 1979 Revolution [in Iran], because it was very hard to make films. I had to go on producing images, so I started taking still pictures. It became a parallel activity to film-making. They interact. Theres a mutual influence.  

He also explained why he was drawn to still photography, saying: I guess its a defence mechanism, but also kind of a protest against all thisin my viewunwelcome movement in images. Some of my latest works are experimental films that last four or five minutes. But each still image can last four or five minutes. If an image is worth seeing, it takes concentration and contemplation.

In 2009, Kiarostami showed a series of photographs entitled Road and Rain at Purdy Hicks Gallery in London; the exhibition was co-organised with the London-based arts organisation Candlestar whose director, Fariba Farshad, says: When we were working on this show Kiarostami often told me that photography was his first love. 'It is my meditation,' he often said and the images that he made have the meditative, poetic quality that pervades all his work.

Kiarostami told The Guardian in 2009: The idea for this series of rain pictures is one I had a long time ago. I had spent years looking through my car windscreen, admiring the rural landscape, admiring the raindrops and the effect of light on them.

Another important series called Snow White comprises 30 images of snow-covered landscapes taken between 1978 and 2004. A work from the series, some of which were taken on Irans Caspian coast, sold at Bonhams in 2008 for $132,000. In the Snow White series, Kiarostami makes a transition from the urban to the natural, and with it replaces political discourse with philosophical contemplation, said the catalogue entry. 

The newest installment of the BMW Art Car series, created by the maverick artist Maurizio Cattelan, made its debut at Les Rencontres dArles photography festival in Arles, France, which opened earlier this week (until 25 September). The car was created in collaboration with Cattelan's Toilet Paper magazine and his collaborator Pierpaolo Ferrari. Dubbed the "Spaghetti Car," the BMW i3 has been slathered with a full-body decal depicting a photograph of spaghetti in Toilet Paper's signature deadpan style. I have been disappointed in my efforts to make a good spaghetti sauce since I started cooking 37 years ago," Cattelan says in a statement. Cattelan's car marks the first BMW Art Caressentially a single BMW with a very expensive paint jobsince 2010's edition by Jeff Koons (the first, in 1975, was done by Alexander Calder). But intriguingly, a project spokeswoman insists that "it must be officially clarified that what Maurizio Cattelan created is not an official BMW Art Car. The artists design will be destroyed according to Cattelans wishes sometime after Rencontres dArles".

Cattelans retirement from the art world continues, meanwhile, with a vast new show at the Monnaie de Paris this autumn (22 October-8 January 2017). Details about the works included are sketchy but many of them, which will be displayed throughout the venues 18th-century salons, will leave their image imprinted for eternity on the retina, the organisers say. The famous effigy of Cattelan climbing out of the floor (Untitled, 2001) will be the beating heart of the exhibition, offering the beginnings of a response to the show's primary interrogation, which is equally as tongue-in-cheek as it is metaphysical : Is there life before death?.

The spotlight shines on Ancient Egypt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with the launch of two new galleries of Ptolemaic works (from 1 July). Galleries 133 and 134, which are located in the Lila Acheson Wallace Galleries of Egyptian Art in the Sackler wing of the museum, have been revamped; both galleries opened in 1976.
 
As part of the renovation, a drop ceiling was removed that added around six feet of height to the space. New display cases have been unveiled, along with archaeological findings and expert analysis. The refurbishment has been partly sponsored by the philanthropists Marica and Jan Vilcek, and John and Carole Moran.
 
The two galleries show more than 300 works of art that were created between 332 and 30 BC by the Ptolemies, the Macedonian rulers of ancient Egypt that descended from the general Ptolemy I Soter who succeeded Alexander the Great. An important work is the 72-foot-long ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead of the Priest of Horus, Imhotep (Imuthes) (around 332-200 BC), a series of vignettes written on papyrus that were compiled and buried with the deceased to guide them through the path toward rebirth.
 
Other highlights include three wrapped mummies and their coffins, faience tiles from a shrine, statuaries that depict royalty such as queen Cleopatra VII, and other personal, domestic and funerary items from the period. 

Your correspondent is not usually prone to horn blowing, but it is difficult not to feel a small triumphant glow after rather achieving a rather significant victory opposing the motion that contemporary art has sold out to the market in last nights (5 July) Intelligence Squared debate, hosted by Investec at Phillips. Decrying the evils of the art market and its corrupting effect on artists was the Guardians chief art critic Adrian Searle. Before the debate commencedmoderated by the BBC arts editor Will Gompertzthe room was 38% in favour of the motion and 15% against, with 47% undecided.

A spirited discussion ensued with much parry and thrust between the two combatants and some vigorous questioning from the audience who included Sigrid Kirk of Arts Co, the Monocle culture editor Robert Bound and the chief curator of Hepworth Wakefield, Andrew Bonacina. But your correspondent won the day by claiming a resounding 72% of the rooma 34% risein favour of the integrity of art and artists and that selling well need not mean selling out. In what was apparently the biggest ever swing in Intelligence Squared debates, the room of bankers and artworlders ended up by being convinced that, to paraphrase Damien Hirsts former manager Frank Dunphy, money chases art more than art chases money. Hurrah to that!

Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author, who founded the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, was a keynote speaker at the International Council of Museums (ICOM) conference in Milan this week. He delivered the following message, first published by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, by video link. He stressed that in the future we need "small and economical museums that address our humanity". 

Pamuk said: "All museums are genuine treasures of humankind, but I am against these precious and monumental institutions being used as models for the institutions to come. Museums should explore and uncover the population as a whole and the humanity of the new and modern man that emerges from the growing economies of non-Western countries. I address this manifesto in particular to Asian museums that are experiencing an unprecedented period of growth. 

The aim of the great state-sponsored museums is to represent a state and that is neither a good nor innocent aim. Here are my proposals for a new museum, some themes on which we must reflect now more than ever. 

The great national museums like the Louvre and the Hermitage assumed the form of tourist institutions with the opening of royal and imperial palaces to the public. These same institutions, today national symbols, present the narrative of nation, History with a capital H, as much more important than the histories of individuals. This is a shame, since individual histories lend themselves much better to portraying the depths of our humanity. 

The second reflection I want to introduce is that the transitions from palaces to national museums and from the epic to the novel are parallel processes. The epic is like a palace: it speaks of the heroic gestures of the kings that inhabited them. National museums should be like novels, but this is not the case. 

Three: we do not need more museums that attempt to construct a historical narrative of our society and community as a narrative of faction, nation and state. We all know that ordinary and everyday stories are richer, more human and above all more joyful. 

Four: demonstrating the richness of Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Iranian or Turkish history and culture is out of the question. It must surely be done, and it is not difficult to do. The true challenge is to use museums to tell with the same brilliance, power and depth the stories of the human beings living in these countries. 

Five: the measure of success of a museum should not be its ability to represent a state, a nation, a society or a particular history. It should rather be its capacity to reveal the humanity of individuals. We must judge museums on that criterion.

Six: it is imperative that museums become smaller, more orientated towards the individual and more economical. This is the only way that they can ever tell stories on a human scale. The great museums invite us to forget our humanity and to accept the state and its human masses. This is why there are millions, outside the West, who are frightened by museums. This is why museums are associated with governments. 

Seven: the aim of museums present and future must not be to represent the state but to recreate the world of individual human beings, the same human beings who have suffered under tyrannical oppression for hundreds of years.

Eight: the resources channelled into the great monumental and symbolic museums should be redirected to small museums that tell the stories of individuals. These resources should also be used to support and encourage people to transform their small houses and small stories into places of narrative.

Nine: if objects are not uprooted from their contexts and streets but situated with care in their natural places, they can have a way of independently telling their own stories. We need modest museums that can honour the streets, houses and shops around them and transform them into moments of their narrative. 

In brief, the future of museums begins at home. The situation is very simple: we are used to having epics but what we need is novels. In museums we are used to representation, but what we need is expression. We are used to having monuments, but what we need is houses.

In museums we have History, but what we need is stories. In museums we have nations, but what we need is people. We had groups and factions in museums, but what we need is individuals. We had great and costly museums and will continue to have yet more, especially in Asia, where government money is funding these museums. Yet what we need are small and economical museums that address our humanity." 

This article first appeared in La Repubblica

The Art Newspaper is a media partner of the International Council of Museums conference in Milan, until 9 July

One hundred years after the American painter Georgia OKeeffe (1887-1986) made her professional debut at the 291 gallery in New York, Tate Modern opens the first UK survey of her work since 1993. The show, which is almost entirely drawn from US collections, speaks to a startling fact: none of OKeeffes works are held by any public UK museum.

With around 100 pieces by the artist, the survey opens with abstract charcoals, including those shown at her first 291 exhibition, and moves through the skyscape series she made in the early 1960s, when she was still working at the height of her powers, says Tanya Barson, the curator who organised the exhibition.

Thirteen galleries will be organised chronologically and thematically so that visitors will encounter less familiar works before her flower pictures and south-west American landscapes. One room, for instance, is dedicated to paintings OKeeffe made at Lake George in upstate New York, where she took annual holidays from 1918 to the early 1930s. Another gallery will include photographs of OKeeffe taken by Alfred Stieglitz, who founded the 291 gallery and later became her husband. OKeeffe was a collaborator and co-author of these pictures, Barson says. The strength of her own self-presence comes through really powerfully in those works.

The shows central aim is to privilege OKeeffes voice, Barson says. From very early on, interpretations were made of her work that she didnt agree with. In particular, the Freudian reading of her flower paintings, which originated with Stieglitz, emphasised how the flora resembled vaginal forms. Barson, however, insists that the works are about form, composition, colour.

The exhibition is co-organised by the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna, where it shows from 7 December-26 March 2017, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (22 April-30 July 2017).

Georgia OKeeffe, Tate Modern, London, 6 July-30 October

The UK is on course to leave the European Union, after a narrow vote in favour of divorce in a referendum held two weeks ago on 23 June. How long the process known as Brexit will take, and its consequences for the arts and for artists, remain largely unknown. The referendum resultLondon and Scotlands voters were among the dissenterswas greeted with shock by many in the arts, and the fallout from the subsequent political and economic turmoil has caused widespread concern internationally.

Thomas Campbell, the British-educated director of the Met in New York, says: Since the Second World War, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has pioneered ambitious and groundbreaking loan shows, often in co-operation with European partners. We believe that these collaborations are ever more important now. He adds that, although it is too early to assess the impact of Brexit, we trust that we will be able to work with our peers to navigate new legal and financial issues so that, together, we can continue to bring thought-provoking, educational and relevant exhibitions to our national and international audiences.

The importance of maintaining international co-operation was echoed by Campbells peer in London, Hartwig Fischer, the German-born director of the British Museum. We think about where we come fromand what this museum has achieved at the heart of this nation and of Europe. We all know that we have to continue to share this future, Fischer says.

The former Tate trustee and Turner Prize-winning artist Wolfgang Tillmans, who designed anti-Brexit campaign posters, told the Munich-based Sddeutsche Zeitung: The only thing that helps is not to lose courage. Its now the duty of us all to defend the pillars of the free world order that were created over the past 70 years. And I know that were still the majority.

Meanwhile, the Paris- and Salzburg-based art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac remains committed to opening a large gallery in London in spring 2017. He says: I have no doubt that London will continue to be one of the most vibrant and quintessential art centres in the world, despite the UKs vote in favour of Brexit.


Brexit fears: international reactions
"Hundreds of artists from all over Europe have chosen to live in London, just as many of us live in cities across the continent. We will now lose the right to this ease of movement," Michael Craig-Martin, artist and Royal Academician.

While Brexit isnt necessarily an existential threat to most major cultural institutions in London, its surely going to make life much more difficult, especially in the short to medium term with the inherent uncertainty. Cultural institutions like the RA have long been international in outlook and, through partnerships, we have encouraged ties between nations. We now have a responsibility to nurture such relations more than ever, Charles Saumarez Smith, secretary and chief executive, Royal Academy of Arts.

The Leave campaign preyed on fear, ignorance and prejudice to vote through a misguided return to an antediluvian Britain. As a fourth-generation immigrant, this makes me sad, angry and ashamed. Discussing the art market feels insensitive, but the devalued currency could make British art and services cheaper, and lower London house prices for art workers. Frieze remains more committed to working internationally than ever before, Matthew Slotover, co-founder and co-director, Frieze.

As a German I grew up in a country that wanted to overcome nationalism, and my whole education was based on not being German but identifying with something larger, international, standing for peace. Now there is a very disheartening atmosphere, not only for the art world but in every little detail of daily life for so many people, Klaus Biesenbach, director, MoMA PS1, and chief curator-at-large, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

I am not that concerned. The art market has become so firmly institutionalised in London. In the short run, I am much more concerned that Brexit and the turmoil on financial markets add a lot of uncertainty to an already weakened art market, so I would expect potential buyers to wait and see, Olav Velthuis, art market academic and economist.

Following the largely successful round of post-war and contemporary auctions last week, which appeared  unaffected by the surrounding political chaos in the UK post-Brexit, Londons art world now turns its eye to Old Masters and classical art in one final burst of market activity before many dealers shut up shop for the summer.

The fourth edition of London Art Week, an amalgamation of Master Drawings and Sculpture Week (founded in 2001) and Master Paintings Week (founded in 2009), has seen strong six- and even seven-figure sales that prove there are still collectors hungry for top Old Master works. Colnaghi, for example, sold a dramatic work by Jusepe de RiberaA philosopher holding a mirror (around 1630)priced in the region of 1.25m. Over at Ariadne Gallery, meanwhile, a gold Phoenician axe-head, dating to the Middle Bronze Age (around 2000-1750 BC) sold for a six-figure sum to a private buyer.

Almost 50 galleries involved in London Art Week (1-8 July), however, are showing works that range from 500 all the way up to millions of pounds, so there are buying opportunities for all types of collectors. We have picked a few examples here that cover the variety of art on offer, both in terms of price and object.

Sam Fogg
16th-century stained glass roundels from the collection of Sir Thomas Neave
Asking price: from 500 to 30,000

The prices for some of these stained glass roundels might come a surprise to those who are used to associating Old Masters art with imposing sums of money. Almost half of the 35 pieces, which have never been seen in public before, have already sold. Its worked well for us, says Sam Fogg, weve been selling to museums and private collectors."

Rupert Wace

Greek bronze griffin protome from the Archaic Period (mid-7th century BC)
Asking price: 140,000

This detailed and well-preserved artefact would have been fitted around a cauldron and used as part of votive offerings to the gods in ancient Greece. Its in particularly good condition and such fine engraving is uncommon on such a piece, says the gallerys Harry Prance. Its typically Greekyou dont find this anywhere elseand it indicates the presence of a long-term religious practice that predates the building of temples and places of worship.

 Johnny Van Haeften
Song Yu, A still-life with Chinese porcelain and bowls of cherries and strawberries (2015)
One of a series of works, in the region of 50,000

We try to do something different every year for London Art Week, says Johnny Van Haeften, the veteran Dutch Old Masters dealer. This year, he is pairing 17th-century Dutch still-life paintings with work by the Chinese contemporary artist Song Yu. Yu draws on the rich history of trade between the Dutch East India company and his native China, producing works of striking precision, which evidently reference the Dutch masters. The Chinese bowl in this work resembles the very same Chinese export porcelains that flooded the European market in the 17th century, and found their way into the Dutch Old Master paintings of the time.

Maurizio Nobile
Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of a man (1601)
Asking price: 180,000

Before Artemisia Gentileschi, Lavinia Fontana was perhaps the most well-known and most respected woman artist of her time, and certainly one of the most important portrait artists working at that time too, says Maurizio Nobile, the Bologna-based gallerist who is showing at London Art Week for the second time as a pop-up on Bury Street. The most incredible part of Fontanas story is that when she was made to marry a much lesser painter than her, Giovan Paolo Zappi, she forced the wedding contract to recognise her as a professional painter. Zappi ended up working as her assistant and accountant, while she painted portraits for all of Bolognas high society.
 
Lullo Pampoulides
Thomas Jones, Bay of Naples with mount Vesuvius (1782-3) and Marco Ricci, Architectural Capriccio with Saint Pauls Cathedral, sculptures and figures (around 1713)
Asking prices: around 600,000 and 300,000 respectively

Going against the Brexit grain, the newly-opened Lullo Pampoulides gallery are showing these two works, one painted by the Welshman Thomas Jones, after a trip to Italy, and the other by an Italian, Marco Ricci, after a trip to London. The work by Jones, which is very rare in itself, was only recently attributed to him and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1785. Weve only been open for five days so far, says the Italian Andrea Lullo, but its going very well and weve already made sales. I think other dealers are happy to see younger dealers entering the Old Masters market.

A bomb was detonated late yesterday (4 July) near the Prophets Mosque in Medina in western Saudi Arabia, Islams second holiest site. The mosque, which was founded in the seventh century, houses Muhammads tomb as well as those of the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Omar.
 
Images posted on the Al Jazeera website show a fire outside the mosque where the explosion took place; officials at the Saudi embassy in London were unavailable to comment on whether the mosque, which was filled with worshippers for Ramadan, was damaged.
 
The bombing, which claimed the lives of four men, was one of three apparently coordinated suicide attacks in the country yesterday; an attacker attempted to destroy a Shiite mosque in Qatif, eastern Saudi Arabia, but failed. Another bomber detonated a device near the US consulate in Jeddah.
 
No group has yet claimed responsibility, but Saudi Arabia has been the target of Islamic state attacks (Isil) in the past year.  

This summer at Fort Tilden, a disused military outpost in Queens, MoMA PS1 presents Rockaway!, a new work by the German painter Katharina Grosse in which she covers an abandoned beachside building with methodical splatters of neon red, orange and pink paint. We spoke to Grosse about her project.

Your work often seems like it is done by someone hovering in the sky. Do you see a narrative there? Is it your eye there, or is it a more objective view?

It has to do with a certain kind of absurd scale, so you could choose whether its another [persons] eye, whosever eye that is. But its not objective. I think its a multidimensional painting and it looks different from all kinds of angles. I do think that scaling it up is very important, so that you have a totally different relationship with the painting, with your body and with the house.

My work is very interfering, even if its a beautiful colour or a wave. Inscribing a large painting on a large structure is upsetting at times. Thats what I want to do, of course. I want to be visible as a painter in our social fabric and Im trying to find out what a painting can do, so Im trying to use different forms, sizes, situations, set-ups or surfaces for my understanding of painting.

Have you considered the audience for this work?

What I find interesting is that you have to go there to see it. Thats something Ive been so intrigued by in works like Walter De Marias [permanent installation in the New Mexico desert] The Lightning Field.

But people should go [to see Rockaway!]. Its a very physical experience to see it, rather than see a photo. Its a great spot, and it will be taken down afterwards. The whole thing will disappearnot only my work but also the house. So its just a little moment in our lives. You cant see it again. You cant replay it, in a sense.

Katharina Grosse: Rockaway!, Gateway National Recreation Area at Fort Tilden, New York, until 30 November

The 21st Biennale of Sydney may be two years away but the organisers have already put in place a curator for the established Oz event. Mami Kataoka, the chief curator at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, takes the reins in 2018, saying: As artistic director, I am interested to ask how we can test the biennales significance given the growing understanding of multiple modernities; the many socio-political contexts and accelerated complexities in the world today. Kataokas CV is extensive, from organising exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum such as Roppongi Crossing (2013) to serving as an advisory member for the Ullens Center for Contemporary art in Beijing. The 20th Biennale, which closed earlier this year, drew 640,000 visitors. 

In 1970, the year that Christo and Jeanne-Claude first conceived of the Floating Piers, the phenomenally popular installation that closed this weekend on Italys Lake Iseo, the artists wrapped monuments were greeted with hostility in nearby Milan. The Wrapped Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II was undone by the city authorities after two days of protests by ex-servicemen and monarchists, while the Wrapped Monument to Leonardo da Vinci lasted a week before a group of neo-fascists set it on fire. 

Forty-six years on, all seems to have been forgiven and forgotten. Christo, a keynote speaker at the International Council of Museums conference in Milan yesterday (4 July), described Lake Iseo as the most spectacular set Ive worked in. In collaboration with the Italian curator Germano Celant and the engineering firm Arup, the Bulgarian-born artist spent two years planning the Floating Piers, his first major project since the death of Jeanne-Claude in 2009. The free installation, which connected the islands in the middle of the lake to the mainland for the first time, drew more than 1.2 million people during its 16-day run. 

The figures involved in its creation are no less mind-boggling. The 3km structure of 220,000 interlocking polyethylene cubes was held in place by 37,000m of rope and 200 concrete anchors. Approximately 80,000 sq. m of felt and 100,000 sq. m of shimmering yellow nylon covered the piers and the streets of the tiny lakeside towns in between. These materials are now due to be recycled (though a number of square fabric swatches distributed by stewards as souvenirs are already up for sale on eBay). Christo has funded the 18m project through the sale of his preparatory drawings and other works of art. 

For the artist, however, the work of art isnt the Floating Piersbut the journey: those who went will carry them in their minds for the rest of their lives. Maybe it was apt that the journey to a work deemed impossible for almost half a century was at times fraught for visitors too. As long queuesfar exceeding expectationsformed at the entrance, train operators suspended regional services to the lake to prevent overcrowding. Christo intended the work to be open around the clock, but bad weather caused partial closures, while overnight access was blocked after six days to ease the strain on the fabric and the local area.

In spite of the crush, the atmosphere on the closing weekend was good-natured, reminiscent of a festival or a day at the seaside. Visitors waited patiently for hours to board trains at Brescia station and then finally set foot on the piers. Dog-walkers, wheelchair users and young families joined the promenade, undeterred by the sweltering heat or lack of barriers. Christo himself rode by, waving to fans from the makeshift barge that dropped the anchors beneath the piers. Some cheered, while others failed to recognise the slight white-haired figure who made it temporarily possible to walk on water.

As the local officials who approved the project pay tribute to the boost to international tourism in the region, it seems that Italy has learned to embrace Christos monumental, ephemeral brand of sculpture. But against the instincts of an artist who claims not to understand computers, the Floating Piers will have a digital afterlife. The selfie-friendly installation has generated 130,000 hashtags on social media, while Google is due to put 360-degree images of the work online through its Street View function. 

EU-loving art worlders had their legs emphatically stretched this weekend with Saturdays (2 July) anti-Brexit march attracting a considerable and multigenerational posse from the capitals visual arts contingent. Among the estimated 50,000 throng of protestors who paraded from Park Lane to Parliament Square were the eminent art historian Dawn Ades; the former Serpentine Gallery director Alastair Warman; the artists Anne Hardy, Charlotte Cullinan and Gavin Turk with his wife Deborah Curtis and their daughter Frankie.

Once everyone had marched the route and shouted themselves hoarse (with much boo-ing outside No 10 Downing Street) it was then time to hit the trail for Art Night. This all night art-fest, organised by the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Unlimited Productions, transformed ten locations throughout the City of Westminster with installations and performances from 5pm on Saturday until the wee small hours of Sunday. Some of the spaces are normally inaccessible, such as the disused Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross tube station which Korean artist Koo Jeong A had infused with beaming lights and the costly scent of the endangered Agar tree; or the shut-off rooms of Admiralty Arch, which had been anointed with squid ink and populated by bizarre guides, courtesy of the Turner Prize winning artist, Laure Prouvost. The Danish artist Nina Beier installed well-trained dogs and masked performers in a luxuriously generic show flat at 190 Strand. In the almost-refurbished brutalist building next door, which overlooks the Thames, Celia Hempton took advantage of the view (soon to be blotted out by another development) with her strikingly panoramic installation of paintings exploring the source of the river, including via the undulating bodies of her three river goddesses.  

Art was also let loose in and around some of central Londons most iconic sites, but in such a way as to present them in a very different light. The 18th-century baroque gem of St Mary le Strand played host to the Californian Jennifer Wests projected film while the Duke of York Steps became the stage set for Linders full-blown extravaganza of tap dancing showgirls, singing choirs, posing model boys, Northern Soul and ballroom dancers, and performers dressed as rabbits wearing surgical masks. But the grand finale was provided by the magnificent Joan Jonas who collaborated with the jazz pianist Jason Moran to fill the gothic interior of Southwark Cathedral with a constantly-changing array of sounds, drawings and projected images as both a tribute and an elegy to the volatile flux and fragility of our world. A perfect end to a troubling but also stimulating day.  

Claude Gelle, called Claude Lorrain, A pastoral landscape with a shepherd and shepherdess beside their livestock in an Arcadian landscape with drovers on a bridge beyond (1635-37)
Bonhams, New Bond Street, Old Master Paintings, 6 July
Estimate 600,000-800,000 (sold for 722,500 with premium)

Claude Lorrains lyrical observations of landscape, light and nature revolutionised painting in the 17th century. Before then, pure landscape had been looked down upon: it offered only aesthetic simplicity when compared with the moral superiority of religious art. Certainly, landscape had been appreciated, but it tended to play a supporting role to the main narrative of a painting. Claude, however, showed that even the plainest clump of trees or hillside could be made into an engaging subject, if you knew how to light the scene with dexterity and drama. Through Claudes eyes, nature became poetry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the Englishhaving managed perfectly well without religious art since the Reformationwho collected his work most keenly. By the early 19th century, two-thirds of Claudes works were in England, including this example offered at Bonhams, which was first recorded in the collection of Earl Howe in 1824.

Jean-Etienne Liotard, A Dutch Girl at Breakfast (around 1755-56)
Sothebys, Old Masters evening sale, 6 July
Estimate 4m-6m (sold for 4.4m with premium) 

Liotards elegant homage to Dutch genre painters of the 17th century went on show in the Royal Academys recent monograph exhibition. Although widely seen as the 18th centurys premier pastellist, Liotard was just as happy to paint in oil, though such works are rare. Sothebys describes A Dutch Girl at Breakfast as his only genre scene of an interior in oil to remain in private hands, and such a unique selling point perhaps accounts for an estimate that dwarfs the current auction record for Liotard of 1.4m (in 2012, for a pastel). Julys auction will be only the second time this picture has appeared for sale. It was last sold by Liotard himself in 1774, for 15.4s.6d. at Christies, where it was bought by the second Earl of Bessborough. In 1993, the tenth Earl of Bessborough bequeathed the picture and his house, Stansted Park in Sussex, to a charitable foundation (now, alas, the vendor).

Peter Paul Rubens, Lot and his Daughters (around 1613-14)
Christies, King Street, Old Master and British Paintings evening sale, 7 July
Estimate on request (sold for 44.9m with premium)

It is an Old Master market clich that great works never come up for sale anymore. But every now and then a truly extraordinary picture surfaces to prove that not all the worlds masterpieces are already in museums. The subject matter of Rubenss Lot and His Daughters might not be to everyones taste. But look beyond the depiction of a drunk old man about to commit incest and you will see as good a demonstration of Rubenss early style as it is possible to findas well as a work in unusually good condition. Despite having belonged to an emperor (Joseph I) and dukes (of Marlborough), the picture has until now only been known to scholars through an old black-and-white photograph. Collectors have already expressed an interest, and despite Christies high estimate, widely reported at 20m to 30m, there can be little doubt it will sell. 

Photo © Alessandro Moggi" />
Ai Weiwei will be the first artist to have the full run of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence when his first retrospective in Italy, Ai Weiwei: Libero, opens there on 23 September (until 22 January 2017). Sculptures, installations, photos and videos will fill the exhibition spaces inside and out, including the piano nobile, the Strozzina contemporary art gallery and the courtyard, says Arturo Galansino, the director general of the Strozzi. The show will include Reframe, a new installation made in response to the ongoing refugee crisis. Ai plans to hang 22 inflatable orange boats evoking Italian search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean across the venue's faade. The work, supported by the charitable foundation Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, will symbolise "cultural rescue in this time of international and European crisis", Galansino says. Meanwhile, the courtyard will host Refraction, a five-tonne metal sculpture of a bird's wing previously shown in the former prison of Alcatraz. Its feathers are made from solar panels used in Tibetan cookers a reference to the region's long struggle for freedom from China.