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What makes a museum building successful? Until the arrival of Frank Gehrys Guggenheim in Bilbao in 1997, this question might have been almost exclusively focused on the best environments in which to view art. But the Guggenheims phenomenal success, which allowed the Basque government to recoup the construction costs within three years, moved the debate on to issues of branding and statement architecture.

Now the discussion has moved on again. In the public imagination, museums have been transformed from cultural destinations into leisure ones, and there has been a global rise in visitor numbers. Tate Moderns new extension, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, was partly predicated on annual visitor numbers topping five million instead of the two million originally envisaged when the institution opened in 2000. The new wing is notable for the spaciousness and drama of its circulation spaces as much as for the galleries themselves. The other challenge for museum architects today is to design spaces for forms of media, such as video and performance, that are an increasingly prominent part of institutional programming.

As museums get bigger, the tension between intimacy and expansiveness becomes more difficult to resolve. As the artist Thomas Demand notes, some architects, such as Norman Foster, are skilled at moving large numbers of people around airports, while others, such as David Chipperfield and Caruso St John, are experts at intimacy. The two together is the taskscale and intimacy, Demand says.

We asked architects, artists and curators to name their favourite museum buildings

Thomas Demand
Artist
Architects often build museums for their taste, rather than for the collection that will be housed therethats the first problem. Philip Johnson hated certain artists and when he designed museums, he prevented them from being shown. You will never see a Carl Andre in one of his museums; hed put down a tropical wood floor or something. But whatever you do, the artist will challenge the context to make their show unforgettable. The best museums are the ones you can take a walk through. You mustnt see everything at once; every space should not be the same and, because artists create their own worlds, you need windows to connect you to the outside world. At Hans Holleins Abteiberg Museum in Mnchengladbach, Germany, every space is accessible through a corner, allowing installations that are not dominated by the architecture. David Chipperfields Neues Museum in Berlin is great, with every detail, down to the door handles, considered. Caruso St John Architects give spaces atmosphere, intimacy and uniquenesstheir most daring being Tate Britain, where they got the strength of the decoration right. Its a question of proportion and sensibility. 

Cornelia Parker
Artist
All artists want is a neutral, beautifully lit space in which to exhibita space that is uplifting and atmospheric before you even begin to absorb the art. I love the Guggenheim in New York, which is so great for retrospectives and chronological hangs. I admire Renzo Pianos Menil Collection in Houston for its light, intimate spaces; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, both by Louis Kahn; the Met Breuer in New York, by Marcel Breuer; and Norman Fosters Great Court at the British Museum. Artists dont need flamboyant vanity architecture to fight with. Sadly, at Zaha Hadids MaXXI in Rome, the interior spaces are totally dominated by her ego; the artists work always looks compromised as a result. The Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart by James Stirling is tatty postmodernism at its worst. 

Connie Butler
Chief curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
I love architecture and dont think that art should be placed in a generic white cube. As a curator, it can sometimes be interesting to push against architecture. I was just at the Serralves Foundation [in Porto, Portugal; designed by lvaro Siza Vieira], where the galleries are glorious but not necessarily easy, with their strange angles. It works because the very choreographed space recedes to a backdrop for art when it needs to. A flexible architecture is ideal for a temporary space, and one of the best that started the trend for raw spaces is Frank Gehrys 1983 Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The spaces I love include the Beyeler Foundation in Basel and the Menil Collection in Houston [both designed by Renzo Piano]. The light is beautiful and ethereal. It is also something to do with [the intimacy of] scale. Some galleries are so big that exhaustion sets in on the part of the viewer because there is no break, no punctuation. There is a curatorial move towards bigger and bigger architecture, but this isnt always what we need. 

Jens Hoffmann
Deputy director, Jewish Museum, New York
I like very neutral spaces that are just straight white cubes, and also very eccentric, historical spaces with unusual floor plans and difficult layouts that have a lot of character. I like the Japanese architects Sanaa a lot; they are very subtle and careful but not precious with their architecture. I like Renzo Piano for his interiors. The Swiss architect Peter Zumthor is brilliant and unusual. I also like David Chipperfields redesigns of historical spaces, and Diller Scofidio & Renfro have done some amazing things recently. The worst museum I have ever seen is the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, designed by Fernando Romeronothing is right in that place. It was all about creating a spectacular exterior to recreate the effect of Gehrys Bilbao Guggenheim but without the class and a proper interior. Daniel Libeskinds Jewish Museum in Berlin is also pretty terrible as an exhibition space, given the particular shapes of its galleries. What I dislike most are patchwork museumsmuseums with many extensions and new wings that dont really fit together. 

Adam Caruso
Caruso St John Architects, London/Zurich
The most important thing about a museum building is how powerful the experience of the art inside it is. There has to be something about the architecture that allows for a productive installation of the art, and it is probably the case that former industrial spaces are better for late-1960s conceptual art than they would be for early Renaissance paintings. Starchitecture probably hinders ones experience of art; it is often an indication of a client who wants to build a spectacle to attract people, rather than build an institution or a programme. I prefer spaces that have a specific character, which should come out of what kind of art will be shown but also out of the social and physical situation of the projects. There are architects who are genuinely interested in looking at art and have made some museums that are very enjoyable to visit: the Neues Museum in Berlin [by David Chipperfield Architects], the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery in London [Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates], the Kunsthaus Bregenz [Peter Zumthor], the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, the Netherlands [Benthem Crouwel Architects], and hopefully a few of our projects, too.

Meet this year's designers from the Bay Area...

Performance artists for the “The Great American Foot” exhibition...

The London-based philanthropist Valeria Napoleone is to show her all-female art collection in public for the first time in the UK regions. The Italian-born collector has exclusively acquired works by women artists for the past two decades in a bid to redress the art worlds persistent gender imbalance. An exhibition of highlights will open at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield in the north of England next week (Going Public: the Napoleone Collection, 15 July-1 October), before travelling to Touchstones Rochdale in Greater Manchester (10 December-11 March 2017). 

With works by established and emerging artists including Monica Bonvicini, Tomma Abts, Shirin Neshat and Mai-Thu Perret, the show forms part of Going Public, an initiative by Museums Sheffield to foster collaboration between major international collectors and regional museums. Co-organised with the art consultants Sebastien Montabonel and Mark Doyle, the exhibition programme brought loans from the collections of Dominique and Sylvain Levy, Nicolas Cattelain, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Egidio Marzona to four venues across Sheffield last autumn, drawing 135,000 visitors. 

The pioneering project shares my goals of supporting realities which are too often overlooked by the mainstream and creating a catalyst for change, Napoleone says in a statement.

Today (7 July) also marks the publication of the report from the Going Public summit at Sheffield Hallam University last October. The report by The Art Newspapers contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck represents the first step in a vital conversation to establish how public galleries can develop meaningful, reciprocal relationships with philanthropists, says the chief executive of Museums Sheffield, Kim Streets. 

Against a climate of spending cuts to UK arts institutions, particularly outside London, philanthropy cannot and should not be a substitute for government funding, Buck warns. The collectors themselves agreed that too much private influence could undermine the integrity of our public institutions. Philanthropy is not a silver bullet.

The Going Public Report is available to download in full here. 

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.

A foundations class where anyone is welcome to come and revisit the basics or get to know yoga for the first time.

Every pose, even the simplest (and sometimes especially so) can hold a challenge for us. As we move, place our bodies in shapes and try to breathe comfortably, we feel sensations.We can also look to the mind. So it’s a bit of body and a bit of mind. There will be music played during the postures and we relax lying down on the floor at the end.

The class is designed to be small so you can be guided more personally as you try the postures and breathe and move.

Wear comfy clothes that are not too baggy. Everyone is welcome. Injuries and special requirements welcome. Everything provided.

Bookings essential.
See website for details.

Held postures, supported by blankets, pillows and props. Restorative yoga is an approach that doesn’t require movement. Postures are either seated or lying and held for a number of minutes once you find a way to settle into the support.

Restorative yoga targets the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the branch of the nervous system that is responsible for all the physiological responses we feel when we are relaxed. Through conscious breathing and focused attention, we practice becoming attuned to the body and then we practice letting the muscles relax.

Restorative yoga is a good practice in which to nurture an injury back to health. It is a great balance to a dynamic yoga practice and it is proven to decrease a high stress response and assist recovery from trauma. The use of support means this practice is well suited to those bodies that are naturally very bendy as the support is more important than the sensation so injury is less likely. Instead of bending into the body more, we take the poses in a way that facilitates a deep muscular letting go where muscles send the chemical signals to the brain that everything is OK and we are safe to relax, which stimulates the parasympathetic response. It encourages a sense of being supported, being at ease and being held.

Bookings essential.
See website for details.

In yoga nidra or deep conscious relaxation of body and mind, the body fully rests. Traditionally on the floor lying down, the practice can also be done seated if necessary. Whatever option, the body is supported and encouraged to be comfortable and relaxed.

Your awareness is guided by the teachers voice to focus on different areas of the body to induce a state of deep rest. The practice is usually around half an hour and might be preceded by some gentle stretches to assist your body to release into the posture for resting.

Anyone can do yoga nidra. It is widely known that the benefits are similar to the refreshing effects of deep sleep.

You don’t need special clothes as it’s a no sweat practice and there is no wriggling against your clothes as you move.

Bookings essential.
See website for details.

Black Eye Gallery is proud to announce the upcoming solo exhibition of Christopher Walters.

“When does a landscape image stop being a landscape image? How much information does it need to portray before it becomes something else, something abstract? With the saturation of photography widely accessible in the world today I am looking to push the boundaries of what a photographic landscape image is, what it needs to say, and also what it doesn’t.” – Christopher Walters

Christopher Walters photography conveys the details of a place that gives you that special feeling that is hard to describe. Like a misty sunset, the stillness of the ocean, low lying clouds or rolling hills doused in sunlight. When isolated, these details evoke a sense of place without being tied to a particular location.

Opening night celebrations run from 6 – 8pm on the 8th of July, rsvp to anna@blackeyegallery.com.au

These classes are calming. There are some flowing vinyasa movements at the beginning of the practice to move and disperse excess energy. As the class progresses the pace slows so that after slower movements toward the end the poses are almost restorative, which means on the floor and staying in the pose for longer.

Over time this practice helps moderate feelings of anxiety or continuous worry and helps manage panic and stress. The postures are designed around slower breath focused movements. We do more forward bending, less back bending. We work on grounding in balances and slowing down the breath. We move the joints and limbs softly and place the hands with meaning and the intention to come back to yourself (Nyasa).

Bring a thread (Sutra) of calm in to your week, to help tie the busy-ness together.

Bookings essential, see website for details

The Galeries and Art Month Sydney continue their partnership with the launch of their inaugural Emerging Artist Exhibition, which celebrates and supports Australia’s next generation of contemporary art talent.

Following a call-out to artists back in March during Art Month Sydney, four talented finalists will display their works in The Galeries public art space for the month of July, with an artist prize announced on 12 July 2016 at an official launch event.

The finalists consist of Brendan Barnacle Duck, Daniel Grosz, Jessica Barraket, and Kai Waskowski.

Visitors will also have the opportunity to vote for their favourite artist, with a People’s Choice prize. Votes can be cast online at www.thegaleries.com/emerging-artists, or shoppers can vote in-centre using their mobile devices.

Voting closes August 2nd 2016.

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.

Meet the Bay Area stylists who'll be at this year's American Craft Show in San Francisco.

Animal sculptures by Ellen Jewett, Crafts Council UK and the EU Referendum, and more...

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.