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.

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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.