Briefing

Stanley Brouwn has died, aged 81. His death was confirmed by Konrad Fischer Galerie, which represented him in Dusseldorf and Berlin. Notoriously private, Brouwn did not allow his work to be reproduced for most of his career; he also declined to give interviews or be photographed. Born in 1935 in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, Brouwn moved to Amsterdam in 1957. His fellow artist friend Armando introduced him to the Zero movement, founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, a group of artists who rejected claims to artistic authority. Brouwn’s first works, dating from that time, which he later destroyed, were transparent polythene bags filled with rubbish and hung from the ceiling. For a 1960s series the artist would approach passers-by and ask them to draw directions to a particular place on a piece of paper. He would then print on each drawing with a stamp that said ‘This way Brouwn.’ Brouwn taught at the Kunstakademie Hamburg, and had a major retrospective in 2005 at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He was also included in Documenta 5, 6, 7, and 11. Read our feature on Brouwn, written by Dutch novelist and playwright Oscar van den Boogaard from frieze issue 161, 2014, here.

The Frick Collection is leading an international collaboration to digitize 25 million images of artworks for a new research platform. The Frick has teamed up with 13 other arts institutions around the world to establish PHAROS Art Research Consortium, which plans to have seven million images available online by 2020. PHAROS comprises among others the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome; Bildarchiv Foto in Marburg, Germany; the Courtauld Institute in London; Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles; Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris; National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC; Paul Mellon Centre in London; RKD—Netherlands Institute for Art History at The Hague; and the Frick Art Reference Library in New York.

Kurt Schwitters’s last remaining Merz Barn, located in the Lake District in the north of England, may have to be sold after Arts Council England (ACE) rejected a funding application for the site for the fourth time. The artists Ian Hunter and Celia Larner, who run and maintain the site as the charity the Littoral Arts Trust, believe it should be preserved and kept open to the public but are struggling with its upkeep due to a lack of funds. After three rejections by the ACE, Hunter and Larner were formally invited to apply for another round of funding by the former ACE president Sir Peter Bazalgette. They were paid GBP£34,000 to take part in an independent study regarding future funding, 45% of which they had to match. The ACE has supported the project in the past with GBP£240,000 of funding. After the barn was severely damaged during winter storms of 2015-16, Hunter launched an appeal and raised GBP£65,000 for repairs. Gmurzynska Gallery donated GBP£25,000 to the cause at the request of the late architect Zaha Hadid, the rest was donated by local foundations and international donors. Read our feature on the Merz Barn, written after the storms of last year, here. 

The Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in New York will present a new triennial of contemporary art, called ‘Uptown,’ this summer. Running from 2 June through 20 August, it will present the work of 66 artists who live or maintain studios north of 99th Street in New York. The exhibition, which is organized by the Wallach’s director and chief curator, Deborah Cullen, will be the gallery’s first major initiative in its new home in Columbia’s Lenfest Center for the Arts on West 129th Street, part of the university’s new Manhattanville campus, which opened earlier this year.

Jane South has been appointed chair of the Fine Arts Department at the School of Art at Pratt Institute in New York. She will begin the role on 1 July, succeeding current chair Deborah Bright, who is stepping down to focus on her artistic practice and scholarship. South currently teaches in the Film, Animation, and Video Department at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she has also taught sculpture, painting, and digital media. Previously, she served as head of sculpture at RISD; cocreative director of CoLAB, a summer performance laboratory offered by Brown University and RISD from 2015 to 2016; and associate director of Italy’s Siena Art Institute since 2011. South has also held visiting teaching positions and has been a visiting artist at a number of institutions including Pratt Institute, Williams College, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Brandeis University.