As another sign of changing times on the North American art scene, the Lannan Foundation in Los Angeles will end its exhibition program and disperse a collection of more than 1,500 works of modern and contemporary art.
Established in 1960 by late financier J. Patrick Lannan, the foundation has supported often-daring visual art and literature through nearly $8 million in grants to museums, university galleries and other not-for-profit spaces.
Recently joining the awards in art and literature was a national grant program that responds to needs in rural American Indian communities. All such projects–plus funding for special efforts by individual artists–will continue, substantially benefiting from the abandonment of three yearly exhibitions in the foundation galleries and a growing permanent collection.
Major works by Chuck Close, Robert Irwin, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt and Frank Stella, among many others, will be placed with public institutions around the country.
Exhibitions will conclude next May with a showing of the National Gallery of Art’s traveling retrospective for photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank.
– “Self Portrait,” an obscure 1972 mixed-media painting by Salvador Dali that features photographer Philippe Halsman’s famous collage of Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong, sold at auction for $111,000 last week in Miami Beach, Fla. The U.S. Customs Service had seized the work there 18 months ago for having been purchased by Colombian drug dealers with funds from illegal sales. Proceeds from the auction went into a U.S. Treasury Department fund to support customs law enforcement.
– Kathleen E. Bickford, since 1993 research assistant in the department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has become an assistant curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her responsibility is for the African collection in the museum’s department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. She succeeds Ramona Austin, who left the institute last June to become curator of African art at the Dallas Museum of Art.
– “WhiteWalls: A Journal of Language and Art” will sponsor a tour of the extensive contemporary art collection of REFCO, an international financial risk management firm based in Chicago, beginning with a reception at 6 p.m. Thursday at the firm’s corporate offices on the 17th floor of 111 W. Jackson Blvd. Admission is $25. Proceeds will benefit the artist-run, non-profit journal. Call 312-409-4344 for reservations.
– “The Arts and the Underserved Community,” a free panel discussion on visual impairment in the visual arts, will take place at 7 p.m. Friday at the A.R.C. Gallery, 1040 W. Huron St. “Visions,” a group` exhibition of work by visually impaired artists, will continue at the gallery through July 1.
– The annual black-tie dinner dance to benefit the School of the Art Institute of Chicago will begin at 7 p.m. Friday in the South Garden of the Art Institute, Michigan Avenue at Adams Street. Tickets are $275. Call 312-899-5158 for reservations.
– The 46th annual Old Town Art Fair, the oldest outdoor juried fair in the United States, will run from 10 a.m. to dusk Saturday and Sunday around the 1800 block of Lincoln Park West and Orleans Street. More than 240 artists will offer work for sale in all media. Admission is $3.
– Patricia Morrisoe, author of the first biography of controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, will give a free lecture and sign copies of her book at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 237 E. Ontario St.
