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New York Institute Updates

Contemporary Art Program – Fall 2009
The Contemporary Art Program had four highly rewarding regional study trips during the fall academic term – day trips to Dia: Beacon and the Storm King Arts Center in up-state New York, and week-long trips to Chicago, IL and Milwaukee, WI, and Marfa and Houston, TX. In addition, the cohort had the usual amount of numerous site visits around New York City to various collections, museums, galleries and installations. The students participated in a charity food drive in conjunction with the David Zwirner Gallery, and curated two realized exhibitions titled Youthful Gazes and Indian Summer, respectively, for the end of semester group projects.

Art Business Programme — Fall 2009
The year was off to a great start as the Art Business NY students joined their fellow incoming students on a trip to Governor’s Island. On Governor’s Island, the students toured a public art exhibition with various SIA-NY faculty as their guides. The trip instantly created a feeling of camaraderie amongst all SIA-NY students. Once in the classroom, the Art Business students got down to work with their core faculty, Dr. Andras Szanto, Judith Prowda, Mary Rozell and Tom McNulty. The students began their studies by examining the history of the art world, gallery operations, appraisals and financial reporting. A particular highlight was the group auction project that the students developed with Barbara Strongin. In December, after a strenuous semester, the Art Business class boarded a plane for sunny Miami Beach, marking the fourth consecutive trip to Art Basel taken by the Art Business NY class. Like all previous visits, this proved to be an interesting and insightful field study opportunity. The students saw the art market in action and applied their newly gained knowledge in their analyses of Art Basel Miami Beach art fair and the multitude of satellite fairs that took place that week.

American Fine & Decorative Art — Fall 2009
Within the American Fine and Decorative Art programs students began their field study work right away with a trip to Philadelphia. Students studied the American collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with MAAFDA NY Program Director Jonathan Clancy and lecturer Amelia Peck. Amy Finkel of M. Finkel and Daughter Antiques provided first hand object and career based knowledge as it related to dealing in antiques. Students began to develop and refine their research skills with research sessions at The Frick Collection, the Museum of Modern Art and New York University, among many others. In October students traveled to New Haven, Connecticut and Newport, Rhode Island. While in route to Newport students were able to meet Yale Center for British Arts Deputy Director, Constance Clement, and tour the current exhibition, Strawberry Hill and Mrs. Delaney. While in Rhode Island students toured and studied the architecture and collections of the Newport Mansions as well as the Redwood Library. Students ended their field study with a trip to Winterthur, Delaware where they toured the Winterthur estate and attended the Sewell C. Biggs Winterthur Paintings Conference as well as the Delaware Antiques Show. And, as always, the students spent a great deal of time while in New York studying the endless art and research collections with the assistance of Carrie Barratt, Associate Director for Collections and Administration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tom McNulty, Librarian for Fine Art at the Bobst Library, New York University.

London Institute Updates

Art Business
The first semester of MAAB 2009/2010 has been as satisfying as ever. Students enjoyed an exciting study visit to the Berlin art fair, Art Forum. The optional Wednesday gallery visits organised by programme coordinators, Laura and Deborah, once again proved a great success with students, with venues ranging from the massive corporate collections of Deutsche Bank through to the challenging avant garde of Riflemaker contemporary, and the refined atmosphere of Colnaghi old masters. For the first time in Art Business’ 11-year history a small group of students organised an Old Master society, visiting Mayfair alpha galleries such as Johnny van Haeften, Philip Mould and Derek Johns. As usual, London is proving a wonderful place to be for art market studies, with great shows of Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy, and Damien Hirst at the Wallace Collection. One of the full-time faculty members, Catherine Morel, has moved to Kingston University – the Art Business Programme extends its best wishes to her in the new job. Art Business welcomed Natasha Degen to the staff. Natasha comes to the Institute with a Ph.D from Cambridge University in Pop Art and the Market.

Contemporary Design
During semester I, the Contemporary Design Programme visited the V&A, British Museum, Brighton Museum and the Geffrye Museum in addition to five houses (Rodmarton Manor, Willow Road, The Homewood, Eltham Palace and Charleston) to study objects in relation to their historic interiors. The house visits were followed-up by a seminar discussion with a National Trust curator about the issues of conservation and presentation with 20th Century houses. Visits to the Sotheby’s auction house, Pavillon of Art & Design Fair, Peter Layton Glass, Knoll and to various galleries completed the semester. Highlights of the four day study tour to Paris in November included a visit to Sotheby’s, the first exhibition on the designer-decorator Jean-Michel Frank at the Yves St Laurent Foundation, and the Art Nouveau Revival exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay. The latter examined the influence of the fin-de-siècle style on the 1940s and 1960s and could not have been more appropriate as these are the periods currently being studied on the programme. The students had privileged access to several of the leading galleries specialising in 20th Century and contemporary design, including the Galerie Kreo, but the pièce de resistance was the visit to Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre (1927-1932).

Maison de Verre

Photography
The Photography course has enjoyed an increased cohort of 17 this year. The first semester included exciting study visits to Bradford and Paris. In Bradford students enjoyed fascinating sessions in the archives and the permanent exhibitions of the National Media Museum under the expertise of Professor Roger Taylor and Brian Liddy as well and tours around the temporary exhibitions with curator Colin Harding. Lucy Soutter accompanied the students on the non-stop visit Paris this year where they enjoyed Photograph overload at ParisPhoto and had the chance to bump into many SIA alumni representing galleries. They also enjoyed some fantastic exhibitions such as The Subversion of Images: Surrealism, photography, film at the Pompidou centre where they were also able to view the Elles show for a private tour from one of the exhibiting Photographers, Karen Knorr. As usual the trip included specially-designed sessions at photographic archives Bibliotheque Nationale & Societe Francaise de Photographie with just enough time to soak up the nightlife of Paris. The students enjoyed many visiting speakers and visits to local exhibitions and fairs such as Frieze, had special access to the royal collection in Windsor Castle and some wonderful sessions at the Wilson Centre.The students are very much looking forward to the trip to New York and AIPAD in March. Semester two will run under the leadership of Bernard Vere this year as Juliet Hacking is on maternity leave with baby Alice who arrived on new year’s eve – Congratulations!

Singapore Institute Updates

In the first semester the Singapore Contemporary Art Programme went to China and to Australia for the Asia Pacific triennial. In the second semester the students will be travelling to Indonesia and possibly Thailand. The Art Business Program also had a field study trip to KIAF in Seoul South Korea, and in the second semester they are planning trips to Hong Kong and India.

It is also the first year that the Institute is running an expanded curriculum which now includes two electives offered along with the six core class modules. One of the electives called the “Singapore Challenge,” involves the Contemporary and Art Business students teaming up to write a proposal to conduct research in an Asian country. If the proposal is accepted the Institute will sponsor the research trip. Previous teams have already conducted research in Korea, the Philippines, Cambodia and Hong Kong. For further details see the following link: www.sothebysinstitute.com/singapore/challenge.html

Looking forward to semester two we will have a launch of our short courses and summer program schedule for Singapore, as well as the pilot of new short courses in Korea. In addition we are also planning to run a pre-session English-language course to prepare students with English as a second language.

In April 2010 we will enroll another Art Business cohort, which will ensure we all keep busy over the summer period.


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