In Paris, Museum Visitors Are Spared From Strikes on Sunday

PARIS — Tourists take note: if you're planning to spend the holidays in France this year, you'll want to make sure your favorite museums are actually open before spending on Metro fare to reach your cultural destination.

Workers at many of the top museums in Paris were on strike this week, prompting numerous closures - at least periodically. Throughout the week, visitors arrived at major art institutions like the Louvre  museum and Musee d'Orsay, only to find picketing workers and locked doors covered with posters reading "grève" ("strike"). But to avoid angering the public even more, most museums were open today to honor their usual offer of free admission on the first Sunday of every month. The Pompidou Center was the exception, remaining closed for the fourteenth day in a row.

The strikes were initiated by unions representing culture ministry workers protesting government plans to trim the civil service by replacing only half of all retiring employees. France's Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand has refused to back down, making closures likely to resume next week.

==============================================================

Read More - Most Paris Museums Open, Strikers Consider Options | Reuters

[Photo: Visitors at the Pompidou Center find the doors locked due to a strike. Courtesy Charles Platiau/Reuters.]

In Paris, Museum Visitors Are Spared From Strikes on Sunday

Le Cirque du Pompidou Is Coming to Town

PARIS — Move over Ringling Brothers, the "Pompidou Mobile" is coming to town! But there's no need to buy tickets - this circus will be free. And instead of a ringleader, animals and clowns, there will be a curator and fine art masterpieces.

Provided it can raise the estimated $4.43 million necessary, starting in late 2010, France's Pompidou Center will hit "la rue" with 10-15 paintings from its permanent collection. Picassos, Matisses and Calders will be displayed in a 10,700-sq. foot high-tech canvas-like structure being designed by architect Patrick Bouchain. Every few months the big top will pick up, clear out and move to a different French town, concentrating on rural regions and poor, crime-ridden suburbs. "It's about bringing art to the people to awaken their desire to go toward the art," the Pompidou's president, Alain Seban, said in a statement.

Museums collections travel all over the world for special exhibitions at other museums, that's nothing new. But bringing modern art to less fortunate areas, setting up a makeshift museum in a field or parking lot, and charging no entry fee - that's a pretty great concept.

==================
Read More — Art Under the Big Top: The Roving Pompidou | AP
[Photo: The Stravinsky Fountain outside the Centre Pompidou]

Le Cirque du Pompidou Is Coming to Town

American Feminist Artist Nancy Spero (1926-2009)

"I have come to the conclusion that the art world has to join us, women artists, not we join it. When women are in leadership roles and gain rewards and recognition, then perhaps 'we' (women and men) can all work together in art world actions." ~Nancy Spero

NEW YORK — Figurative artist Nancy Spero died of respiratory complications on Sunday. She was 83. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Spero and her husband of 53 years, painter Leon Golub, lived together in New York City until his death in 2004. The couple met while studying at the Art Institute of Chicago.

An active feminist, Spero's focus was primarily the representation of women from various cultures throughout history. Her works combine drawing, painting, collage and printmaking techniques to reflect her strong ideals. The artist has exhibited at prominent institutions such as New York's Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, and a retrospective of her work is scheduled at the Centre Pompidou in Paris next year.

==================

[Read more - Nancy Spero, Artist of Feminism, Is Dead at 83 - Obituary | New York Times]

American Feminist Artist Nancy Spero (1926-2009)

The Painter of Black and Light: Soulages at the Pompidou

"Painting is a play of opacities and transparencies."  ~Pierre Soulages

PARIS -- The Centre Pompidou is putting on a major retrospective to celebrate the work of an artist who the museum calls, "the greatest painter on the current French scene." Approaching his 90th birthday, Pierre Soulages, nicknamed the "painter of black and light," is recognized as a major figure in the genre of abstract art.

Following a National Museum of Modern Art show in 1967, the Centre Pompidou held its first large scale exhibition of Pierre Soulages in 1979. This autumn's show looks back at over 60 years of painting and offers a new reading of the artist's oeuvre, with emphasis on more recent developments in his work.

Soulages brings together over a hundred major works dating from 1946 to the present day, from the striking walnut stain works executed between 1947 and 1949 to the paintings of recent years. The collection displays the dynamism and diversity of the artist's constantly evolving approach. Most of the paintings are being shown for the first time.

_________________
Soulages (Oct. 14 - March 8, 2010) @ Centre Pompidou | Website

=================

The Painter of Black and Light: Soulages at the Pompidou