O'Malley Award winner / G-men track art (Wednesday 7 December 2005)
compiled by Mary Garboden
Tony O'Malley Travel Award announced
On Friday, 25 November, Chloé Morrison was announced as the winner of the Tony O'Malley Travel Award for Irish Painters at a reception in Kilkenny Castle. The 26-year-old artist, originally from Coleraine, lives and works in Belfast. Having been graduated from The Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam in 2004, she has exhibited in group exhibitions in the Netherlands but, despite her roots, is new to the Irish exhibition scene.
Tony O'Malley, the award's namesake, was a painter for whom travel at home and abroad was a great influence. Appropriately, the 2,600 euro award is granted to a successful applicant who has a specific travel proposal involving their work. Morrison's paintings often depict figures with their inner organs on the exterior of their bodies, and the artist plans to use her grant to travel to La Specola Museum in Florence which has an extensive collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wax anatomical models. The artist wishes to use the models as they were originally intended: for the study of the human body without the use of real corpses (although the students originally in mind for such study were future doctors rather than artists).
The winner of the Tony O'Malley Award was selected from a great number of submissions made to the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny.
F.B.I.'s 'most wanted' art list
The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation has recently released a 'most wanted' list of the top-ten art crimes, asking the public for any help they can give towards solving them. How real the concept of somebody saying, "Now that you mention it, I do know who stole those Munch pieces..." or, "Oh yeah - that's the picture hanging in the lobby of my dentist's office" is up for debate, but I suppose there's something to be said for public awareness.
As one is unable to blow one's nose in America without being accused of supporting terrorists these days (sniffling means they have won!), this is of course being linked to that whole kettle of fish. According to F.B.I. Assistant Director Chris Swecker, "There have been reported ties to everything from the insurgency in Iraq to some theories that some of these proceeds support terrorism." Gosh, if they can only manage to recover Madonna of the yarnwinder there may be a chance for world peace after all.
The top-ten list of stolen art consists of:
• 7,000-10,000 Iraqi artifacts looted and stolen in 2003
• twelve paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in1990 (the biggest art heist in U.S. history)
• two pieces by Renoir and one by Rembrant lifted in 2000 from Sweden's National Museum (which were eventually recovered)
• Munch's The scream and The Madonna stolen from the Munch Museum, Oslo, in 2004
• Benevenuto Cellini's Salt cellar taken from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 2003 (find a civilian who can spell the name of the museum and you've found your man)
• Caravaggio's Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco stolen in 1969 from Palermo
• A Stradivarius violin pinched from a New York apartment in 1995 (that's just rude!)
• two Van Goghs taken in 2002 from Amsterdam's Vincent Van Gogh Museum
• Cezanne's View of Auvers-sur-Oise stolen from Oxford's Ashmolean Museum in 1999 (with the millenium fireworks going off at the time, the theives had no need to create a distraction)
• Da Vinci's Madonna of the yarnwinder pocketed in 2003 from Scotland's Drumlanrig Castle
So... Seen anything fishy?
Most recent news items:
• Bumper budget for arts in Republic (Thursday 17 November 2005)
• Major award for Factotum / NCAD students upset (Monday 14 November 2005)
• Million-dollar gaze? / French cultural injection for Big Easy (Thursday 10 November 2005)
• I scream, you scream, we all scream - for board-games... / art custody battle (Friday 28 October 2005)
For a full list of news items, click here.
Latest reader
feedback:
News item 603
I have to say I agree with Circa. I have been working on a projec...
News item 624
The idea of exhibiting a group of objects bought on eBay, though ...
News item 617
It'd be interesting to see how many visitors attended the gallery...
News item 603
re. Comment 2 - most people who get turned down for grants have t...
News item 603
'sour grapes aside, what are culture ireland up to?' i think we n...
News item 606
hang on a minute... surely the feller who won the prize at art st...
News item 603
As someone who received a grant from Culture Ireland this year, f...
News item 602
try and make work that doesn't topple over in future!...
Do
you have an opinion on this article? If so, please click here for our comments form.
| No reader feedback so far - awaiting your input! |
Back
to top of page
