Photography Collection - News for Art Buyers

HUG TO ART COLOGNE
The struggling Art Cologne is bringing in a little Los Angeles glamour to revamp its brand: 39-year-old art dealer Daniel Hug (pronounced "Hoog," we are told) has signed on to direct the fair. Outspoken and energetic, Hug has run a namesake gallery in L.A.’s Chinatown, showing works by Patterson Beckwith, Gaylen Gerber, Los Super Elegantes, Michael Queenland and others. He is given credit as well for having a role in the recent relaunch of Art LA 2008 as a hip international fair of younger dealers. Hug is also grandson of Bauhaus great Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, giving the appointment a certain cachet.

Hug succeeds Gerard Goodrow, who was shown the door in January, as Art Cologne reeled from a perceived loss of status in the face of stiff global art fair competition. At the time, the exhibition company that owns the franchise, KölnMesse GmbH, announced that it was looking at a successor "with connections to Basel." However, as the weeks passed and Art Cologne’s 2008 date approached, nothing materialized, while as recently as mid-March the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung was reporting that the final decision would be announced at the opening of the fair in April. Art Cologne returns to the German art center, Apr. 16-20, 2008, with 150 dealers, promising a tighter, more focused presentation than in the past.

FOTOFEST2008 IN HOUSTON
Did someone say that the 2008 Armory Show was short on photographs? Maybe all those pictures are in Houston, as the city is currently in the midst of "Fotofest2008," Mar. 7-Apr. 20, 2008. Taking place in all Houston art museums as well as an incredible 107 other spaces, "Fotofest2008" features ten shows focusing on China photography and another 135 exhibitions in all.

The lineup includes shows of Nan Goldin and Bill Brandt at the Museum of Fine Arts, "Vivid Vernacular" at the Menil Collection, and Dawoud Bey at the Contemporary Art Museum. Commercial galleries participating include De Santos, Deborah Colton, Finesilver, Inman, Koelsch, Apama Mackey, McClain and Wade Wilson. Nonprofit galleries, corporate spaces, retail spaces and restaurants and even artist’s studios are involved as well. For a complete list, see www.fotofest.org

CURATOR AS PHOTOGRAPHER
The contemporary art world knows Kathleen Goncharov as a sophisticated curator who has formerly organized shows for the Nasher Museum in North Carolina and currently heads the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University. But now Goncharov has come out as a photographer, with her first exhibition on the new "Art Wall" at the venerable Bowery Poetry Club at 303 Bowery in Manhattan. Titled "See America First," Mar. 22-Apr. 13, 2008, the show features color photographs Goncharov took at Yesterday’s Treasures in the Hamptons, an astonishing font of kitsch of all kinds, where polychromed cavemen, knights, aliens and other figures are all displayed cheek-to-jowl.