Organizations Merge--Americans for the Arts and the Arts & Business Council, Inc., have announced that the two organizations will merge their operations, creating the largest-ever advocacy group for the arts in America. This will allow the new organization to increase efforts to secure increased funding for the arts from the private sector.

Newsletter Available--The free March issue of AirbrushTalk.com is now available on the Web at www.airbrushtalk.com. Articles include "With Spring Showers Come Flowers, but We Don't Have to Wait!" by Janean S. Thompson; "Good Sméagol" by Wes Hawkins; "Canvas Wrap" by A.D. Cook; "The Hyde Project" by Alex Castro; plus more. Sign up for your free subscription to this bi-monthly e-newsletter and see the newly designed home page.

Awards Announced--The Museum of Arts & Design has announced the Horizon Award 2005, the fifth annual presentation for emerging artists. In recognition of this, ten schools, which have been previously honored, will be invited. Each school is asked to submit five works in the areas of ceramics, jewelry, metal, glass, furniture, wood and/or textiles. The prize recognizes skill, innovation and the students' potential to become leaders in their fields. Awards will be presented in June.

Gates Bid Farewell--Four million visitors from the U.S. and around the world came to New York City to view Christo and Jean-Claude's long-awaited installation, "The Gates." Visitors who came to view this unique exhibition in Central Park brought unprecedented business to provide a post-holiday/mid-winter economic boom. Christo and Jean Claude's next project is "Over the River--Project for the Arkansas River" in Colorado, dates to be announced.

Exhibitions:

New York, NY -- The Drawing Center - 3 x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing by Hilma Klint, Emma Kunz and Agnes Martin is a major exhibition of stunning and rarely seen work by three artists who pioneered the development of modern abstraction. Klint, Kunz and Martin represent three generations of women artists who pursued nontraditional paths in visualizing thought through geometric abstraction. Through May 21.

Chicago, IL -- Museum of Contemporary Art -- Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist's Eye occupies the entire MCA building as well as its outdoor spaces. Works range from large-scale installations and sculptures to more intimate photographs and videos and focus on the phenomenon of more than 70 international visual artists whose works respond to their experience of traveling and living within various cultures. Through June 5.

Brooklyn, NY -- Brooklyn Museum of Art -- Basquiat gathers together more than 100 of Jean-Michel Basquiat's (1960-1988) finest works and demonstrates not only that he was a key figure in the 1980s, but also that his artistic accomplishments have a significance for twentieth-century art as a whole. Through June 5.

Los Angeles, CA -- THING: New Sculpture from Los Angeles includes a broad selection of works by 20 Los Angeles-based artists and addresses a wide range of sculptural practices, attempting to make sense of new materials, forms, methods and concerns of this promising generation of emerging Angeleno artists. Through June 5.

Raleigh, NC -- The Mint Museum -- Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration features 115 prints by one of America's foremost artists. The exhibition will show the artist's range of invention in etching, aquatint, lithography, handmade paper, direct gravure, silkscreen and traditional Japanese images and is designed especially to highlight several series of state proofs, to provide viewers with a seldom seen view of the technical and creative process required to realize these complex images. Opens April 16 through August 7.

Copyright ARTtalk Vol. 15 No. 6 -- April 2005