Ok, so a recent installation at the Tate Modern in London kinda cracked us up.

The exhibit, by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, is called Shibboleth and is a 167-meter long crack in the floor. Museum goers are invited to interact with the exhibit. A story in the AFP says, “some visitors have been so distracted by the impressive surroundings that they have unwittingly fallen into the crack, around one foot (or 30 centimetres) wide in places.” The crack gets filled next April.

For more on the artist, check out the Tate’s site.

Across town at the National Portrait Gallery, a huge pop art exhibit opened today. The usual suspects—Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney—are among the 52 artists represented. The exhibition runs through January 20th, 2008. More info at the Gallery’s Web site. Price: £10.

And, if you’re in London—whatever you do—please, for the love of art, go to the annual Frieze Art Fest. It’s on until October 14th and, though it will set you back £18.50, you’ll feast on the works of more than 1,000 artists the world ’round.

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Photograph by Elen Farkas

Vienna is subdivided into 23 districts. On Sunday, March 25, 2007 for the first time, Vienna will hold the Tag der Wiener Bezirksmuseen, or the day of district museums. Starting at 10 a.m., all district museums in Vienna will be open to those interested in finding out more about each district’s culture, history, and significant residents.

Aside from exhibitions, there will also be press conferences, seminars, and matinee concerts. In the inner First District, discussions of its famous citizens (Ludwig van Beethoven, the playwright Johann Nestroy, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, among others) are scheduled. In the Eighth District (Josefstadt) a special exhibit, “Hollywood in der Josefstadt” is in planned. Noted Viennese luminaries such as Billy Wilder (who became a popular director in Tinseltown with “Sabrina” and “The Seven Year Itch,”) Oskar Werner, and Fritz Lang will surely be hot topics.

For more information, summary of events and the addresses of the museums, visit the City of Vienna’s Web site or call +43 (0)1 403 6415. Admission is free.

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photograph courtesy of Elen Farkas

Who is Marie-Louise von Motesiczky?

This is the question posed by a retrospective exhibition of many of the artist’s works at the Wien Museum, now through May 5. Though von Motesiczky was born in Austria, she spent most of her life outside of the country; along the way, she was very nearly forgotten by the Austrian public.

The painter was born in Vienna in 1906. She left school at the tender age of 13 and was already attending art classes in Europe—in Vienna and Paris—exhibiting only once in 1933. When Adolf Hitler declared the dreaded Anschluß in 1938, she and her mother quickly left Austria. They left behind a brother who perished at Auschwitz. After the war she quickly made her name in the visual arts world in her adopted city of London. It was during this time that von Motesiczky also met writer and Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, who served as her companion for three decades.

For more than 70 years she painted and displayed her collection of works in different galleries and in different cities. In 1994, already established as one of the most important Austrian painters in the 20th century, the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere held a special exhibition to honor her. Two years after this recognition she died peacefully.

Find out more about Marie-Louise von Motesiczky by visiting Wien Museum at Karlsplatz, 1040 Vienna, open Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. General admission is €6, though groups, senior citizens, students, and the unemployed can count on reduced admission. Cheapo tip: entrance to the general collection is gratis every other Sunday.

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We got a good injection of artistic inspiration at the Benaki Museum’s Pireos Street Annexe in Athens (Pireos Street 138 at Andronikou Street, tel: +30-210-345-3111). There, one of the current exhibitions is a collection of selected sculptures and paintings by contemporary Greek artist Kostas Paniaras. The exhibition spans Paniaras’s first 50 years of art work. It’s a “non-retrospective” review, with current work and past work juxtaposed side-by-side. This organization jumbles the traditional narrative of an artist’s progression, and makes Paniaras’s work feel truly alive across the decades of his work.

While you can pay €8 for admittance to all of the museum’s fabulous exhibits, you can opt to experience the Paniaras exhibition for only €3. If you have a child under 18 with you, the child attends free and you are admitted for €1.50.

This exhibit only runs through March 18, so hurry! (The museum is open from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday, 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and closed Monday and Tuesday.)

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How would you like the coming spring this year? We are betting our noses for mild and sunny weather. And, as ever, we are also hoping for more eroticism.

Happily for us, the classy BA-CA Kunstforum in Vienna opens “Eros in Modern Art” tomorrow, March 1, 2007. The exhibition runs through July 22. “Eros” foregrounds the knotty and central theme in the arts: eroticism.

The show attempts to popularize a sense of eroticism that doesn’t revert exclusively to matters of sex and the body. The exhibition’s more expansive objective is—in the museum’s own words—to open up the field of eroticism to “the erotic sphere of temptation and union, of desire and longing, dream and the subconscious in a great variety of forms.” Gulp.

Expect an all-star cast of around 35 artists, from the late 19th century through the present. Visitors will find the works of Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí, Paul Gauguin, Gustav Klimt, Henri Matisse, Bettina Rheims, Auguste Rodin, and Egon Schiele included.

BA-CA Kunstforum is located at Freyung 8 in the First District. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. (until 9 p.m. on Fridays.) Adults are admitted for €8.70, with discounts available for students, seniors, children, and groups.

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