Culture Canvas

_A roundup of the week's arts and culture headlines._ _Click to enlarge._ The "2012 Whitney Biennial":http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/2012Biennial opened Thursday at the "Whitney Museum of American Art":http://whitney.org/ in New York, prompting discussion of the work and sparking protests over representation and compensation within the art world. The contemporary art exhibit elicited "a letter":http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2012/02/27/occupy-wall-streets-arts-and-labor-group-demands-end-of-whitney-biennial/ from the "Arts and Labor":http://www.facebook.com/occupyartsandlabor working group of the the Occupy Movement, which wrote, "We object to the biennial in its current form because it upholds a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers." Pranksters launched a fake website for the exhibition with "a phony press release":http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2012/02/27/anti-corporate-pranksters-zing-the-whitney-biennial/, announcing that the Whitney was breaking partnerships with Deutsche Bank and Sotheby's, and that it was committed to providing artists and art handlers with better compensation. ARTINFO has a "roundup":http://artinfo.com/news/story/761386/from-the-radical-to-the-ridiculous-a-brief-history-of-anti-biennial-activism of previous protests of the Biennial, as well as "video interviews":http://artinfo.com/news/story/761493/video-four-emerging-stars-of-the-2012-whitney-biennial-explain-their-aesthetic-visions with four of the artists in the exhibition, several of whom attempt to address issues of misrepresentation, identity, agency, labor and capitalism within their work. Above, one of the artists interviewed, Georgia Sagri, performs during a press preview of the Whitney Biennial on Monday. Photo by Mario Tama /Getty Images. * "The Artist":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8K9AZcSQJE won Best Picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday, via "The New York Times":http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/movies/awardsseason/the-artist-wins-best-picture-at-the-academy-awards.html. Jean Dujardin took home the award for best actor for his performance in the same film, and Meryl Streep won best actress for her work in "The Iron Lady":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t20WIDQcbXE&feature=relmfu. Films from Iran and Pakistan won the best foreign language film and best documentary categories, respectively; it's the first time movies from those countries have been awarded Oscars. * The "Pritzker Architecture Prize":http://www.pritzkerprize.com/ was awarded to Chinese architect Wang Shu, whose designs often incorporate recycled bricks, tiles and other building materials, via "The Los Angeles Times":http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/02/pritzker-prize-wang-shu-architect.html. * Crowdsourcing website "Kickstarter":http://www.kickstarter.com/ is on track to distribute $150 million in funding this year, exceeding the budget of "The National Endowment for the Arts":http://www.nea.gov/, via "Talking Points Memo":http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/kickstarter-expects-to-provide-more-funding-to-the-arts-than-nea.php. * The late Wislawa Szymborska's will calls for a literary award and foundation, which will guard her books and archives, via "The Washington Post":http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/polish-poet-szymborskas-will-calls-for-a-new-literary-prize-and-foundation/2012/02/29/gIQAXpEEiR_story.html. Szymborska, who won the Nobel prize in 1996, "died last month":http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2012/02/the-life-work-of-poet-wislawa-szymborska.html.