If the Beach Gets Too Boring ArtMag's Summer Tips
Urban
gardens, historical country residences, mermaid parades, and the best
dim sum in Taipei - read the ArtMag team's personal summer tips.
Sara Bernshausen, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
 Hotel Eberle, Bolzano
Off to South Tirol: Bolzano is a super nice little city. You can stay here at the Hotel Eberle, situated in the midst of vineyards. And there’s a show up by Pawel Althamer. Seventy of the figures made in the Deutsche Guggenheim can now be seen at the Museion.
Several of documenta’s highlights can be found in the Karlsaue, for instance the works of Omer Fast and Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller.
The best thing is to grab a bike and explore the wonderful park. Make
sure you don’t miss the Hugenottenhaus with two magnificent works by Theaster Gates and Tino Sehgal.
 Pawel Althamer, Polyethylene, Museion 2012. © Pawel Althamer Photo: Othmar Seehauser
Another great thing is to read Julian Barnes’s novel The Sense of an Ending while enjoying a cool glass of white wine at Lake Garda! Or just take a dip in the Liepnitzsee in Brandenburg.
 Karlsaue, Kassel Photo: Achim Drucks
Liz Christensen, Deutsche Bank, CC Art, New York
 Os Gemeos, In High Seas Everybody Flies, 2008 © Os Gemeos
Recommendation for the summer: a trip along the East Coast, from Boston to Washington DC. Starting in August, the Deutsche Bank-sponsored Os Gemeos show will be up at the ICA
in Boston. And of course the Brazilian Street Artists will also be
making a big street painting/intervention in the city. You can sip a
cold one on the museum’s open patio and watch lots of sailboat action
on the Charles River—or walk back to the city on a paved walkway along
the river’s edge to The Barking Crab. It’s always crowded, but the lobster is delicious!
 Nathan's Hot Dogs at Coney Island, NY Photo: J. Reed
In New York, of course, the show to go to is the Rineke Dijkstra exhibition at the Guggenheim. There’s art and design at Grey Area on Broadway, for instance beach towels by Peter Doig or Yoshitomo Nara. And the classic trip to Coney Island is still a lot of fun, especially with kids: freak shows, hot dogs at Nathan’s, the legendary Mermaid Parade.
 Grey Area: Yoshitomo Nara Towel Photo: Jordan Doner
The Barnes Collection with its countless Cézannes, Picassos, and Modiglianis has moved to a great new building in downtown Philadelphia. And the perfect contrast to the modernist classics is the Mütter Museum, where science, history, medicine and Madame Toussauds all come together. Just as wacky is the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. Folk and Outsider Art meet monstrous kitsch—don’t forget this is the city of John Waters!
The historic harbor section is currently being taken over by yuppies,
but there are still a few pockets of old taverns and places where fresh
Maryland crab cakes are on the menu.
 The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia © The Barnes Foundation
In Washington DC, the Corcoran Gallery is celebrating Richard Diebenkorn with a magnificent retrospective, while John Cage’s New River water colors can be seen in the Phillips Collection.
The National Women’s Art Museum offers an alternative version to
official art history. The museum experience really impresses how women
artists were seriously marginalized. And now, the NWAM is developing a contemporary collection and expanding their programming to notable living women artists.
Achim Drucks & Oliver Koerner von Gustorf, regarding arts, Berlin
 Prinzessinengärten Moritzplatz, Berlin-Kreuzberg
Guerilla Gardening at its best: the Prinzessinengarten on an empty lot on Moritzplatz
is a unique urban biotope: you can enjoy great vegetarian dishes
beneath leafy trees, with ingredients grown on site, in the middle of Kreuzberg. And learn how to grow your own potatoes in a sack, entirely without a garden patch. Right across the street you can explore Modulorhaus,
where creative people can find everything their hearts desire: material
par excellence ranging from high-tech foils to Winsor & Newton ink.
 Diane Arbus, Two ladies at the automat N.Y.C. 1966 © The Estate of Diane Arbus
From here you can take the M29 bus to Martin Gropius Bau, where there’s a fantastic Diane Arbus
retrospective. Her intimate, disturbing portraits of nudists,
middle-class families, eccentrics, and the famous made her into an icon
for generations of photographers.
After traveling through time
to New York of the sixties, you can explore the Berlin Wave scene and
everyday life in the city on the front in Haus am Kleistpark: the black and white photographs of Hildegard Ochse are presented in a somewhat conventional way, but convey an authentic eighties feeling: for instance the portrait of Neubauten singer Blixa Bargeld when he was still young and beautiful, in the legendary Café Mitropa.
 Ulrike Ottinger, Tabea Blumenschein, Berlin 1975 Courtesy Ulrike Ottinger
In the film Ticket of No Return, Ulrike Ottinger created a portrait of Berlin in 1979. Nina Hagen and Kippenberger were also part of it. Now, wonderful photos of the film set can be seen in the Verborgenes Museum in Charlottenburg—together with selected pictures from Ottinger’s entire career and her private collection, for instance of Gisèle Freund, Yva, and Herbert Tobias.
 Prinzessinengärten Moritzplatz, Berlin-Kreuzberg
But you can work up quite an appetite after so much art. Each weekend when the weather is nice, Preußen Park turns into Thai Park: Thai families sell authentic and delicious dishes from their home country here. And you can even get a massage!
Britta Färber, Deutsche Bank, CC Art, Frankfurt
 John Armleder, Zakk Wylde II, 2008 Courtesy Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zürich
Time travel back to Art Nouveau: the buildings on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt are a true gesamtkunstwerk. The museum there, which among other shows over the past several years has put on sensational exhibitions of Nedko Solakov and Janet Cardiff, has now turned into a House Full Of Music. David Bowie’s legendary song Sound and Vision
can be experienced here in a very direct way—in sound rooms and through
projections and installations by 110 artists and musicians ranging from
Duchamp and Beuys to Laurie Anderson, Anri Sala, and Heiner Goebbels,
who has a sound work in an old water reservoir. Thanks to headphones
and a carefully calibrated audio system, each visitor can sample his or
her route through the show.
 Forellengut Herzberger
A bicycle tour through the
Karlsaue is always wonderful—even without documenta, or at least that’s
what my friend in Kassel says… The Baroque park with its huge trees and
small lakes is indeed beautiful. And now you can make yourself
comfortable in one of the hammocks by the brilliant Thai director and
actor Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Listen to the sound of bells hidden in the bushes and trees under the
watchful eyes of a huge comic spirit made of white plastic.
 Minds on Minigolf Zeilgalerie, Frankfurt am Main
As everyone knows, it’s also beautiful in the Taunus. A special recommendation for fans of miniature golf is the course in Bad Homburg at Hirschgarten.
Even on very hot days, it’s pleasantly cool here in the forest. The
parcours is considered to be one of the most challenging in all of
Germany. Real pros can be seen putting on the green. How to tell them
apart from the rest: they mop the tracks clean before they begin. After
that, it’s off to the nearby Forellengut Herzberger, a somewhat
bizarre family business. Absurdly feathered ornamental chickens run
around the place, and there’s also a pen for wild boar. Trout and boar
can be ordered for dinner here—and in the summer, guests can dine
outside too, of course. And when the rain falls again, you can
still play miniature golf in Frankfurt, in the Zeilgalerie. This is
where artists have designed a very special nine-hole course: the balls
land in the monster’s gullet, fly over a fully set table, or into a
half-pipe recruited for the purpose. Great!
Mary Findlay, Deutsche Bank, CC Art, London
 ArcelorMittal Orbit by Anish Kapoor Olympic Park/London. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
The Turner Contemporary
in Margate, Kent opened only one year ago. Now, right in the middle of
the “Garden of England,” as they call the region, they’re showing Tracey
Emin. Great exhibition of work and wonderful views of the sea from the
gallery. There is also a good restaurant/café there: a smart idea for a
day trip out of London.
 Tracey Emin, Last in Love, 2011 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012. Courtesy White Cube Photo Ben Westoby
You need a ticket to the Olympics to visit the 115-meter-high ArcelorMittal Orbit by Anish Kapoor
in the Olympic Park—London’s new answer to the Eiffel Tower! It’s like
climbing around inside a Kapoor sculpture—but you can take the lift to
the top for an amazing view and art experience.
Sabrina Fung, Art Consultant, Hong Kong
 Oval House Courtesy Benesse House/Naoshima
A stay at the Tadao Ando Oval House in Naoshima is an unforgettable experience. The quiet hotel with its minimalistic design is a rejuvenating experience. The Benesse House
shows projects on how old and new, art and living can coexist and
maintain such a good balance. Take a walk around the “art island” to
discover the fantastic sculptures and installations there.
After a visit to I.T. Park Gallery in Taipei, a must stop is Wo Seng: this small shop sells delicious date with walnut cookies. Or a divine tea with dim sum at King Join, probably one of the few places in Asia that can make such high quality imperial dim sum.
 Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 1994-2005 Courtesy Benesse House/Naoshima
In Nan Lian Garden, a spectacular landscape garden in Kowloon, Hong Kong, you can enjoy healthy, creative and delicious vegetarian meals at Chi Lin Vegetarian. On the weekend are concerts with traditional Chinese instruments. Highly recommended!
 Nan Lian Garden, Kowloon Hong Kong
Alistair Hicks, Deutsche Bank, CC Art, London
 Anni Leppälä, Orange tree, 2008 Courtesy TAIK Gallery. © Rencontres Arles
As
a curator for Deutsche Bank, it is sometimes difficult to tell the
difference between holiday and work destinations. I love art, so I
spend my “holidays’” seeing just as much or even more than I do in a
working day. For instance, every year I go to visit family down in Uzes
in the South of France, an hour away from Arles, and always go to the Arles Photography Festival,
which runs from the beginning of July to September 23. There are around
fifty exhibitions of international photographers to see, and invariably
there is something to excite one. It is also gives one a good excuse to
enjoy one of Van Gogh’s
stomping grounds. Indeed, some of the exhibitions are shown in the Old
Hospital. Of course, the sad thing is there are no Van Gogh
masterpieces anywhere to be seen, so one has to relax, enjoy the wine
in the heat or in the starlit cafes, or walk the surrounding fields.
 Piero della Francesca, Madonna del Parto, ca. 1455-60 Monterchi, Sansepolcro
As
my job entails looking at a wide range of work, when I have some spare
time there is little that gives me more pleasure than making a
pilgrimage to a single work of art. The sense of anticipation, the
build-up in thinking about a single work, the concentrated experience
and the opportunity to discuss one work afterwards is a good way to
relax. My wife once sat next to the former British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, who described how he had as a student traveled on a donkey from Sansepolcro, Piero della Francesca’s
birthplace, to the artist’s mother’s little village Monterchi up in the
hills. Much of his day was spent on the back of this beast till he
arrived in the little white chapel, of which one wall was filled with
one of the very rare depictions of the pregnant madonna, the Madonna del Parto.
Sadly, since I first saw it they have moved the picture into its own
little museum within the protection of the hilltop village itself, but
it is one of the great sights, a reduced vision of startling
simplicity. Tarkovsky was inspired to use it in Nostalghia.
 Jacopo da Pontormo, Visitation, 1528-29 Carmignano
Bill Viola has made a film about Pontormo’s Visitation,
another great pilgrimage from Florence. The flowing robes of Mary and
Elizabeth, the soon-to-be mothers of Jesus and John the Baptist, come
to life in Viola’s version, but the original is worth walking to. If
you do not wish to spend the day walking from Florence, you can at
least walk up the long hill from Poggio, but you can, of course, just
cheat and park outside the Church of San Michele in Carmignano and walk inside and stare in wonder at one of the hedonist treats of Mannerism.
 Highclere Castle
If
in England on your way to a bucket and rain holiday in the West
Country, stop off the M3 near Basingstoke and park your caravan outside
the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere. Stanley Spencer
is not Piero or Pontormo, but he has made one of the greatest early
20th-century British works of art for the chapel by resurrecting his
own First World War experiences as an ambulance driver. For those
addicted to the television series Downton Abbey, Highclere, really the home of the Herberts but also the setting for Downton Abbey, is just three miles down the road, so there is a detour off a detour...
Christina März, Deutsche Bank, CC Art, Frankfurt
 Giardini Botanici Hanbury © Daderot
Just back from bella Italia, our children want ice cream every day now, even in Frankfurt. But none is as good as the Gelateria Sharbé in Imperia, Ognelia. Those spending their holidays in Liguria should definitely sample their ice cream in the Via Giorgio des Geneys 7.
 Giardini Botanici Hanbury © Daderot
The
Italian and French Riviera are not necessarily known for their sights.
A few cultural treasures can be found here, though, amidst the culinary
diversity. On the way to Menton or Monaco, a stopover in the Hanbury Garden
is well worth it. Close to the border to France, it is Liguria’s most
beautiful garden, but is almost completely forgotten. Right over the
border is another highlight: on the coast of Roquebrune-Cap Martin,
with another fantastic view of the sea, is the E 1027 House, designed by Eileen Gray in 1929.
 Villa Grock © Mattia Anselmi
Back again in Imperia, a visit to another recently opened house is to be recommended: the Villa Grock was the residence of the world-famous clown
until 1959. People who crave something more urban and contemporary and
don’t mind the two-hour drive should make their way to Turin, where the
Thomas Schütte exhibition Frauen (Women) will be on view in the Castello di Rivoli through September 23.
 Thomas Schütte, Frauen, exhibition view Castello di Rivoli, Torino. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
Lucille Zacaria, Deutsche Bank, CC Art, London
 Roman baths, Bath
The Holburne Museum
in Bath is a jewel: a beautiful historical museum which last year was
given a fantastic modern extension. The collection was founded by Thomas William Holburne
(1793-1874) and includes over 4,000 works of applied and fine arts.
They have thought very hard about how visitors experience the art, and
it’s quite interactive and especially good for children.
 Holburne Museum in Bath
This summer,
the exhibition Portrait Sculpture can be seen, which shows antique
busts and masterpieces of the 18th century in a dialogue with some of
the greatest sculptors of the 20th century, including Giacometti, Brancusi, Marc Quinn,
and Ron Mueck. Of course Bath itself is a fabulous town to visit,
oozing with thousands of years of cultural history and obviously very
famous for its Roman Baths!
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