EMPLOYER OF THE MONTH

Hey, lil' Miss Artrumour, my rich (but soon to be poor, ha!) city friends say to me, why do you work in the art world? The pay barely keeps you in Chloe, the contracts are 'verbal', you get no pension plan, and you're forced to drink warm beer and bad white wine whilst hairy art dealers touch you up. Well girls, I reply, you get the chance to work for fantastic, liberal-minded, right-on employers. Take the Lux Gallery board for example. I hear they employed the late-90s Asian Tiger school of management when they hauled the staff in on October 2 to fire most of them. How honest of them! And they even gave the sacked folk half an hour to leave the building, which was jolly lovely. And to make sure the staff didn't get all confused, they even went to the trouble of changing the locks. What more could a girl want? And they sent out lovely letters from financial bods PriceWaterHouseCoopers (what a long word!) saying that the company "is likely" to start formal insolvency procedures. So sweet! Sacking you before they were certain they'd gone bust - ah, the dears. But look! Here are two grumpy curators who unreasonably claim they could have been treated a wee bit nicer given all the hard work they've put in these years. Read the ungrateful wretches on [link].

FANTASTIC NEW NEIGHBOURS

Look! Is it a bird? Is it an eagle? Is it a vulture? Is it a large but deeply unhip East London art gallery looking around the Lux just after it closed with a view to moving in? And the answers to the questions earlier in this paragraph are all: no! Don't think challenging 80s-stylee painting bang in the middle of our cherished Hoxton Square. Don't think what the hell is neighbourhood coming to? Don't think: not Spearmint Rhino next! Think: good luck Mr Jopling!

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Is Victoria Miro going to close?! Hell, no! Is it going to stay open despite all those nasty rumours it was going to close? Hell, yes! Is Glenn Scott Right ever wrong? Who knows? What the hell has Abigail Lane been on? Check out the show and marvel at the tootling panda.

ART CRITICS ON TELEVISION

Oh! We at Artrumour love art critics on television and we're particularly looking forward to this year's Channel 4 Turner Prize coverage - so profound, so witty, so deep! Yes, baby! But whilst you're waiting, ponder these questions: question 1: which well known art critic has been incensing his production teams by taking to using the dinner trays on planes for consuming boutros? And apparently takes many, many takes to get those witticisms just so right? question 2: which portly, devout art critic has amazed her crew with drinking prowess? Crew members particularly recall one incident when the tv art star was asked to empty her deep pockets at an airport security check, resulting in a haul of around twenty miniatures which our offender claimed were 'holy water'.

OLD MUSEUM STRIKES BACK

So you thought old Tate was old and boring? So you thought you'd never visit Millbank again aside from on one of those oddly melancholic yet beautiful late Autumn days when you fancy a bit of Stubbs? We all love horses but think again sucker! The old Tate is back - with a new door AND a new staircase. Which are apparently fab! And lots of other things are going on: it's just that Artrumour is not quite sure what they are. But they're having a party, and despite all previous Tate parties being terrible because their mailing list was last updated in 1976 (come in Frank Auerbach!), this one looks like its actually gonna rock. Watch this space….

OOP NORTH

The Baltic is almost done. And it's pretty damn funky. And the director has built himself an enormous office with windows overlooking the water so he can eject any troublesome curators with minimum fuss. Nice one.

ANY ANSWERS…

As to why most of the Whitechapel's education folk seem to have left all at the same time? But make them nice answers!

ART MAGAZINES!

Aren't they great? We at Artrumour are pleasantly surprised by the new look Art Review. For one thing, there are no reviews - which is fab. And its got a fabulously insane cover of Meester D'Offay and a fabulously insane inside photograph of its surprisingly-named editor. We like! And we hear that Contemporary Visual Arts are re-launching as Contemporary! With editors and things like that! And that Tate! is fighting off those nasty rival bids to run the magazine from Wink (who publish the exquisitely dull Wallpaper TM my arse) and Condy Nasty.

BUT SPECIAL MAGAZINE MENTION GOES TO…

.... frieze! Who are gonna be 10. Happy birthday! Is it just a decade since a fiery, young(er) Matthew Slotover announced to The Guardian he was going to re-introduce punk into publishing?

BLIMEY!

Aren't we being nice this issue?

KENT-O-METER

Hey you gallery girls and boys! Wanna know how many times the Time Out review crew (headed by the fearless Sarah Kent) printed reviews about your rivals? Or simply can't remember how many fantastic, insightful, deep reviews Time Out printed about you? Check out our league tables of Time Out reviews complied over the past year and ponder questions like: what the hell is Mobile Home doing in the Premier League? And what are Cabinet, Vilma Gold and Greengrassi doing slumming it in the Beazer Homes League? [link]

ARTRUMOUR RECOMMENDS

Mike Nelson, Dave Hickey, Eyre Brothers, the strangely moving month of October

ARTRUMOUR DOES NOT RECOMMEND

Wallpaper, Stubbs, dinner parties, 'October: The Second Decade: 1986-1996' (MIT press 1997, ed. Krauss, Michelson, Bois, Buchloh, Foster, Hollier, Kolbowski)