LOUISVILLE, KY.-The Speed Art Museum is proud to announce the acquisition of a video work described as the “sexiest work of art at this year’s Venice Biennial,” The Most Beautiful Woman in Gucha by London-based, Serbian-born artist Breda Beban.

This installation will be on view at the New Center for Contemporary Art, located at 725 East Market Street beginning from September 20 through November 24, 2007.

Beban’s work was donated to the collection of the Speed Art Museum in memory of activist and philanthropist Minx Auerbach, a Louisville native and longtime member of the New Art Collectors group of the Speed. Beban’s work shows a young Gypsy woman belly-dancing for money at an annual village brass band festival in central Serbia. The viewer plays witness to the dancer’s seduction of a young man in a scene filled with sweat, glances, gazes and touches. The music sets the tone of the scene as it transitions between a riotous Gypsy band and then slowing down the motion with more seductive melody.

The Most Beautiful Woman in Gucha was acquired by the museum after Speed Curator of Contemporary Art, Julien Robson discovered it at the 52nd Venice Biennial this summer. "This is a powerful and compelling work that adds significantly to the contemporary holdings of the Speed. While saturating the viewer's imagination with the promise of love, Beban's work also reveals how meaning depends both upon the framing of images and the subjective response of the viewer. The Most Beautiful Woman in Gucha is a work that Minx Auerbach would have been proud to see in the Speed's collection," said Robson.

Moving fluidly between film and photography, Beban has produced and exhibited a number of important works that have brought her international acclaim. Beban was the recipient of the International Video Festival Medeja Golden Sphinx Prize in 2007 as well as the Paul Hamlyn Award for Visual Arts in 2001. Her work has been shown in a variety of renound institutions including Kunstmuseum, Thun, Switzerland; Tate Gallery, London; Zentrm f�r Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany; and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Breda Beban lives and works in London and Sheffield, England, and is Professor of Visual Arts at Sheffield Hallam University. She is currently working on a project for display at the Tate Gallery, London in October 2007.

A national leader in arts education, serving over 30,000 children each year, the Speed Art Museum has repeatedly been voted Kentucky’s best museum and is considered one of the top ten sites each Kentuckian should visit. The Speed honors its mission to bring great art to our communities through its distinguished collections and as the Commonwealth’s number one venue for international art exhibitions.

Rated one of the top ten audio guides in the country by MSNBC.COM, “Passport to the Speed,” offers insight into selected works in the collection, and is available for free at the Museum’s Welcome Center. The Speed Art Museum: Highlights from the Collection, a new companion guide to the Speed’s distinguished collection will be available December 2007.

The Speed Art Museum is located at 2035 South Third Street in Louisville. Other features of the museum include a hands-on Art Learning Center for families, a caf� and gift shop. Gallery hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; Thursday 10:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.; Saturday 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; and Sunday 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. The museum is closed on Mondays. For general information, call (502) 634-2700 or visit www.speedmuseum.org.