I’m traveling today. Back tomorrow.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
April 30, 2013, 7:54 am
Tuesday links
This isn’t new, but I just discovered it last week: For some time I’ve been pointing out that one of the problems with Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek’s Bubble fantasy is that no one’s on board with it, not even Hirshhorn staff. Now there is empirical data suggesting that the going-nowhere project has decimated morale among the Hirshhorn staff: According to a December 2012 Smithsonian survey, Hirshhorn employees rated the Hirshhorn the second-worst place to work in the entire 41-unit Smithsonian Institution.- Speaking of the Bubble: The Hirshhorn’s head of “identity” for the project announced her departure from the museum last week. Could that be a harbinger of how the Hirshhorn board’s upcoming vote on the project will go?
- Another prominent departure: Jennifer Bartenbach, the CFO of the troubled Indianapolis Museum of Art, left the museum on April 11.
- How the Denver Art Museum discovered that it owns a Canaletto.
- Greg Allen on buying a $36 Franz West multiple — maybe.
- Here’s what it looks like when Storm King de-installs a Mark di Suvero for shipment to San Francisco for this SFMOMA exhibition.
- Whitney Kimball wonders whether expensive ‘Make-a-Wish Foundation-style’ projects for wealthy artists are really necessary.
- I’m really enjoying following MoMA’s Jackson Pollock conservation project. [Image above: A housefly in Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950. Lots and lots more great JPEGs in James Coddington's and Jennifer Hickey's post.]
- On Aperture’s blog, Isabel Stevens reviews a show of Middle Eastern photography that recently closed at the V&A.
- Do not miss the transcripts of four artists taking over @SFMOMA’s Twitter stream on Slow Art Day.
- Great marriage of artist and residency: Erwin Redl at the Toledo Museum of Art. I don’t know where Redl will install his piece, but that SANAA-designed Glass Pavilion there sure has potential….
April 16, 2013, 10:25 am
MFA Boston announces free admission today
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, which typically charges $25 for entry, will be free today. Bravo.
Update: ICA Boston too. Double bravo.
April 11, 2013, 7:10 am
The Modern Art Notes Podcast: Kaz Oshiro
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features painter Kaz Oshiro. His work is on view in “Lifelike” at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. In art speak, “Lifelike” “invites a close examination of artworks based on commonplace objects and situations, which are startlingly realistic, often playful, and sometimes surreal. This international, multigenerational group exhibition features artists variously using scale, unusual materials, and sly contextual devices to reveal the manner in which their subjects’ ‘authenticity’ is manufactured.” Or it’s a contemporary trompe l’oeil show. Organized by the Walker Art Center and curated by Siri Engberg, it’s on view at MCASD through May 27. Oshiro is exhibiting new work at Honor Fraser gallery in Los Angeles in an exhibition that opens on April 13.
The topics we discuss include:
- Oshiro’s favorite elements of the trompe l’oeil tradition;
- Why he often provides a ‘reveal’ to the viewer;
- How he discovered realist painting; and
- Why he wants to chuck trompe l’oeil to become a ‘pure’ abstract painter.
On the second segment, Deb Sokolow discusses her narrative drawings and installations. Her work is the subject of two ongoing exhibitions: “Some concerns about the candidate” a “Matrix” exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum through June 30; and in a solo exhibition at Chicago’s Western Exhibitions gallery. It’s on view through April 20. [Image: Deb Sokolow, from Some concerns about the candidate, 2013.]
To listen (after noon ET, Thursday): Download the show to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or RSS. Stream the program at MANPodcast.com.
The Modern Art Notes Podcast is an independent production of Modern Art Notes Media. The program is edited by Wilson Butterworth. The MAN Podcast is released under this Creative Commons license.
For links images of artworks discussed on this week’s show, please click through to the jump.
April 10, 2013, 9:21 am
Travel links: de Kooning
April 9, 2013, 9:47 am
Travel links: Bruce Nauman at MoMA
I’m traveling through April 14. Meanwhile: The Museum of Modern Art is exhibiting Bruce Nauman’s White Anger, Red Danger, Yellow Peril, Black Death (1984). It’s one of a group of Naumans that is substantially about torture. I wrote about them here and here.
April 8, 2013, 9:28 am
Travel links: VMFA’s great Ed Ruscha
I’m traveling through April 14. Meanwhile: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has one of the best Ed Ruschas, Noise, Pencil, Broken Pencil, Cheap Western (1963). On the occasion of the re-opening of the museum after an expansion, I wrote about curator John Ravenal’s particularly good installation of it.
April 5, 2013, 10:54 am
Travel links: Robert Heinecken
I’m traveling through April 14. Meanwhile: The Museum of Modern Art has recently acquired a set of Robert Heineckens. They’re on view now. One of the best shows of Pacific Standard Time featured Heinecken and Wallace Berman. The catalogue was super.
April 4, 2013, 12:10 pm
The Modern Art Notes Podcast: Shirin Neshat
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Shirin Neshat. The Detroit Institute of Arts debuts a mid-career survey of Neshat’s work on Sunday, April 7. The exhibition, organized by curator Rebecca R. Hart, remains on view through July 7. The museum has published this catalogue in conjunction with the show.
Neshat is one of the most prominent Iranians living in the West. Neshat has been the subject of major survey exhibitions at museums in Spain, Germany, England, Italy, Mexico, Canada and the United States. Among many other honors, she won the Silver Lion at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival for “Women Without Men” and the First International Award at the 1999 Venice Biennale. She was a guest on Episode No. 11 of The MAN Podcast when she debuted her “The Book of Kings” series of photographs at New York’s Barbara Gladstone Gallery.
Subjects we discuss include:
- The recurrence of motifs in her work, such as how the ‘negative’ protagonists always wear white while the sympathetic characters always wear black;
- Why Neshat participates in so many monographic museum exhibitions;
- The way in which certain actors recur in her work; and
- The role of architecture in her work.
On the second segment, artist Kelly Richardson discusses the mid-career survey of her work that’s at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo through June 9. Titled “Legion,” the exhibition was organized by Alistair Robinson for the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland, England. The Albright is the exhibition’s only U.S. stop. The show is accompanied by a catalogue titled “Kelly Richardson: The Last Frontier.” More information on Richardson and her work is available on her website. Extended clips from several of her works are available on Vimeo, including The Erudition, Mariner 9 (still detail at right), Leviathan and Twilight Avenger.
To download: Download the show to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher or RSS. Stream the program at MANPodcast.com.
The Modern Art Notes Podcast is an independent production of Modern Art Notes Media. The program is edited by Wilson Butterworth. The MAN Podcast is released under this Creative Commons license.
For links images of artworks discussed on this week’s show, please click through to the jump.
April 3, 2013, 9:26 am
Travel links: Nancy Rubins
I’m traveling through April 14. Meanwhile: The Albright-Knox’s Nancy Rubins triumph.
