Category: art

When the chief art critic for your town’s largest paper publishes a front page review of the cafeteria’s “gelato collection”, do you:
A) Realize now’s a good time to rethink the curatorial program of the museum?
B) Wish he’d reviewed the best publicly accessible “bathroom installations” while he’s at it?
B) Develop a strong desire to pummel said critic about the head and face?
C) Remember that next door is a horrible Stella, and next to that was a concert starring Barry Bostwick, Robin “last BeeGee standing” Gibb backed up by the whitey white whitest choir EVER, and Clay Aiken singing the William Tell Overture, so why are you EVEN surprised?
E) All of the above.
Related, but not mentioned, an actual piece of art: Art Domantay’s 31 Flavors of Hell.
Related: Hirshhorn Museum men’s room features “The Lexus of baby changing tables.”

Mail fraud charges–for improperly ordering high school science-level lab samples–were announced yesterday against Prof. Steve Kurtz, a member of Critical Art Ensemble and a colleague.
Despite absence of ball, game, playbook, rules, Feds decide to keep kicking.

Critics who don’t buy this also don’t buy this [via bloggy]
I guess if the Observer isn’t going to have art critics whose recommendations ever make sense, at least they can have critics whose pans are consistent signals of worthwhile shows.

Critics who don’t buy this also don’t buy this [via bloggy]
I guess if the Observer isn’t going to have art critics whose recommendations ever make sense, at least they can have critics whose pans are consistent signals of worthwhile shows.

So now my big complaint about WPS1 is that you can’t link to broadcasts very easily.
I’ve been listening to a series of lectures the art historian Leo Steinberg gave at MoMA in 1960 about contemporary art and the public’s reception/perception of it. There are three hour-long lectures; the first appeared last week (6/15), so work your way back through the ‘previous broadcast’ section to them.
I’m a lazy fan of Steinberg, whose unabashedly erudite tone I find very engaging. He invariably uses it to deliver extremely smart insights, all the while bringing you along his observational and analytical path. His method and criticism still strike me as entirely applicable to art-seeing and -making today.
It’s about as much fun as an audio recording of a slide lecture can be, I imagine. And it’s fascinating to listen back on a time when artist like Jasper Johns or John Chamberlain were seen as controversial provocateurs. Check it out.

So now my big complaint about WPS1 is that you can’t link to broadcasts very easily.
I’ve been listening to a series of lectures the art historian Leo Steinberg gave at MoMA in 1960 about contemporary art and the public’s reception/perception of it. There are three hour-long lectures; the first appeared last week (6/15), so work your way back through the ‘previous broadcast’ section to them.
I’m a lazy fan of Steinberg, whose unabashedly erudite tone I find very engaging. He invariably uses it to deliver extremely smart insights, all the while bringing you along his observational and analytical path. His method and criticism still strike me as entirely applicable to art-seeing and -making today.
It’s about as much fun as an audio recording of a slide lecture can be, I imagine. And it’s fascinating to listen back on a time when artist like Jasper Johns or John Chamberlain were seen as controversial provocateurs. Check it out.

It’s like WPS1, but it’s almost two years old. The Walker Art Center operates The Walker Channel, an online collection of streamable artist interviews and other programming.
This is one prong of the museum’s strategy to maintain and expand their presence while their building is receiving a Herzog & deMeuron makeover.
Most of the recordings are interviews with people I’ve never heard of, and there are no explanations. But there IS a 2002 interview with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, one of the principals in the cool Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow. They published Pet Architecture, which is a very cool book and site.
It’s simultaneously heartening and depressing to note that this interview with an architect I’m very interested in is almost as excruciatingly underproduced as the early WPS1 bits I whined about earlier.

It’s like WPS1, but it’s almost two years old. The Walker Art Center operates The Walker Channel, an online collection of streamable artist interviews and other programming.
This is one prong of the museum’s strategy to maintain and expand their presence while their building is receiving a Herzog & deMeuron makeover.
Most of the recordings are interviews with people I’ve never heard of, and there are no explanations. But there IS a 2002 interview with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, one of the principals in the cool Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow. They published Pet Architecture, which is a very cool book and site.
It’s simultaneously heartening and depressing to note that this interview with an architect I’m very interested in is almost as excruciatingly underproduced as the early WPS1 bits I whined about earlier.

So you better treat her right.
Approximately a hundred friends at Downtown for Democracy are organizing a fundraising party and silent auction of works by 35 established and emerging artists Tuesday, June 29, at Passerby.
Buy a $75 ticket to bid (silent auction runs from 8-10:30) or to see the preview (11-6). [And even though Bush & Co are the world’s problem, federal election regulations don’t permit (non-permanent resident) foreigners to give money or bid. Sorry.]
D4D is a PAC mobilizing the arts and creative community to raise hard money to, among other things, clean up the language on the Senate floor.

So you better treat her right.
Approximately a hundred friends at Downtown for Democracy are organizing a fundraising party and silent auction of works by 35 established and emerging artists Tuesday, June 29, at Passerby.
Buy a $75 ticket to bid (silent auction runs from 8-10:30) or to see the preview (11-6). [And even though Bush & Co are the world’s problem, federal election regulations don’t permit (non-permanent resident) foreigners to give money or bid. Sorry.]
D4D is a PAC mobilizing the arts and creative community to raise hard money to, among other things, clean up the language on the Senate floor.

In anticipation of the reopening of the midtown museum building, MoMA’s design department created a new website–including a weblog–for the Junior Associates, a group of 400 or so people who do all kinds of art world-related activities. As far as I know, it’s the first museum weblog. (I know, Eyebeam eats weblogs for breakfast, but they’re not a museum. They ARE quite cool, though, and hosted a swell party and exhibition walkthrough for the JA’s, which, although it has passed, remains enshrined in a gif on the JA welcome page.)
When Picasso painted a portrait of Gertrude Stein (which she gave, alas, to the Met), someone said it didn’t look like her. “It will,” he replied. Such is the long horizon on which art’s influence operates. Remember this when you look for the weblog on the JA site, because the Museum has called it a ‘notebook’. A Typepad-powered notebook. We may not call weblogs notebooks now, the Museum seems to say, but we will.
I, of course, trendchaser that I am, suggested that the site be called JA Rule. After all, it/they does/do. For a young person in the city, it’s probably the greatest opportunity to get involved with a truly amazing institution. And as the calendar of events attests, JA’s get to do some really cool stuff. (For the reopening shindig this fall, being a JA is like having the golden ticket.)
In the end, the Museum’s rejection of my JA Rule idea was correct. The main requirements for becoming a JA, you see, are 1) an interest in seeing and learning about art, 2) a desire to support the Museum, and 3) $500 a year, or as it’s known in the haut monde of museum committees and high-priced benefit galas, 50 Cent.

In anticipation of the reopening of the midtown museum building, MoMA’s design department created a new website–including a weblog–for the Junior Associates, a group of 400 or so people who do all kinds of art world-related activities. As far as I know, it’s the first museum weblog. (I know, Eyebeam eats weblogs for breakfast, but they’re not a museum. They ARE quite cool, though, and hosted a swell party and exhibition walkthrough for the JA’s, which, although it has passed, remains enshrined in a gif on the JA welcome page.)
When Picasso painted a portrait of Gertrude Stein (which she gave, alas, to the Met), someone said it didn’t look like her. “It will,” he replied. Such is the long horizon on which art’s influence operates. Remember this when you look for the weblog on the JA site, because the Museum has called it a ‘notebook’. A Typepad-powered notebook. We may not call weblogs notebooks now, the Museum seems to say, but we will.
I, of course, trendchaser that I am, suggested that the site be called JA Rule. After all, it/they does/do. For a young person in the city, it’s probably the greatest opportunity to get involved with a truly amazing institution. And as the calendar of events attests, JA’s get to do some really cool stuff. (For the reopening shindig this fall, being a JA is like having the golden ticket.)
In the end, the Museum’s rejection of my JA Rule idea was correct. The main requirements for becoming a JA, you see, are 1) an interest in seeing and learning about art, 2) a desire to support the Museum, and 3) $500 a year, or as it’s known in the haut monde of museum committees and high-priced benefit galas, 50 Cent.