Roberta Smith continues her one-woman campaign (or so it seems—are there others on this bandwagon?) of bringing thoughtful and reasonable thinking to the world of art making, viewing and buying. Like so many other subcultures, this is one that regularly runs off the rails and into the hollers of ego, greed and elitism. Her recent […]
Museums
- Aesthetics
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One More Dance: The 2010 Whitney Biennial
Jeffrey Inaba’s installation warms the cold cement interior of the Whitney Museum lower level It is a ritual I have witnessed for over twenty years (and one I have participated in with variations in intensity): The Whitney Biennial Grouse. The cacophony of anger, outrage and “how could they?” that erupts around this show every two […]
Do Something Else Next
Adam, Eve, by Philip Taafe (Taafe is one of several undervalued painters mentioned in Roberta Smith’s Sunday Times piece) Roberta Smith secured the premier position in the Sunday Times Arts section, above the fold and in the center. The visual arts rarely show up in the top slot these days. Her article, Post-Minimal to the […]
- Aesthetics
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Reporting in on the Other Coast
View of the Pacific Ocean from Marin County, with the Farallon Islands in the distance How does it work, those mysterious tendrils that some part of us knows how to sprout, rooting us to the places that feel hospitable, that feel like our native habitat? I spent my childhood in California but expatriated to the […]
Per Kirkeby
“Mild Winter II” (Photo: Galerie Michael Werner) This weekend I found Laura Cumming’s review in the Guardian of the new Per Kirkeby show at the Tate Modern. (It is also posted on Slow Painting.) Well known in his homeland of Denmark, he’s a painter whose work does not get as much visibility (IMHO) everywhere else […]
Some Get it Right
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University in Waltham MA (Photo, Boston Globe) Thanks to the ever-resourceful blogger Judith H. Dobrzynski at Real Clear Arts for this update on the much-discussed issue of universities and the visual arts. As the title of her posting suggests, Take That, Brandeis! Dartmouth Gets $50 Million for a Visual Arts Center, […]
Mass MoCA, You Rock
Here’s a well deserved shout out for Mass MoCA. One of my all time favorite museums, this innovative, expansive and lively space is celebrating its 10 year anniversary. That’s no small feat. (A piece about its inception is posted on Slow Painting, excerpted from an article by Geoff Edgers in the Boston Globe.) Here are […]
Rose Art Museum, from a Distance
I’ve been following the Rose Art Museum’s undoing here and on Slow Painting. Over the weekend London-based The Guardian ran an article about this unfortunate state of affairs as well. Reading about the Rose from that Eurocentric point of view brought on another layer of frustration for me. Funding crisis … Visitors tour the Rose […]
Update on the Closing of the Rose Art Museum
This, from the New York Times: Three prominent museum-world figures who are Brandeis University graduates spoke out vigorously on Tuesday against the school’s plans to close its Rose Art Museum and sell off artworks to raise money. In an open letter posted at the Rose’s Web site, Adam D. Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum […]
Dispensibility and Other Sorrows
Bravo to Roberta Smith, the New York Times art critic who journeyed to Boston this weekend to see firsthand just what was at stake with Brandeis’ decision to close the Rose Art Museum. Her report is a devastating one, revealing a process that is more egregious than I had previously realized. (You can read her […]