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The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center made their plans public regarding Rising Currents, their Waterfront project in New York.
The purpose of this venture is to address the increased water levels and safeguard the ecosystems that are at risk of endangerment.
The details of the project are discussed in-depth at Artdaily.org.
Click here to read the article on Rising Currents
2 years ago | Tags: new york art projects artdaily museums
Shepard Fairey, the artist recognized for creating the Hope poster associated with President Obama’s campaign, took accountability for lying about the photograph on which he based the reproduced image. The confession, made known to the public on Friday, finally came up after months of fighting lawsuit charges from the Associated Press.
The New York Times reported the following:
Mr. Fairey admitted that in the initial months after the suit and countersuit were filed, he destroyed evidence and created false documents to cover up the real source. He said he had initially believed that The A.P was wrong about which photo he used, but later realized the agency was right.
“In an attempt to conceal my mistake, I submitted false images and deleted other images,” Mr. Fairey said in a statement, released on his Web site. “I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment, and I take full responsibility for my actions, which were mine alone.”
Mr. Fairey’s lawyers said they intended to withdraw when he could find new counsel.
Click here for the full article
2 years ago | Tags: obama, New York Times, contemporary art Sheperd Fairey copyright laws
Yesterday, the Tate Modern in London opened the newest addition to their renown Unilever Series. It is not very often that I would want or need to leave New York City to visit a notable installation or exhibition, but this particular instance is very tempting. If “How It Is” is anything like its predecessors, it will be quite an experience.”How It
From Artdaily.org:
Polish artist Miroslaw Balka has constructed a huge steel container, held aloft on two-meter high supports, which is open at the far end of the space as visitors enter.
They can walk up a ramp into the pitch black space, measuring 13 meters high, 10 meters wide and 30 meters long.
Entitled “How It Is,” the sculpture is designed to convey a sense of unease as the visitor walks into the container as if completely blind. The sculpture is on show from October 13 to April 5, 2010. “You can shape this yourself,” Balka said of the commission. “The shape you create is not just about your body, it’s about your mind.”
The title of the installation takes its inspiration from Samuel Beckett’s novel “How It Is,” about a narrator who looks back on his life as he crawls through mud.
Miroslaw Balka’s “How It Is” will remain in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall through April 5, 2010.
2 years ago | Tags: tate modern unilever series london Art Installation
After a long, arduous and highly controversial battle, The Barnes Foundation has reached a milestone in their process of relocation. This week, the Philadelphia Inquirer (Philly.com) and the New York Times posted a series of images showing designs for the building which will house the art collection when it moves to Philadelphia, PA in 2011.
From the New York Times:
Although Albert C. Barnes, who founded the collection in the 1920s, stipulated that it should never leave Merion, Pa. — a position still shared by many of its admirers — it was granted permission by a court in 2004 to move to a location on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, where it expects to be able to draw a larger audience. A design for its new building there, by the New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, is to be officially unveiled this week.
Also on the case of the Barnes Foundation, a video clip at NYTimes.com provides a glimpse of the documentary entitled “The Art of the Steal” which is currently being screened at the New York Film Festival.
… the film details the twists and turns in the struggle for control of the collection after the death of its founder, Albert C. Barnes, in 1951. The film’s director, Don Argott, spoke at the Toronto film festival about the Barnes collection and the battle over whether to move the collection from the foundation’s headquarters in the Philadelphia suburbs to the city’s downtown area…
2 years ago | Tags: art museum, Philadelphia films new york times art collection
The recently appointed director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Campbell, made it known that the institution’s active schedule of loan exhibitions will be significantly reduced over the next few years. Finally, someone is willing to risk a potential drop in visitor numbers and disappointing a section of the public to protect a museum from completely overextending itself!
The Art Newspaper published an article earlier this month that discusses the museum’s recent changes and the plan for temporary, loan exhibitions in the foreseeable future. It stated that “Campbell remains committed to maintaining a menu of international loan shows, but he acknowledges that ‘the economic circumstances will affect us profoundly’.”
Click here to read the article
2 years ago | Tags: Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas Campbell New York City museums the art newspaper art exhibitions
I just read an interesting, albeit anxiety-ridden article over at the New York Times. Guy Trebay discusses what it’s like to meet superstar artist Takashi Murakami at the Boom Boom Room in New York, after one of his art openings, during fashion week:
Sample question: Do you find that conducting the whirlwind jet-setting life of an ultra-genius pop star artist and handbag designer leaves you time for quiet consultation with your muse?
Or: What role does fate play in fame and global recognition? Do some ultra-genius pop star artist handbag designers just get lucky, while others wind up making Hendrick’s martinis behind a bar?
Or: Who styles your topknot? It’s kind of cute.
The one thing you should probably never inquire of a person of Mr. Murakami’s stature, on the eve of his exhibition at the Larry Gagosian Gallery, on the final night of Fashion Week, in the Boom Boom Room of the Standard Hotel, locus of all things flossy and urgent and cosmopolitan for the last seven days (and, looking forward, one might predict for the following 90), is what he thinks makes a party fun.
If you present such a banal query, well, be prepared for a look of smoldering incomprehension, a coldly evidenced distaste for breaches in the protocols of global celebrity. You must be ready to experience a displeasure that could atomize you, reduce you to an integer of laboring-class nothingness, a mote of dust.
2 years ago | Tags: art article, new york times, takashi murakami boom boom room gagosian
Currently there is a rather large confusion occurring over a stolen artwork - Iraq claims the painting to be a valid Picasso, while the Louvre denounces the piece as a fake:
From the New York Times’ Arts Beat:
Iraqi security forces on Thursday displayed what they said was a Picasso painting, who they said had stolen the painting during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990, The Associated Press reported. The artwork, said to be called “The Naked Woman,” was taken from the Kuwait National Museum during the Iraqi invasion that preceded the first gulf war. They said the former soldier had been trying to sell the painting and that it was seized in a raid on his house in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. The painting was said to have Picasso’s signature and the stamps of the Kuwaiti museum as well as the Louvre. But a Louvre official told The A.P. that it has never had a Picasso in its collection and does not sell its works because they are government property. The Art Loss Register in London told The A.P. it had no record of any paintings missing from the Kuwait National Museum, and no record of this particular painting as missing.
2 years ago | Tags: picasso iraq art crime stolen art louvre
A recent Art Newspaper article addresses the issue, America is changing- but are its art museums?
The article questions the diversity of art museums:
”..you do not have to look at major US art museums for long to realise that most of the senior management is white, unlike staff at comparable levels in corporations, universities and government offices. When is this going to change? Those leading efforts to diversify museums say the economic reality of who pays to support institutions has not evolved sufficiently to require any lasting push for change. But American demographics are shifting swiftly. US minority groups will become the majority in a few decades. And art museums will have to diversify to survive.
The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) raised the issue back in the 1990s, but “sufficient progress” has not been made, says Johnnetta Cole, director of the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) at the Smithsonian Institution…
“If museums are to be vibrant and sustainable,” she ( Johnnetta Cole) says, “they cannot present the work of only a select group of people.”
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I’ve always thought that art should aim to be accessible to everyone; it speaks to people from everywhere and maintain a universal quality. The elitism in art is what sometimes makes it hard for it to progress forward, and so initiative to diversify the art insitutions and the art they represent is a very good step forward.
2 years ago | Tags: changing art museums diversity in art museums diversify art multicultural art art institution changes johnetta cole
The Art Newspaper reported that the founder of MoCA China, Jeffrey du Vallier d’Aragon Aranita, has still not returned to Hong Kong to deal with his creditors and debts. With an ambitious plan to open up several MoCA museums across China that would share collections and programming, the artist/entrepreneur defied skeptics when he was even able to open the one and only MoCA on October 3, 2008. But shortly after the museum’s opening, Aranita skipped town, leaving behind debts upwards of a quarter of a million dollars.
Skeptics perhaps had a right to their hesitation: after three months and three exhibitions, MoCA China had to close because they ran out of money and couldn’t pay the rent. They also didn’t follow through on payment to artists after fundraising auctions.
All in all, it sounds like it was a poorly run operation—not surprising when your founder is tummy surfing in Hawaii. The Art Newspaper has tracked Aranita on his facebook page, which he updates with conflicting stories (he claims he went to Hawaii for healthcare). But facebook status messages apparently say he still has time for surfing. Aranita’s background is elusive and strange, and no one has any strong hopes he’ll make good on his debts. Jackass.
For the full story on Aranita and MoCA China, click here. For information on Aranita the artist, click here.
2 years ago | Tags: MoCA China Jeffrey du Vallier d’Aragon Aranita Museum of contemporary art hong kong museum art debt
Even though photography was invented in 1839, it was debated as an art form right into the twentieth century—thanks to the pioneering efforts of artists such as Alfred Stieglitz, photography finally was legitimized as an art form. It takes a while for any new technological medium to evolve into an art medium, and be accepted as such.
The Disposable Film Festival represents the pioneering efforts to have handheld and disposable cameras recognized as legitimate art forms. The DFF, which was created in 2007 in California, shows us that non-professional cameras that are sold to us as “mere” commercial items—point n’ shoots, camera phones, webcams, etc—in actuality have opened up the door to some truly innovative modes of artistic expression and exploration.
Check out this video about the Disposable Film Festival, by Bassett & Partners—it features a few highlights from the film fest.
The DFF has already grown in popularity, and has been successfully traveling around the country and globe, having showings at SXSW, New York, London, and most recently, in Paris in June.
For more information, check out the DFF website. They’re accepting submissions for DFF ‘10, so get creative with your iPhone and see what happens!!
