R.I.P.

Malcolm McLaren, the impresario, promoter, and self-promoter who once claimed to have invented punk rock, and who assembled and managed the youthful, unruly members of the Sex Pistols, the breakthrough British punk band, has died. He was sixty-four. His companion of many years, Young Kim, confirmed that McLaren died on Thursday, and said that he died of mesothelioma at a hospital in Switzerland, the New York Times’s Dave Itzkoff reports.

In the 1970s, McLaren returned to his native London from New York, where he had briefly managed the New York Dolls in the waning days of that band’s career. With his business partner and girlfriend at the time, Vivienne Westwood, they renamed their clothing shop Sex, and McLaren set about putting together his own rock act of untested British youth, which became the Sex Pistols.

Fronted by John Lydon—whose repugnant appearance and Irish background earned him the stage name Johnny Rotten—with Steve Jones (guitar), Paul Cook (drums), and Sid Vicious (a bassist who replaced original member Glen Matlock), the Sex Pistols terrified traditional music sensibilities with songs like “Anarchy in the UK” and “God Save the Queen,” and fueled McLaren’s flair for over-the-top spectacle: He arranged for the band to sign its contract with A&M Records outside Buckingham Palace, and organized a private boat performance of their “God Save the Queen” on the Thames that was quickly shut down by the police, cementing the group’s rebellious reputation.

As a solo artist, McLaren released genre-defying albums like Duck Rock in 1983 and Waltz Darling in 1989, and remained a perennial presence in the worlds of art and fashion. Greil Marcus wrote on McLaren’s most recent video work, Paris: Capital of the XXIst Century, in the March issue of Artforum.

HAVERFORD COLLEGE CURATORIAL CONFERENCE

Each participant will present a manifesto of curatorial practice. These presentations will be followed by an open conversation among the four presenters and audience members, considering the role of the curator in cultivating visual culture across disciplinary boundaries; the institutional elements necessary to integrate the display of art objects within a wider programmatic framework of interdisciplinary inquiry, experimentation, critique, or activism; and the purpose(s) of exhibitions in this contemporary moment of media dissemination, social networking, and other “ethereal” forms.

10 AM - 12:30 PM, Stokes 102, Haverford College

Speakers:
Ian Berry Curator, The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
Julie Joyce Curator of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Aaron Levy Executive Director and Chief Curator, Slought Foundation
Ingrid Schaffner Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania

Free and open to the public; lunch to follow in the Center For Peace & Global Citizenship (CPGC) Café, Stokes 104.

ART WEEK

Art week, Nov. 25 - Dec. 1, 1940 : Buy American art.New York : New York City W.P.A. Art Project, 1940.

EXHIBITION TALK: PAINTERS/PAINTING

In conjunction with the exhibition Don't Piss on Me and Tell Me it's Raining, apexart presents:

Tom Sanford will moderate a panel of five other painters who will talk about painting, including: Kamrooz Aram, Holly Coulis, David Humphrey, Dike Blair and Deborah Kass.

Wednesday, April 28: 6 pm

Painter and Bad at Sports NYC correspondent Tom Sanford will moderate a panel of five other painters in a discussion about painting. Kamrooz Aram, Holly Coulis, David Humphrey, Dike Blair, and Deborah Kass, representing various generations of New York painters, are all prominent voices among their cohort who enlist a wide variety of approaches to the medium. These "Painters of Painting" will discuss the current concerns in painting as well as painting's enduring relevance as a humanistic and idiosyncratic antidote to the prevailing corporate culture of consensus and commoditization.

And, if you are not familiar with the podcast Bad at Sports – definitely check it out.

QUOTE OF THE DAY (not necessarily a recurring feature)

"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

Salvador Dali.

NEW IN THE PEI READING ROOM

Come on in and READ ‘EM


On Curating: Interviews with Ten International Curators
Carolee Thea's second volume of interviews with ten of today's leading curators, explores the intellectual convictions and personal visions that lay the groundwork for the most prestigious and influential exhibitions in the world today. Among the aesthetic and theoretical issues raised are the relationship between artist and curator, globalism, post-colonialism, capitalism, the future of cultural tourism and the biennial as spectacle or utopian ideal. As Thea notes in her introduction, "the biennial or mega-exhibition--a laboratory for experimentation, investigation and aesthetic liberation--is where the curators' experience and knowledge are tested.

Seeing Out Louder
Jerry Saltz doesn't only address art objects in these essays, he considers the art world as an ever-mutating organism. He signals out mismanaged museums, out-of-control auction houses, misguided artists, the gossip pages of Artforum, and the tent-city casinos known as Art Fairs. Saltz has an unsparing eye, a deep love of the art world, respect for artists, self-deprecating humor, sweet skepticism, and one of the easiest writing styles of any critic working today. Tracking the most recent all-out orgy of art and money, Saltz considers what this did to art and asks, now that the money is gone, how might art and the art world put their house in order?

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists' Writings
"Institutional critique" is an artistic practice that reflects critically on its own place within galleries and museums and on the concept and social function of art itself. Such concerns have always been a part of modern art but took on new urgency at the end of the 1960s, when—driven by the social upheaval of the time and enabled by the tools and techniques of conceptual art—institutional critique emerged as a genre. This anthology traces the development of institutional critique as an artistic concern from the 1960s to the present, gathering writings and representative art projects of artists who developed and extended the genre.


The Sublime (Documents of Contemporary Art)
In the contemporary world, where technology, spectacle, and excess seem to eclipse nature, the individual, and society, what might be the characteristics of a contemporary sublime? This anthology examines how contemporary artists and theorists explore ideas of the sublime, in relation to the unpresentable, transcendence, terror, nature, technology, the uncanny, and altered states. Providing a philosophical and cultural context for discourse around the sublime in recent art, the book surveys the diverse and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the term as it has evolved from the writings of Longinus, Burke, and Kant to present-day writers and artists. The sublime underlies the nobility of Classicism, the awe of Romantic nature, and the terror of the Gothic. In the last half-century, the sublime has haunted postwar abstraction, returned from the repression of theoretical formalism, and has become a key term in critical discussions of human otherness and posthuman realms of nature and technology.

IT'S NOT DRY YET

Discovery Channel has their Shark Week and in early May PEI has our Painting Week. Relevant to conversation(s) is an article Roberta Smith wrote this past weekend for the NY Times. Check it out…

WANT TO CURATE FOR WALES AT THE NEXT VENICE BIENNALE?

A Call For Curatorial Propositions From Galleries, Arts Organisations, Curators, Artist/curators And Visual Arts Collectives
Wales At Venice 2011
Closing Date 16 April 2010

Arts Council of Wales is delighted to confirm that Wales will be participating at the 54th International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale in 2011. Wales at Venice is supported by the Arts Council of Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government and is a key part of the strategy for the visual arts in Wales.

Wales at Venice will be in its 5th Biennale year in 2011. Previous artists representing Wales include, John Cale, Richard Deacon, Merlin James, Heather & Ivan Morison, Peter Finnemore, Bethan Huws, Cerith Wyn Evans (see www.walesvenicebiennale.org ) The Biennale enhanced these artists' international profile and has showcased outstanding work from Wales.

This opportunity remains the prime international context for contemporary art and raises Wales' cultural profile as a place for many emerging and highly respected artists. With a variety of approaches taken to date, Arts Council of Wales is now seeking to open out the possibilities for our next presence, as it responds to the on-going shifts for presenting contemporary art.

In the past, artists have been chosen to represent Wales by a commissioner and curator working with a committee. However for 2011, we feel it would be more exciting and rewarding to call for submissions and ideas from our visual arts community.

It is vital that this international platform is maximised, that the presentation speaks of contemporary Wales and that it connects in artistic terms with other curated exhibitions and presentations at the Biennale. In essence it needs to continue to build the focus on contemporary art from and within Wales.

This is a call to galleries, arts organisations, curators, artist/curators and collectives with a proven track record of working internationally or delivering respected international presentations of contemporary art. Interested parties should be based in Wales or have a connection/awareness of Welsh contemporary visual arts practice.

To prepare for Venice in 2011, Arts Council of Wales is initiating the following process: 


1. Invite exploratory propositions through this call. (March-April 2010)
2. The Venice Advisory Committee will evaluate these propositions. (April 2010)
3. Offer a short development phase supported by a fee to a maximum of three propositions, (April- May)
4. Make a final selection, before constituting and financing the partnership team and artist(s) to create the exhibition. (May-June 2010)

Reports at the various stages will be posted on the Arts Council of Wales website and the Wales at Venice website.

In addition to realising the exhibition at the Biennale, the partnership will need to actively contribute towards a strong education programme, audience development initiatives and raising the profile on an international stage of high quality visual arts practice in Wales.

For further enquiries and to request a Wales at Venice Biennale Proposition Form please contact Lindsay Hughes, Senior Visual Arts Officer at Arts Council of Wales, lindsay.hughes -at- artswales.org.uk

PEI APRIL EXHIBITIONS PICKS

Time for another installment of PEI's Exhibitions Picks, our monthly feature highlighting exhibitions of exceptional interest. This month's picks are all just a bit beyond Philadelphia, summer is coming… take a road trip!!!


CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
The Magnificent Seven: Harrell Fletcher
Selections from the Life and Work of Michael Bravo
January 19–April 24, 2010
Curated by Harrell Fletcher as part of The Magnificent Seven, this unique, biographical exhibition features artworks by the artist's mentor, family member and friend Michael Bravo. Selections From the Life and Work of Michael Bravo presents paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, and sculptures from the artist's large body of work produced over the past fifty years. The exhibition also highlights a wide range of personal objects that Bravo created for his family including wooden ships, airplanes, and mobiles, as well as family snapshots and other ephemera from the artist's life and career.


Ballroom Marfa
In Lieu of Unity / En lugar de la unidad
March 26 – August 15, 2010
Curated by Alicia RitsonIn Lieu of Unity brings together artists from Mexico – citizens, residents and emigrants – who have sustained a curiosity about social relations in their art practices. Their focus demonstrates that the nature of existence is contingent not merely on the cognizance of being, but more so on the relationships between individuals and the collectives they form. Through varied perspectives on what it means to be together, these artists relinquish utopian ideas of unity. Instead they favor their own explorations of the underlying systems that influence everyday encounters, such as language, commerce, architecture, citizenship and social mores.


The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Dr. Lakra
April 14 - September 6, 2010
Jerónimo López Ramírez, also known as Dr. Lakra, is an renowned tattoo artist who lives and works in Oaxaca, Mexico. Under his pseudonym, loosely translating as “Dr. Delinquent,” he draws over vintage printed materials and found objects rather than skin, manipulating images of pin-up girls, 1940s Mexican businessmen, luchadores, and Japanese sumo wrestlers. Referencing diverse body art traditions from Chicano, Maori, Thai, and Philippine cultures, Dr. Lakra layers spiders, skulls, crosses, serpents, and devils over these existing images. Playful, naughty, and often intentionally vulgar, his work challenges social norms by blurring cultural identities.


MASS MoCA
Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With
December 12, 2009 – October 31, 2010
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle's project is based upon Mies van der Rohe's uncompleted project, the 50x50 House (1951), a square structure open to view on all four sides through glass walls. In Manglano-Ovalle's work, the house will be constructed at approximately half scale and inverted, the ceiling of the original becoming the sculpture's floor, the floor becoming the ceiling, and all interior elements such as Mies-designed furniture and partition walls installed upside down. Within the sterile, modernist space, a small narrative is evident. A screen displays a relentless series of video messages that go unanswered by the anonymous and absent occupant of the glass house. As the unrequited callers grow increasing frustrated we are left to piece a story line with only the (anti)gravitational consequence of a sudden occurrence.

A WONDERFUL POST ON A WONDERFUL BLOG: 16 Miles

Negative Art Reviews in the New York Times

Last year 16 Miles blogged about the White Columns Annual, which was curated by Primary Information (Miriam Katzeff and James Hoff). The brilliant little diagram was the focus…

DEAR CURATORS, PLEASE PASS TO ARTISTIC FRIENDS…

John Baldessari (American, b. 1931). Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966-68. Acrylic on canvas. 68 x 56 1/2 in. (172.7 x 143.5 cm).The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica / © John Baldessari

ARTISTS' GRAVES

Odd, I know, but since visiting Robert Smithson grave as part of a CLUI (The Center for Land Use Interpretation) tour of New Jersey I’ve been fascinated by some artists final resting places…

Henri Matisse

Vincent Van Gogh

Mark Rothko



Jackson Pollock



Salvador Dali



Jean-Michel Basqiat



Andy Warhol

Call For Applications: Art Fag City Curatorial Fellow

Calling Young Curators
The always interesting Art Fag City (AFC) is looking for a Curatorial Fellow:

Art Fag City is seeking a Curatorial Fellow as part of a new program titled “Young Curators”. AFC is an award-winning New York-based art blog that focuses on art world news, reviews, and culture commentary.

Ideal candidates have a deep knowledge of contemporary art and digital media, possess excellent writing and editing skills and either a degree in curatorial studies or experience curating. Applicants should also be extremely organized, self-motivated, and detail-oriented. Knowledge of Facebook, Delicious, Flickr, and Twitter is preferred. Interest in New Media is also a plus.

The Curatorial Fellow will work directly with AFC Editor-in-Chief Paddy Johnson on a project-to-project basis. The position offers valuable hands-on experience in the fast-growing world of digital media, and in-depth insight into a prestigious online publication. This position will give curators the opportunity to attend private tours and panel discussions as well as write original content for the blog.

Find more on their blog here.

This Weekend: Art Handling Olympics!!!

From the event's website:

Art Handlers are the unrecognized backbone of the art industry. We are the life blood of galleries, art shipping companies, museums, art storage warehouses, artist’s studios, and cultural institutions. For most of us, the hours are long, risking life and limb without health insurance or job security. There are more of us than anyone realizes and we’ve never had the chance to throw down together.

The Art Handling Olympics (AHO) is the first event of its kind. It is equal parts olympic competition, three ring circus, and foreign TV game show. The day’s events will be rowdy, fast paced and ending with a monster party.

Art Handler teams will compete in a series of physically and mentally excruciating events that spotlight the absurdity and seriousness of our jobs. Picture the worst install you’ve ever worked on. Now add a psychotic art director frothing at the mouth, the world’s most indecisive client, a frantic truck dispatcher, an audience, a timer, and beer. Art will be destroyed and egos shattered. There will be glory to the winners, but nothing is sacred and no one is safe from humiliation in the olympic arena.

Sunday, March 21, 2010, 3 pm, at Ramiken Crucible, 221 East Broadway, New York, NY 10002.

Quote Of The Day (not necessarily a recurring feature)

"But I'm more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg's my main influence."

Damien Hirst

World Of Art School For Critics And Curators

Deadline: March 23, 2010

The World of Art enables participants to learn the knowledge, skills and methods needed to tackle the complex issues in the world of art.

The school is intended for all who are interested in working in the field of contemporary art, regardless of experience, age and education.

The annual school program is internal and for a selected group of participants who will be chosen by open call. The course has two semesters:
- the first semester (April–June 2010) will be dedicated to the acquisition of art – historical, theoretical and methodological skills
- the second semester (September 2010–May 2011) will be dedicated to critical and curatorial studies and practice.

The program includes lectures, seminars, workshops, research work, modules on the practical work of the curator, study excursions and practice in galleries. The process comprises the organisation of events, studio visits, meetings with curators, artists, theorists, and writers, and teamwork in conceptualisation and preparing an exhibition of contemporary art under the tutor’s leadership.

Fee: 400 euros (VAT included)Send or bring your application form (download here), CV, motivation letter and review of selected exhibitions of contemporary art (up to 40 lines) to SCCA-Ljubljana, Metelkova 6, SI 1000 Ljubljana, svetumetnosti -at- scca-ljubljana.si

The selection of participants will be in two stages. After the first selection, participants will be invited for an interview, to be held at the SCCA-Ljubljana on Thursday, April 1 and Friday April 2.

Museums Become Venue Of Choice For Some Bands

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Museums become venue of choice for some bands
Collectives find the venues suit their mix of music and performance art. Museums see the concerts as big draws for the young visitors they need.


Lucky Dragons, Los Elegantes and My Barbarian, and YACHT are more likely to found at artist-run-spaces than, say, Johnny Brenda’s.

PEI Funded Exhibition Gets A Shout-Out From A Conference At VCU

CFP: "Beyond the Art/Craft Divide: Rethinking Ceramics History"
20-23 October 2010
SECAC/MACAA Panel, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA

Ceramics is arguably experiencing a renaissance, both in terms of production and reception. Recent work in clay has received high-profileattention: consider that Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize in 2003; note that Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art, a venue for cutting-edge art, garnered positive reviews for its 2009 "Dirt on Delight." Scholars have begun to reconsider the place of ceramics in art history more broadly: Andrew Perchuk and Glenn Adamson, for example, have examined studio pottery in dialogue with conceptual avant-gardes of the mid-twentieth century. It might seem that studio ceramics is finally poised to rise above its lowly status as craft and gain definitive entrée into the fine-arts world. Yet the question of whether ceramics should be considered craft or art is not one that actually shows any signs of disappearing. Is it time to let this distinction fall away, to leave that question behind in favor of others? Or is it necessary to retain these categories? This session aims to consider what forms the future of ceramics history and criticism should take. Panelists may turn to the distant or recent past, modeling a practice or history without addressing this divide or insisting on its continued relevance.

To submit a paper proposal, please download the form
from:http://www.secollegeart.org/annual-conference.html
The deadline for submissions is April 20, 2010.
Email proposals and/or questions to Bibi Obler, George Washington University, at bobler@gwu.edu.

MoCA NOMI Website Aa Artwork

Yesterday I went onto the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami’s website, as I often do, to see what forthcoming exhibitions they have lined up. The site had been redesigned in a wonderful, comical way. This morning ARTNET News provided an explanation:


The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami has just debuted the first U.S. museum survey of work by Cory Arcangel (b. 1978), the popular techno-artist who has composed "missing" Glockenspiel parts for Bruce Springstein songs and dubbed the 1993 cult film Dazed and Confused with dialogue read by Indian-accented actors. "Cory Arcangel: The Sharper Image," Mar. 11-May 9, 2010, is organized by MOCA associate curator Ruba Katrib and includes an appropriately up-to-date range of works: videos, video game consoles, film, photographic prints, sculpture, drawings, sound, performance and web-based work.

One example of this last category is the museum website, which Arcangel has completely redesigned, putting all the text in the font known as Comic Sans, a particularly goofy-looking script intended to imitate comic book lettering. The font is widely despised by designers, and has even inspired a "Ban Comic Sans" campaign, which has its own website. According to Miami’s New Times, MoCA NOMI’s all-Comic Sans look caused a bit of a stir on the internet, including speculation that it was an early April Fool’s prank.

In any case, be sure to catch Arcangel’s 2009 video performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 11, an atonal modernist work supposedly played by a montage of YouTube snippets of cats walking on piano keyboards -- it’s here. And note the comments, from "LMAO" to "the paradigm of lameness."

Quote Of The Day (not necessarily a recurring feature)

"I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs. "

Andy Wahol

Does Anyone Have The Number Of The Philadelphia IKEA?!

An interesting blend of commercialism and major commissions noticed on artforum.com today:

IKEA Plans Major Art Commissions For Moscow Development
Global giant IKEA Retail Estate is planning multimillion-dollar commissions by major contemporary artists, including Piotr Uklanski, Jeppe Hein, and Jim Lambie, as part of an “airport-size” Moscow-based development due to open in 2012, reports the Art Newspaper.

The works are part of a plan to roll out mixed-use spaces across IKEA sites, beginning with Russia and the former Soviet republics. The first will open at the mammoth Mega Teply Stan retail park in Moscow. “The new building will be totally different from what’s there now,” said Simon Dance, of Simon Dance Design, who has been working with the Swedish brand since 2007. “The idea is to create a day out, somewhere people want to spend time, especially in Moscow where it takes so long to get anywhere because the traffic is so bad.” He said the concept of the developments is to “fuse culture, commerce, and leisure—and the works of art are a key part of our vision.” Plans for the site include shops, restaurants, and an ice rink, as well as an IKEA flat-pack furniture store.

Hein is proposing a mirror labyrinth to be placed opposite the new building’s facade, which will be nearly one thousand feet in length and eighty feet in height. Uklanski is working on a large-scale iron sculpture, which will be viewable from the sixteen-lane motorway that runs alongside the site, while Lambie intends to make a new version of Secret Affair, 2007, an installation of giant keyhole-shaped sculptures.

NYPD: Do Not Worry About The Naked Rooftop People

Check out this the New York Times story on a truly risky public arts projects presented by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Antony Gormley is putting 27 life-size figures on rooftops and ledges of Midtown Manhattan buildings, which the Police Department has reassured New Yorkers that the figures are not despondent people on the verge of leaping to their deaths.

Museum Attendance Up During Recession

In their American Voices Section the Onion asks “everyday people” about the state of museum audiences:

http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/museum_attendance_up_during

PEI Has A New Magazine Subscription …

THE EXHIBITIONIST: JOURNAL ON EXHIBITION MAKING

Co-Founded by former PEI Roundtabler, Jens Hoffmann (Innovation 2: Risk and the University Gallery), The Exhibitionist is a new journal focusing solely on the practice of exhibition making. The objective is to create a wider platform for the discussion of curatorial concerns, encourage a diversification of curatorial models, and actively contribute to the formation of a theory of curating. The journal is a publication made by curators for curators and understands itself as a site for critical debate in regards to the practice of exhibition making. The Exhibitionist will be published twice a year and will follow a strict editorial structure that revolves around the analysis and examination of past, present, and future exhibitions and other curatorial ideas. Under the title Curators' Favorites each issue will present three texts for which three curators will write a personal essay about their favorite exhibition, contemporary or historic. This will be followed by an in-depth look at a historically important exhibition in the section Back in the Day. Assessments will comprise the core of the journal. Here four curators will focus on reviewing one significant contemporary exhibition from different points of view. Typologies opens up the debate around specific exhibition formats. The section Attitudes will feature a text by a member of the editorial board reflecting on the current state of exhibition making while Rear View invites a curator to reflect upon an exhibition s/he has recently curated. Every fourth issue a conversation about past contributions, the content and the form of the journal between some of the past contributors will offer a forum for self-reflexivity.

The star-studded Editorial Board includes: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Okwui Enwezor, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Mary Jane Jacob, Maria Lind, Constance Lewallen, Chus Martinez, Jessica Morgan, Julian Myers, Paul O'Neill, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Adriano Pedrosa.

Come on by the library and check it out…

CURATING AND RISK

Wiped out from the Armory? Looking to stay local this weekend? This coming Saturday our friend’s over at Moore College will be presenting their third symposium on the practice of curating…

Curating and Risk: A Day of Conversations
March 13, 2010, 9:30 am - 5 pm
Curating and Risk: A Day of Conversations is the fifth in a series of public conversations about issues and ideas in contemporary curatorial practice. Through a series of grouped conversations with a roster of distinguished panelists, we will examine multiple ways in which curatorial activities can interrogate and engage risk. In this time of insecurities, rather than turning toward safety, what is a risky project/idea—financial, political, artistic, intellectual, aesthetic, moral, organizational, conceptual, administrative—for curators and artists? Is there creative release in the pleasure of ideas when risk is embraced rather than avoided? How do you access the successes and failures of risky projects? Or has risk become simply trendy? What is really at stake? And for whom?

Featured panelists: SHERYL CONKELTON Philadelphia based curator, formerly curator at Temple Gallery/Tyler School of Art, Museum of Modern Art, NY and Los Angeles County Museum of Art; DAVID DEMPEWOLF co-founder of Marginal Utility gallery and the zine Machete, Philadelphia, PA; HOMER JACKSON interdisciplinary artist, Philadelphia, PA; RUBY LERNER President and CEO of Creative Capital, New York, NY; AARON LEVY Executive Director and Chief Curator, Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, PA; LANA LIN and LAN THAO LAM New York based interdisciplinary collaborative artist team (LIN + LAM); RADHIKA SUBRAMANIAM Director and Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons the New School for Design, New York, NY; NATO THOMPSON Chief Curator at Creative Time, New York, NY; RICHARD TORCHIA artist and Director, Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, PA.

Video interludes previewing Project 35, an international video exhibition of historic and contemporary works selected by 35 curators from around the globe. Project 35 is produced and circulated by iCI (Independent Curators International), New York.

Moderators:Janet Kaplan, Professor of Art History and Director of Curatorial Studies, Moore; Lorie Mertes, Director and Chief Curator, The Galleries at Moore

RSVP by March 8, 2010. Admission FREE and open to the public. Pre-registration via email is requested. For more information and to RSVP: 215-965-4027; kaplan@moore.edu or mailto:orgalleries@moore.edu

iCI Is So Great!

Independent Curators International has become THE hotbed of interesting curatorial discourse. For months PEI has posted information of their tremendous Curator's Perspective series of lectures and now they have graced us with another incredible resource: DISPATCH. iCI describes this site as:

DISPATCH is ICI’s new online publication that publishes a curator’s point of view on current developments in art. Practitioners based in different cities around the world are invited to use DISPATCH as their virtual base for a month, building their research over time through text, image, and video. Taking advantage of the interactive platform, DISPATCH will also allow for comments and feedback from readers around the world, allowing for the development of a dynamic curatorial network.

This month takes you on an extensive tour of Mexico City’s intersection of education, pedagogy and art – all from the comfort of your office computer.

It’s PEI highly recommended:

http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/index.php/dispatches/

And, of course:

THE CURATOR'S PERSPECTIVE


María del Carmen Carrión
Wednesday, March 107-9 pm
New York University , Steinhardt School of Education
Einstein Auditorium (1st Floor), New York City
María del Carmen Carrión is an Ecuadorian curator, writer, and cultural advisor. She is co-founder of ceroinspiración, an exhibition and residency space in Quito, where she recently curated the exhibition PACO GRUEXXO vs EL HOMBRE FOCA. In 2009, she designed Ecuador’s National Grants System for the Arts. Between 2005 and 2008 she worked as Associate Curator of New Langton Arts, a non-profit gallery in San Francisco.

ArtStars*

Get to know the Toronto art scene!!!
http://artstarstv.com/

PEI MARCH EXHIBITIONS PICKS

Time for another installment of PEI's Exhibitions Picks, our monthly feature highlighting exhibitions of exceptional interest.



New Museum
Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection
March - June 2010
We’ve seen the cover of the Brooklyn Rail and it’s finally time for the controversial show to open. Over 100 works by 50 international artists, all drawn from the collection of Greek magnate Dakis Joannou, one of the world’s leading collections of contemporary art. Guest-curated by Jeff Koons.



The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Paying a Visit to Mary
2008 Hall Curatorial Fellowship
January to June 2010
Paying a Visit to Mary is organized by Canadian curator Maxine Kopsa, a resident of the Netherlands, who is the second recipient of the Hall Curatorial Fellowship. Paying a Visit to Mary refers to a line from Tell Me, a 1979 play about language by French artist Guy de Cointet that questions how reality is perceived and interpreted. Like the play, the exhibition explores language as it relates to personal narrative and contemporary storytelling. Constructed as a “call and response” between different voices represented by a group of carefully selected contemporary artists, Paying a Visit to Mary tells a romantic, conceptual, and highly specific story of our time and our present human condition. The exhibition is seen as a conversation amongst both the artists and the audience with whom their work engages.



The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History
January - April 2010
The first survey of the early work of New York-based Sean Landers. Since the 1990s, Landers’ work has been one of the most captivating enterprises in contemporary art, as a practice that has long gamed sincere attempt to map the boundaries of human-nature and the self. This exhibition proposes that Landers’ formative body of work, produced from 1991-1994, was one that defined the artist, the persona, and the conceptual conceits that he has cultivated and enriched over the course of his twenty-year career. The show presents an overview of the artist’s oeuvre including text works on paper, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and diaristic calendars, with a focus on his performative videos shot in the studio.



Whitney Museum of American Art
2010 Whitney Biennial
February - May 2010
This year marks the seventy-fifth edition of the Whitney’s signature exhibition. While Biennials are always affected by the cultural, political, and social moment, this exhibition “simply titled 2010” embodies a cross section of contemporary art production rather than a specific theme. Balancing different media ranging from painting and sculpture to video, photography, performance, and installation, 2010 also serves as a two-way telescope through which the Whitney’s past and future can be observed.

New in the PEI Reading Room

Come on in and READ ‘EM!

30 Seconds off an Inch @ The Studio Museum

This survey has brought together contemporary artworks by a group of artists who, having absorbed the lessons of U.S.-based Conceptual art and identity politics, imbue their respective practices with a critical sense of play and irreverence adopted from Fluxus, Arte Povera, Gutai and Neoconcretism, among other international movements. 30 Seconds takes the singular practices and conceptual methods of black artists active on the West Coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a starting point—work that inspired a bodily engagement in conceptual practice. Presenting approximately one hundred works by dozens of artists, the exhibition will provide an overview of a generation of artists who use a variety of media, including photography, video, large-scale sculpture, figurative painting and site-specific installations. 30 Seconds aims to show how this group of artists engages with the body and race in clever, subtle and astute ways.

Shovel in a Hole by Urs Fischer

Text by Massimiliano Gioni, Jessica Morgan, Bice CurigerShovel in a Hole includes over two-hundred images of the Swiss artist Urs Fischer’s work, and features essays by Massimiliano Gioni, Jessica Morgan, and Bice Curiger. This catalogue is published in conjunction with Fischer’s solo exhibition at the New Museum, “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty,” curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Best known for his unexpected transformations of everyday objects and his lack of allegiance to any one style, Fischer consistently projects a sense of transience and existential uncertainty. This catalogue is an indispensible resource, including installation views and studio shots that cross-reference Fischer's thought processes. Shovel in a Hole was conceived by designer Scipio Schneider in close collaboration with the artist.

Hey Hey Glossolalia (BEFORE) and (AFTER)

A two-volume publication with a section curated by Adam Pendleton and contributions by over 40 major contemporary artists, including Tauba Auerbach, Mark Beasley, Nicholas Bullen, Adam Chodzko, Cerith Wyn Evans, Chris Evans, Ryan Gander + Bedwyr Williams, Liam Gillick + Tirdad Zolgadhr, Will Holder, Mark Leckey, No Bra, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, William Pope L., Sun Ra, Rammellzee, Rigo 23, Frances Stark, Ian Svenonius, Javier Téllez, Mark Titchner, Vert, Robert King Wilkerson, Carey Young, and more.

Gabriel Orozco @ MoMA

With a body of work unique in its formal power and intellectual rigor, Gabriel Orozco emerged at the beginning of the 1990s as one of the most intriguing and original artists of his generation. This volume, designed in collaboration with the artist and presented on the occasion of his retrospective at MoMA, offers a comprehensive examination of Orozco's career from the late 1980s to the present. Critical essays provide new approaches to grounding Orozco's work in the larger landscape of contemporary art; they are complemented by a a richly illustrated chronology that combines biographical information with focused discussions of selected objects. Each entry pays particular attention to Orozco's material practice and introduces the artist's own reflections on the work he has created.

RUBELLS TO OPEN D.C. MUSEUM

Looks like Mera and Don Rubell are set to open a new, 20,000-square-foot private museum, this one in Washington D.C. The art power-couple’s CACG Holdings partnered with development firm Telesis to snag a vacant building in Southwest Washington for $6.5 million, according to the Washington Post. The new development, which sits across the street from the Rubell-owned Capitol Skyline Hotel, will include a hotel and residencies, in addition to the museum.

The site was formerly owned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which had plans to move its College of Art and Design to the location. According to the Corcoran’s chief operating officer Fred Bollerer, the sale became necessary when a deal with a developer fell through. The location had been purchased by the Corcoran in 2006 for $6.2 million. The search for a suitable location for its art school continues.

ICI Curatorial Intensive

A training intensive for aspiring curators
Building on its history as a hub for curatorial ideas, ICI is supporting a new generation of curators to develop exhibition proposals. The Curatorial Intensive is a short-term, low-cost program taking place this June in New York for emerging curators across North America. From an open competition, 6-10 individuals will be selected to come to New York and work with some of today’s leading curators and artists. Through a rigorous schedule of workshops, discussions and critiques, as well as site visits to local institutions and artist’s studios, each participant will be led through the process of developing an idea for an exhibition into a full exhibition proposal.

After the New York phase of the project is complete, ICI will continue working with participants long-distance to finalize their proposals. The Curatorial Intensive has been organized in partnership with the CUE Art Foundation, who will provide their virtual gallery as a platform for participants to publish their proposals online so that broad publics, as well as the hundreds of institutions with which ICI works, can view the final proposals.ICI is uniquely positioned to establish The Curatorial Intensive, having worked with a wide range of curators to develop innovative traveling exhibitions. In 35 years ICI has organized 116 shows, which have been presented in 570 institutions in 47 states and 23 countries worldwide, and experienced by nearly 6 million people.

The Curatorial Intensive was developed by ICI’s Executive Director, Kate Fowle, who recently joined ICI after working as the International Curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. Prior to her time in China, Fowle spent 6 years in San Francisco at the California College of the Arts, where she was the director of the MA Program in Curatorial Practice, which she founded in 2002 with Ralph Rugoff.

Teachers & Advisors
Dan Cameron (Founding Director, Prospect New Orleans); Kate Fowle (Executive Director, ICI); Matthew Higgs (Director and Chief Curator, White Columns); Eungie Joo (Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs, New Museum); Maria Lind (Director, CCS Bard); Nicola Trezzi (US Editor, Flash Art); and Fred Wilson (artist).

Program Timeline
Application Deadline: March 12, 2010
New York Program: June 6-15, 2010
Proposals Published: July 15, 2010

Application Guidelines
Applications must include a 300-word description of an exhibition idea the applicant would like help in developing. Submissions should include an exhibition concept or key idea, and any artists that the applicant is considering.

Also required is a current resume, plus a 1-2 page letter of intent that outlines why applicants want to participate in The Curatorial Intensive, as well as an example of a recent exhibition that has made an impact on the applicants.

Applicants must be over the age of 21. Current graduate students are not eligible to apply for The Curatorial Intensive.

Fees & Scholarships
The program fee is $1,500. This covers local travel and admissions to museums and other institutions. Participants will be responsible for covering their travel expenses to and from New York as well as accommodation. In its commitment to make The Curatorial Intensive accessible to individuals from diverse economic backgrounds, ICI will offer full or partial scholarship packages to several program participants.

Individuals interested in applying for scholarships will need to submit an additional letter which addresses the following questions: 1. What are your future educational and career goals? 2. How specifically would The Curatorial Intensive help you to achieve those future educational and career goals? 3. Because this scholarship is partially awarded on need-based criteria, please explain the specific nature of your past or current financial challenges.

For More Information / To Send Application Materials
ICI (Independent Curators International)
799 Broadway, Suite 205
New York, NY 10003
T: 212.254.8200 x 26
F: 212.477.4781
education -at- ici-exhibitions.org

Research Residency at the MACBA Study Center

Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona



Apply for a MACBA Study Center Research Residency. From Curating.info:

In order to foster research in the field of contemporary artistic practices, the Study Center of MACBA has established four work stations for guest researchers, addressed to academic researchers, artists and other specialists in contemporary art, which are available in residency periods of three to six months. To apply for a residency, please send the following documents to centredestudis -at- macba.cat:

- letter of application, stating the desired dates for starting and concluding the residency.
- description of the project you wish to pursue during their residency, demonstrating the appropriateness of the Study Center for your research (maximum 3,000 characters).
- academic and professional curriculum.

Residency periods can last between one and three months. Exceptionally, these periods be prolonged, should this be justified by the nature of the candidate and the project submitted. However, in no case may the residency period exceed six months.

New in the PEI Reading Room

Come on in and READ ‘EM!

The PEI library is available to constituents of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, by appointment only, 9am – 5pm, Monday – Friday. To make an appointment call 267.350.4930 or e-mail pei@pcah.us.



For The Blind Man In The Dark Room Looking For The Black Cat That Isn't There
Curated by Anthony Huberman at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the group exhibition explores the speculative nature of knowledge and insists on the importance of curiosity and the things we don't understand. Arranged around the premise that the world--and art--is not a code that needs cracking, the works in the exhibition center on the fruitfulness of not-knowing, un-learning, and productive confusion. David Hullfish Bailey, Marcel Broodthaers, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Fischli & Weiss, Rachel Harrison, Giorgio Morandi, Matt Mullican, Rosalind Nashashibi & Lucy Skaer, Frances Stark, Rosemarie Trockel and others present explanations that playfully don't explain. Dedicated to the inquisitive mind, For The Blind Man celebrates our ability to get lost and the stories we use to find our way in the dark.



Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection
A heroine of American Minimalism, an increasingly admired artist whose journals (Daybook, Prospect, Turn) have a longstanding and devoted readership, but whose art has not previously been the subject of a substantial monograph. Perception and Reflection remedies this historical oversight superbly and decisively. The evolution of Truitt's sensibility is at once a classic Minimalist story and the tale of a truly independent spirit: following an encounter with the black paintings of Ad Reinhardt at the Guggenheim in 1961, she abandoned her earlier sculptural style and began to make stark, columnar works inscribed with bands of sometimes bright and sometimes quiet color.



Art and Text
Art and Text covers the development of the textual medium in art from the early combinations of text, lettering and image in the work of seminal artists such as El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters right up to the present day. The use of written language has been one of the most defining developments in visual art of the twentieth century. Art and Text is a unique and timely survey of this most contemporary and relevant artistic tool. The work of some of the most famous conceptual artists of the 1960s began to use written language as an artwork in itself. The expansive Art & Language group of artists and theorists, including Joseph Kosuth, also reconsidered the possibilities of ‘linguistic art.’



Piero Manzoni
Piero Manzoni was the enfant terrible of the post-war Italian avant-garde before his untimely death in Milan in 1963 at the age of just twenty-nine. Curated by Germano Celant, the artist’s premier scholar and author of the two editions of the Manzoni catalogues raisonné’s, this stunning catalogue spans Manzoni’s entire oeuvre, including works belonging to the Manzoni archives as well as several international museums and private collections. In addition, it presents several works by Manzoni’s American and European contemporaries. Manzoni’s alignments and responses to other artists active at the time, from Robert Rauschenberg to Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana to Robert Ryman, and Cy Twombly to Jasper Johns, demonstrate his own decisive contribution to the art of the late fifties and early sixties.


All book descriptions are from Amazon.com except Art & Text which is from blackdogonline.com.

PEI January Exhibitions Picks

Time for the first 2010 installment of PEI's Exhibitions Picks, our monthly feature highlighting exhibitions of exceptional interest. This month's picks are all within a day's trip of Philadelphia.

Sculpture Center
Long Island City, NY
Leopards in the Temple
January 10 - March 30, 2010
Leopards in the Temple is a parable by Franz Kafka. The group exhibition of the same name focuses on moments of metamorphosis, paradox, and formal adjacency, borrowing from the parable an ability to promote multiple readings of succinct forms and extraordinary occurrences. Gathering together an international group of artists, the works in this exhibition share an extra-linguistic interest in moments of translation and a resistance to fixed forms. The exhibition represents the first New York exhibition for a number of the participating artists. -e-flux.com



Guggenheim Museum
New York, NY
Tino Sehgal
January 29 - March 10, 2010
Tino Sehgal constructs situations that defy the traditional context of museum and gallery environments, focusing on the fleeting gestures and social subtleties of lived experience rather than on material objects. Relying exclusively on the human voice, bodily movement, and social interaction, Sehgal’s works nevertheless fulfill all the parameters of a traditional artwork with the exception of its inanimate materiality. The fact that Sehgal’s works are produced in this way elicits a different kind of viewer: a visitor is no longer only a passive spectator, but one who bears a responsibility to shape and at times to even contribute to the actual realization of the piece. Presented as part of the Guggenheim’s 50th Anniversary celebrations, Sehgal’s exhibition comprises a mise-en-scène that occupies the entire Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda. In dialogue with Wright’s all-encompassing aesthetic, Sehgal fills the rotunda floor and the spiraling ramps with two major works that encapsulate the poles of his practice: conversational and choreographic. To create the context for the exhibition, the entire Guggenheim rotunda is cleared of art objects for the first time in the museum’s history. -nyspacesmag.com



Whitney Museum of American Art
Collecting Biennials
January 16 -November 28, 2010
As a prelude, counterpoint, and coda to the Biennial, the Museum’s fifth floor is devoted to artists in the Whitney’s collection whose works were shown in Biennials over the past eight decades. Collecting Biennials is installed as a kind of historical survey within the Biennial, underscoring the importance of previous Biennial exhibitions in the Museum’s history and the formation of its collection. Work by one of the artists in 2010, George Condo, is included in the mix. Collecting Biennials begins nearly six weeks before the rest of the Biennial. -Whitney.org



Neuberger Museum of Art
Tania Bruguera: On the Political Imaginary
January 28 - April 11, 2010
Tania Bruguera: On the Political Imaginary is the first survey of the artist's interdisciplinary work focusing on the relationship among art, politics, and life. The exhibition features her powerful, innovative installation and performance work created for international venues over the past twenty years and will include multiple daily performances throughout the run of the show. The artist combines personal experience with a broad social and historical perspective to explore a range of issues including exile, displacement, endurance, and survival to create ephemeral, experiential works that are strongly visceral and highly poetic.-neuberger.org

Paddy Johnson documents the Art World Trends for 2010

Check out Paddy Johnson's Art World Trends for 2010 over at The L Magazine website. Frame art, apartment shows, the possibility of intelligent thought on the Internet(!), and the imminent death of “Crap on Crap”!

Call for Papers

Call for papers for an interesting conference at UC Santa Cruz (from the UC Santa Cruz Museum and Curatorial Studies website):

ACADEMIC CONFERENCE -- FRIDAY, MAY 14 2010
THE TASK OF THE CURATOR:
TRANSLATION, INTERVENTION, AND INNOVATION
IN EXHIBITIONARY PRACTICE

This one-day event will bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss the role of the curator in relation to how objects are displayed in museums and galleries. The title, inspired by Walter Benjamin's theories of translation, brings attention to the often overlooked or naturalized labor of curators, which involves subtle but nonetheless transformative acts of framing and poetic interpretation. Presenters are encouraged to "look outside of the white box" toward new and alternative display methods. Proposals are due on February 5th, 2010.

It's So Hard To Say Goodbye: X Initiative Closing in 2010

From e-Flux:

"X Initiative – an experimental nonprofit organization – is about to end its year long run at 548 West 22nd Street. Since it opened in March 2009, X Initiative has presented 12 exhibitions and more than 50 events, with an attendance of over 75,000 visitors. X Initiative received honorable mention in the best of 2009 articles by The New York Times art critics Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith."

"The month of January marks the last chance to see their final round of exhibitions, featuring solo shows by Hans Haacke and Artur Żmijewski, the group exhibition Ecstatic Resistance, and In Numbers, a presentation of artists’ serial publications through January 30th.

Click here for more info on X Initiative and the Feb. 3rd Bring Your Own Art closing event (inspired by Walter Hopps's 36 Hours).