Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative BLOG

R.I.P.

2010-04-08T15:44:00.004-04:00

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

2010-04-06T10:09:00.004-04:00

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

2010-04-06T10:02:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-06T09:50:00.004-04:00

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)

2010-03-31T12:12:00.000-04:00

"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

2010-03-31T11:53:00.007-04:00

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

2010-03-31T11:49:00.002-04:00

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?

2010-03-31T11:34:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-31T10:57:00.009-04:00

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

2010-03-30T10:52:00.004-04:00

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…

2010-03-30T10:46:00.004-04:00

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

2010-03-30T10:09:00.008-04:00

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

2010-03-22T12:38:00.001-04:00

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!!!

2010-03-18T11:31:00.004-04:00

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)

2010-03-17T12:41:00.000-04:00

"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

2010-03-17T11:52:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-17T11:47:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-17T11:41:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-17T11:09:00.002-04:00

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)

2010-03-11T09:36:00.003-05:00

"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?!

2010-03-11T09:24:00.007-05:00

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

2010-03-11T09:17:00.000-05:00

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

2010-03-09T11:46:00.001-05:00

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 …

2010-03-09T11:36:00.004-05:00

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

2010-03-09T11:25:00.004-05:00

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!

2010-03-09T10:55:00.006-05:00

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*

2010-03-09T10:30:00.001-05:00

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

PEI MARCH EXHIBITIONS PICKS

2010-03-03T15:15:00.011-05:00

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

2010-03-01T09:51:00.007-05:00

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

2010-02-24T12:59:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-24T12:46:00.001-05:00

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

2010-01-12T10:55:00.003-05:00

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

2010-01-12T10:20:00.010-05:00

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

2010-01-11T12:21:00.008-05:00

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

2010-01-07T12:07:00.002-05:00

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

2010-01-07T11:48:00.018-05:00

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

2010-01-07T11:36:00.003-05:00

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).

The Man Who Made Curating an Art

2009-12-16T12:21:00.002-05:00

http://www.observer.com/2009/culture/man-whos-made-curating-art?page=0
THE NEW YORK OBSERVER By Leon Neyfakh

(When THE NEW YORK OBSERVER needs a quote - they come to the best!)

Hans Ulrich Obrist enjoys a level of prominence in the art world that would have been unimaginable for a curator of contemporary art 20 years ago. Back then, curators didn't get famous, and though they talked among themselves about their work, no one else cared very much about who they were or how they made their decisions.
People care about Mr. Obrist. At 41, the Swiss-born impresario has spent the past three years as co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London, and has curated some 150 exhibitions internationally since his early 20s. His reputation is that of a fast-talking, tireless obsessive, and his various activities--which include mounting shows around the world, moderating panels, writing catalog essays, hosting early-morning salons and conducting scores of in-depth interviews with artists and other cultural figures--have made him an improbably influential, globally ubiquitous presence in the art world.
After making his first bit of noise as a curator in 1991 with a group show in his kitchen that featured, among others, Charles Boltanski and the duo Fischli/Weiss, Mr. Obrist quickly made a name for himself as a self-consciously innovative exhibition-maker interested in working closely with artists and mounting shows in unconventional spaces.
"There's a certain kind of curator who is really down with the artists, and Hans Ulrich is definitely down with the artists," said the downtown gallerist Jeffrey Deitch. "There are many other curators who keep their distance, simply because it's their personality or their background or because they think that's what one should do. They're not on the scene. You're not going to see them at a party at 1 a.m., deep in discussion."
The interviews Mr. Obrist has conducted over the years currently add up to some 2,000 hours' worth of tape. A fraction of them have been published in books and magazines, but the vast majority remain in Mr. Obrist's personal archive. Through these interviews, Mr. Obrist has established himself as the unofficial secretary of the contemporary art world. "The way we might read Vasari for primary information on the Italian Renaissance," said Mr. Deitch, "people will be looking at the archive of Hans Ulrich's interviews to construct the art history of this era."
For all that, Mr. Obrist remains all but unknown to the general public.
"Sometimes people who are a little bit below the popular radar are actually more powerful than people everyone knows about," said Paula Marincola of the PEW Center's Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, who edited a 2006 collection of essays on curatorial practice. "In our field, he's kind of a rock star."
In that capacity, Mr. Obrist has functioned as a "catalyst," according to the artist, critic, and curator Matthew Higgs, but at some point during his career, "this other thing happened, which is that this character emerged, ‘Hans Ulrich Obrist,' who is clearly at the center now of all this activity and is as well known as a lot of the subjects of his interviews, exhibitions, and research."
Earlier this fall, Mr. Obrist was named the most powerful person in the art world by the British magazine ArtReview, bumping the fellow who topped last year's list, Damien Hirst, down to No. 48. The U.K.'s Independent wrote at the time that Mr. Obrist's placement was evidence that "it is curators rather than artists who are now regarded as the real movers and shakers of the art world."
THOUGH HE GRADUATED with a degree in economics and social science, Mr. Obrist was set on being involved with art from the time he was a teenager, and made himself known in the art world at a young age.
"He was this enthusiast, you know? This kind of genius thinker who was very hyperactive," said gallerist Barbara Gladstone of Mr. Obrist's first few years on the scene. "He read voraciously-he'd wake himself up in the middle of the night to read. He had this huge library in Switzerland, which wasn't so much where he slept as where he kept his books."
At this early point in Mr. Obrist's career, no critic or scholar had thought to study the role of curators in art history, and while there was plenty of secondary literature on museums as institutions, there was no book one could read to learn about milestone exhibitions or the history of curatorial practice. Mr. Obrist was surprised to discover this state of affairs when he resolved, in his early 20s, to learn everything he could about his chosen line of work.
"At a certain moment, when I started doing my own shows, I felt it would be really interesting to know what is the history of my profession," Mr. Obrist said in a phone interview last week. "I realized that there was no book, which was kind of a shock."
Mr. Obrist was not the only one who had this experience. In New York City, a young gallery director named Bruce Altshuler found himself in the same position, and in 1989 quit his job to research a book on the history of exhibitions that became 1994's The Avant Garde in Exhibition.
"I was working in a commercial gallery, so I was seeing the role that exhibitions played all over New York in terms of the functioning of this overall system," said Mr. Altshuler, now the director of the museum studies program at N.Y.U. "Art history tended to be written monographically: most of the effort in the discipline had gone into studying individuals and their works, rather than looking at the system of display and distribution of those works."
Mr. Altshuler's book was followed two years later by another milestone text, Thinking About Exhibitions, this one an anthology of essays on exhibition practices edited by the independent curator Bruce Ferguson, the art historian Reesa Greenberg, and British museum professional Sandy Nairne.
This flurry of scholarly interest in the work of curators and the history of exhibitions--now a burgeoning field within art history--came as a result of several factors, starting in the 1980s with the emergence of a class of independent curators who saw the exhibition as a medium unto itself and were driven to experiment with it.
These curators collaborated more with artists than traditional museum curators ever had. They weren't merely taking care of collections, but commissioning original work and organizing group shows around sophisticated themes. As the contemporary art world exploded in size during the 1990s, international biennales proliferated--there are now more than 150--and became platforms for ambitious emerging curators who wanted to showcase their curatorial voice and vision. Curatorial-studies programs, where students learned the trade and thought critically about the practice, popped up all over the country.
"In many ways, curators took on the role of what we might have once thought of as a role of the critic," said Tom Eccles, the executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. "Someone like Clement Greenberg was able to codify moments in art and promote individual artists into groups, and say, 'This is what is significant in our time.' I think there's a moment in the '80s when that transfers over to curators."

BY THE TIME Mr. Obrist read Mr. Altshuler's book and the Thinking anthology, he had already begun making his own contribution to the field by interviewing the generation of '60s curators--men his grandfather's age, like Walter Hopps, Pontus Hultén and Harald Szeemann--who had inspired him.
"Exhibitions are kind of ephemeral moments, sometimes magic moments, and when they're gone, they're gone," said Mr. Obrist. "I wanted to find a way of recording this. And since there weren't any books, I thought a good way would be to do an oral history, to start to speak with all these pioneers who had been somehow forgotten. ... It was the last moment when one could get a really firsthand account of the history of curating in the 20th century."
Starting in 1996, some of the interviews started appearing in ArtForum, and this fall, 11 of them were collected in a book called A Brief History of Curating. It is Mr. Obrist's third collection of interviews--the other two are with artists--and an informal survey this week made it seem like basically every curator of contemporary art in New York is either currently reading it or already has. Though it is hardly the first time someone has published a collection of extensive conversations with curators--see Carolee Thea's 2001 book Foci and her recently published follow-up, On Curating--Mr. Obrist's book is nevertheless being called a landmark work, in part because so many of the people in it have passed away in recent years.
Norton Batkin, the founding director of the curatorial-studies program at Bard, called it an "invaluable contribution," and praised Mr. Obrist for getting his subjects on tape while they were still alive. "Other people didn't think of interviewing curators," Mr. Batkin said. "It's a history that in some sense wasn't there before."
And yet, Mr. Obrist is decidedly not a historian. Rather than synthesizing primary-source material and making arguments about what it means, he merely generates that material and moves on, hoping others will pick up the ball. Throughout his career, he has made little of his own views on art, asserting his taste through exhibitions, to be sure, but only occasionally writing argumentative essays of the sort one might expect from a man famous for his rigorous engagement with ideas. In effect, Mr. Obrist functions as something like a neutral mediator--a listener who asks questions of others and provokes them to explain themselves while keeping his own beliefs to himself.
That he has managed to become as famous and influential as he is in spite of that role is what makes him a singular figure in the art world, and a poster boy for how much that world has changed since the days when curating was considered just a job.
"Anybody who pumps a lot of energy into a situation, anybody who expresses interest in other people and brings good things out of them ... is bound to be a player of a special variety," said Robert Storr, the curator, critic and current dean of the Yale School of Art. "The ability to generate excitement, to focus attention and to stir things up in a positive way is a particular skill, you know, and it is not to be taken lightly. We need animators. We have too many of them who have no seriousness and no curiosity, who are just making events and spectacles. He's an animator who actually creates interesting situations."

Grand Arts Presents: Ecstatic Resistance

2009-12-16T12:00:00.002-05:00

A show that look excellent and has an interesting twist:

Grand Arts is pleased to present “Ecstatic Resistance” a group show curated by Emily Roysdon on view from November 13, 2009 – January 16, 2010. The exhibition and correspondent events of Ecstatic Resistance include several commissioned works by Sharon Hayes (NY), My Barbarian (LA), Jeanine Oleson (NY), A.L. Steiner (NY), and will host performances and symposia by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy (Amsterdam), Dean Spade (Seattle) and Craig Willse (NY) and Ian White (London). Also included in the exhibition are seminal works by Yael Bartana (Tel Aviv), Ulrike Ottinger (Berlin) and Adrian Piper (Berlin).

As a curator, writer and artist, Emily Roysdon has spent the last decade formulating a vocabulary for how to discuss impossible positions arising in contemporary art practice. Through collectivity and performance, pursuing moments of ecstasy can result in non-linear positionalities and radical forms of self-actualization. As an unfolding exhibition at Grand Arts, Ecstatic Resistance seeks to locate this conceptual current within contemporary, everyday life. Identifying herself in this milieu, Roysdon has organized a platform to share the work of her contemporaries side by side, visually and verbally.

Collectively the artists in Ecstatic Resistance forge ways forward as envisioned in their works and the context built through the exhibition and accompanying events. Ecstatic Resistance embraces confrontational activism and pleasure–two ideas that need not be at odds. Strategies employed in the show are many and diverse: humor, activist gestures, queer history, absurdism and improvisation. Ecstatic Resistance provides a space and time for artworks to extend the scope of “what is possible” and what can be done.

And the twist:

In addition to the Ecstatic Resistance exhibition at Grand Arts, a sister show of the same title will occur at X Initiative in New York showing from November 21, 2009 – February 6, 2010. More information about this show at: www.x-initiative.org and www.ecstaticresistance.org

PEI loves this idea of creating a sister exhibition in New York, or anywhere outside of your cities limits.

For more information on this project and Grand Arts visit our website and blog: www.grandarts.com

Is it too early to be excited for the Whitney Biennial?

2009-12-16T11:43:00.003-05:00

Whitney Announced the Artists for the 2010 Biennial and we noticed a few connections back to Philadelphia:

Sarah Crowner is Philadelphia born.

Kate Gilmore has recently had shows at both the Temple/Tyler Gallery and at the ICA.

Sharon Hayes took part in the two-person exhibition “Other Islands: recent video works by Sharon Hayes and Danielle Mericle” at Arcadia, as well as participating in the CURATING AND ACTIVISM: INTERNATIONAL PANEL AND CONVERSATION at the Moore College of Art and Design.

According to the New York Times:
Next year’s event, which runs February 25–May 30, is being organized by Francesco Bonami, fifty-four, the Italian-born curator who helped put together the Rudolph Stingel retrospective at the Whitney in 2007, and Gary Carrion-Murayari, twenty-nine, a senior curatorial assistant at the museum who helped with the Biennials in 2004 and 2006.

Thus, in these recessionary times, the show will be smaller than it has been in recent years, with just fifty-five artists, down from eighty-one in 2008 and one hundred in 2006.

And unlike the one in 2006, this Biennial won’t have a theme. Bonami said he didn’t want one: “The theme is the year—2010—which is the title.”

H + F Curatorial Grant

2009-12-16T11:13:00.004-05:00

Call For An Assistant Curator / Exhibition Coordinator

Application deadline: February 28, 2010

FRAC Nord – Pas de Calais (F)

de Appel arts centre (NL)

H + F Curatorial Grant

The "H+F Curatorial Grant" is an ambitious and original initiative which allows the FRAC Nord–Pas de Calais (Dunkirk/France) in close partnership with the private collector Han Nefkens (H+F Collection) and the de Appel arts centre (Amsterdam/NL), to give young international curators the opportunity to participate in the development of exhibition projects based on the collection of FRAC Nord-Pas-de- Calais.

This grant, which was launched in 2007, offers emerging art curators a unique infrastructure and environment with free access to a research and documentation centre as well as to one of the best French collections of contemporary art. The FRAC acts as the first intermediary for these future professionals of contemporary art by helping them to develop and implement their projects.

A panel composed of Han Nefkens (H+F Collection), Ann Demeester (Director of de Appel) and Hilde Teerlinck (Director of the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais) will select the new candidate. The selected person will become part of the FRAC's team as an assistant curator, coordinating local, national and international exhibition-projects. She / he will receive in exchange a grant for 12 months (May 2010 - May 2011) that will help finance her/his living and travel expenses.

An excellent knowledge of English is required, knowledge of French would be helpful.

The candidate will have to install her/himself in Dunkirk for the mentioned period.

This project has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Han Nefkens (journalist, writer and art collector), which enables the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais to reinforce the development of a strong and active policy of patronage around its activities. From 2008 onwards the application process is open for former students of de Appel Curatorial Programme and all aspiring young curators who wish to enhance their expertise and further develop their skills and agilities in project management.

Please send your application containing a recent CV (including a photograph) and a motivation letter before February 28th 2010 to:

FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais

930 avenue de Rosendaël

59240 Dunkerque (France)

http://www.fracnpdc.fr/ h-teerlinck@fracnpdc.fr

Curatorial Residency Programs around the World!

2009-12-14T11:24:00.001-05:00

Hordaland Art Centre Residency

Deadline for applications to Hordaland Art Centre's residency for 2010 is December 15th 2009. Applications are accepted via e-mail.

Hordaland Art Centre has been host to guests since 1987. Today the residency is focused on research as well as production and is an integral part of our programme. The residency is open to international artists, curators, writers and other art professionals. Our guests are expected to have a public presentation during their stay with Hordaland Art Centre.

Our guests stay in a quiet residential area seven minutes walk from Hordaland Art Centre in the centre of town. The flat has one bedroom, kitchen, living room and bathroom, as well as a south-west-facing balcony. The studio is on the top floor of C. Sundts gate 55, a nine floor studio building only three minutes walk from Hordaland Art Centre. The studio is furnished and has open access wi-fi. Guests are expected to bring their own computer and other tools necessary for their work during the residency.

Hordaland Art Centre covers travel, rent, studio rent, electricity and a small stipend to cover the high living costs in Norway. The applicant can apply for periods of 2 weeks, 1 month or 2 months.

Our residency is financially supported by Hordaland County and Nordic Culture Point. Successful candidates are also encouraged to apply for additional funding.

Please fill in the application form and attach cv and images/texts.

Please make sure you comply with the instructions. Incomplete applications will not be taken into consideration. Please e-mail completed application form, cv and images/texts in one single e-mail to hks[at]kunstsenter[dot]no with your name as subject line.

We accept applications in English only to accommodate our international jury members.

Applications are assessed and chosen by a jury on the basis of merit, and the ability Hordaland Art Centre has to support the proposed research or project.

To be eligible for the Nordic residency, supported by Nordic Culture Point, you are a professional working artist, curator, contemporary art writer, critic or researcher from one of the Nordic (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Greenland or the Faroe Islands) or Baltic (Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania) countries, or based professionally in one of these countries.

To be eligible for the International residency, supported by Hordaland County, you are a professional working artist, curator, contemporary art writer, critic or researcher from any country.

PEI December Exhibitions Picks

2009-12-07T15:28:00.011-05:00

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago
Heartland
October 1, 2009 – January 17, 2010
Throughout the vast interior of the United States, contemporary artists are responding to the world around them and reshaping it in unexpected ways. Organized by the Smart Museum of Art and the Van Abbemuseum, one of Europe’s premier contemporary art institutions, this exhibition offers an idiosyncratic look at the innovative forms of artistic creation taking place in the American Heartland. In 2007 and 2008, the Heartland curators, eschewing traditional research methods, set out on a series of old-fashioned road trips through the vast center of the United States. These research trips informed two distinct exhibitions. The first presentation, which opened in October 2008 at the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands, sought to uncover new ways of thinking about the American interior during the U.S. presidential election and gave European audiences access to a broad survey of the Heartland’s culture, art, and music. The second, reconceived presentation at the Smart Museum, offers U.S. audiences a more focused look at the ideals of resourcefulness and invention that permeate the Heartland. Together, the two presentations offer a richly layered reading of a region that has too often been overlooked.

Bass Museum of Art

Where Do We Go From Here? Selections from La Coleccion Jumex
December 3, 2009 - March 14, 2010

This exhibition positions art as a cultural index by juxtaposing inter-generational artists, as well as, artists from, or based in Mexico with international counterparts. The exhibition has four sections: art about art; art and urban anthropology; text in art; and a series of artist profiles. These conceptual clusters are important as they spin a narrative from one work to the other as well as provide key contextual reference points.

X Initiative
IN NUMBERS: Serial Publications by Artists since 1955

December 10 – Ongoing

This exhibition represents the first serious effort to define a neglected art form—the serial publication. Artists have long seized on magazines and postcards to create new kinds of art, often the most avant-garde of its time. The exhibition will survey these works—from Wallace Berman’s Semina through Eleanor Antin’s 100 Boots, Robert Heinecken’s modified Periodicals, the Japanese Provoke group, to Raymond Pettibon’s Tripping Corpse and Maurizio Cattelan’s Permanent Food—and will offer a glimpse of rare works by Continuous Project, and a special appearance by North Drive Press. These works have had a profound effect on a diverse range of contemporary artists—such as Terence Koh, Tom Sachs, Scott Hug, and Roni Horn—who have embraced the form and contributed to an explosion of new artists’ publications.

INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, BOSTON

Damián Ortega: Do It Yourself
September 18, 2009 - January 18 2010

Due in part to his background as a political cartoonist, Mexico City–based Damián Ortega has a knack for animating objects in unexpected yet incisive ways. Cosmic Thing, 2002, a fastidiously exploded 1983 VW Beetle whose disassembled parts are suspended in midair, is characteristic: at once playfully destructive and rigorously diagrammatic. A common car in Mexico, the Bug is one of many stereotypically Latin American products stacked, rolled, or pulled by Ortega, along with tortillas, pickaxes, and bricks. Indeed, this exhibition, which includes eighteen sculptures, photographs, and videos made between 1996 and 2007, promises not only technical finesse but a wry commentary on the movement of global commodities.

New Curatorial Residency

2009-12-07T15:12:00.003-05:00

Residencies at the
Elsewhere Collaborative
2010 residencies for artists, curators, scholars, designers and creatives of all kinds Elsewhere Collaborative, a living museum and experimental production environment in downtown Greensboro, NC, USA is now accepting applications from artists, curators, writers, musicians, designers, gardeners, makers, builders, scholars, producers, and creatives across media for residencies in 2010. Elsewhere is set within a three-story former thrift store, boarding house, and warehouse containing one woman's enormous 58-year collection of American surplus, thrift, and antiques. Elsewhere residencies invites experimental creators to join our collaborating community in utilizing this immense collection of objects, no longer for sale and instead circulating internally, as material or inspiration for site-specific projects that become part of an endlessly transforming environment of objects and works. Artists live and work within interactive installations that provide evolving frameworks for investigating collaborations, community structures, and creative processes. Residency fellowship funding for travel, room and board, are now available in exchange for hosting an educational workshop during the residency. Deadlines are rolling every other month; the deadline for fellowships is January 31 2010. Read more and download a brochure at: http://elsewhereelsewhere.org/programs/residencies

NEW IN THE PEI LIBRARY

2009-12-07T10:49:00.011-05:00

Come on in and READ ‘EM!

Did someone ask for a homage to Szeemann?

Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology

We owe our idea of the contemporary exhibition to Harald Szeemann--the first of the jet-setting international curators. From 1961 to 1969, he was Curator of the Kunsthalle Bern, where in 1968 he had the foresight to give Christo and Jeanne-Claude the opportunity to wrap the entire museum building. Szeemann's groundbreaking 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become Form, also at the Kunsthalle, introduced European audiences to artists like Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Richard Serra and Lawrence Weiner. It also introduced the now-commonplace practice of curating an exhibition around a theme. Since Szeemann's death in 2005, there has been research underway at his archive in Tessin, Switzerland. An invaluable resource, this volume provides access to previously unpublished plans, documents and photographs from the archive, along with important essays by Hal Foster and Jean-Marc Poinsot. There is also an informative interview with Tobia Bezzola--curator at the Kunsthauz Zurich and Szeemann's collaborator for many years. Two of Szeemann's most ambitious exhibitions are presented as case studies: Documenta V (1972) and L'Autre, the 4th Lyon Biennial (1997). A biography, an illustrated chronology of Szeemann's exhibitions and a selection of his writings complete this exhaustive survey.

Harald Szeemann: The Exhibition Maker
A generation of curators and viewers has been inspired by Harald Szeemann's independently organized exhibitions and his emphatic methods of presenting contemporary art. This volume describes the "Szeemann principle", the visions of an enlightened curator, and provides an overview of the most important stations of his singular curatorial career: the legendary exhibitions When Attitudes Become Form and Documenta 5; the great thematic explorations such as Bachelor Machines; and his discoveries of young Eastern European scenes. In retrospect, Szeemann's infallible interest in artistic loners with strong attitudes and powerful personalities seems like a vehement contradiction of an art market that focuses on trends and movements. In the last 10 years of Szeemann's life, he sought the new as avidly as ever, as viewers will note in documentation of his fourth Lyon Biennale, second Kwangju Biennial, both the 1999 and 2001 Venice Biennales, and the first Seville Biennial, which closed two months before his death: it was themed The Joy of My Dreams.

Harald Szeemann – with by through because towards despite

This is a ground-breaking work that adds much to our understanding of art history. It is the first exhaustive documentation of all the exhibitions initiated and planned by one of the art world’s greatest figures. It is a comprehensive appraisal of the work of Harald Szeemann, who has an international reputation as one of the most creative of today's exhibition-makers. Numerous documents, notes, sketches, photos, commentaries, reactions, explanations and recollections convey an extremely lively picture of how Szeemann's ideas and concepts are put into practice, as well as his philosophy and understanding of art, which can be summed up in the phrase ‘with by through because towards despite’. The diverse and informative material reflects the development of art in the second half of the 20th century. This book is an indispensable working tool and reference work covering the history of art over the last 45 years and includes a detailed bibliography enabling the reader to conduct follow-up research.

And not Szeemann related, but still really cool:

MATRIX/Berkeley: A Changing Exhibition of Contemporary Art

The MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art has changed and evolved over the past thirty years but has always remained true to its guiding principles as an exhibition project that challenges conventions, privileges artists and their ideas, and experiments with form and content. In this vein, the new book MATRIX/Berkeley: A Changing Exhibition of Contemporary Art was conceived as a project in its own right, born in a spirit of experimentation and in collaboration with Project Projects, the design partnership of Prem Krishnamurthy and Adam Michaels. Arrayed loosely, as if spread out on a table, the book’s visual elements—ephemera, installation views, production materials—speak to the process of making each exhibition, in a collaged and anecdotal form. Individually, these visual essays are compelling snapshots of their time, each a condensation of the thoughts and actions of a particular artist; in aggregate, laid side by side, they narrate an arc through thirty years of contemporary art practice. The book also features newly commissioned interviews, including conversations between MATRIX artists and curators.

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 mailto:pei@pcah.us

artonpaper magazine

2009-11-16T11:07:00.009-05:00

The Graphic Unconscious
Peter Nesbett talks with Philagrafika 2010 artistic director José Roca

Please check out this fascinating conversation between Peter Nesbett and Philagrafika’s José Roca in the November/December 2009 issue of artonpaper magazine:

http://artonpaper.com/bi/v14n02/profile.php

(Philagrafika received a 2009 PEI Implementation grant)

You will not be disappointed!

Daniel Fuller interviews Stacy Switzer, Artistic Director, Grand Arts. A Symphony in 3 parts…

2009-11-11T12:09:00.004-05:00

I absolutely love small art scenes that seem to have the ability to catch you by surprise. It’s the beauty of the internet--the gift of being able to follow from afar scenes in cities we have never visited. Of course, there are interesting communities in Portland and Providence, Houston and Oakland, but I maintain that over the past two years or so, no non-native has been more interested than I have been in Kansas City. And, not only have I never been a resident, but I have never set foot within the city limits. Sure, the Steven Holl Bloch building addition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art grabs all of the headlines (Time magazine ranked it #1 on the "The 10 Best New and Upcoming Architectural Marvels" list), but there is something about the funky artist collaborations and the multitude of interesting non-profits that makes the city seem like a utopia in the middle of Tornado Alley. In case you have not visited in person or haven’t had the online tour, here is the lay of the land: the Kansas City Art Institute cranks out creative kids, and houses the H&R Block Artspace, an incredibly interesting collegiate gallery. Recent grads used to hightail it for the greener pastures of fame and fortune in New York or Chicago. (A problem Kansas City shares with many a small city.) The development of the Charlotte Street Foundation, which provides unrestricted financial awards to individual artists (not to mention professional development support), has made it viable for a creative class not to just remain, but to flourish. Just down the road from the Art Institute and the Nelson-Atkins, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art has been mounting innovative exhibitions since 1994. Just when it looked as though the Crossroads, one of the largest arts districts in the U.S. and home to the city’s First Fridays, was about to lose its anchor warehouse building due to gentrification, the Kemper stepped in and opened the Kemper at the Crossroads. This is a completely new venture that is sure to solidify relationships with the young artists of the neighborhood and open the museum to wider audiences. Another new kid on the block sits just across the river in Kansas City, Kansas: the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, at Johnson County Community College. It is the largest museum of contemporary art within a four-state radius. You may be asking how I am able to follow all of this from Philly. It’s tough, but made easier with the help of the Kansas City art blog Shorttage (“Where funds are low and creativity is high”). My favorite posts are the reviews of opening night hors d'oeuvres.

Of course, there is one institution that has been conspicuously left out of this discussion, one of my favorite curatorial programs in the country: Grand Arts. I’ve always admired the imaginative work of the Artistic Director of this quintessential alternative space, Stacy Switzer, whose exhibitions attempt to confront current political/racial/ecological issues. Switzer and Grand Arts maintain a program that continually challenges artists and audiences alike in unexpected ways by treating galleries as laboratories, not pristine white boxes. When PEI announced the creation of our Curatorial Consultation Program, I instantly knew that it would be a tremendous benefit to our region to have Stacy involved. Luckily, Andrew Suggs, Director of Vox Populi, agreed, and our first match was made. It is our hope that Stacy’s ideas will be as inspirational to Vox as they have been to us.

I was fortunate enough to have Stacy answer a few questions about the state of the arts in Kansas City, as well as her hopes for her upcoming experiences with Vox:

Continuing ...

2009-11-11T11:23:00.000-05:00

Daniel Fuller: Over its history Grand Arts has exhibited more than 70 projects by artists. The fascinating thing about your program is that, more than solely curating exhibitions, you use the spaces as co-producers, foremen who commission and fully assist artists in the realization of their wildest dreams. You provide financial, technical, logistical support and even maintain an onsite 4,000-square-foot fabrication studio. Artists that have worked with you tell me there isn’t a more flexible residency program around. If alternative spaces are defined by the capacity to risk failure, how do you measure/define success? Have there been projects that initially felt impossible, yet ended triumphantly? Do you ever have to just say “no” to an artist’s idea?

Stacy Switzer: These are great questions! And they are ones which we find ourselves asking, responding to, and returning to again and again. Curatorially, we look for projects that have a certain urgency about them—things that feel like they need to be in the world. As for measuring success, the way we define it is different for most every project, and depends enormously upon what the artist wants and needs from the project and from their experience with Grand Arts. The conversation about these needs and goals develops over time—and it tends to be a very intuitive, intimate dance between the artist and our staff and other collaborators. Everything, including the core ideas for a project, tends to evolve and shift over the course of a collaboration, which for us is usually about one to three years. We encourage this as part of our process and what we offer to artists—space and time to ponder, rethink, and revise.

Some of the questions we always consider are: Is the artist taking a significant leap within their practice? Have we as collaborators brought everything we have to the table in terms of creative problem solving? Is the artist connecting with a certain audience they hoped to reach? How will the artist be able to leverage the project they’ve worked on at Grand Arts into further opportunities down the road?

It’s true that for some of our most technically and logistically challenging projects, success can be defined in part by just seeing the work through to completion. William Pope.L’s 2008 flag project, Trinket, for example, presented some extraordinary technical challenges. We needed to figure out how to make a colossal American flag (three stories high and more than twice as long) whip around violently in an indoor space, where the ceiling was not much taller than the flag itself. The aura around the flag needed to feel dangerous, like it was blowing so hard it could hurt you, but at the same time we wanted the flag to have a certain proximity to viewers… so that you could reach out and touch it if you dared. After beginning with some homespun experiments, and moving on to consult with a wind engineer and industrial HVAC specialists, we ended up working with a wonderful person from the Hollywood special effects industry who retrofitted giant propeller fans—the kind they use to make tornadoes for movies like Twister—to make them work for us. The final work was spectacular, but we weren’t sure how we were going to make it happen until just a couple of months before it opened. We took a quick trip to L.A. to do tests in a sound stage, and when we finally saw the test flag up and flying, it was a very emotional moment.

I think Pope.L’s project is a poignant example because his work is itself so often about failure. And risk and the potential for failure are embedded in everything we do at Grand Arts. As are—again—adaptability, change, revision. There have only been a couple of times in Grand Arts’ history where we’ve had to suspend work on a project because of a conflict in expectations or schedules or what have you. One of these projects, which is still very dear to me, came to a stop due in part to differences among collaborators (Grand Arts was in the role of mediator) and in part because to do justice to the idea, it would have taken some truly astronomical resources. Done wrong, it could have collapsed and killed someone—so even though I was heartbroken to stop work after more than a year of research and development, I like to joke now that we escaped a falling ceiling, and maybe a manslaughter charge!

DF: Are you at all concerned with the provincial nature of the national arts press? Unless a big splash is made (like with the Steven Holl Nelson-Atkins addition), Kansas City art spaces seldom receive the attention they deserve because there just aren’t many regional critics. Can this actually be considered an advantage, an opportunity to be experimental instigators and take more artistic risks?

SS: Yes, I think you can see it as an advantage, and historically, I believe it has offered artists coming to Grand Arts from other places a degree of freedom that they might not feel elsewhere. But it’s also important that magazines such as Art Papers and others are beginning to cover more of what is going on in Kansas City, because artists here desperately need the critical dialogue and feedback.

DF: Obviously you are aware that in the course of five years the Pitch (Kansas City’s weekly version of Philadelphia’s City Paper) named you: Best Curator (2006), Best Solo Exhibition (2008) and Best Curatorial Debut (2004). Your trophy shelf must need reinforcing! An incredibly impressive aspect of these awards may be what the paper wrote about your shows: “We don't always understand, or even like, the high-concept installations at Grand Arts, which in the past year have included Aidas Bareikis' garish squadron of debris; Nadine Robinson's Revelations-inspired light sculptures; Neal Rock's large-scale, silicone abstractions; and a boat.” This was written while awarding best curator. I find this accepting, willingness to look, learn and trust your curatorial voice to be far beyond what is often seen in local press. Does this openness extend to your viewing public?

How does Grand Arts think about its audiences and how do you engage with them?

SS: That quote from the Pitch is pretty funny, especially if you take a look at the boat! It was an exquisitely beautiful installation by the artist Michael Jones McKean, but also rather intimidating in scale and (I suppose this is what they were getting at) in concept.

Of course, it’s great to be welcomed and recognized in the ways you described. Kansas City has a very sophisticated art-going public, and people always expect to see something challenging when they come to Grand Arts. This too is part of Grand Arts’ founding mission—to present work that might not be seen otherwise in Kansas City, or anywhere. For this and other reasons, Grand Arts occupies its own niche locally, regionally and nationally. On the one hand, we maintain something of a low profile because our mission is so completely artist-focused. We don’t have a membership, and we aren’t out in the community raising funds—so these things make us rather unusual from the outset. At the same time, we want people to visit and to have meaningful exchanges with the artists and the work. And it is important for us to maintain some visibility on a broader scale, both for the artists we work with and for the momentum of our program.

Our approach to audiences tends to shift a bit with each project. We have a core group of very loyal visitors, but we are also constantly trying to tap into other segments of the community, and testing different strategies to do this. Also, as you know, the very notion of ‘audience’ is debated in the museum world. spurse, an interdisciplinary collective we recently worked with, engages this debate as part of the content of their work, by asserting that audiences and visitors do not exist—only participants and collaborators. Thus there is an institutional critique embedded in spurse’s work that cannot merely be ‘presented’ by Grand Arts or any other venue that wants to welcome and engaged its ‘visitors.’ The question of who comes to an exhibition, how, why, and speculation about what they might ‘take away’ from their experience in the gallery becomes a point for serious philosophical wrestling. And admittedly, the audience for this kind of wrestling might be extremely small. It might just be the fly on the wall while we’re duking it out amidst a pile of canvas scraps, sewing machines, and plant specimens. But Grand Arts can be a place for this kind of wrestling—a rowdy, good-natured fight that tumbles over from the stage of the gallery into the protected sanctuary of the administrative offices, and even back into the fabrication shop (again, figuratively speaking!) among the tables saws, welding equipment, etc. There aren’t many places like us out there.

The Conclusion…

2009-11-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

DF: Do you use social media or other forms of technology to reach out to your audiences? If not, why not? Also, do you produce publications? What’s your approach to documenting your programs?

SS: We finally finished the redesign of our website about a year ago, and it’s working great for us. It’s very simple. One of the main points is to create a more public archive of the projects we’ve done, with the brochure essays, which we also print, published online. We added a blog to the site and are still experimenting with different ways to use that. As for social networking, I do this in a very unofficial way. Like a lot of curators, I think, my Facebook page is half personal, and half professional. As for an official Grand Arts page, we don’t have one right now. But I’m easy to find, and we like to connect with artists and other art people in a more personal way.

DF: I had mentioned to you before that back in 2005, the show What’s The Matter With Kansas? at Rare Gallery in New York piqued my interest in what is happening on in the mid-West. Seth Johnson’s work blew me away. You had mentioned that there was another similar exhibition at one of the art fairs in Miami. These shows are terrific, but can’t compare to the exposure of the Heartland exhibition co-organized by the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago (where it opens October first) and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Heartland explores the challenges of working within the interior of the United States, and Kansas City plays a major role with three artists/collectives participating: Carnal Torpor, Cody Critcheloe, and Whoop Dee Doo. What does/could this mean for the morale of a city to be out of the national limelight, yet internationally recognized as being innovative?

SS: Good question. First, I think all of the artists you mentioned are especially brilliant at navigating the split between living and working in a smaller city, and participating in a larger national and international art and music scene. They are incredibly savvy and unbelievably supportive of one another. I think in many places you’d see cut-throat competition among a group of artists who are so talented, capable and ambitious. But here, each of them owes their individuals successes in large part to the others, and there really is a spirit of shared accomplishment. So you have people like Peggy Noland and Ari Fish, who are amazing local fashion designers, doing the costumes for Critchloe’s band SSION. Meanwhile, images of Critcheloe and Seth Johnson modeling Ari’s own designs are popping up on Project Runway, while Ari is also a member-at-large of Johnson’s collective, Carnal Torpor. Johnson and Jaimie Warren, who is the ringmaster of Whoop Dee Doo, used to run a gallery together. And Whoop Dee Doo often features performances by SSION.

An exhibition like Heartland is fantastic for bringing additional attention—perhaps especially from a more conservative segment of the museum world—to all of these artists. But the artists are gaining international exposure and managing their careers on their own, in a very DIY fashion. They are doing things like blogging for VICE magazine, opening pop-up shops in Berlin, and producing music videos for other bands… so I’d say their morale is excellent, regardless of whether Artforum reviews their work, which is beginning to happen, too.

There are many other excellent artists working in Kansas City, of course, and their sense of the City’s place on the larger stage will really depend on whom you ask. On the one hand, there’s incredible vibrancy and energy around art and artists here. It’s cheap to live, easy to navigate, and there’s a growing infrastructure for funding, free studios and other forms of support, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Urban Culture Project and Charlotte Street Foundation. At the same time, artists are frustrated by the relative lack of a gallery system that might help export their work to the Coasts and beyond, and the attendant failure to nurture collectors who will ‘buy local.’ I believe these things are coming, though. There are new people on the scene, such as Cara Lewis of Cara and Cabezas, who seem ready to try to take things to the next level of professionalism.

DF: Your time here in Philadelphia consulting for Vox Populi is approaching and I am wondering if you might have any early thoughts about Philadelphia? Any initial aspirations or accomplishments you hope to help Vox achieve?

SS: I am very excited to be working with Vox Populi, and to get to know more about what’s happening in Philadelphia. I’m not sure, but it does seem like there might be some strong parallels between the art scenes in Philadelphia and Kansas City. I want to use this opportunity to open some lines of communication between artists and curators in both cities, and explore the possibilities for exchange.

I think it’s far too early to put forward any kind of agenda in terms of how Vox’s approach to curatorial issues might evolve or develop. Vox is a collective, and I’m an outsider. That said, I do hope to work with the group to identify a variety of different models and approaches that they might incorporate, as it suits them. Stay tuned!

PEI December Curatorial Roundtable: The Curator-in-Residence

2009-11-10T20:34:00.001-05:00

Ana Paula Cohen, 2009-2010 Curator-in-Residence at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
In conversation with Kate Fowle, Executive Director, iCI (Independent Curators International)
Cultural institutions frequently make resources available for artist-in-residence programs. These programs can be found across the globe, bringing institutions opportunities to increase diversity and further build a creative atmosphere. However, those same institutions seldom develop similar models to bring in international curators. As Curators-in-Residence become acquainted with the dialogues of the local network, new curatorial perspectives may culminate in exhibitions not normally produced in the region. Residency programs can serve as tools that open up communities, build contacts with new practitioners, and promote further research in emergent practices. Speakers' bios below.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009 3-5 PM,

Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage1608 Walnut Street

Space is limited so please respond to Daniel Fuller, PEI Senior Program Specialist,via email at dfuller@pcah.us, or by phone at 267-350-4932, by December 1st.

Ana Paula Cohen
2009-2010 Curator-in-Residence at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College Ana Paula Cohen (São Paulo, 1975) is an independent curator, editor and writer. She was the adjunct curator of the 28th Bienal de São Paulo – “In living contact” (Oct-Dec 2008), and the co-editor of the publications related to the project. Cohen has co-curated the project Encuentro Internacional de Medellín 07 (Jan-June 2007, Medellín, Colombia), in which she created, in collaboration with other artists and curators, a new center for contemporary art – La Casa del Encuentro. Within the framework of the Encuentro, she curated an exhibition on Cildo Meireles’ work, at the Museo de Antioquia. Since 2006, she has initiated and is part of the editorial team for the newsletter of Mabe Bethonico’s project museumuseu. Since 2004, she co-founded and has been the curator of the project istmo – flexible archive , in São Paulo.

Kate Fowle
Executive Director of iCI (Independent Curators International)Fowle was most recently International Curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. There she played a key role in developing the first year of exhibitions, commissions and public programming. Prior to her time in Beijing, Fowle spent six 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, (iCI curator for Shoot the Family ). During her tenure as program director Fowle built extensive international networks, bringing over 100 artists, curators and writers from places as diverse as Chiang Mai, Paris, São Paulo, Johannesburg, Copenhagen, Beijing, Vilnius, Frankfurt, Tokyo, London, and Mexico City, to share their knowledge and expertise through lectures, round-table discussions, symposia and an annual journal.

NEW IN THE PEI LIBRARY

2009-11-10T11:22:00.000-05:00

Come on in and READ ‘EM!

Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985
A groundbreaking anthology that captures the essence and the edge of the contemporary art scene. Focusing on key theoretical and aesthetic issues in contemporary art in cultural, historical, and socio-political contexts –including media, architecture, postmodernism, multiculturalism, identity politics, censorship, AIDS, postcolonialism, globalization, technology, and spectatorship – this volume brings together a broad selection of important contributions that map out the role that critical theory has played in contemporary art. This anthology mixes established and emergent art voices, including scholars, curators, critics, and artists. Interdisciplinary in approach and drawing on a wide variety of sources, Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985 brings together scholarly essays, artists’ statements, and art reproductions to capture the vibrancy and dissonance that defines today’s art scene.

The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art
In this book Martha Buskirk addresses the interesting fact that since the early 1960s, almost anything can and has been called art. Among other practices, contemporary artists have employed mass-produced elements, impermanent materials, and appropriated imagery, have incorporated performance and video, and have created works through instructions carried out by others. Furthermore, works of art that lack traditional signs of authenticity or permanence have been embraced by institutions long devoted to the original and the permanent. Buskirk begins with questions of authorship raised by minimalists' use of industrial materials and methods, including competing claims of ownership and artistic authorship evident in conflicts over the right to fabricate artists' works. Examining recent examples of appropriation, she finds precedents in pop art and the early twentieth-century readymade and explores the intersection of contemporary artistic copying and the system of copyrights, trademarks, and brand names characteristic of other forms of commodity production.

Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh
In 1986 Hsieh announced that he would spend the next thirteen years making art but not showing it publicly. This final lifework—an immense act of self-affirmation and self-erasure—came to a close at the turn of the millennium. For many Hsieh is a cult figure. The rigor and dedication of his art inspires passion, while the elusive and epic nature of his performances generates speculation and mythology. After years of near-invisibility Hsieh has now collaborated with the writer and curator Adrian Heathfield to create this meticulous and visually arresting record of the complete body of his artworks from 1978-1999. Out of Now is the first extensive critical account of these remarkable works. Heathfield's astute meditation is complemented by an intensive exchange with the artist and a set of letters from leading art theorists Peggy Phelan and Carol Becker, and the internationally acclaimed artists Marina Abramovic, Santiago Sierra, and Tim Etchells. This exquisitely composed volume is essential reading for all those interested in art history, conceptual art, visual culture, and the practice of performance.

Art and Electronic Media
Art and Electronic Media is the latest installment in the THEMES AND MOVEMENTS series, a collection of groundbreaking sourcebooks on the prevailing art tendencies of our times. This is the first book to explore mechanics, light, graphics, robotics, networks, virtual reality and the possibilities afforded by the web from an international perspective. It outlines the importance of figures previously neglected by art history, including engineers, technicians, and collaborators. Included are works by over 150 artists, both familiar. The book is divided into seven thematic sections arranged chronologically. Art and Electronic Media is a lucid, accessible, and authoritative evaluation of continually developing media. As part of the THEMES AND MOVEMENTS series, Art and Electronic Media is intended for uninitiated readers and scholars alike. They include a complete overview of each theme or movement, situating individual artists' work in the context of modern art.

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 mailto:pei@pcah.us

Franchise Two

2009-11-06T09:30:00.006-05:00

Are you as witty as Last year’s winner, The League of Imaginary Scientists, from LA???

From the apexart website:

'considering the same boundary between art and business. again'

Based on the idea of creating its own franchise, apexart is currently holding a worldwide open call for 250-word proposals asking participants why the franchise should come to their town and provide all of the support necessary to produce an exhibition.

March 13 - April 17, 2010
APPLY HERE
Accepting applications from anywhere, now through December 15, 2009

As the art world adopts strategies from the world of business, cultural organizations have set up franchises around the globe. For the second year, apexart is joining this trend and setting up its own franchise in a new city.

This competition is an opportunity for anyone from anywhere to create their own temporary apexart in your city, town or village. For a four-week exhibition from March 13 - April 17, 2010, you will be the director, curator and/or staff of your own apexart franchise with a budget, a modest salary, and almost complete control. We will provide the funding (up to 10,000 USD), along with the necessary guidance to make your curated exhibition happen. This includes an apexart brochure in an edition of 10,000 and its distribution around the world to more than 108 countries and a visit or two from us.

The Franchise is an opportunity to help bring an idea to fruition in a new place and to give someone an interesting opportunity. This year we will exclude people in large cities like New York, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo from applying, and invite submissions from locations with less than 500,000 people. Places such as Moshupa or Priboj, Baton Rouge or Lübeck, Cadiz or Az-Zawiyah, Heidelberg or Zinder.

To participate, please submit a reason in the form of a 250 word essay, along with four images, to tell the jurors why apexart should come to you. We encourage applicants to use the 250 words in any way they see fit. Applications will be accepted until December 15, 2009.

Dialogues All Around...

2009-11-04T15:34:00.019-05:00

Contemporary Museum, Baltimore
ANNOUNCING THE 2009/10
NEW ART DIALOGUES SERIES

CARLOS BASUALDO
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 7:00 PM

In collaboration with the Maryland Institute College of Art Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism

Falvey Hall, Maryland Institute College of Art Campus 1300 Mt. Royal Avenue

Carlos Basualdo, Keith L and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, comes to Baltimore to share his experiences curating on the global stage. The curator of numerous international exhibitions, Basualdo most recently served as lead organizer of Bruce Nauman's celebrated exhibition in the United States Pavilion at the recent Venice Bienniale exhibition.

MICA Students/Staff/Faculty and Contemporary Museum Members: FREE General Admission: $10Students: $5

COMING IN 2010:

RICHARD VINE
Managing Editor of Art in America
Thursday, February 11, 2010

MEL CHIN
Artist
Wednesday, March 31, 2010

PEI November Exhibitions Picks

2009-11-04T14:26:00.014-05:00

Queens Museum of Art
Duke Riley: Those About To Die Salute You
Nov. 2, 2009-Mar. 13, 2010
This exhibition is the second installment of a multi-part residency that began with a recreation of a Romanesque bread and circus naval battle or naumachia that drew more than one thousand toga-clad spectators to a World’s Fair reflecting pool adjacent to the Museum. Riley converts the QMA’s Small Triangle Gallery into a diorama revisiting that event through the detritus of the battle - armor, elements of the coliseum backdrop, battle-scarred vessels - while multi-channel video brings the “props” to life. In addition, Riley will be unveiling Morituri Te Salutant (2009), a special edition print depicting the event in laser engraving and dry-point on Plexiglas printed on paper handmade from the same phragmites reeds that Riley harvested in Flushing Meadows Corona Park for the construction of his naval vessels.

Studio Museum Harlem
30 Seconds Off an Inch
Nov. 12, 2009-Mar. 14, 2010
Curated by Philadelphia’s old friend Naomi Beckwith, this survey will bring 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. It aims to show how this group of artists engages with the body and race in clever, subtle and astute ways.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Ktzysztof Wodiczko: The Veterans Project
Nov. 4, 2009 - March 28, 2010
Wodiczko's immersive new installation explores the chaos and confusion of war. For three decades, Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has addressed timely political, social, and psychological issues in his artwork, creating over 80 large-scale public projections around the world. In these works, he transforms the stories, voices, and gestures of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances by projecting them onto public monuments and landmarks. In a new, projection-based work for the ICA, Wodiczko focuses on veterans engaged in active combat in Iraq, as well as Iraqi civilians. In ...OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project, the routine sounds of life are interrupted by the noise of destruction and chaos as Wodiczko’s narrative unfolds across three walls of the gallery.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The one hundred and sixty-third floor:
Liam Gillick Curates the Collection
November 27, 2009 - January 10, 2010
Liam Gillick curates a small selection of works from the MCA's collection as a complement to his major solo survey exhibition. The collection exhibition provides an institutional and historical context for the presentation of Gillick's own work while bringing an unexpected approach to presenting the collection into play. The exhibition reflects his fascination with the role of the collection within the museum, especially in the way that artists whose careers have developed less prominently than others are still represented in such a major institution's holdings and the circumstances involved in each case.

PEI tries to help make your day a little more manageable!

2009-11-03T11:59:00.011-05:00

CNN Ranks Stressful Jobs that Pay Badly

#12: Curator

Median pay: $46,500

% who say their job is stressful: 89%

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which could also be the length of a curator's job description. Being responsible for priceless art, artifacts and antiquities is just another day's work for those in this field. Curators must also research and write museum articles, negotiate the exchange or loan of collections, coordinate with customs and art handlers and answer to directors, the board and artists themselves.

"What people see is everything beautifully installed," said curator Jason Andrew from Bushwick, N.Y. "What they don't see are all the extensive loan forms, all the hassle of trucking and shipping, the fights with private collectors and institutions to lend work. You're working up until the last second to create that great experience, and curators don't get overtime."

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/pf/0910/gallery.stressful_jobs/12.html

Follow-Up Discussion for Our Weekend Excursion (Part I)

2009-10-27T10:30:00.020-04:00

In the aftermath of our bucolic bliss in the Berkshires and upstate New York, PEI reconnected with several of our intrepid voyagers for a little follow-up discussion. Kathryn Kraczon, the Assistant Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, as well as two Pew Fellows in the Arts, Daniel Heyman and Ben Peterson, provided thoughtful reviews and assessments of our visits. We offer them our gratitude for their contributions.

PEI posed several questions to our respondents. Following are Kate’s replies:

What do you think about the Tang’s practice of working with “non-professional” curators to realize their exhibitions? Through the years, Tang has worked with various professors of psychology, chemistry, physics, anthropology, etc., taking full advantage of expertise around the campus. For example, Lives of the Hudson, currently on view, was co-curated with Tom Lewis, an English professor at Skidmore. Artists often associate and collaborate with professionals from a range of expertise; why do you think this type of dialogue between curators and academics is so rare?

Kathryn Kraczon: As a curator at a university museum, I was extremely pleased that Holland Cotter recently noted the importance of the exhibitions coming out of these institutions: “If you want to find innovative models for small-scale shows with big ideas, teaching institutions are still the place to look, particularly university art museums.,” (“Top of the Wish List: No More Blockbusters,” The New York Times; September 9, 2009). Having recently moved from a “high-powered” contemporary art museum to a small, non-collecting contemporary museum, I’m familiar with how these two very different institutions function.

While the curators at both types of museums have the same values and goals regarding their exhibitions and their roles in facilitating new work—the artists and artworks are always the priority—what often affects programming at larger museums is an institution-wide focus on audience development and the position of the institution in the constellation of other regional, and national, museums. They are financially tied to tourism and the corporate sponsorship that accompanies a large audience (income from admission fees is negligible).

Smaller, often university-affiliated institutions cannot compete for this sponsorship and rely more heavily on grants and private donations, but are not pressured to generate the high admissions numbers. Instead, these institutions can focus on the regional academic and art communities, who are their primary audiences. Ultimately, larger institutions are constricted by programming constraints and smaller institutions are constricted by financial ones. The challenge, and gratification, of working at a smaller institution is that you can organize a great exhibition on any budget as long as you work creatively (and with artists who understand this and are willing to work within these parameters).

Using the phrase “more artistically open” to describe the Tang in relation to the Hessel is loaded and needs to be redefined. Perhaps the Tang’s practice of co-curating with professors (non-curators) is the primary method of integrating the institution into the campus and local community. For example, we learned that many Skidmore professors develop curriculums around these exhibitions. For the Tang, in a rather isolated location, this is an ideal form of audience development that both generates visitors and produces a unique exhibition program. I view the programming at the Hessel as equally innovative and not indicative of a high powered (aka blockbuster driven) institution. As Tom Eccles mentioned during the tour, they consider themselves to be in dialogue with the New York City art world due to their proximity, and I assume their programming is innovative, rather than crowd-pleasing, in order to entice New Yorkers and other regional art viewers to Bard.

I don’t believe the Hessel could function outside of the larger institution of Bard College. I suspect that the prestigious university or college that a museum is affiliated with adds a buffer of academic legitimacy to their programming, shielding them from outside influences. There seems to be less of a sense of ownership over programming from board members when the ultimate oversight belongs to the academic institution. The Tang encourages Skidmore professors to incorporate the exhibitions on view into their curriculums, but professors are, in general, reluctant to alter their syllabi year-by-year. If a university museum wants to develop these kinds of relationships it must be part of the museum’s mission, and as the full name of the Tang indicates— The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College—teaching is in the title and therefore a focus. Ian Berry has been the curator there for ten years and has forged these relationships with faculty. They don’t just happen, they take time.

We often think of art school as “training grounds, places where students can try and fail.” Did you find the Hessel Museum to model an experimental approach for its students? Does this translate to the artist's side of the coin? Bard has recently hired highly renowned curators in the form of Tom Eccles and Maria Lind, whom ambitious students want to work and learn from. Is this how interesting art schools are built as well, through an all-star faculty?

Kathryn Kraczon: The argument that there are too many Curatorial Studies MA graduates is the same argument being made throughout US humanities departments. There are simply more liberal arts MA and PhD graduates than there are academic jobs to fill.

The main issue to address is why Curatorial Studies programs are necessary despite their controversial status. While contemporary art curatorial positions do not currently require a PhD, and very few contemporary art curators have one, virtually every position from Curatorial Assistant upwards requires an MA. With some exceptions (such as Tufts or Williams) there are few excellent terminal MA Art History programs in the US, and if that MA program is within a PhD program, there will be little, if any, funding (and even less support from professors, who concentrate their energy on the PhD students). PhD programs mint future professors and rarely accept students whose career goal is to be a curator, particularly a curator of contemporary art.

The existence of Curatorial Studies programs provides a graduate degree to students who know they would like to pursue a curatorial career in contemporary art, but also rightly legitimizes Curatorial Studies as a discipline, much like Film Studies or Women’s Studies were legitimized over the last few decades. And, like Film Studies and Women’s Studies, there are exponentially more qualified applicants than there are available positions in the field. An Art History MA seems more flexible in terms of alternate careers choices than a Curatorial Studies degree—publishing, arts education, non-profit development, etc. are all career options related to the field—but my ignorance of what the curriculum of a Curatorial Studies program involves prevents me from judging the qualifications of its graduates.

Museum Education, in particular, is a field that needs curatorially-oriented staff and could benefit from Curatorial Studies programs that offer some form of education training. There is friction between Education and Curatorial Departments at most museums, and institutions are increasingly reshaping their educational departments to align more closely with curatorial programming. Eungie Joo, for example, moved from a position as curator at REDCAT to Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs at the New Museum, and has successfully integrated the education program into the broader museum programming.

If there is a homogenization occurring in Curatorial Studies perhaps a benefit will be, as with many inchoate disciplines, the development of an increasingly common language in the field. The value of a Curatorial Studies program like Bard’s is that students are working directly with two highly respected and relevant contemporary curators, Tom Eccles and Maria Lind. In an Art History program they would rarely have access to both an institution like the Hessel and to world-renowned curators.

Follow-Up Discussion for Our Weekend Excursion (Part II)

2009-10-27T10:27:00.007-04:00

Pew Fellows Daniel Heyman and Ben Peterson weigh in from their perspectives:

Who are the audiences for college and university museums? During discussions on the trip, some expressed the opinion that the Tang seemed to be more artistically open and integrated into to the campus and local community, while Bard seemed to be more like a high-powered contemporary art museum that could be found outside an academic community just as readily as inside it. Do you agree? As an artist did one approach resonate more for you? Where would you prefer to show your work and why? Which of the two curatorial approaches did you find more artist-centered?

Daniel Heyman: Now here is something I feel I can relate to as I often show in college and university galleries, and spend a lot of time talking to curators and groups of students at colleges and universities. University galleries address both the academic needs of their institutions, as well as the broader community. The Tang was a perfect example, with several shows, each curated with a different purpose in mind. The Hudson show was a “curators” show, where the museum curators worked with faculty to develop themes through selection and placement of objects that could be contemplated from a wide variety of view points – historical, art historical, social, environmental, etc., -- being a perfect kind of pedagogic tome. Though I was not too interested in the show, there was enough in it for me to ponder and reflect upon that was new and interesting either in the kind of objects presented or in the context in which they were exhibited, or through the accompanying text that brought together various ideas around those objects. I was more interested in the single artist shows on the top floor, Nicole Eiseman in particular, a much more traditional exhibit that was deferential to an artist in that the ideas presented came directly from the art work, and not in its placement or the placement of other unrelated works in close proximity. Both approaches seemed to be interesting enough for all audiences, whether viewers considered themselves “high-powered” in the know art goers or not. The Bard exhibition spaces also had a variety of shows, one major space devoted to a single artist’s work, other spaces with works placed in group show environments, and that central gallery that seemed to be a presentation of a curator’s take on the collection. I found these exhibits less interesting not because of how the work was exhibited, but because I was not particularly interested in the particular works exhibited. The idea that the Bard shows were of a more general or worldly nature is a notion that seems to reflect the navel gazing of the contemporary art community and its focus on what’s new and what’s hot. The Bard shows certainly seemed trendier than those at the Tang, with the line between those in the know and those outside of the loop more clearly delineated. Whether or not this served a purpose other than a place for self congratulation for those in the know I am not sure. For me an art experience involves a kind of inner shudder, good art creates a crack in your mind where a new idea can gather steam. It can happen anywhere where someone has given thought a form. I found it more in front of the Frank Gerry building at Bard than at either of the museums, but that is simply a question of taste.

Curatorial studies programs and the number of students attending them have multiplied dramatically over the past decade. (Since it began its graduate program in curatorial studies in 1994, Bard alone has awarded the M.A. degree to more than 100 students.) How do you imagine artists might work with these curators in the future? Can artists still lead the way in innovating curatorial approaches, as has an artist like Fred Wilson, for example. How can an artistic practice be applied to push a curator beyond their conventional positions?

Ben Peterson: I think on some level I can agree with the feeling that the Tang was more integrated, while Bard seemed more like a "high powered" art museum, but of course some of that feeling rests solely on the architecture of the spaces, Bard having a very contemporary feel to the exhibition spaces, while the Tang seemed smaller and more broken-up (easier to teach multiple groups at once?) Of course, the focus that Bard puts on the artist and his or her art production, versus the Tangs mission to "teach" the art of the artist, or integrate them into a thematic show, leaves me wondering how many artists are good fits for the Tangs program and weather art which resists "teachability" (or readability for that matter) would suffer in the context of the Tangs wider mission. Of the two I think the Tang has the potential to curate far more interesting shows, there is something in the professionalism and "vetted" quality of Bards collection that makes it feel very "safe" even if the work is not (confession: I liked Rachel Harrisons WORK far more than the concept of the exhibition or it's installation, as far as SHOWS go I liked the Tang far better). As for the question of which i would rather show work at........context, context, context.

We often think of art school as “training grounds, places where students can try and fail.” Did you find the Hessel Museum to model an experimental approach for its students? Does this translate to the artist's side of the coin? Bard has recently hired highly renowned curators in the form of Tom Eccles and Maria Lind, whom ambitious students want to work and learn from. Is this how interesting art schools are built as well, through an all-star faculty?

Ben Peterson: Having spent a few days working in the Hessel Museum, I have to say that "experimental" is not the word I would use. "Pedagogical" might be closer to the truth, because while the art is radical (often in intent and execution) the display, and perceived "permiability(sp)" of the museum itself leaves something to be desired. Are star artists and curators the way to make an interesting school, sadly..... probably.....yes....you can't build a good team with lousy players, and I would rather have had Mike Kelly for a prof. than Hans Hoffman....I feel sad even writing that...where was my Black Mountain College?

Thinking specifically of Mass MoCA’s massive Building 5 Gallery, which is the size of a football field, can so much space be intimidating to an artist? That space aside, the museum contains a number of large galleries that can swallow-up smaller works. Do you, personally, find such raw, cavernous warehouse galleries to be stimulating to your own way of thinking about making and showing your work or simply overwhelming?

Daniel Heyman: I have visited the Building 5 Gallery three times now, so being asked this question as an artist certainly interests me. Like everything else in this country, art was super-sized over the last number of years, as if it was a natural progression. It’s not. Good art carries its weight whatever its size because the form and the content illuminate thought. The idea is large, the work can be of any size. Elephants are always impressive, and so the space (and probably most objects in that space) will always be impressive, but this doesn’t make it great art. Fireworks over central park, man-made water falls ringing Manhattan, big highly polished steal “atoms” at Mass MOCA, blown up photos, acres of paintings, none of it means much unless the art experience trumps the size experience. I don’t find the space intimidating because I can’t imagine I would ever be interested in doing something in that kind of space. Moreover, there is certainly room for a multitude of art experiences in the world, but the available funds are short, and it irks me when hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent to put school busses or ranch homes into a space such as Gallery 5 when there is so little funding available for the making of art works in general. America is obsessed with size; I wish it was more obsessed with the quality of experience. But what of the artist whose work is made in the solitude of a small studio – without the flash of production assistants an ocean away. I am not sure that this kind of work, the kind that I do, has a place in the large raw spaces of places such as Gallery 5. To answer your question, I don’t think these kinds of cavernous spaces are good for work such as mine, even though I think they are glorious in themselves. They don’t intimidate me because I can’t imagine working in them. Maybe one day I will be invited to do so, and then I will be intimidated. Ben Peterson: For the last question...both, neither, and maybe. Have Mass Mocha give me a call, we'll set up a show, and I'll blog about my feelings, all the while being secretly thrilled to even have the chance.

Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Professional Development Trip to upstate New York and Western Massachusetts

2009-10-27T09:00:00.003-04:00

Welcome to North Adams!

Curator Susan Cross gives us a tour of Simon Starling in Gallery 5 at Mass MOCA.

Porches. Glorious Porches.

The Stone Hill Center expansion by architect Tadao Ando, at The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

The energetic Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at the Hessel Museum of Art.

Anthony Campuzano does his best imitation of Cher in a Rachel Harrison installation.

And, of course, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College was also wonderful, but due to the diligent work of the security staff no photos were allowed!

Center for Curatorial Leadership Announces Fellows for 2010

2009-10-26T10:48:00.006-04:00

Former Brooklyn Museum curator Elizabeth Easton’s Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL), launched in 2008 with Museum of Modern Art patron Agnes Gund and designed to give participants an intensive study in management skills at Columbia Business School, has announced its fellows for 2010, according to Artnet. The program, which begins next January, includes consultation with museum directors, administrators, and trustees; all costs are paid by the CCL.

Participants this year include Christophe Cherix (curator, prints, and illustrated books, Museum of Modern Art), Deborah Cullen (director of curatorial programs, El Museo del Barrio), Malcolm Daniel (curator, photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Kristina van Dyke (associate curator, Menil Collection), Kathleen Forde (curator of time-based visual arts, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy, NY), Alison de Lima Greene (curator, contemporary art and special projects, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Frederick Ilchman (curator, paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Chiyo Ishikawa (curator, European paintings and sculpture, Seattle Art Museum), Alisa LaGamma (curator, arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, Metropolitan Museum), Lisa E. Rotondo-McCord (curator, Asian art, New Orleans Museum of Art), Trevor Schoonmaker (curator, contemporary art, Nasher Museum at Duke University), and Stephen Wolohojian (curator of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts, Harvard Art Museum/Fogg).

If you have visited the Resources page of PEI’s new site you might have seen the link to the CCL.

A New Monthly Curatorial Talk Series:

2009-10-25T09:59:00.005-04:00

The Curator's Perspective
This fall, iCI launches a new monthly curatorial talk series. Each month an international curator distills the current happenings in contemporary art, including the artists they are excited by, exhibitions that have made them think, and their views on recent developments in the art world.

This month’s speaker was Lars Bang Larsen

An independent curator and writer based in Barcelona, Lars Bang Larsen is known for his seminal writing on the new generation of artists that emerged from Scandinavia in the 1990s, and subsequently his exhibitions and books that offer a fresh approach to considering artists’ engagement with social activism and counter cultures from the 1960s on. Born in Denmark, Bang Larsen has spent the last ten years predominantly looking into artists’ practice across Europe, the U.S and the Middle East. Recent exhibitions include Fundamentalisms of the New Order for the Charlottenborg in Copenhagen; Populism, presented at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, CAC Vilnius and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam; The Echo Show for Tramway in Glasgow; and currently he is working on a show for Raven Row in London, entitled Art, Activism and the Archive. Bang Larsen is a regular contributor to Frieze, Afterall, and Artforum. In 1998 he was the co-curator for the inaugural Nordic Biennial, and in 2004 he was the curator of the Danish participation for the São Paulo Biennial.

Stay tuned! We'll let you know when the next speaker is announced.

For further details and to RSVP please contact Mary Derr at derr@ici-exhibitions.org or 212-254-8200, ext. 21

NEW IN THE PEI LIBRARY

2009-10-24T11:49:00.010-04:00

Come on in and READ ‘EM!

Continuing Dialogues: A Tribute To Igor Zabel: The Slovenian curator, art critic, writer and theorist Igor Zabel (1958–2005) was largely responsible for putting Slovenian art on the map of the international art scene. As senior curator of Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, he was engaged in establishing links between "East" and "West" Europe without losing a critical perspective of the ongoing transformations. In this book, which aims to provide an appreciative insight into Zabel’s far-reaching commitment, with contributions by artists and theorists, it will become clear that, despite his unblinking perception of all the apparently unbridgeable differences involved, continuing dialogues played a fundamental role in his practice as both a theorist and a curator.

e-flux Journal Reader 2009: e-flux journal, an online experimental art criticism magazine initiated by the artists Julieta Aranda, AntonVidokle, and Brian Kuan Wood. Writers, artists, and thinkers are invited to write on topics of their choosing, discussing the various urgent concerns being engaged in art today. Initiated in fall 2008, e-flux journal is first and foremost an online publication: free and accessible simultaneously from all parts of the world. Its topics and themes are not shaped by the interests or concerns of one specific center, but are developed through open invitations extended to art practitioners and thinkers as diverse as its readership.

The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art
This is the publication for the inaugural event of a long-term research project on ”the documentary" that aims to investigate the heritage of documentary practices in contemporary art in relation to the history of film, documentary photography, and television as well as to video art. The project also aims at situating these contemporary documentary practices within current cultural production and exploring their role within mainstream media and activism. This publication was inspired by the idea of a greenroom at a television station--a place where staff and guests meet before and after filming and engage in discussions that often differ from those conducted in the limelight. The research project is a collaboration between CCS Bard and the artist and theoretician Hito Steyerl.

Christian Marclay: Shuffle (Cards)
For this project, a limited-edition boxed card set, Marclay photographed the appearance of musical notation in his everyday wanderings--finding examples on shop awnings, chocolate tins, T-shirts, underwear and in other unexpected places. This body of work reveals Marclay to be an obsessive photographic note-taker with a flair for uncovering musical "clues" hidden in the landscape and adorning our world--musical notes just waiting to be called into action. Each of the 75 images collected here is presented on an oversized playing card. Part Fluxus box, part John Cage-ian "chance operation" or Eames House of Cards, it offers a compelling, serendipity-driven visual experience, as well as the components for a spontaneous musical score: a player need only shuffle the deck and let the cards fall where they may in order to produce a unique, experimental sequence.

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 mailto:pei@pcah.us

A Brief History of Curating (Global Art Forum 2009)

2009-10-23T13:28:00.001-04:00

Daniel Birnbaum with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Walter Hopps

2009-10-22T12:05:00.008-04:00

As of late I have been devouring any and all articles I can find on Walter Hopps. Perhaps it’s Hans Ulrich Obrist’s one man march to keep the legacy alive, or maybe it’s just this photo I found online of Pharrell wearing the “Back in Twenty Minutes” button. Who can say?

If you are interested, here are several links to more interesting articles about Hopps:

Paul Richard for The Washington Post

David Ebony for Art in America

Hans-Ulrich Obrist for ArtForum

Ken Allen for X-TRA

Daniel Fuller is the Senior Program Specialist of the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative

PEI October Exhibitions Picks

2009-10-21T10:45:00.018-04:00

Exhibition Picks, our monthly feature highlighting exhibitions of exceptional interest, makes its debut on the new PEI blog! Be on the lookout for more of your favorite monthly PEI emails—coming soon to our blog.

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

Moby-Dick

Sept. 2 - Dec. 12, 2009

Moby-Dick is the second show in a trilogy of Wattis Institute exhibitions that are based on canonical American novels. The first, The Wizard of Oz, was presented in fall 2008; the third will be Huckleberry Finn, in fall 2010. All three stories have major themes related to exploration and (self-)discovery, and the corresponding exhibitions function as metaphorical journeys through which the audience experiences various notions of America's reality, both contemporary and historic. Established and emerging contemporary artists from around the world are invited to address the key themes of the books and the historical moments in which they were written.

SculptureCenter

A Voyage of Growth and Discovery: Mike Kelley & Michael Smith

Sept. 13 - Nov. 30, 2009
A Voyage of Growth and Discovery centers on Baby IKKI, a character that artist Michael Smith has been performing for over thirty years. Pre-lingual and of ambiguous age, Baby IKKI is both comedic and melancholy. The six-channel video follows the existential journey of the Baby over several days at a festival of "radical self-expression," famous for its presentations of large-scale displays of fire, held in the remote Black Rock Desert of Nevada. The Baby, alone in his journey despite being surrounded by thousands of revelers, negotiates the rave-like festival environment while also exploring the primal natural elements of fire, water, earth, and wind.

Creative Time

Creative Time Summit: Art and Social Justice in the Public Sphere

co-presented with Live from the New York Public Library
October 23 - 24, 2009

The conference kicks off Friday night with the first CT Prize for Art & Social Justice, and the inaugural prize is being given to The Yes Men. All day on Saturday, 42 artists from around the globe will give short presentations about the experimental social justice art practices they are developing. The goal is to inspire a broad understanding of diverse practices developing around the globe. The Summit is expected to be a highly engaging, thought provoking, even inspirational event.

Performa 09

November 1–22, 2009
Tickets are going on sale and moving fast! The third edition of the internationally-acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance will showcase new work by more than 150 of the world’s most exciting contemporary artists. Over its three week-run, Performa 09’s innovative program will break down the boundaries between visual art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, film, television, radio, graphic design, and the culinary arts, presenting over 110 events in collaboration with a consortium of more than 80 of the city’s leading arts institutions, 40 curators from around the world, and a network of public and private venues throughout the city.