Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Museum Attendance Up During Recession


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

PEI Has A New Magazine Subscription …



THE EXHIBITIONIST: JOURNAL ON EXHIBITION MAKING

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

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

Come on by the library and check it out…

CURATING AND RISK

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


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


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


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


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


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

iCI Is So Great!



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

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

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

It’s PEI highly recommended:

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

And, of course:

THE CURATOR'S PERSPECTIVE


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

ArtStars*



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



Wednesday, March 3, 2010

PEI MARCH EXHIBITIONS PICKS

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



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



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



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



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

Monday, March 1, 2010

New in the PEI Reading Room

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

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

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


Gabriel Orozco @ MoMA

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