“It wasn’t till I got to art school that I really understood how art can connect you through human history and the type of reservoir that it could be.” (Jeff Koons)

Art21 is proud to announce the launch of Open Enrollment, the newest column on this site. Open Enrollment chronicles the experience of graduate school via the perspective of current students. As MA and MFA degrees become ever more the norm for the professional training of artists, educators, and administrators alike, Open Enrollment functions as a time-sensitive journal, offering readers a birds-eye-view of the challenges, rewards, puzzles, and ontological questioning that a graduate education engenders.

Each semester, a selective and diverse group of students from accredited graduate programs, as well as students studying at non-traditional institutions (temporary schools, artist’s educational projects, intensive residency programs, etc.), will take up residence on the blog. The roster of contributors will grow over time, providing a cross-section of international venues and pedagogical approaches. Open Enrollment intends to portray, through both personal examples and larger inquiries about the pursuit of higher education, the diversity of studio and critical academic experiences in art school today.

This column, written by nine students in the US and Europe, will publish each Wednesday, alongside Joe Fusaro’s Teaching with Contemporary Art column. After an extensive search, which yielded lots of impressive applications, we’ve narrowed down the authors to this fantastic group. Welcome to our inaugural class!

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Entering Kidspace at MASS MoCA

On March 20, Kidspace at MASS MoCA celebrated its 10^th anniversary. Kidspace, a contemporary art gallery, studio, and educational program, promotes the understanding and teaching of art through experiential learning opportunities designed for elementary and middle school students, teachers, and families. Housed at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, Kidspace is a collaborative program founded in 2000 by the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute (The Clark), and MASS MoCA. Kidspace is designed to serve as a partnering mechanism between the three museums and six rural schools in the North Berkshires, and annually provides every student in Pre-K through 8^th grade with sequential arts education opportunities. The partnership involves teachers, administrators, and three museum staff in the development and assessment of programs.

Leading up to the big 10^th anniversary celebration, I had the chance to talk with Laura Thompson, Director of Exhibitions and Education at Kidspace, about what makes Kidspace a different kind of experience for students.

Joe Fusaro: First of all, congratulations on the 10^th anniversary of Kidspace. Tell me about the kinds of thematic exhibits Kidspace has organized since 2000. What are some of your personal favorites? And how does Kidspace come up with the themes?

Laura Thompson: Over the past 10 years, Kidspace has organized 20 exhibitions representing a diversity of themes. We have organized exhibitions about the natural environment, childhood fears, food, and music. The variety of art materials represented in our exhibitions range from grass and pompoms to welded metal and phone books. Some of my personal favorites were the following exhibitions: Nature Park with Victoria Palermo’s grass chairs and rubber trees and Rob De Mar’s miniature three-dimensional landscapes.  I loved this exhibit because we were able to talk about how artists either use natural materials as artistic medium or represent the natural environment in their work.  I also loved Long-Bin Chen’s Reading Sculpture exhibition, which featured Buddha heads and sculptures of warriors made out of phone and text books.  This was a fun exhibit to talk about recycling and make connections between literature and the visual arts.

Kidspace comes up with the themes of the exhibitions by having a deep connection to the schools.  We are aware of topics that are being addressed in the schools and try to select themes that illustrate these topics “thinking outside the box,” using visual arts as a means for encouraging discussions.  We sometimes choose topics that are not being addressed in the schools like childhood fears (what did the exhibit on childhood fears look and sound like?) or about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, offering a place for these important discussions to take place.

JF: What was the inspiration for starting Kidspace? Were there any particular hurdles you encountered starting the space ten years ago?

LT: I have been working for Kidspace since 2002, and therefore, my knowledge about the inspiration in starting up the gallery is based on what I have been told.  In 2000, WCMA’s past education director, Barbara Robertson, wanted to take on a new challenge and wanted to reach out to the North Adams community.  She also saw that MASS MoCA was starting up but would be without an education program.  WCMA’s education director got the three museum directors (The Clark, WCMA, and MASS MoCA) to form a consortium that oversees Kidspace, housed at MASS MoCA. Each of the three museums contribute in-kind aspects like staff time and space, and each has the responsibility of raising funds to support everything we do from artist residencies to the buses for school groups.

The hurdles I suppose would have been regarding funding.  As soon as we became established in MASS MoCA, we did not have any problems with securing artists for our exhibitions.  Rather, we found it difficult and continue to find it tricky, especially in today’s economy, to fund all our different programs. The key thing for people to understand is that Kidspace depends on grants and donations to make the magic happen here.

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“Kashmir Ki Kali Hoon” sung by Lata Mangeshka, Junglee, 1961

My father told me years ago that he’s only ever seen 7 films in a theater. When asked to list them, he replied, Junglee (a film directed by Subodh Mukherjee in 1961). Confused, I asked him to carry on with the list before realizing that he had only seen Junglee, and he had seen it seven times.

“Chahe Koi Mujhe…Yahooo…” sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi, Junglee, 1961

The film is set in Kashmir, a space that busies the various administrations of India, Pakistan, and China. The native ambiguities of this highly politicized region at an early age intrigued my artistic sensibilities. Revisiting this intrigue now leads me to other films introduced to me by my father.

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Richard Serra, "Baldwin", 2009. Paintstick on handmade paper, 78 1/2 x 78 1/2 in. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

One artist in Rome, four artists in San Francisco, three artist talks from the U.S. to the U.K., and more in this week’s roundup:

• On April 9, Gagosian Gallery Rome will open an exhibition of eight new drawings by Season 1 artist Richard Serra. Serra began working on Greenpoint Rounds in late spring of 2009. In these large-scale works, each measuring 80 inches square, a large black circle is embedded in the surface of heavy paper. According to the gallery, “Each drawing exerts a vastly different energy and exudes a singular character.” Using heated paint-stick, gummy or fluid in state, Serra built up the material so that each drawing has its own unique surface. On view through May 15.

• Tonight at 6pm, Season 1 artist Andrea Zittel will speak at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The artist will describe how her studio in the high desert of California serves both as a space for exploration and as a place for crafting and presenting objects, materials, spaces and ideas. Purchase tickets here.

• Don’t Piss on Me and Tell Me it’s Raining – an exhibition curated by the contemporary art news and audio site Bad at Sports – will open at apexart in New York on April 7. The exhibition features over 100 objects, images and ephemera submitted by Bad at Sports contributors and guests of the show. Art21 artists Kerry James Marshall (Season 1), and Raymond Pettibon (Season 2) are two of the many participants. Follow @Bad at Sports and the hashtag #basapex on Twitter to get the deets on exhibition installation and events.

• The Spring 2010 issue of The Georgia Review features ten images by Season 2 artist Kara Walker. Titled Riots and Outrages, the portfolio has been culled from two recent shows: Walker’s 2007 solo exhibition Bureau of Refugees, and a show (with Season 4 artist Mark Bradford) at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. last year. The title of the feature was inspired by a list of “Riots and Outrages” committed by whites that Walker discovered in the archives of the short-lived Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, the federal agency that supervised relief efforts and documented conditions related to Civil War refugees and freedmen.

• On April 9, Season 3 artist Ellen Gallagher will appear at Tate Liverpool in conversation with Romi Crawford, professor of Literature, Africana and Visual Critical Studies in the Liberal Arts Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The event – held in conjunction with the exhibition Afro Modern – begins at 6pm. Purchase tickets here.

• Mapping Identity, a group exhibition in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, explores aspects of contemporary cultural identity and the effects of displacement, exile, transnationalism, hybridity, cosmopolitanism, and the state of the “in-between.” Works by Shahzia Sikander (Season 1) and Do-Ho Suh (Season 2) are included. The Philadelphia Inquirer says, “What becomes especially vivid in this display is the extent to which the work underlines the diversity and imaginative energy of artists supposedly on the periphery.” Mapping Identity is on view through April 30.

• Works by Kiki Smith, Raymond Pettibon (both Season 2), Laurie Simmons (Season 4), and Julie Mehretu (Season 5) are currently installed in the gallery of Arion Press, the printer-publishing company located in San Francisco. On view are sixteen images of Smith’s own hair for I Love My Love, a ballad by Scottish-born San Francisco poet Helen Adam; Pettibon’s prints for Arion’s forthcoming edition of South of Heaven by Jim Thompson; Simmons’s photographs for a new limited edition of Mrs. Bridge, a mid-twentieth-century fiction novel by Evan S. Connell; and a print by Mehretu for Arion’s forthcoming edition of poetry by Sappho.

• On April 11, Mehretu will speak at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The artist (a Core Fellow at the museum’s Glassell School of Art in the late 1990s) will discuss her work, including her new suite of paintings in the exhibition Julie Mehretu: Grey Area, now traveling from Berlin to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where it will open in May. The event begins at 2pm and is free and open to the public.

• The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) has acquired Untitled (Dementia) by Season 4 artist Mark Bradford. Created in 2009, the twelve-panel piece is made from posters advertising services to Alzheimers sufferers. “While invoking the history of collage and its incorporation of the everyday and the readymade into the work of art,” states the press release, “Untitled (Dementia) is also a melancholic reminder of the economy it reflects, the trace of a world that formulates itself below the radar and a metaphor of forgotten histories.” Untitled (Dementia) is on view at PAFA through April 11 in the exhibition Philagrafika 2010: The Graphic Unconscious. The piece will be on view again from June 26-September 12 in an exhibition of selections from PAFA’s permanent collection.

• This is the last week to see work by Cao Fei (Season 5) at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design. The group exhibition The Storyteller looks at contemporary artists who use narrative as a way to understand the social and political events of our time. Closes April 9.

• The New York Times Magazine article Can Animals Be Gay?, about the science of same-sex pairings in animals, features a series of conceptual images by Jeff Koons (Season 5). View the slideshow.

• The Toronto Star blog reports that the Art Gallery of Ontario has commissioned an outdoor installation by Barbara Kruger (Season 1) in conjunction with the Contact Festival next month. The piece will span an entire city block. Read more about it here.

• Laurie Anderson (Season 1) has announced her first studio album in a decade, featuring songs from her Homeland stage project. The LP, to be released this summer, will feature contributions from Four Tet, Antony Hegarty, and Anderson’s husband Lou Reed. The Guardian has the scoop.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell, Lakshmi Mittal, and Anish Kapoor

Poor old Vladimir Tatlin. Having been ruthlessly picked-apart in numberless modernist critiques, his thwarted architectural ambitions have yet again provided the basis for a work of contemporary art. Anish Kapoor’s design for a monumental public sculpture for the 2012 London Olympic site, unveiled this week, is a sort of organic knock-off of Tatlin’s spiraling lattices of iron and steel. Kapoor’s signature maroon palette and bulging, squidgy forms – a catch-all code for blood and guts and sex and death and all the other big themes slapped onto the artist’s works in enthusiastic press releases – have been reconfigured into a huge spurt of latticed steel that loops around itself and culminates in a disc-like viewing platform. The sculpture – officially the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a car crash of corporate acronyms surely soon to be replaced with an architectural nickname (The Partially-Decayed Human Larynx, maybe) – will be Britain’s largest public sculpture, an accolade that sounds like an insult (like “Employee of the Month“) but is in fact the terms on which public commissions tend to define themselves these days, especially in the UK.

Lego "Angel of the North" at Legoland Windsor

No sooner had Antony Gormley’s enormous Angel of the North been installed back in 1998, than local government agencies started courting corporate investors for monumental works of art that would do for the 21^st century what suspension bridges and railway stations did for the 19^th: provide tangible and solid evidence of the country’s engineering prowess and international cultural standing. The problem remains that of art’s pesky inability to sit still and be about one thing. Bridges are bridges, whatever attributes they’re made to embody, and art’s semantic skittishness remains a stumbling block for public works of art. The Angel of the North could either be a monument to the virtuosity of the British steel industry or a memorial to it, a grounded and flightless epitaph. Kapoor’s tower could either be a celebration of national engineering innovation or a hubristic blast of Olympian pomposity and corporate extravagance that’s huge (a thousand times taller than the Eiffel Tower, or whatever) simply because it can be, not because it needs to be. To future historians in zero-gravity bubble-pods analyzing the artistic legacy of the twenty-first century, the blossoming of enigmatic public sculptures will seem as retroactively metaphorical as The Colossus of Rhodes or Nero’s own bronze Colossus, legendarily installed in the Forum and melted down in the fourth century to make coins.

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Mural by Sofia Maldonado. Photo by Alex Mateo.

Do artists from underrepresented demographic groups have a responsibility to represent their ethnicity in a positive light?  This is not a new question, in fact, it seems to re-enter the national conversation every time a minority artist ventures to create a provocative image.  This question has recently reemerged in response to Sofia Maldonado’s mural installed near Times Square.  As reported on CNN, the local Fox affiliate, the New York Times and several popular blogs, Maldonado’s work has come under fire because some viewers find her representation of the women of color in her mural—scantily clad with long acrylic fingernails—inappropriate. Furthermore, as reported by Jezebel, a feminist blog, at least one minority group, New York City Black Professionals, condemns the mural noting that, “this is not even about the Latina artist [Maldonado is of Puerto-Rican and Cuban descent] or her expression of how she sees NY; she was only painting what they [the Times Square Alliance] commissioned her to do in order to get her paycheck…and the end result was a slap in the face of every woman of black and brown descent.”

This question of “responsible” representation is not unique to the visual arts.  Over the years, African-American rappers, such as Ice-T and DMX, have been lambasted for their hyper-masculine, misogynistic lyrics.  Stephenie Meyer, the author of the wildly successful Twilight series, has been roundly criticized by feminist scholars for creating a heroine, Bella, who is devoid of all personality and lives only for her boyfriend.

The problem with this question is that it aims to reduce artistic expression into a Manichean dichotomy of good and bad, acceptable and offensive. The very supposition of responsibility removes the essential subjectivity from the creation and viewing of art. An African-American woman in the Fox 5 News piece on Maldonado’s mural condemns the work because, “that’s not who we are.” Maldonado would agree. In all of the statements she has given about her mural, she has never presented her work as representative of all women of color. Her most widely quoted statement makes this clear; Maldonado wrote on her blog that her mural “illustrates strong New York City women as a tribute to the Caribbean experience in America. Inspired by my heritage, it illustrates a female aesthetic that is not usually represented in media or fashion advertising in Times Square.” Maldonado’s mural depicts a segment of the Caribbean-American population. It may be a segment that some viewers would consider “ghetto,” as another person interviewed by Fox put it, but it is not a segment ever intended to represent the entire ethnic group.

So why this confusion?  Why do some viewers of subjective, specific pieces like Maldonado’s have this immediate, offended reaction? As African-American blogger Keysha Whitacker explained, people of color are concerned that “good white folks” will see “our shame.” She further admonishes people of color to stop trying to “manage” how they are viewed by other racial groups.

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MGMT, "Time to Pretend." Source: Ticklebooth.com

• This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco club either…but it is SUPER FUN! Art21 hosted the second installment of Culture Wars: A Night of Trivia with Art21 this past Wednesday, March 24. We were shocked to see over 120 participants gathered at the 92YTribeca in New York City. It was so packed that we had to bring in more chairs for the twenty-six teams who battled through four rounds of trivia. Marc Mayer reports.
• VIDEO EXCLUSIVE | William Kentridge — We invited viewers to choose the 100th Exclusive video and, with 43% of the vote, William Kentridge emerged triumphant! We’ll debut the four other videos in contention — with artists Mary Heilmann, Julie Mehretu, Beryl Korot, and Mike Kelley — throughout the month of April. Thanks to all who voted, and without further ado, check the winning video out!
• Blogger Ivan Lozano, who comes from a film and history background, questions how the “future” is distributed in contemporary art. What does this mean in relationship to Dziga Vertov’s Kino-eye?
• FLASH POINTS: Deaccessioning Without Putting Your Mission Up For Sale. Museums have been disposing of objects since they began acquiring them. Guest writer Maxwell Anderson, Director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, is surprised by how transparent his museum chooses to be about the decision-making process.
• In continuation of the Flash Points topic pertaining to Ethics and Art, Hrag Vartanian speaks with #Class Co-Curator Jennifer Dalton.
• New Guest Blogger | Baseera Khan — Baseera is a practicing artist and curator living and working in Brooklyn, New York. What is the history of what she does and why she does it? Check out this post. Baseera also revisits her own art education and surprise path-crossing with a special Art21 artist in her post, Wayward Memories.
• EDUCATION | Teaching with Contemporary Art — “I think the performers should have been credited in the (Tino Sehgal show. In ballet, dancers are considered artists even though they don’t actually choreograph the dance. They don’t have the idea. They are the vessel that choreographers use to show the idea to the world. ” says high school student Suzanne when responding to the question: who should receive credit for conceptual works produced by fabricators or performers? Joe Fusaro in continuation of his post from last week, had described a few upcoming classes where his high school students were taking on the question of whether or not an idea can be considered a work of art, even if an artist never actually touches the object that’s created or has a direct hand in the performance of the piece. This discussion led to other questions in a very interesting conversation. Check out Joe’s post for additional insightful comments made by the students in his class.
• A new video installation by Season 1 artist Barbara Kruger is now on view at the Chelsea location of Mary Boone Gallery. Women of the Chrysler: A 400-Year Celebration of the Arts is now on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Galerie Lelong in New York is displaying new sculptures by Season 4 artist Ursula von Rydingsvard in the solo show ERRĀTUS. Mark Dion (Season 4) and Robert Williams have organized An Ordinall of Alchemy, the first in a series of exhibitions presented by the art journal and gallery space, Cabinet. James Turrell, Bruce Nauman (both Season 1), and Jenny Holzer (Season 4) are included in the first Biennale for International Light Art, Open Light in Private Spaces. Season 1 artist Mel Chin is in Baltimore with his Fundred Dollar Bill project… and much much more in this week’s Round-Up!

Snap shot of the exhibition, "William Kentridge: Five Themes," now on view at the Museum of Modern Art, NY

The best word to describe my undergraduate experience as a Drawing/Painting major is miseducation — to educate improperly — though what I learned as an artist in school is quite invaluable. There wasn’t as much instruction as there were socialization tactics. I supplemented my studies with unintended diversions to the oftentimes absurd, as one could describe a painting studio. Luckily, the school I faltered into had studio professors that grew to mean something to me. Sitting here now looking back, the one aspect that impresses me most is how they weeded students out. They would tell you everyday how thankless being an artist was and how you will make no money. Vernon Fisher once told me that I would have a better time doodling between customers as a cashier at the local 7/11 for the rest of my life. He said that artists simply do not make a living unless they put up a huge fight; in fighting you train, and in fighting there is either success, or defeat. I was successfully socialized into thinking that the function of art goes beyond personal comfort.

Snapshot of the"William Kentridge: Five Themes" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, NY

In 2002, a friend convinced me to skip class to drive down to Houston, Texas, in her ‘97 Ford Mustang to see the William Kentridge exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum (CAMH). A six-hour car ride later, I was submissively thrilled to enter into a space adorned by oversized, dark charcoal drawings on paper of street lamps, rotary telephones, and other quotidian still-life subjects. There was an economy to his work that struck me immediately. It was something that I paid close attention to, as I had not yet seen a contemporary artist use drawing/painting in the manner of the everyday. On our campus, there were many popular drawing/painting icons that influenced us fledglings, artists like Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, and David Salle. When I skipped class to see these works, they seemed triumphant or to have large production budgets. That was honestly the first thing that impressed me when I entered into museum spaces; secondly, I was naturally impressed by the artists’ abilities to use material as their signature. One not only recognizes these artists’ own artwork; they recognize when someone else borrows their technique.

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We invited viewers to choose the 100th Exclusive video and, with 43% of the vote, William Kentridge emerged triumphant! We’ll debut the four other videos in contention — with artists Mary Heilmann, Julie Mehretu, Beryl Korot, and Mike Kelley — throughout the month of April. Thanks to all who voted, and without further ado…

Episode #100! With his video History of the Main Complaint (1996) serving as a backdrop, William Kentridge discusses how artists draw upon tragedy as subject matter for their work and how drawing itself can be a compassionate act.

Having witnessed first-hand one of the twentieth century’s most contentious struggles—the dissolution of apartheid—William Kentridge brings the ambiguity and subtlety of personal experience to public subjects most often framed in narrowly defined terms. Using film, drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance, he transmutes sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories. Aware of myriad ways in which we construct the world by looking, Kentridge often uses optical illusions to extend his drawings-in-time into three dimensions.

The traveling exhibition William Kentridge: Five Themes is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (through May 17, 2010).

William Kentridge is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Compassion of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Ray Day. Editor: Paulo Padilha. Artwork Courtesy: William Kentridge.

The Watts Towers, view of 99-foot tower, which contains the longest slender reinforced concrete column in the world. Courtesy www.wattstowers.us

Fifty years after public outcry stopped the city of Los Angeles from demolishing the world-famous Watts Towers, Angelenos once again rallied to rescue the complex from the City Council chopping block. While the network of 17 interconnected spiraling structures–built from salvaged materials over the course of 33 years by immigrant Simon Rodea-–was not in physical peril this time, the Los Angeles City Council aimed to raze funding for two city-owned art centers that are part of the Watts Towers complex. Council members had proposed closing or privatizing many of the municipal community art centers, including the Watts Towers Arts Center, which provides tours of the now nationally recognized folk art monument, as well as free workshops, lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and community outreach. In 1970, the local community founded and developed the facility through a grassroots fund raising effort known as the “One Square Inch” campaign $1.00 for each square inch of the building. Five years later, the community deeded the site to the city of Los Angeles, and the Municipal Arts Department began operating the WTAC. Given the community’s historic involvement in preserving the site and developing the center, it is no surprise that the proposal to shut down public support for the complex was met with opposition.

Los Angeles has worked long and hard to establish itself as a cutting-edge art capital, but the city’s mammoth financial woes may cause it to falter from its path toward becoming a leading center for artistic and cultural innovation. In the face of shouldering the burden of Los Angeles’s budget deficit–which could be anywhere between 500 million and 1 billion dollars in the next fiscal year–the Department of Cultural Affairs has begun the process of cutting its expenditures in half by laying off workers and seeking private enterprises to operate many of the city’s public arts centers. Los Angeles owns a unique network of twenty-five community arts centers around the city, and has previously cut spending by partnering with private nonprofits at ten of these sites. The city council proposed cutting funding entirely to nine more of these centers, hoping to find more private enterprises to operate them. However, finding nonprofits capable of running these centers could prove to be difficult, if not impossible. If the city is unable to find private partners, the centers on the list may shut down entirely.

The directors, educators, and staff at the Watts Towers Art Center and adjacent Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center, as well as the William Grant Still Arts Center and the Warner Grand Theatre, already received pink slips last month. The facilities faced the prospect of shuttering starting this week, until the City Council voted on Friday to explore the possibility of funneling away from public art projects for the next two years, essentially granting a stay of execution for its network of community art centers. The money would come from the Public Arts Redevelopment Tax Fund, which earmarks 1% of all new city-funded construction projects for new public art works. Council members emphasize that this reallocation of public art dollars is by no means a permanent solution, and the city continues to seek private enterprises to take over many of the city cultural facilities.

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