Weekly Roundup

Video/Performance Still. Photo Credit: Charles Atlas

As summer 2010 winds down this week’s roundup gets ready for an exciting fall season when Mark Dion embarks on an expedition in Oakland, Andrea Zittel lands on the Portland Art Museum front patio, Cindy Sherman steps out in Balenciaga, and Matthew Ritchie and Trenton Doyle Hancock gear up for Super Bowl XLV and more!

• The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art presents a live, audiovisual collaboration between Charles Atlas and musician/composer William Basinski as part of the Time-Based Art Festival. “This is a rare chance to see a virtuoso performance from Atlas — a pioneer of the integration of live video with stage performance known for acclaimed collaborations with Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery and Merce Cunningham — and New York experimental media musician and composer William Basinski. — forma.org” The festival will run September 9-19.

• Miradas: Mexican Art from the Bank of America Collection, organized by the National Museum of Mexican Art in collaboration with Bank of America, includes work by Gabriel Orozco. The exhibition will be on view September 10, 2010 – January 9, 2011 and is comprised of “the most extensive corporate collections in the U.S. and takes a close look at the paintings, prints and photographs created over the past 80 years.” Continue reading »

Weekly Roundup

Barbara Kruger, "Between" installation, 2010. Photo credit: Guild Hall.

This week in the roundup … Barbara Kruger gets a celebration started, Cao Fei has her eyes on a prize, Cai Guo-Qiang goes in with a bang, Raymond Pettibon is into OFF!, Maya Lin dedicates her Confluence, Laurie Anderson opens BAM and much more!

• Barbara Kruger presents Plenty at Guild Hall through October 11. A special preview on August 13 celebrates the exhibition.  “Barbara Kruger is one of the most important artists of this century. Her work is exciting and challenging. I have wanted to work with her since I first became Curator of Guild Hall in 1990 and am delighted that the opportunity finally arrived for our schedules to coincide and work together on this amazing exhibition,” said Christina Mossaides Strassfield, Museum Director and Chief Curator.

• The Guggenheim Museum and Hugo Boss announced the artists short-listed for The Hugo Boss Prize 2010, which will be awarded on November 4, followed by a solo exhibition for the winning artist in 2011. One of the Prize nominees, Cao Fei also had her work in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, and she was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize 2010.

• Cai Guo-Qian has been invited by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to make Odyssey that will adorn a new Arts of China Gallery on October 17. “Cai Quo-Qiang is a master of the poetic on a grand scale,” director of the MFA Houston Peter C. Marzio said in a statement. He added that he believes Cai’s project will foster a “dialogue between artworks from different time periods within the galleries.” Continue reading »

Weekly Roundup

William Kentridge, Drawing for the film 'Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old (Soho and Mrs. Eckstein in Pool)', 1991. Charcoal and pastel on paper, 47 1/4 x 59 in. Collection of the artist. © 2010 William Kentridge. Photo: John Hodgkiss, courtesy the artist.

With 19 bits and bites below, this week’s roundup is a whopper:

• Five Themes, the traveling survey exhibition of work by Season 5 artist William Kentridge, has landed at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition underscores the inter­relatedness of Kentridge’s various disciplines and mediums — drawing, print, animated film, theater models and books. The exhibition is organized chronologically and in five primary themes that cut across his artistic output: “Occasional and Residual Hope: Ubu and the Procession,” “Thick Time: Soho and Felix,” “Parcours d’Atelier: Artist in the Studio,” “Sarastro and the Master’s Voice: The Magic Flute,” and “Learning from the Absurd: The Nose.” The New York installation of Five Themes has been expanded to include 38 prints from the MoMA’s collection. The exhibition is on view through May 17.

• On March 8 at 7pm, Kentridge will perform his lecture/theatrical monologue/installation, I am not me, the horse is not mine, at MoMA. (According to museum press materials, the event is already sold out.) The piece is based on the short story The Nose (1837), by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, which “follows the travails of a pompous Russian bureaucrat who wakes one day to find his nose has escaped his face and assumed greater clout than he.” In this solo performance, Kentridge combines narration, video projection, and a vocal and instrumental soundtrack. I am not me, the horse is not mine is part of an extensive body of work Kentridge has developed in preparation for his production of Dimitri Shostakovich’s The Nose, premiering at New York’s Metropolitan Opera on March 5.

• On March 12 at 7pm, the New York Public Library, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera, will host a public conversation between Kentridge and Paul Holdengräber, the Director of Public Programs for The Research Libraries. Read more about the program and purchase tickets here.

• In conjunction with all of the above, Dieu Donné, a non-profit space in New York City that focuses on the hand papermaking process in contemporary art, presents a new limited edition book of 18 watermarked images and text created by Kentridge. Sheets of Evidence was, according to the website, conceptually designed to reveal nothing at first glance. “The viewer is encouraged to delve deeper and quite literally look beneath the surface, allowing light to reveal the subtle images and text hidden in the white sheets of handmade paper…Through the use of the watermark technique the artist continues his exploration of light and perspective, and like his films these invisible drawings are revealed only when illuminated from behind.” The exhibition will also feature two earlier projects created in collaboration with Kentridge: Thinking in Water, a suite of three works; and Receiver, a limited edition book published in 2006, which features twenty-three etchings, photogravures, and dry points by Kentridge and seven poems by the Nobel Laureate poet Wislawa Szymborska. Sheets of Evidence closes March 27.

• On March 3, the Manifest Equality project will open a one-week pop up gallery in the center of Hollywood. The exhibition brings together international and local artists in “a call to present art that unites art, activism and the message of universal equal rights into a memorable multi-media moment.” Participating artists include: Barry McGee (Season 1), Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Harvey Pekar, Karen Kimmel, Robbie Conal, Ron English, Tierney Gearon, Clare Rojas, and others. Manifest Equality specifically responds to “the growing resistance to equal rights for the LGBT population” and seeks to “raise visibility for the grass roots efforts to ensure full Equal Rights to LGBT Americans.” Follow the Manifest Equality blog here.

• On March 5 at 5pm, Ida Applebroog (Season 3) will sign copies of her new monograph Monalisa, published by Hauser & Wirth. The event is part of INDEPENDENT, a hybrid model and temporary exhibition forum, conceived by New York gallerist and founder of X Initiative, Elizabeth Dee, and gallerist Darren Flook, from Hotel, London. Monalisa features an illustrated essay by critic and art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson and a photographic study of the Monalisa house by Abby Robinson.

• For the annual week of New York City art fairs, Galerie Lelong will present Sheela-Na-Gig at Home, an installation by Season 4 artist Nancy Spero. First created in 1996, the piece displays Spero’s “dark humor and interests in the female experience and the grotesque” and alludes to “women’s work.” Figures of Sheela-Na-Gig are repeated and interspersed with feminine lingerie and hung on a clothesline. Placed on the floor is a television monitor showing the artist hanging the drawings and clothes. Spero conceived Sheela-Na-Gig at Home as an “instructions” work that could be installed by anyone, similar to Fluxus and Conceptual works. This is the first time the work will be presented in New York since the year of its creation. Sheela-Na-Gig at Home will be on view March 3-7 at the Park Avenue Armory.

• Season 2 artist Maya Lin has received the National Medal of Arts, an annual award managed by the National Endowment for the Arts. Chairman Rocco Landesman said the winners represent “the breadth and depth of American architecture, design, film, music, performance, theater and visual art.” Lin’s latest project, What Is Missing?, was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal and on CNN. On April 22, her website www.whatismissing.net will go live, and a companion video will screen in Times Square.

• Three sculptures and 29 drawings by Louise Bourgeois (Season 1) are currently on view in Seoul, Korea at Kukje Gallery. Les Fleurs, Bourgeois’ fourth solo show at the gallery, focuses on Bourgeois’ interest in drawing corporeal and psychological subjects such as nature, motherhood and women. The artist has chosen the title to “speak to her adoption of the flower and women as symbols for vitality, desire and sexuality.” Les Fleurs is on view through March 31.

• Season 5 artist Jeff Koons (whose personal art collection was featured in the New York Times over the weekend) has curated an exhibition of work by Ed Paschke for Gagosian Gallery. Koons was Paschke’s assistant in Chicago in the mid-1970s while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschke would prove to be an important mentor and formative inspiration for the young artist. The exhibition includes loans from public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad, as well as rarely seen works from the Ed Paschke Foundation. Read more about the show here.

• The Ashville Art Museum has opened the exhibition Limners to Facebook: Portraiture from the 19th to the 21st Century, which explores the persistent desire to capture images of self and others. The multimedia exhibition includes formal portraits, self-portraits, portraits of animals, and portraits of friends or models. In addition to photographs by Season 1 artist William Wegman, the show includes an image of Season 1 artist Laurie Anderson taken by Annie Leibovitz. Limners to Facebook closes July 18.

• For the March issue of Modern Painters, Anderson was commissioned to visit artist Marina Abramovic and discuss the recent evolution of performance art. Abramovic’s retrospective exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York on March 14. Marina Abramovic and Laurie Anderson: Wise Women is available online. (On an unrelated note, The New York Observer recently reported that Anderson has been appointed to P.S.1′s Board of Directors.)

• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas has acquired a work by Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall for their collection. The museum describes the piece: In Our Town [1995], Marshall presents a tidy vision of suburbia not unlike Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play of the same title – apron-clad mother, cookie-cutter homes, two kids and their dog – and then undercuts it with the tense expressions and postures of the children in the foreground. Yellow ribbons are wrapped around most of the trees, suggesting war or other tragedy beyond the confines of the neighborhood…Floating above the image, heralded by bluebirds bearing ribbons, the title of the work calls into question who belongs in this American idyll.” Our Town will be included in Kerry James Marshall, a retrospective exhibition opening May 8 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

• On March 5 at 6pm, the Salina Art Center in South Santa Fe will host a public talk by Marshall. Titled John Brown’s Body: The Representation of Black Bodies as Revolutionary Gesture, Marshall’s presentation will explore his ongoing investigation of African American identity and culture in the United States.

• On March 5, the Brooklyn Museum will host a free open house for teens in conjunction with Sojourn, the solo exhibition of works by Kiki Smith (Season 2). The event, planned by teens working at the museum, offers hands-on activities from 4:30pm until 7pm. To RSVP call (718) 501-6588 or e-mail teen.programs@brooklynmuseum.org.

• In conjunction with the exhibition Contemplating The Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum, Harvard physicist Lisa Randall, Spanish composer Héctor Parra, and Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie have collaborated on Hypermusic: Ascension, a new site-specific monodrama. The piece “inverts and renovates the genre of opera with an experimental score suggesting the expanding reality of a fifth dimension.” Hypermusic will debut in the museum’s rotunda on March 11 at 6:30pm.

• Reverend on Ice (2005) by Yinka Shonibare MBE (Season 5) is on view at the National Gallery of Victoria. According to the Brisbane Times, this three-dimensional rendition of Skating Minister, an 18th-century painting by the Scottish artist Henry Raeburn, is placed in the 18th-century galleries to encourage visitors to “think about the migration of ideas and culture across boundaries, from the political to the historical.”

• Season 3 artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has been awarded a 2009 New England Art Award. The awards are organized by the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research to honor the best art made in New England and exhibits organized in 2009. The winners are picked by some 1,880 voters from across the region. In each category there are two winners — the critics’ choice and the people’s choice. Wodiczko won the people’s choice award in the category for New Media.

• Visit Bostonist.com to read about the public conversation between Roni Horn (Season 3) and John Waters that took place at the ICA, Boston a few weeks ago. Horn’s retrospective is on view at the ICA through June 13.

Weekly Roundup

Ann Hamilton, "accountings . soot wall", 2009. Flame-licked walls, dimensions variable. Courtesy Carl Solway Gallery.

In this week’s roundup, Art21 artists play with fire, sign new books, design stained glass, collage basketballs, create new films, and pop up in Miami Beach exhibitions:

• Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinnati is paying homage to installation art with their exhibition Walls, Ceiling & Floors, which focuses on the transformation of space through large-scale works by 15 different artists. Among them is Ohio native Ann Hamilton (Season 1) who has delicately burned walls of the space (pictured above) to “create a dense environment.” Walls, Ceiling & Floors continues through December 23.

• The Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio has announced that Mark Bradford (Season 4) is one of three recipients of their 2009-10 Residency Award. Bradford will develop new work for his survey exhibition Mark Bradford: You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You), on view at the Wexner beginning May 8, 2010. His projects will include a new sculpture entitled Lazarus, comprised of more than 1,000 collaged basketballs; Pinocchio, a sound-based sculptural environment that explores the social experiences of a young black man growing up in L.A. in the early 1980s; and the film Mithra, which documents and reflects on his mammoth public sculpture created for Prospect.1 in New Orleans.

• Kiki Smith (Season 2) has been commissioned (along with architect Deborah Gans) to design a stained glass window for the Eldridge Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Founded in 1887, the original window has been missing since the mid 1940s, when the congregation had it removed due to high maintenance costs. The new window is scheduled for completion in the spring. The New York Times is one of many media outlets to report on this commission; read more about the project on their Arts Beat blog.

• On Wed., December 2, Walton Ford (Season 2) will lecture and sign copies of his new book, Pancha Tantra, at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The program begins at 6:30pm and is free and open to the public. (New paintings by Ford are on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York through December 23.)

• Paste Up, a survey of early work by Barbara Kruger (Season 1), is on view at Sprueth Magers London through January 23. The title of the exhibition reflects the professional term for the works on view and underscores the influence Kruger’s experience as a magazine editorial designer had on her career.

• Spazialismo, a group exhibition at Bitforms Gallery in New York City, takes the writings of Argentinian artist Lucio Fontana as its point of departure. Through works by Matthew Ritchie (Season 3), Mel Bochner, R. Luke DuBois, Michael Joaquin Grey, and Yael Kanarek, Fontana’s mid-twentieth century concepts of space in the modern yet natural world are explored. Spazialismo closes December 30.

If you’re in Florida this week for Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), here’s a few things to check out:

• The annual Rubell Family Collection exhibition is this year inspired by Picasso’s saying, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Beg, Borrow, and Steal highlights the works of 74 late and living artists who “embrace their influences even as they reinvent them.” Works by Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger (both Season 1), Jenny Holzer (Season 4), Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari, Allan McCollum, Jeff Koons, and Paul McCarthy (all Season 5) are included in this display. The Collection opens at 9am on Wed., December 2. Admission is free during ABMB.

• On Thurs., December 3 at noon, the Bass Museum of Art will debut Latin America’s largest private collection of contemporary art; the collection has never before been shown in the United States. Where Do We Go From Here? Selections from La Coleccion Jumex brings together familiar names on the international art circuit, such as Mike Kelley (Season 1) and Urs Fisher, with Mexican conceptualists Damian Ortega, Inaki Bonillas and Stephan Bruggeman. Visitors with a Bass Museum invitation, VIP card, exhibitor’s pass, press pass, or Bass Museum membership card can attend the opening reception on Wed., December 2, 8-10pm.

• The Swiss Institute has published a calendar of New York artists photographed on their bicycles. Collier Schorr (Season 2), Pierre Huyghe (Season 4), and Cindy Sherman (Season 5) are pictured. This limited-edition piece will be unveiled later this week at ABMB, however, it can be immediately ordered online or downloaded as a PDF.

• On Fri., December 4, catch up with Schorr at the book launch for Forest and Fields. Volume 2. Blumen. Forest and Fields is an ongoing suite of artist’s books; each volume is part diary, photo annual, palimpsest, and scrapbook. In the latest release, Schorr focuses on arrangements in landscapes and domestic and commercial settings. This program is part of ABMB Salon, an open platform for discussion with an emphasis on current themes in contemporary art. The event begins at 5pm.

Weekly Roundup

Matthew Ritchie, "Line Shot" Installation (detail), 2009. Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery.

• The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will host a talk with Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie and brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner (of indie rock band The National) on Saturday, October 31 at 6pm. The event is held in conjunction with their collaborative performance The Long Count, which opens at BAM on Wednesday, Oct 28. Ritchie’s work is currently on view at Andrea Rosen Gallery in the solo exhibition Line Shot.

• Songs of Ascension by Ann Hamilton (Season 1) and Meredith Monk (also currently at BAM) was featured in a New York Times music review last week. Read the article here.

• For Performa 09, Mike Kelley (Season 1) will present three short dance/performance pieces inspired by his film and video installation Day Is Done (2005). These performances bring to life some of the characters featured in the film, all of whom are based on found photographs of extracurricular activities from American high school yearbooks. Premiering will be Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #33 (Ladder Piece), a work involving 13 people assembled on and around a large ladder playing music on horns. Kelley’s show runs Nov 17 – Nov 19 at Judson Memorial Church. Purchase tickets here.

• Between Being Born and Dying, a site-specific installation by Barbara Kruger (Season 2), is on view at Lever House through November 21. Bloomberg.com describes the installation: “Kruger’s aphorisms are written in massive black-and-white letters all over the Lever House’s atrium, both inside and outside. They are printed on vinyl panels covering the floor, windows, walls and columns. The results are striking but disorienting. The 17-foot-tall letters are so big you can’t take it all in at once–or at all.”

• Season 2 artist Paul Pfeiffer has created a special project for the 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. The project opens with Vertical Corridor, in which Pfeiffer encourages the viewer to peer through a tiny peephole in the wall of the gallery. The peephole is the only access to an immense space, and questions “the validity of the spectacle … reminding the viewer that every such spectacle must bow to the limits of one’s perspective.” This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Russia.

• Kara Walker (Season 2) will introduce a screening of the 1926 film Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York on November 11. Directed by the German animator and film director Lotte Reiniger, it is the earliest feature-length animation still believed to exist, and considered one of the greatest animated films of all time. The program — part of MoMA’s To Save and Project festival — begins at 8pm.

• Season 2 artist Trenton Doyle Hancock will speak at James Cohan Gallery Shanghai on Tuesday, October 27 at 5pm. Two print portfolios Fix (2007) and The Ossifies Theosophied (2005) will be on display in conjunction with the event. Hancock is featured in the exhibition Young Americans at James Cohan Gallery Shanghai through November 15.

• Mirror, Mirror: Contemporary Portraits and the Fugitive Self, a new exhibition at the Brigham Young Museum of Art in Utah, features works by 32 artists, including Oliver Herring (Season 3), Rebecca Campbell, Hasan Elahi, Harrell Fletcher, Douglas Gordon, Nikki Lee, and Takashi Murakami. The exhibition explores the influence of rituals, facades, social media, and the family on the formation of individual identity. On view through May 2010.

• Art critic Tyler Green talks to MoMA curator Connie Butler (organizer of the feminist exhibition, Wack!) about Season 4 artist Nancy Spero, who passed away last week. Read the interview on Green’s blog Modern Art Notes.

• Work by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Season 4) is included in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Learning Modern: Bauhaus Legacy in Downtown Chicago. Building on the legacy of László Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Learning Modern features projects by artists and architects who continue a legacy of interdisciplinary innovation for better living, while exploring the central role of experiential education in the modern vision. Continues through January 9, 2010.

• Willy Loman: The Rise and Fall, the fifth exhibition of work by Yinka Shonibare MBE (Season 5) at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, is on view through November 20. The earliest known documentation of a fatal car crash provides a pictorial metaphor for Shonibare’s new body of photographic and sculptural work. Photographed in 1898, the image records death as a spectacle for the first time; a crowd surrounds the carcass of a motor vehicle. Shonibare has created a similar scene in the gallery, a sculptural dramatization of the death of Arthur Miller’s infamous protagonist, salesman Willy Loman. The installation suggests a parallel between Miller’s 20th century examination of greed and the human condition, and the present day.

• Now on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Focus on Artists celebrates the museum’s 75th anniversary, and its close ties with modern and contemporary masters as demonstrated by works from their collection. SFMOMA holds a number of sculptures by Season 5 artist Doris Salcedo; pieces from her Unland (1995–98) and Untitled “Cabinet” series (1989-present) will be on view. Continues through May 23, 2010.

• On the occasion of Grey Area, a new work by Season 5 artist Julie Mehretu commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim, the current issue of ArtMag (the online art magazine of Deutsche Bank) focuses on artists who investigate urbanism and cultural identity. Joan Young, curator at the Guggenheim Museum, has contributed an essay about Mehretu’s recent work. Read it here.

Weekly Roundup

Mark Bradford, "Red Painting", 2009. Mixed media collage on canvas, 101.75 x 143.5 in. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

• Season 4 artist Mark Bradford has been awarded the 2009 MacArthur “Genius” Award. The MacArthur Fellows Program, as it is also known, awards unrestricted fellowships to individuals who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” The Foundation recently released a YouTube video of Bradford. Watch it here.

• The Japan Art Association has announced the winners of the twenty-first Praemium Imperiale, an international arts prize that celebrates the human spirit as expressed by the world’s artists. This year’s recipients include Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3), Richard Long, and Zaha Hadid.

• Ear Sofa; Nose Sconces with Flowers (In Stage Setting) is the first ever tableau vivant created by Season 5 artist John Baldessari. The installation will be unveiled at Sprüth Magers London on October 12, the day before Baldessari’s retrospective opens at Tate Modern. Central to this piece is an ear-shaped sofa, on which a model sits, flanked on either side by a pair of nose-shaped wall sconces. Inspired by Art Deco aesthetics, the sofa is framed by a large decorative semi-circular arch. The gallery’s storefront window will be shrouded by a sheet of sheer stretched silk. The exhibition was developed by Baldessari in collaboration with production designer Naomi Shohan, whose credits include work on American Beauty; I Am Legend; and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

• Andrea Rosen Gallery’s fourth solo exhibition of work by Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie opens October 23. Works include Line Shot, a one hour animated feature film; Haruspex, a series of collaborative drawings; and The Dawn Line, a modular structure that is part of a larger architectural, film and musical collaboration. The exhibition is held in conjunction with The Long Count, part of the Next Wave Festival at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York.

• A new single-channel film by Catherine Sullivan (Season 4) is on view at Metro Pictures.  LULU – Or: To What Ends Does the Bourgeoisie Need Despair is based on the 1978 affair between silent film star Louise Brooks and British theater critic Kenneth Tynan who was also the creator of the musical review Oh! Calcutta! Runs through October 17.

• Illusion of Childhood, an assemblage of bicycles, toys and other objects by Season 3 artist Cai Guo–Qiang is included in the exhibition Bikes Rides at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Organized with help from bicycle enthusiast David Byrne, the show features approximately thirty works from around the world, from functional cycles to bicycle-inspired sculpture and video. On view through January 2010.

• Season 5 artist Jeff Koons will curate the Dakis Joannou Collection exhibition at the New Museum that is scheduled to open late February 2010. This will be the first time Dakis Joannou, a New Museum Trustee based in Athens, shows his collection in the U.S. The collection contains major holdings of works by Koons, Kara Walker, Kiki Smith (both Season 2), Pawel Althamer, Maurizio Cattelan, Nathalie Djurberg, Urs Fischer, Robert Gober, Chris Ofili, and Charles Ray among others. Read more about the exhibition here.

Weekly Round Up

Bob and Roberta Smith, "So I Came to Bourgeois." Courtesy Grey Gallery.

• Last year the Guardian asked its sports and art writers to swap pieces for a day. Tennis correspondent Steve Bierley reviewed a Louise Bourgeois (Season 1) exhibition, which Bob and Roberta Smith fell in love with and subsequently made into a text-based painting. As part of the current Edinburgh Art Festival, Smith (it’s one person) has turned the project into a full fledged exhibition at the nomadic Grey Gallery. Now if only they would swap athletes and artists salaries for a day….

• In other sports and arts news, America’s team the Dallas Cowboys just finished building their state of the art football stadium at the cost of $1.15 billion dollars. Owners Gene and Jerry Jones formed an art program that brings site-specific installations to the venue, including commissioned works from Franz Ackermann, Olafur Eliasson, Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2), and Matthew Ritchie (Season 3).  Additionally, the program will develop educational initiatives and tours focused on the collection of works.

• Through September 20th at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is Your Bright Future, a show of twelve artists from South Korea who were born between 1957 and 1972. Your Bright Future includes, among others, Kimsooja (Season 5), Jooyeon Park, Do-Ho Suh (Season 2), and Haegue Yangthe.

• Season 2 artist Kiki Smith has received the Edward MacDowell Medal at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.   She is the 50th MacDowell Medalist, with past recipients including I.M. Pei, Merce Cunningham, Georgia O’Keeffe, and John Updike.  The award is given each year to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her field.

• Through September 7, the Pompidou Centre is displaying the “feminine side of its own collections” in an exhibition titled elles@centrepompidou.  Giving the galleries over to 200+ women artists from the 20th century to now, sub-themes take the headings of Pioneer, Free Fire, and Body Slogan, and includes many notables like Art21′s Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, and Barbara Kruger.

Weekly Roundup

Bruce Nauman, "One Hundred Live and Die," 1984. Neon tubing mounted on four metal monoliths. Collection of Fukake Publishing Co., Ltd., Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Kagawa, Japan Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York, © Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

• Bruce Nauman (Season 1) has won the Golden Lion award for Best National Participation at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Visit the Daily Best Media Gallery to see images of his installation.
• Nauman is the first Art21 artist to appear on the Times list of the top 200 artists from the 20th century through today. He comes in at #24.
• Songs of Ascension, the multimedia work by Season 1 artist Ann Hamilton and composer Meredith Monk, will be included in this year’s Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
• BAM has also commissioned a new piece by the Dessner Brothers. The musical duo will collaborate with Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie, as well as vocalists from The Breeders for this project.
• Videos by Season 4 artist Pierre Huyghe (working in collaboration with Philippe Parreno, Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, Liam Gillick and Melik Ohanian) are on view in VRAOUM!, an exhibition of comic strips and contemporary art, at La Maison Rouge in Paris.
• A major mid-career survey of work by Yinka Shonibare MBE (Season 5) will open at the Brooklyn Museum on June 26, 2009.

Authoritarian?

Matthew Ritchie, "The Dead: Belphegor," 2004

As I mentioned last week, the Teaching with Contemporary Art column over the next few weeks will focus on questions generated at the recent NAEA conference in Minneapolis. This week’s question comes from Clyde Gaw from Indianapolis, who wrote, “Much of the teaching that takes place in art rooms today is authoritarian and actually restricts personal expression. Is this beneficial in any way?”

First of all, I do not agree that much of the teaching that takes place in art education classrooms is authoritarian. Mimicry can be a problem, but I can’t say that I’ve encountered many instances where the teaching could literally be called authoritarian. What I do find, as Olivia Gude pointed out in our Art Practice, Teaching Practice panel at the conference, is that many art educators are desperately clinging to old models of teaching from their childhood and/or teacher training. Using the elements and principles of design to drive a curriculum, for example, is simply not enough, and in some cases it’s misguided altogether.

Bringing contemporary art and artists into the classroom through the incorporation of Art21 education materials or sites like artbabble.org allows teachers to make important connections between the strengths in an existing curriculum and the gaps that curriculum faces. For example, taking ever-present artists like Andy Warhol or Alexander Calder and juxtaposing them with Margaret Kilgallen or Tim Hawkinson can teach more about all of the artists and ideas involved. What are the similarities between Warhol and Kilgallen? What do Calder and Hawkinson have in common and how is their work very different? What do Warhol and Kilgallen teach about working with popular culture? How do Calder and Hawkinson each attempt to redefine sculpture?

If, as Clyde points out, art education in your school or district leans towards an authoritarian model, then my suggestion might be to share (and model!) how contemporary art promotes choice, play, uncertainty, chance, undiscovered relationships, and new perspectives. Good teaching, much like contemporary art, has a lot to do with taking risks. Perhaps the first risk may be to push an existing curriculum into new territory.

Weekly Roundup

• Vernissage TV takes a close look at Let the Priests Tremble…(1998/2008), a large hand-printed wall installation by Season 4 artist Nancy Spero. The piece was included in Spero’s retrospective at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Sevilla, Spain.

• 9/11-9/11, an animated film by Season 1 artist Mel Chin, will screen tonight at MOMA (7pm). The piece will be screened twice, and a discussion with the artist and the audience will take place in between. Tickets are available at the Museum.

• On the occasion of the fourth Berlin Gallery Weekend (a program of 38 gallery openings in a 3-day span), c/o–Gerhardsen Gerner gallery will present works by Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie. Read more about the exhibition, titled The Need-Fire, here.

• Ann Hamilton (Season 1) has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Science. Visit Artforum.com to read the full list of inductees in the visual art category.

• The Guggenheim exhibition catalogue Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe has won the 2008 George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award, which recognizes outstanding publications in visual arts and architecture. The catalogue accompanied the comprehensive exhibition of work by the Season 3 artist.

• Kara Walker and Raymond Pettibon (both Season 2) appear in the May issue of Black Book magazine.