Hiroshi Sugimoto. A selection from the "Lightning Fields" series, 2009. Photo courtesy the artist.

In this week’s roundup, Mel Chin commemorates 9-11, Hiroshi Sugimoto creates art with lightning, Mike Kelley delves into Superman, Oliver Herring throws art parties, Kiki Smith creates with paper, and much more.

• Mel Chin‘s 9-11/9-11, which premiered in New York and Santiago, Chile, on Sept. 11, 2007, is part of an exhibition at the Louisville Visual Art Association (Kentucky).  The film follows the family and intimate relationships of a small circle of people involved in the attacks in New York, as well as others touched on that same date in 1973, when a presidential coup led to the violent rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s selections from the Lightning Fields series are currently on view at the Edinburgh International Festival (Scotland).  Lightning Fields is a series of dramatic photographs produced through violent electrical discharges on photographic film. The images suggest a range of associations, from lightning flashes to strange forms of primordial life.  The show closes on September 25.

• Barry McGee participated in Art & About Sydney 2011, a project that aims to transform the Australian city into a canvas, or a living gallery.  As part of the Laneway Art program McGee joins a select group of artists and created an “evocative work that teeters between the free spirit of graffiti, the random energy of the urbane and the pure intent of controlled artistry.”  This work is on view from September 23 – January 31, 2012, and is free to the public.

• Art by Vija Celmins, Allan McCollum, Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, and Eleanor Antin are part of the Getty Center’s online archive, Pacific Standard Time.  This collection provides materials about hipsters and happenings at venues in postwar Los Angeles, and documents where all the action took place through images and first-hand accounts from the artists.

• Pieces by Louise Bourgeois and Andrea Zittel are featured in Contemporary Works from the Permanent Collection at the Palm Springs Art Museum (California).  This exhibition includes Prototype for A-Z Cool Chamber by Zittel and Spider II by Bourgeois.  The show is ongoing.

• John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Martin Puryear, Susan Rothenberg, Kiki Smith and more are occupying all three floors of the Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City, NY.  The Center has extended LEGACY: Selections from Emily Fisher Landau’s Gift to the Whitney Museum of American Art, through Sunday, October 9, 2011.

• Kiki Smith is co-curating and has work represented in Papertails at NYU Steinhardt’s 80WSE Galleries (NYC).  The exhibition includes examples that range from printmaking and collage to photography, painting, and sculpture.  The show will open Sept. 14 for a special viewing from 6 to 8 p.m. and remains on view during regular gallery hours through November 5.

• Mike Kelley‘s Exploded Fortress of Solitude is currently on view at the Gagosian Gallery (London).  The Kandors series, which Kelley initiated in 1999, are sculptural depictions of Superman’s birthplace Kandor.  Selecting 20 examples from the myriad two-dimensional renderings of the famous fictional city, Kelley has created three-dimensional Kandors and variant works.  This exhibition closes on October 22.

• Oliver Herring is traveling the U.S. throwing parties involving a game called TASK, a straightforward activity with very few rules.  Its open-ended, participatory structure creates almost unlimited opportunities for a group of people to interact with one another and their environment.  Herring is throwing a new party on October 21 at Gallery 210 at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

• Susan Rothenberg has new work on view at Sperone Westwater (NYC).  The exhibition features 13 paintings, including one of a raven perched on a tree branch and a large profile of a head outlined in grey and black. The artist mines the tactility of her medium to extract emotional truths about perception, memory and the human condition.  The show closes on October 29.

• Sally Mann‘s Proud Flesh is on view at Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta, GA). Using the human body as her main subject, Mann’s photography explores familial and spousal relationships.  This exhibition is on view until October 29.

• To mark her 100th birthday, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland is featuring an homage to Louise Bourgeois.  The exhibition represents a concentrated selection from the artist’s collection and addresses its key themes: an involvement with other artists, a concern with her own biography, and the translation of emotions into objects of art.  This exhibition is on view until August 1, 2012.

Laurie Anderson and Phillip Glass. Concert for Japan 2011. Image courtesy of the Japan Society.

In this week’s roundup, Laurie Anderson performs for Japan aid, Maya Lin is honored, several artists are keeping it real in London, work by An-My Lê and Richard Serra soon to come at The Met, and much more.

• Laurie Anderson and several others will perform at a Japan Society concert to benefit the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.  Concert for Japan will be a 12-hour marathon event on Saturday, April 9, in New York City to benefit organizations that directly help people affected by the earthquake and tsunamis that struck Japan.

• Maya Lin is the winner of an architecture medal presented by The University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.  The Thomas Jefferson Medals recognize the achievements of those who excel in areas in which Jefferson did significant work.

• Do Ho Suh, Kimsooja, and Mark Bradford are part of a group of artists whose work is included in The Spirituality of Place at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Gutstein Gallery.  The show focuses on artists working in a variety of media who explore the sense, spirit and memory of place and reinterpret it poetically through their art.  This exhibition closes on April 17.

• Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Mike Kelley, Julie Mehretu, Arturo Herrera, Gabriel Orozco and other artists are part Keeping it Real: An Exhibition in 4 Acts: Act 4: Material Intelligence at Whitechapel Gallery (London).  These artists use existing images as a material in their work, including cuttings from newspapers or using common technologies such as desktop scanners, they heighten the physicality of their chosen images by cropping, distorting and layering them.  The exhibition is on view from March 18 – May 22.

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Pierre Huyghe, "The Host and the Cloud," 2009-2010, live experiment. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.

Closing out year 2010 for this week’s roundup, Pierre Huyghe and Mel Chin receive artist awards and a few upcoming shows to mark in your 2011 calendars.

• Pierre Huyghe is the 2010 winner of Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Contemporary Artist Award.  Huyghe is the ninth winner of the $25,000 award, which recognizes an artist younger than 50 who has produced a significant body of work and consistently demonstrates exceptional creativity. It is intended to encourage the artist’s future development and experimentation.

• Mike Kelley has an upcoming show at the Gagosian Gallery (L.A.).  This exhibition, Kelley’s first with the gallery, will consist of new large-scale sculptures and videos that expand on previous projects—the Kandor series and Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction (EAPR) – combining them into one. This show also includes other works that provide moments of humor and charm throughout the installation.  Kelley’s exhibition will run from January 11 – February 19, 2011.

• Ellen Gallagher has an upcoming show with the Gagosian Gallery (NYC), which will run from January 21 – February 26, 2011.  More info on this exhibition is forthcoming.

• Mel Chin joins a select list of artists who have been awarded USA Fellowships for 2010. Each receives $50,000 from the national grant-making and advocacy organization United States Artists (USA), which has invested a total of $12.5 million in artists since 2006.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, "Voz Alta," 2008. Courtesy the artist and bitforms gallery.

As a research artist and digital media Ph.D student, I am constantly challenged to reflect critically upon the nature of the various forms which are emerging in contemporary artistic practices.  Is there a thread that connects the work of William Kentridge and Mel Chin or Tim Hawkinson and Ann Hamilton, for example? We were given two final texts to read and discuss in my seminar class this week: curator Nicholas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics and art critic Claire Bishop’s Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (pdf).  It was also announced that electronics artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who was scheduled to lecture at the High Museum of Art, and his gallerist would be visiting our class prior to his museum lecture.  Excited by this prospect, I delved into the assigned texts hoping to find an idea that resonated with my own interests.  I think I might have found a connection but not in the way I had initially hoped for in the readings.

Claire Bishop names several curators who are promoting a model which, to a large extent, is a direct reaction to art produced in the 1990s, work she describes as “open-ended, interactive, and resistant to closure” that is often displayed as a “work-in-progress” rather than a complete work.  She critiques Nicholas Bourriaud and other curators who are reconceptualizing the “white cube” model of contemporary art exhibition and re-staging the art studio as an experimental “laboratory.”  This ideology takes shape in Bourriaud’s notion of ”relational aesthetics,” which celebrates art that engages in “the realm of social interaction and content.”

A more socially engaged form of contemporary art?  Okay, I can work with that. But wait.  Critics like Bishop are actually criticizing current discourse about “relational” practices such as socially engaged, community-based, experimental, participatory, or research-based forms of art.  I really like William Kentridge’s tapestries, for which the artist collaborated with a Johannesburg-based weaving art studio.  Kentridge was recently honored with a Kyoto Prize awarded individuals who make “significant contributions to the betterment of humankind.”  Mel Chin was the winner of the biennial Fritschy Culture award, which is given to artists who “give shape to cultural diversity and make world citizenship the subject of their art.”  These are outstanding developments which place artists on a world stage, not solely within certain art circles.

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Gabriel Orozco, Details of the working "Table (Desert Samples)", 2010. Courtesy of the artist and PKM Trinity Gallery.

In this week’s roundup: Gabriel Orozco is on view in Seoul, Cindy Sherman imagines the social, several artists are honored for their contributions, and more.

• Gabriel Orozco: Selected Works which is on view at PKM Trinity Gallery (Seoul), showcases 50 works by Gabriel Orozco.  This includes sculptures, paintings, photos, drawings and installations.  The exhibition runs through November 30.

• Janine Antoni and Ann Hamilton were among eighteen artists and architects recently inducted into The National Academy Museum and School for 2010. Academicians are elected by peer artists and architects who are members of the Academy.

• Mel Chin will give a lecture on November 14th in Museum Het Domein Sittard (The Netherlands).  Chin was the winner of the biennial Fritschy Culture award, which is given to artists who give shape to cultural diversity and make world citizenship the subject of their art.  Chin’s Disputed Territories is on view at the museum through December 12.

• Cindy Sherman imagines the social through her photography as part of Embarrassment of Riches: Picturing Global Wealth at the Harrison Photography Gallery 365.  This exhibition explores how photographers picture and examine the new evolving political economy.  The show is on view until January 2, 2011.

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William Kentridge, "Sphinx," 2010

This Weekly Roundup features Kentridge’s Egyptian sketchbooks, Louise Bourgeois in The Surreal House, and Mike Kelley’s maiden voyage.

• Scheduled to coincide with the monographic retrospective devoted to the artist at the Jeu de Paume, drawings by William Kentridge will be presented in the Salle d’Actualité of the Department of Graphic Arts, alongside a selection of Egyptian drawings from the Louvre.  The work will be on display until August 30.

• A current exhibition at the DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art features the work of Jenny Holzer that deals with the United States-led invasion of Iraq and “holds up language as a mirror to show them and us the consequences of how words are used and misused. This analysis may be too late in some ways, but also just in time to show how language, too, can become a weapon of mass destruction.”  The show closes on November 14.

• The New Topographics photo exhibition at SFMOMA offers a chance to look back in time to gauge our psychological and social distance from what we see.  This exhibition is a re-creation of a pivotal 1975 exhibition held at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. and includes the work of Robert Adams who was in the original show.  The exhibition is on view until October 3.

• The Barbican Art Gallery presents The Surreal House which consists of a labyrinth of chambers, designed by acclaimed young architects Carmody Groarke and features work by a host of artists, architects and film makers including Louise Bourgeois.  The show continues until September 12.

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Mel Chin, Fundred Dollar Bill.

7,000 t-shirts, 22 paintings, two awards, a powerful pair, and one big open studio in this week’s roundup:

• Mel Chin (Season 1) has been named a finalist of the first International Award for Participatory Art. Chin and two other artists are invited to spend a research period in Bologna and develop a site specific project idea. The winning project, selected by jury, will be created in 2011. The jury includes Alfredo Jaar (Season 4), Julia Draganovic, Rudolf Frieling, and Bert Theis. In addition to the budget to accomplish the project, the winning artist will receive an award of 15,000 Euros.

• Mark Bradford (Season 4), working with the Getty Museum, has unveiled Open Studio: A Collection of Artmaking Ideas by Artists, a new project to provide free online arts activities for K-12 teachers to use in their classrooms. Open Studio is the inaugural project of the Getty Artists Program, an expanded effort to involve contemporary artists in the Museum’s Education programs. Bradford designed Open Studio to provide brief, accessible activities that don’t require a great deal of preparation or supplies. A teacher can click, print, and immediately share them with his or her class. Artists such as Kerry James Marshall (Season 1), Kara Walker (Season 2), Carrie Mae Weems (Season 5), Xu Bing, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Jon Cattapan, Catherine Opie, Graciela Iturbide, and Michael Joo have all contributed activities to the site. Marshall, for example, encourages the study of picture-making and provides a set of instructions to make and use plan and perspective grids. Bradford said: “We take a lot of things very seriously with young children – math, languages, phonics – but not art. We relegate that to something less than serious, something you do after the real work. Well, art is important. It’s always been important. And I wanted children to develop a work ethic about art, an ability to see things through and focus, just like the work ethic they would need to become a doctor or lawyer.” Open Studio is available at blogs.getty.edu/openstudio/.

• William Kentridge (Season 5) has won the Kyoto Prize. According to Artinfo, “The award, similar in status to Nobel Prize in Japan, is bestowed annually by the Inamori Foundation to recognize three visionaries in the categories of arts and philosophy, advanced technology, and basic sciences.” Kentridge will receive $550,000, an honorary diploma, and a 20-carat gold medal in a November ceremony.

• The New York Times reports that approximately 7,000 t-shirts bearing 10 different Jenny Holzer (Season 4) truisms will be dropped in Soweto, on the streets of downtown Johannesburg and at the Goodman Gallery space in South Africa through July 17. Holzer’s project, her first on the African continent, is part of the citywide exhibition series In Context (which also showcases works by Kentridge). Read a short Q &A with Holzer here.

• Works by Barry McGee (Season 1) and Claire Rojas are on view at the Bolinas Museum in California through August 1. The secluded town of Bolinas is, according to Juxtapoz magazine, “perfect” for McGee and Rojas, both “known to shy away from media and the public eye.” Go to Arrested Motion to see images of their installations Leave it Alone and Together at Last.

• Austria’s first exhibition of works by Walton Ford (Season 2) is on view at the Albertina through October. The show comprises 22 paintings made in the last ten years. Watch clips from Ford’s recent talk at the museum here.

• Crystal Bridges has acquired another new work by an Art21 artist, this time a tapestry by Kara Walker (Season 2). A Warm Summer Evening in 1863, Walker’s first tapestry, is based on an engraving originally published in Harper’s Magazine during the Civil War that documented the destruction of an orphanage for black children in New York City. “The black felt silhouette of a lynched female figure that is superimposed on the scene, her noose tied in a neat bow, is not based on a real person, but effectively telegraphs the horror of the racially motivated violence.” This piece was shown earlier this year in the James Cohan Gallery exhibition Demons, Yarns & Tales: Tapestries by Contemporary Artists.

• The work of Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall is featured in the current issue of Afterall. Read Kobena Mercer’s article Kerry James Marshall: The Painter of Afro-Modern Life, and Terry R. Myers’s piece Kerry James Marshall’s Tempting Painting, an investigation of what’s at stake in calling an artist “a painter.”

Hans Haacke, "MetroMobiltan," 1985. Fiberglass construction, three banners, and photomural, 11' 8" x 20' x 5'. Collection Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

The United States has always fostered a strange and ambiguous relationship to the arts.  In 1825, John Quincy Adams recommended that the country establish a national university, observatory, and other cultural programs and institutions.  Martin Van Buren and John C. Calhoun repudiated Adams’s proposal, calling it an imposition on states’ rights.  In doing so, they set the tone for subsequent rejections of a national cultural mandate. In the 1960s, at a UNESCO roundtable, the United States firmly maintained that it had no official cultural position, reasoning that its pluralist tradition prevented the articulation of a viable cultural policy through funding or doctrine.

With the exception of the nineteenth-century support of public architecture and the promotion of art as part of Cold War propaganda, the national government has taken no official stance on culture.  This does not mean that there have not been deliberate and instrumental uses of culture undertaken to foster particular outcomes. In the 1920s, the Commerce Department began supporting the film industry in the name of creating a new export for the international market. This initiative funded the Walt Disney Company’s production of propaganda films in the WWII era, aimed at building strategic international support for the Allied forces.  The New Deal’s Civil Works Administration and Works Progress Administration were inaugurated as a means for economic relief but ended as when the Federal Theatre Project was called before The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Walt Disney Co., Education for Death — The Making of the Nazi, 1943. Directed by Clyde Geronimi.

This ambiguity over the place of culture in society has, for all practical purposes, become the de facto cultural policy of the United States, where ambivalence is deployed as a useful strategy for avoiding controversy and navigating disparate ideologies.  The moments when strategic safeguards do fail, such as in the culture wars of the 1990’s, become flashpoints that reflect the unofficial policy.  In the 90s, in response to vexed public reactions to shows like the Brooklyn Museum’s Sensation exhibition and works by Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe and the “NEA four,” the federal government restructured the NEA and redirected funding from the support of individual artists to far less controversial programming of cultural heritage programs and events. Even though the NEA has seen some its funding restored in the past decade, wealthy individuals, private foundations and corporate partnerships now provide the lion’s share of funding for experimentation within the visual arts.

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Barbara Kruger, "The Globe Shrinks" (video still), 2010. Dimensions variable, Four-screen digital video installation. Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery.

• A new video installation by Season 1 artist Barbara Kruger is now on view at the Chelsea location of Mary Boone Gallery. The Globe Shrinks (2010) is a multi-channel piece that, according to the press release, “continues Kruger’s engagement with the kindness and brutality of the everyday, the collision of declaration and doubt, the duet of pictures and words, the resonance of direct address, and the unspoken in every conversation.” The Globe Shrinks continues through May 1.

• Through August 15, photographs by Kiki Smith (Season 2) are on view at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. I Myself Have Seen It: Photography & Kiki Smith shows how photographs play a central role in the development of Smith’s work. The exhibition features hand-made composites, diaristic snapshots, video collaborations, and the artist’s unique takes on computer-based techniques. Read about the show in the California Literary Review.

• Women of the Chrysler: A 400-Year Celebration of the Arts, now on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, celebrates the role of women in the arts. Drawn entirely from the museum’s permanent collection, the show comprises more than 150 works by women painters, sculptors, photographers, silversmiths, glass artists, and printmakers. Through four chronological sections and three centerpiece installations, the exhibition traces the course of women’s ever-expanding contributions to the arts worldwide. Work by Season 5 artist Cindy Sherman is included in the section on modernist women in the age of feminism. Women of the Chrysler closes July 28.

• Galerie Lelong in New York is displaying new sculptures by Season 4 artist Ursula von Rydingsvard in the solo show ERRĀTUS. The exhibition title means “wandering” or “roaming” in Latin. Among the works on view are Blackened Word (2008), an undulating, free-standing wall that stands nearly seven-feet tall; Unraveling (2007), an elaborate wall “drawing” in cedar; and the wall piece Splayed (2009), made of cup-like shapes that protrude and drape. ERRĀTUS closes May 1.

• Mark Dion (Season 4) and Robert Williams have organized An Ordinall of Alchimy, the first in a series of exhibitions presented by the art journal and gallery space Cabinet. Artists are invited to assemble work under one condition: everything installed in the gallery must have been acquired on Ebay for a total of less than $999. When the show comes to an end, its contents are offered for sale as a single item, once again on Ebay. Dion and Williams, along with their students at the Pennsylvania artists’ colony Mildred’s Lane (Matt Bettine, Joey Cruz, Kathryn Cornelius, Gabriella D’Italia, Scott Jarrett, Aislinn Pentecost-Farren, John Wanzel, Laura E. Wertheim, and Bryan Wilson), used the invitation from Cabinet as an opportunity to explore the theme of alchemical transformation. An Ordinall of Alchimy comprises the objects they assembled. The exhibition opens March 30 at Cabinet in Brooklyn, New York.

• 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. Staged in the eastern Ruhr metropolis, and held in conjunction with the annually designated European Capital of Culture celebration/RUHR.2010, the Biennale presents works in sixty residential and private spaces in the cities of Bergkamen, Bönen, Fröndenberg/Ruhr, Hamm, Lünen and Unna. Open Light in Private Spaces continues through May 27.

• Season 1 artist Mel Chin is in Baltimore with his Fundred Dollar Bill project. The artist will lecture about art and social reform at Maryland Institute College of Art on March 31, and present two workshops on April 1. Chin will return to Baltimore the second week of April to present at the National Art Education Association’s national convention at the Baltimore Convention Center, as well as to pick up the local Fundreds in a celebration and parade titled Fundred Extravaganza. Read more about Chin in the Baltimore City Paper.

• The Gibbes Museum of Art has announced the Short List of Finalists for the third annual Factor Prize, an annual cash prize award of $10,000 to an artist whose work demonstrates the highest level of artistic achievement in any media while contributing to a new understanding of art in the South. Sally Mann (Season 1) is among the six artists short-listed this year.

• Summer Nights, Walking, the Robert Adams (Season 4) exhibition now on view at Matthew Marks Gallery, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. Critic Richard B. Woodward says: “Mr. Adams is our leading photographer of landscape because he doesn’t ignore the human hand in its shaping and maintenance…His is a more realistic view of our role as custodians of the planet, even when we fail at the task, than one that yearns for wilderness in its prelapsarian state. He sees that even the suburbs, those most loathed of real-estate developments in postwar America and elsewhere, are nature preserves of a sort.”

• Calvin Tomkins has profiled Season 5 artist Julie Mehretu for The New Yorker.

• Visit PortlandArt.net to read a two-part interview with Season 4 artist Inigo Manglano-Ovalle.

Paul McCarthy, "Paula Jones," 2007. Fiberglass, 82 x 57 1/2 x 107 inches. via Art Daily.org

This President’s Day roundup begins with a hotly debated exhibition and ends with a divine duo:

• The New Museum has announced the details of their exhibition Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection. Curated by Season 5 artist Jeff Koons, this will be the first showing of the Athens-based collection in the United States. This will also be the first exhibition curated by Koons, whose early work is said to have inspired the evolution of the Dakis Joannou collection. Koons has selected over 100 works by 50 international artists spanning several generations, including Matthew Barney (Season 1), Janine Antoni, Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, (all Season 2), Mike Kelley (Season 3), Jenny Holzer (Season 4), Paul McCarthy (Season 5), David Altmejd, Nathalie Djurberg, Robert Gober, Terence Koh, Mark Manders, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Christiana Soulou, Jannis Varelas, and Andro Wekua, among others. The title of the exhibition alludes to notions of genesis, evolution, original sin, and sexuality. “Skin and fruit,” according to the press release, “evoke the essential tensions between interior and exterior, between what we see and what we consume.” The show will feature one work by Koons — One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1985) — the first major artwork that Dakis Joannou acquired. Skin Fruit opens March 3.

• Art21 artists Louise Bourgeois (Season 1), Cai Guo-Qiang, Hiroshi Sugimoto (both Season 3), and Paul McCarthy (Season 5) will participate in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia’s largest contemporary visual art event. Cai’s installation Inopportune: Stage One (2004), nine cars exploding and rotating in space, will dominate Cockatoo Island’s Turbine Hall. McCarthy will premiere his sound and sculpture installation Ship of Fools #2 (2010) at Pier 2/3. And Bourgeois will have a series of painted bronze sculptures on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Artistic director David Elliott says: “The aim of this Biennale is to bring together work from diverse cultures, at the same time, on the equal playing field of contemporary art, where no culture can assume superiority over any other.” The 17th Biennale of Sydney runs May 12 – August 1, 2010. Read more about the event in the Brisbane Times.

• Works by Season 5 artists Cindy Sherman and John Baldessari are on view in the exhibition Pop Art at the Havana Fine Arts Museum in Cuba. According to the Havana Times, the traveling exhibition (organized by Spain’s State Society for Foreign Cultural Action and the Valencian Institute of Modern Art) features nearly sixty works made by American and Spanish artists in the style/period of pop art. Works by John Chamberlain, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Claes Oldenburg, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, and James Rosenquist hang alongside works by Eduardo Arroyo, Equipo Cronica, Juan Genoves, Equipo Realidad, Josep Renau, Manuel Saez, Antonio Saura, Juan Antonio Toledo, and others. Pop Art continues through March 30.

• On February 22, Season 4 artist Alfredo Jaar will present his most recent short film Le Ceneri di Pasolini (The Ashes of Pasolini) (2009) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A tribute to the Italian filmmaker, intellectual, poet, critic, and journalist Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film incorporates footage from Pasolini’s films and rare interviews conducted prior to his sudden and mysterious death in 1975. The title refers to Pasolini’s own poem, Le Ceneri di Gramsci, itself a eulogy to the Italian left-wing intellectual Antonio Gramsci. In a separate unrelated event, Jaar will lecture in the Remis Auditorium of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on February 17. Both programs begin at 7pm.

• February is the last month that the Fundred Dollar Bill project by Season 1 artist Mel Chin will be at Arizona State University Art Museum (ASUAM). In addition to regular museum hours, ASUAM is holding three free events to give the public a final chance to contribute: On February 9, the museum will screen Chin’s award-winning animated film 9-11/9-11: A Tale of Two Cities, A Tragedy of Two Times. February 16, the Phoenix band Peachcake will give a free concert following a screening of Chin’s 2009 interview with Planet Awesome. February 25, an armored truck will pick up ASUAM’s Fundreds — free music and other festivities will lead up to its arrival. Read more about the Fundred Dollar Bill project in Huffington Post; Utah People’s Post; and The Tartan.

• On February 17 at 6:30pm, Roni Horn (Season 3) will be in conversation with John Waters at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Horn’s traveling retrospective exhibition Roni Horn aka Roni Horn opens at the ICA on February 19 and continues through June 13.