How do we experience art?

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Ten Years…… Right Between the Eyes: Zoe Strauss at the Philadelphia Museum

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Ten Years…… Right Between the Eyes: Zoe Strauss at the Philadelphia Museum

Every once in a blue moon you get surprised by an exhibit that takes your breath away. Kiki Smith did it to me in 2006 and last year Glenn Ligon …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Talking with Janine Antoni and Getting Set for NAEA: Part Two

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Talking with Janine Antoni and Getting Set for NAEA: Part Two

Part two of my recent interview with Janine Antoni in advance of her keynote address and workshop at the National Art Education Association’s annual conference here in New York from March 1-4.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Talking with Janine Antoni and Getting Set for NAEA: Part One

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Talking with Janine Antoni and Getting Set for NAEA: Part One

This week’s column features a brand, new interview with Janine Antoni in advance of her upcoming keynote address and workshop at the National Art Education Association’s annual conference on March 1st here in New York City.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Getting Set for PS1’s “September 11”

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Getting Set for PS1’s “September 11”

In two weeks I am taking a group of students to visit the September 11 exhibition at PS1. Most of the high school students in these two classes have some …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Three Ways of Seeing

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Three Ways of Seeing

Nancy Grossman, “T.Y.V.L.”, 1970 Image: PS1.org On a recent trip to PS1, I had the unique opportunity to compare a few different approaches to visiting (and hopefully, seeing) exhibitions. Back …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Fruits of Summer

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Fruits of Summer

Summer offers fantastic opportunities for educators of all kinds to catch interesting group shows and special exhibitions that are happening before we start up the engines again in the fall. …

Testing the Limits: Cultural Activism in the Gateway City

Testing the Limits: Cultural Activism in the Gateway City

When the 2010 U.S. Census figures were released in February of this year, many in St. Louis were alarmed. According to census data, the city’s population declined eight percent in …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About Poverty and Homelessness

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About Poverty and Homelessness

This past Saturday, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote an op-ed piece called Them That’s Not Shall Lose which highlighted, as James Baldwin put it, how expensive it …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 Extended Play

Using Art21 Video Exclusives

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 Extended Play

Using Art21 Video Exclusives

If you follow the Art21 blog and work with Art21 materials you know full well there are plenty of opportunities to see and share a huge variety of video about …

Problematic: Answering Questions with Questions

A Problematic Introduction

Problematic: Answering Questions with Questions

A Problematic Introduction

It’s complicated. Last year, over 3 million Facebook users willingly adopted this dubious relationship status even after the drop-down menu expanded to accommodate eleven statuses, including newer options like civil …

The Space Outside Your Head: Some Concluding Thoughts

The Space Outside Your Head: Some Concluding Thoughts

Over the course of writing this blog, I have learned that many of my posts are about art and economics.  More broadly, they are about creativity and friendship, and how …

Better Not Bigger: What’s Next for Art Museums?

Better Not Bigger: What’s Next for Art Museums?

In the next two weeks, museum leaders gather in two places—art curators in New York May 15-17 and everyone in Houston May 22-25—to contemplate the future of the field.  How …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | Aslı Çavuşoğlu

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | Aslı Çavuşoğlu

A small black and white newspaper photograph hangs on the wall of Aslı Çavuşoğlu’s studio, located in an old warehouse in Istanbul’s Karaköy district. The photograph is crowd shot, taken …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Contemporary Art: The First Three Years

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Contemporary Art: The First Three Years

This week Teaching with Contemporary Art here on the blog turns 3. Frankly, I can’t believe that I’ve been writing this column for three years. At the same time, it …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Rethinking “The Critique”: Possibilities

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Rethinking “The Critique”: Possibilities

As promised in last week’s column I want to share some possibilities when it comes to facilitating in-progress critiques with students. Critiques that take place as an idea is taking …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Rethinking “The Critique”

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Rethinking “The Critique”

Like many art students, I couldn’t stand critiques when I was in high school and especially college. I even had a professor in grad school that would survey the finished …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

What I Learned at the Armory Show

Teaching with Contemporary Art

What I Learned at the Armory Show

A long stroll and purposefully slow visit to the Armory Show last week opened my eyes to quite a bit. In addition to being exposed to new artists (my main …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Trip Advisor

Letter from London

Letter from London: Trip Advisor

All travel is retrospective. We don’t travel for the experience – most traveling time is spent waiting, after all – but in order to have something to remember. The easy …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Absolutely Uncertain

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Absolutely Uncertain

Since you can’t swing a cat without hitting a picture of Charlie Sheen at this point, I thought I’d choose a classic for today’s column. I mean, Art21 shouldn’t be …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Blue

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Blue

A few friends and colleagues have suggested that I share some of the stories I tell in class here on the blog. I sometimes forget as I write the column …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part II)

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part II)

Following is the second half an interview Elizabeth Wolfson conducted with Vasif Kortun. Read part one here. — Ed. Perhaps more than any other individual, Vasıf Kortun has redirected the …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part I)

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part I)

Perhaps more than any other individual, Vasıf Kortun has redirected the trajectory of recent Turkish art history. As Chief Curator and Director of the 3rd Istanbul Biennial in 1992, Kortun …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Working with Violent Images

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Working with Violent Images

Only a few days ago I was all set to write a post that highlighted the plight of Curtis Acosta, an Arizona teacher who finds himself in the position of …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with David Wojnarowicz (and Not Teaching with the Smithsonian)

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with David Wojnarowicz (and Not Teaching with the Smithsonian)

In light of the recent debacle at the Smithsonian involving the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly, I thought it might make sense to suggest some ways …

Flash Points Wrap-Up: When Art Becomes Your Life

Flash Points Wrap-Up: When Art Becomes Your Life

A few weeks ago, when a friend was planning a visit to New York City, he asked me which art to see. I found myself prefacing less-emphatic recommendations with, “it …

Flash Points

Experience at the Mattress Factory

Flash Points

Experience at the Mattress Factory

As an institution that exhibits contemporary, site-specific installation art through a fully supported artist residency program, we only ever get to experience exhibitions for a few months and then they …

Flash Points

“Free” and Online Experience

Flash Points

“Free” and Online Experience

Free, an exhibition that opens October 20 at the New Museum, will explore the web’s impact on how we digest information and experience public space through the work of twenty-three …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Enjoying the Steps

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Enjoying the Steps

Recently I have participated in a few discussions that relate to teaching students about slowing down and examining their process in order to create quality works of art- works that …

Flash Points

Making the Most of It

Flash Points

Making the Most of It

I’ve always thought of artists as romantic creatures. Their desires are truly unlike those of any other profession in the world. While many people work their way up in careers …

Flash Points

Come Curious: The Artists Look

Flash Points

Come Curious: The Artists Look

“When I was sixteen and knew nothing about art, I sat through almost six hours of Andy Warhol’s Empire. I did not understand it but thought: this is in a …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Solid Sound

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Solid Sound

Is sound an element of design right alongside biggies like line, color, shape and texture? Teachers today are faced with the unseemly job of breaking outside “the” seven elements of …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Masterpiece Theatre

Letter from London

Letter from London: Masterpiece Theatre

On a single day this week I saw a clutch of paintings that would, by most reckonings, be referred to as “masterpieces”: Velazquez’ Las Meninas (1656), Goya’s Third of May …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Film and Objects

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Film and Objects

Teaching with film or taking a trip with students to a museum can sometimes be an experience somewhere between total bliss and a dental visit. It can be eye-opening or …

Flash Points

Secrets of Art Appreciation

Flash Points

Secrets of Art Appreciation

I am not an “art critic.” I can tell you how I feel about a given work of art, but I may feel differently over time or if I see …

Letter from London

Letter from London: In the Loop

Letter from London

Letter from London: In the Loop

My favorite things in Pallant House, the excellent gallery of modern British art in Chichester on the south coast of England, are a couple of small models made before its …

Installation shot of "Effervescent Condition" at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. (Left) Yefeng’s "Battelfield," (right) Sampson’s Dodgedraw on the right, Dodgedraw participant

Flash Points

Effervescent Condition

Flash Points

Effervescent Condition

Effervescent Condition, curated by Fang-Tze Hsu (MA 2010) was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s (SAIC) contribution to The Power of Copying, a large-scale, international group exhibition held …