The Museum of Modern Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and Walker Art Center are some of the illustrious cultural spaces where one might expect to see our award-winning film series Art in the Twenty-First Century. It’s true that host organizations have traditionally included such museums, as well as universities, libraries, and cultural centers. But Art21 screenings have also happened in the unlikeliest of places, from a water treatment center in Wichita, Kansas to a research base in Antarctica to a former drill hall in Ethiopia.

In my short time here as Art21’s Director of Education, I have heard incredible stories about enthusiastic individuals and spaces opening their doors to friends, colleagues, and the general public with the sole purpose of sharing Art21’s film series. I can hardly wait to hear new stories that I’m certain will emerge during our yearlong screening initiative Access 100 Artists.

Access screening at artSPACE in Durban, South Africa, 2009.

Access is our external screening program, which started back in 2007 to coincide with the Season 4 release of our PBS series. Now six seasons in and Art21 is celebrating an important milestone: to date, we have profiled 100 contemporary artists. In conjunction with our 100 Artists celebration, we’re offering our entire collection of films (including New York Close Up) totally free of charge to partner organizations new and old.

Access 100 Artists aims to be a worldwide festival of free Art21 film screenings. From a small dinner party with friends to a 24-hour outdoor jubilee, no venue is too small or too large. Anyone can participate. Here’s how:

1. Register at www.art21.org/access. Share your screening dates with us and we’ll announce them here.
2. Use our online resources and discussion guides for pre- and post-screening activities.
3. Promote your event with Access postcards. We’ll mail these right to your door along with other materials that will help make your event successful.
4. Tell us what went down! Who came? What did you screen? What did you talk about? Enquiring minds want to know.
5. Add your pictures to our Access Flickr group and help us grow our visual archive of stories.

By getting involved with Access 100 Artists and sharing your experiences, the education team here gains greater insight into the many different ways that Art21 films are used and shown around the world. We’ll not only share your stories with people in our office, we might get in touch with you and ask for quotes or a blogpost. We’re looking to you to re-think the relationships and connections between the artists we’ve featured. You know what we do. We want to hear your stories!

Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Curator of Contemporary Art at Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC).

Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy is the Curator of Contemporary Art at Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Between 2009-2010, she served as the director of Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. Before then, she worked as curator at Art in General and earlier at Americas Society, both nonprofit arts organizations in New York City. She has curated independently: Autopsia de lo invisible at MALBA in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Archaeology of Longing at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, France, where she was in residence for part of 2008; and together with Raimundas Malasauskas and Alexis Vaillant, the IX Baltic Triennial Black Market Worlds (a.k.a. BMW). Hernández Chong Cuy writes regularly for exhibition catalogues and art magazines, as well as for her blog, www.sideshows.org.

Having followed Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy’s curatorial practice for a decade now, I am very pleased to present to you our discussion on contemporary Latin American art and Hernández Chong Cuy’s current projects.

Mariana Castillo Deball. Grabmaske Peruanis Cheskustengebeit, from the series Falschgesichter, 2008. Laser print and fold on couche paper. 29 x 27 cm. Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.

Georgia Kotretsos: You just held a seminar series at the Konshall, Spånga on “What Does an Art Institution Do?”  The inquiring spirit of  that program invites dialogue, so I would like to begin by asking you this very question – since thus far your name has always been closely linked to an art institution. I’d also like you to consider, what do art institutions do for you?

Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy:  I think the title of the program is telling; simple but challenging. It titillates with the not-knowing. It doesn’t exactly invite a naïve albeit possibly-interested public that may want to learn about the role of art institutions, though it may, but rather, it is an invitation to reflect on art institutions’ commitments to a public.  Since “doing” involves affect and effect simultaneously, it collapses motivation and end at once, at least in the title of the program.  There are certainly many kinds of “doings” in the world, and thus many kinds of art institutions. I’ve worked in a variety of cities and institutions, and in each one, these so-called doings—whether you call it art or culture, niceties or politics—and their so-called institutions are very different from each other.

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Jenny Marketou at her studio in Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY.

Jenny Marketou was born and raised in Athens, Greece and educated in the United States. She lives and works in New York. Marketou earned a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC, and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She also studied photography with Duane Michaels at the International Center of Photography in New York and has participated in numerous workshops during the summer breaks as well as residency programs in the United States.

One of the most important residencies that gave a new direction to Marketou’s life and work was a three-month program at Banff, Canada in 1998.  That experience fed her practice through continuous collaborations at Banff and with some of the residents through 2002.  At Banff, she had the opportunity to meet and later collaborate with international artists as well as some of the hackers and anarchists who initiated the net art movement–Heath Bunting, Alex Shulgin, the Yes Men, Critical Art Assemble, Vuc Gosic, Natalie Bookchin, Fran Ilich and others under the mentorship of people like Sara Diamond, Sylvère Lotringer, Peter Weibel, Kathleen Hayles, Bruno Latour, Lev Manovich, and Tom Levine. The friendships that developed during that program have had an enormous influence on Marketou’s subsequent practice.

Earlier this month, Paperophanies was commissioned by the Praxis Project Gallery at Atrium Art Museum in Vitoria, in collaboration with local communities, artists, universities, and foundations as well as the Guggenheim in Bilbao. The project was inaugurated in the Basque Country in Spain and was curated by Blanca de la Torre. According to the exhibition description, Paperophanies “offers new kinds of mechanisms to explore collaboration, social relations, identity, fashion, action and the commons. Marketou has transformed the PRAXIS gallery into a fashion atelier where workshops take place daily, which after two months culminates into a public event in the form of a public protest ending in the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca.”

Marketou taught for many years at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York City and has lectured world-wide as a visiting artist at colleges and universities such as Parsons/the New School in New York City; Rutgers, NJ; Harvard, Cambridge; Montclair University; University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, among others. Her work can be found in public and private collections from the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece to Museo Reina Sophia, Madrid, Spain, and has been featured in numerous publications including Flash Art, Art Forum and Spiegel.

She is the epitome of a “busy-bee,” with the energy and critical insight that today’s art world requires.  Marketou’s studio is located in DUMBO, Brooklyn, by the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge. I have followed her work since 2005, yet I rarely have the opportunity to indulge in a good art conversation with her due to the ocean that separates us. When we do talk, Marketou makes every word and every minute count. I’ve made a job out of hunting down good art conversations, and it’s not often that I come across an artist who can play art ping-pong with words, without necessarily referring to their work or mine. I am a devoted fan of artists who can think and speak about issues taking place outside of the limits of their studio walls. Marketou is certainly one of them.

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Daniela Ortiz, "N-T," photograph and text, dimensions variable, 2009. Courtesy the artist.

Several months ago, even before I set my foot on Catalan ground, I was captivated by a seemingly modest photograph: a chocolate candy in a golden wrapper set on a tip of the kitchen knife, which displayed a fresh bite mark, still dripping with saliva. Its caption read matter-of-factly:

I work 40 hours a week in a Spanish high-class chocolate boutique. While working on October 12, I stole three sheets of 24-karat gold and a Guanaja chocolate bonbon. I covered the chocolate with gold and ate it to celebrate the National Day of Spain.

Instantaneously, the image and the statement conjured much more than Proust’s madeleine could ever have. A simple, indulgent gesture became the present’s revenge on the past and on its own self. There we were, set up to ponder the nationalistic pride of Columbus’s discovery of the Americas and the riches and delicacies with which he gifted the Old Continent (Spain celebrates its national holiday on the anniversary of Columbus’s first landing in the New World). However, a few swift anthropophagic nibbles were about to gnaw this self-esteem away. A young immigrant retail clerk claimed what should have always belonged to her. Her body enacted the rebellion through the most direct means available: consuming the forbidden (yet, justly hers) treat.

Daniela Ortiz de Zevallos. Courtesy the artist.

This ingenious piece was conceived by a young Peruvian artist living and working in Barcelona, Daniela Ortiz de Zevallos. Even though the Spanish colonial empire was dismantled long time ago, shared linguistic and cultural heritage continue to draw scores of artists from Latin America, who seek to enhance their education or advance their professional careers, to the country. Like many of her compatriots, Ortiz arrived here to continue her art studies at the University of Barcelona (UB). Since her graduation in 2009, she has undoubtedly marked the scene here with her audacious presence, participating in more than a dozen exhibitions in 2010 and sweeping pretty much all the major fellowships and grants available. Her project 97 Housemaids was published with the Art Jove grant and recently, she was awarded the prestigious Guasch Coranty Scholarship for her new project, Service Room.

As Ortiz is orchestrating another transcontinental move, this time to Mexico City (Ortiz will begin her postgraduate studies at SOMA in Mexico City, an experimental education platform co-founded by Teresa Margolles and Yoshúa Okón among others, in just a few weeks’ time), and preparing for three solo shows that are to take place here in Spain in June, we shared a conversation about the origins and influences on her precise, taxing practice and her ambiguous status in Spain that continues to be fodder for her projects.

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Protest on the steps of the National Portrait Gallery, December 2010. Courtesy the Washington Post, photo: Bill O'Leary.

Since I made my first appearance on the Art21 blog about six weeks ago, commenting on the now-infamous censoring of David Wojnarowicz’s video A Fire in My Belly at the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek exhibition, the incident has continued to make waves. Among many blogs, Hyperallergic and ArtInfo have followed the story closely, providing careful updates throughout its development. A few decisive twists and turns deserve to be highlighted here, as not many cases have echoed so strongly in the recent years. This run-through will serve as a brief introduction to my main theme of interest: the difficult relationship between art’s visibility, potency, and meaning, as they unravel in the context of presentation and interpretation.

The manifestation of support for Wojnarowicz’s video has been overwhelming, with multiple institutions and organizations taking it up as soon as the Smithsonian Institution decided to pull it from the show. Transformer Gallery in Washington D.C., the New Museum in NYC, as well as a slew of institutions throughout the country put on display what was meant to be erased, on the scale that – arguably – has never been seen before. Even Stephen Colbert weighed in on the issue.

In condemnation of his action, Secretary of the Smithsonian, G. Wayne Clough, who single-handedly made the decision to take down Wojnarowicz’s video, has been repeatedly called to resign.

Artist AA Bronson asked for his own contribution to the exhibition to be returned and is currently in legal deadlock with the institution, which refused to return the piece before the loan agreement’s stipulated date. According to the Art Newspaper, another request for the “solidarity” removal came in an unprecedented gesture from the owner of Untitled, Self-Portrait by Jack Pierson, a hedge-fund specialist, and collector Jim Hedges, who demanded that his work be taken down, at least until Wojnarowicz’s video is brought back on view.

Following this outpouring of various attempts to counteract the conservatives’ demands to severely limit what constitutes art, Robin Cembalest, the executive editor of ARTnews, wrote incisive commentary on what institutions can and should do to prevent the escalation of the next Culture Wars.

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Thanks to Caroline Picard for a record number of fabulous interviews. Follow her work back on her site, Lantern Projects.

Up next is Dorota Biczel. Dorota Biczel is a Polish-born artist, writer, independent researcher and curator, currently based in Barcelona, Spain. She pursues what Vilém Flusser called “the freedom of a migrant,” and has lived and worked in Poland, the United States and Peru. She first studied graphics at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in Poland and her critical writing and curatorial practice grew out of the experience working at a politically unstable periphery with a weak institutional scene. Dorota has taught classes at the Warsaw Academy, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has realized independent curatorial projects in Warsaw, Milwaukee, and Lima, Peru. Her research interests include issues of artistic labor, critical pedagogy, systems of valuation in the art world, and questions about art historiographies of the “new democracies” under neoliberal policies in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Currently, her main focus is neo-Conceptual art in Peru and the challenge of its narration after the fall of dictatorship – the subject of her MA thesis, Weak Signals in the Fog: Tactics of [In] visibility in the Neo-Conceptual Peruvian Art. Dorota was recently invited to join the research group, Red Conceptualismos del Sur / Southern Conceptualisms Network.

“Philip IV” and “Mariana of Austria” shoot the breeze in the Prado. Period costume memo not picked up by majority of attendees

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 1808 (1814), Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1503-4), and Picasso’s Guernica (1937). I’m deliberately not linking to images of them, because you already know what they look like. Perhaps the images flicked into your mind on reading the titles. I thought I knew them too, but this prior knowledge made it almost impossible to look at the real object with any kind of immediacy. Anecdotal historical information, the stuff upon which wall labels and guided tours are built, deadens an immediate response to a work of art. It thickens the air; it slows down your reactions. This distancing from the physicality of the thing in front of you is made literal in the Louvre’s disastrous hang of the Mona Lisa, pinioned behind glass like an entomological specimen: dead. Continue reading »

Louise Bourgeois, "Crouching Spider", 2003. Steel, 106 1/2 x 329 x 24 inches. Courtesy Cheim & Read, Hauser & Wirth, and Galerie Karsten Greve. Photo: Christopher Burke. via Art Daily.

A tribute to a great artist, a series of German faces, a big film of tiny things, some drawing restraint, and a bunch more in this week’s roundup:

• The Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation in Venice was preparing an exhibition of works by Season 1 artist Louise Bourgeois when they received news of her death last week. The exhibition — the last in which Bourgeois was actively involved — now serves as a tribute to her life and work. Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works mostly comprises montages, collages and assemblages made of pieces of her own clothes and linen. Some fabrics in the show belonged to members of Bourgeois’s family including her mother. These works are, according to the Foundation, “a reincarnation of the past and of [Bourgeois's] childhood, as well as a testimony to her relationship with memory.” Bourgeois explained what drove her to create these works: “I make drawings to suppress the unspeakable. The unspeakable is not a problem for me. It’s even the beginning of the work. It’s the reason for the work; the motivation of the work is to destroy the unspeakable. Clothing is also an exercise of memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that? They are like signposts in the search of the past.” The fabric pieces are shown together with Bourgeois’s large steel sculpture Crouching Spider (2003), a recurring motif in her work. Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works is curated by Germano Celant in collaboration with Jerry Gorovoy of the Louise Bourgeois Studio. The exhibition is on view through September 19.

• Works by Bourgeois (Season 1), and Jeff Koons (Season 5) are included in the exhibition 200 Artworks 25 Years: Artists’ Editions for Parkett, on view at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI). Organized by STPI with the cooperation of Parkett Publishers and Ikkan Sanada, the show fills five rooms with artists‘ sketches, letters and other material documenting collaborations between artists and Parkett. The rooms have been designed to evoke the feeling of different living spaces: a Studio, a Playroom, a Wardrobe, a City, and a Garden. In addition, a Reading room encourages viewers to browse Parkett‘s recent volumes and its page art projects. 200 Artworks 25 Years closes July 17.

• Friedman Benda Gallery in New York is showing works by Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman (both Season 1), and Janine Antoni (Season 2), among others, in the group exhibition Other Than Beauty. The show focuses on post-war and emerging artists, whose practices have “established new paradigms of art-making” and  “disregarded the primacy of formal and aesthetic beauty.” Via the press release, “By pushing the boundaries of meaning and form, these artists have, over time, expanded our ideas of what beauty can be.” The gallery has juxtaposed works from these early artists with those from younger generations including Sterling Ruby, and Chitra Ganesh, who also “challenge our expectations and expand the lexicon of both art and beauty.” The exhibition closes July 30.

• On June 11 and 13, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will host the New York premiere of Tiny Furniture, an award winning film by Lena Dunham, daughter of Season 4 artist Laurie Simmons and painter Carroll Dunham. The film concerns the character Aura, who returns home from her Midwest liberal arts college to her artist family’s Tribeca loft with nothing to show but a film studies degree, a failed relationship, and a total lack of direction. Taking a job as a hostess at a restaurant, she falls into relationships with two self-centered men while struggling to define herself. According to BAM/IFC Films, “Dunham’s razor-sharp dialogue drips with caustic wit, perfectly calibrated to both cut and provoke laughter in this incisive examination of post-college ennui and self-actualization…” Lena Dunham writes, directs, and stars in Tiny Furniture. Simmons also makes an appearance in the film. The first screening will be held inside BAM Rose Cinemas. The second (presented in collaboration with Rooftop Films) will take place outdoors.

• Going to the World Cup or already there? See works by Kara Walker (Season 2), Jenny Holzer (Season 4) and William Kentridge, and Yinka Shonibare MBE (both Season 5) in the exhibition and event series In Context. Organized by Goodman Gallery, the Goethe-Institut, CulturesFrance, the French Institute of South Africa, the City of Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Galleria Continua, the British Council, the Apartheid Museum, the Kirsh Foundation, and Nirox Foundation, In Context brings together works by international and South African artists “who share a rigorous commitment to the dynamics and tensions of place, in reference to the African continent and its varied and complex iterations, and to South Africa in particular.”

• The 13th edition of PHotoEspaña 2010, an international festival for photography in Madrid, includes a show of approximately 60 photographs and 3 videos by Collier Schorr (Season 2) from her series German Faces. This series is described as “a photographic imaginarium that mixes documentary with fiction, where the German landscape is a map of her own story, both imagined and inherited. Combining the roles of photographer, anthropologist and researcher, [Schorr] narrates the tales of a place and time determined by memory, nationalism, war, emigration and family.” German Faces (which has been in progress for the past twenty years) is on view at PHotoEspaña through June 25.

• Through September 10, works by Robert Adams (Season 4), Mary Heilmann, and John Baldessari (both Season 5) are on view in the group exhibition On the Road at ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas. The exhibition takes its title from a book by American poet and novelist Jack Kerouac, which recounts his road trips across the United States in the late 1940s. On the Road investigates the mythology of the American motoring adventure as it began to develop in the early 1920s, with the advent of immense expansions of the highway system, particularly in the West of the country. The first part of the exhibition presents artists whose images and works have long been associated with the exploration of the West by way of the automobile. The second part is the result of a recent two-week excursion through Texas by the curator, during which a number of artifacts and documents were collected for display. Read an interview with the curator in Selectism.

• On June 12, Schaulager in Basel, Switzerland will open Prayer Sheet With the Wound and the Nail, an exhibition related to the Drawing Restraint series by Matthew Barney (Season 2). Curated by Neville Wakefield (MOMA PS1), the show includes 16 sculptures, drawings, videos, and a “Drawing Restraint Archive” of videos recently acquired by the Laurenz Foundation. According to SLAMXHYPE, these artworks will be juxtaposed with 15th and 16th century prints to, says Wakefield, “draw parallels, not only with the trials and tribulations of mark-making, but with Christian iconography and Matthew’s representation of the body in extremes.” Prayer Sheet With the Wound and the Nail will close October 3.

• A Voyage of Growth and Discovery, a collaborative project by Mike Kelley (Season 3) and Michael Smith, made a splash in Los Angeles with nearly 1,000 people attending the opening. Read the LA Times article.

• The BMW art car created by Jeff Koons (Season 5) has finally been unveiled. Read reports from the New York Times, New York Observer, Wall Street Journal, Nitrobahn, Motor Trend, and Wired.

• Vija Celmins (Season 2) talks to Phong Bui of the Brooklyn Rail about her current exhibition at David McKee Gallery.

• The Warholian has created a video about the Oakland Museum of California installation by Barry McGee (Season 1).

• The Art Newspaper has an update on the legal battle between James Turrell (Season 1) and art dealer Michael Hue-Williams.

• An LA Weekly reviewer calls work by Tim Hawkinson (Season 2) now on view at Blum + Poe “funny funny funny.”

• Variations and Improvisations, a solo exhibition of works by Robert Ryman (Season 4) on view at the Phillips Collection, is reviewed in the Washington Post.

• Design Folio has images of the individual works and installation by Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3) for the 17th Bienniale of Sydney.

• Laurie Anderson (Season 1) and Lou Reed presented their highly anticipated “dog concert” at the Sydney Opera House and, according to The Baltimore Sun animal blog, it received “two paws up.”

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org with their avatars in Plymouth, UK. Photo by Marco Anelli.

The Italian “artist-provocateurs” Eva and Franco Mattes, aka 0100101110101101.org, are no strangers to this site. Our very first guest bloggers back in 2008, when they blogged about their Influencers festival (more on that below), they have since made semi-regular appearances in this column.

Throughout their practice, the Mattes seek to make the invisible visible, under rather clandestine circumstances. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, they operated under the name Luther Blissett (1994-99) with a collective of other artists. Notorious during this time was the figure of Darko Maver (1998-99), an imaginary Serbian artist they invented only to “murder” him soon after. The Mattes then became known for their culture-jamming projects like Nike Ground (2003), in which they convinced Vienna residents that a public square would be renamed “Nikeplatz”; Vaticano.org, their hacking of the Vatican’s website; and Life Sharing (2000-2003), a net art project that allowed anyone in the world to log on to their computer and access their personal files.

Significant in the context of this column is the Mattes’s involvement with Second Life. 13 Most Beautiful Avatars (part of their larger Portraits project from 2006-7) is a photographic series of “celebrity” avatars exhibited in a contemporary art gallery in Second Life. Directly referencing Warhol’s 13 Most Beautiful Women and 13 Most Beautiful Boys (both 1964), these images transpose the banality of celebrity and human desire onto the two-dimensional avatar. Around this same time, the Mattes began an ongoing series called Synthetic Performances (2006-present), in which their avatars reenacted seminal performance artworks in Second Life, including Marina Abramovic’s and Ulay’s Imponderabilia (1977), Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Oaks (1982-87), Gilbert & George’s The Singing Sculpture (1968), Valie Export’s Tapp und Tastkino (1968), Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1972), and Chris Burden’s Shoot (1971).

While the Mattes continue their Second Life explorations, they have since turned away from reenactments and appropriations to produce original artworks in this virtual world. At the same time, their real-life practice thrives. With a solo exhibition of mostly new work, Reality is Overrated, currently on view at Postmasters Gallery in New York, the Mattes continue to create their provocative art with the distinctly twenty-first century variable that is the Internet. In doing so, they effectually sew the gap between art and life with the thread of the programming code.

On the occasion of this exhibition, I interviewed Eva and Franco about this show, their latest performances, and the promise of our latest procrastinatory tool, Chatroulette.

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Kerry James Marshall, "Portrait of a Curator (In Memory of Beryl Wright)", 2009. Acrylic on pvc. Collection of Penny Pritzker and Bryan Traubert.

An ancient proposition, a group of Modern women, life-restoring elixir, and more in this week’s roundup:

• Vancouver Art Gallery has organized Canada’s first solo exhibition of works by Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall. The exhibition presents approximately 20 paintings created since the early 1990s. Vancouver Art Gallery director Kathleen Bartels says of Marshall: “[His] skill as an artist, his keen observation of other genres, and his acuity as a thinker have led to a twenty-five year practice characterized by historically informed explorations of the representation of the black figure in pictorial space, as well as investigations into the pretensions of the art world in which he participates.” Kerry James Marshall (co-curated by Jeff Wall) is on view through January 3, 2011. Read recent interviews with the artist in The Globe and Mail and National Post.

• Tonight from 6pm to 8pm, meet Season 2 artist Walton Ford at the Taschen store in Miami. Ford will sign copies of the trade edition of his book Pancha Tantra. Only 100 copies will be available. Reservations are accepted only via telephone order, on a first come first serve basis. Get more information about this event here.

• This is the last week to see two exhibitions of work by Season 5 artist William Kentridge in New York: Five Themes at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) ends today, and Sheets of Evidence at Dieu Donné closes May 22.

• Catch Season 4 artist Mark Bradford at MoMA on May 26. Bradford will be in conversation with Christopher Bedford, Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts. MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry will moderate the discussion. Tickets are available online or at the Museum information and Film desks. (The first major survey of Bradford’s work is on view at the Wexner through August 15.)

• Works by Art21 artists Kiki Smith (Season 2), Roni Horn (Season 3), An My Lê (Season 4), Cindy Sherman, and Carrie Mae Weems (both Season 5) are on view at MoMA through March 21, 2011. Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography brings together over 200 photographs by women artists in the museum’s collection, charting the history of photography from the beginning of the modern period to the present. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with MoMA’s publication of Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art due out next month.

• Resurrectine, a new group show at Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York, is titled after the fictive life-restoring elixir imagined by Raymond Roussel in his 1914 novel Locus Solus. The exhibition, according to the gallery’s website, “embraces the notion of transformation – the creative act of taking form, appearance, nature, character, or meaning, and making it new again.” More than fifty artists — including Art21′s Eleanor Antin (Season 2), Pepón Osorio (Season 1), and Carrie Mae Weems (Season 5) — are included in the show. From June 15 to 19, visitors are invited to bring in their old clothes, which will be “resurrected” courtesy of Junky Styling.

• Works by Josiah McElheny (Season 3), Blinky Palermo, and Heimo Zobernig are currently on view at Andrea Rosen Gallery. The exhibition, titled Blue Design, consists of three works, each of a similar blue tone, that relate through their use of architectural and design language, and the idea that color is “a narrative element of abstraction.” McElheny’s new sculptural work, Charlotte Perriand (and Carlos Scarpa), Blue, (2010), is a shelving design by Charlotte Perriand that has been remade in a deep glossy blue color. The shelves are filled with designs by Carlo Scarpa that have been reconstructed in blue glass. McElheny’s work connects to Palermo’s early exploration of material, narrative, and abstraction. (McElheny’s upcoming summer project at the CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art will coincide with Palermo’s retrospective exhibition, jointly presented by CCS Bard and Dia: Beacon.)

• The Cremaster Cycle (1994-2002), a five-part film by Season 2 artist Matthew Barney, will screen at the IFC Center in New York, May 19 through June 3. According to the New York Post, one reason to attend this screening is that The Cycle will never be available to audiences on DVD. Another reason is that “the films make for damn good viewing.” And if that’s not enough, the artist will make an appearance on May 20 at the 7pm showing of Cremaster 4 and 5. See all show times and purchase tickets here.

• On May 21 at 7pm, Barney will speak at the New Museum as part of the discussion series “A Proposition.” The artist will discuss his developing project Ancient Evenings and share the storyboards and video sequences for this seven-act performance. Purchase tickets here.

• In more Barney news, Carol Vogel of the New York Times reports that MoMA has purchased 50 percent interest in the “Drawing Restraint Archive,” the artist’s chronicle that began in 1987 and to which he continues to add. Read more.

• Season 1 artist Richard Serra has won Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias award in the arts. The Prince of Asturias Foundation described Serra as one of the “most relevant sculptors of the second half of the 20th century” and said his minimalist works were of “great visual power that are an invitation to reflection and wonder.” The prize includes a $63,000 cash award and a sculpture by Joan Miro.