Last Call for Lucelia Award Exhibition

Last chance to see Celebrating the Lucelia Artist Award, 2001-2006 before it closes June 22nd. Installed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the exhibition features works by each of the previous winners: Matthew Coolidge, Andrea Zittel (Art:21 Season 1), Kara Walker (Season 2), Rirkrit Tiravanija, Liz Larner, and Jorge Pardo.

Chosen by a distinguished independent panel of jurors, the $25000 prize annually recognizes an American artist under 50 who has demonstrated exceptional creativity and whose work is “emblematic of this period in contemporary art.” The 2007 winner, Jessica Stockholder (Season 3), was announced last September in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition.

Day 6 - Art21 Online Fundraising Drive

As I write, Art21’s founder and executive director, Susan Sollins, is attending the 37th Annual George Foster Peabody Award ceremony to accept the award being given to the Protest episode from Season 4 of Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century. What a way to start the week!

We hope you will consider making a gift today in honor of this momentous occasion. Donations can be made via Art21.org/donate or the Art21 Facebook Cause.

As filmmakers we are very deeply honored to receive the Peabody Award. One of 35 programs selected as “the best in electronic media,” our fellow awardees, include producers for major news organizations (CNN, ABC, CBS, BBC) and established PBS programs (Nature, Frontline, Independent Lens), as well as those of The Colbert Report and 30 Rock – a testament to the importance of artists’ voices to our national conversation and to the Art21 series that allows their voices to be heard.

Our winning episode features Nancy Spero, Alfredo Jarr, Jenny Holzer, and An-My Lê sharing their processes of making artworks that grapple with the complexities of global politics and activism, and exemplifies Art21’s approach of showcasing artists’ deep engagement with the world around them.

If you haven’t seen the full program yet, consider entering to win your very own copy! Donate $10 or more to Art21 by Friday, June 20, 2008 to be entered to win Art21 DVDs and books, including our Peabody-Award winning episode. Read here for details.Thanks so much to all of you who have already made a donation, or helped to spread the word on Facebook. As of this post, 118 people have joined our cause! We greatly appreciate everyone’s support during our first-ever online fundraiser.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle wins Richard H. Driehaus Foundation award

Art21 artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Season 4) is the winner of a 2008 individual artist award granted by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. This award recognizes artists living in the Chicago area and aims to support and encourage “excellence, artistry, focus, direction, maturity, and originality in the visual arts.” The fifteen thousand dollar prize is awarded to three artists each year to support their work and future achievements.

Other winners of the 2008 individual artist award include Jason Lazarus and Anne Wilson. A jury of five arts professionals selected the recipients of the award and included Susanne Ghez, director of the Renaissance Society; Lane Relyea, professor at Northwestern University; Lisa Dorin, assistant curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago; Carol Ehlers, independent curator; and Nick Cave, artist and past winner of this award.

Maya Lin Awarded Van Alen Prize

Van Alen Institute announced yesterday that Maya Lin (Season 2) has been awarded the New York Prize Senior Fellowship.  Appointed Senior Fellows are accomplished thinkers, artists and practitioners who have a demonstrated record of exceptional work and are identified as leaders in their fields. During her tenure as Senior Fellow, Lin will further develop Missing - a project she describes as her “last memorial” that will “focus attention on species and places that have gone extinct or will most likely disappear within our lifetime.”

Now in its second year, the New York Prize Fellowship was established to bring practitioners and scholars to Van Alen Institute’s headquarters in New York City to pursue and present advanced independent projects on the most significant issues shaping the conception, design and use of public space today.

Turner: New Leaf?

The announcement of the shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize has coincided neatly with a short-lived heatwave in the UK that sent Londoners leaping out of their winter clothes to bask grimly on any available patches of unshaded ground. Notwithstanding the capricious British weather, these two incidents tend to run together; the Turner Prize has long entered the national consciousness as a summer season space-filler, dependably absurd and apparently easy to describe in a breezy article next to some breasts. The fact that the YBAs made (some still do) art of a graphic bluntness that made their work translatable in the punchy prose of the tabloids (Shark in a Tank! Unmade Bed! Cow in a Tank! Lights Going On And Off! etc) is of a piece with the now sometimes embarrassing ballsy nationalism of the late 1990s, which reached its nadir, in a classic example of her inverse Midas touch, with Madonna stepping in and swearing live on TV, British art’s very own ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment.

The media exposure, though, did at least mean that contemporary art was, for perhaps the first time, a regular staple on letters pages, editorials and gossip pages, a position which has arguably had an effect on artistic practice itself (see the gradual domination of Banksy). The latest Turner Prize line-up, though, is largely in line with current vogues in contemporary art: cautious, careful arrangements of found objects with a fairly disturbing suggestiveness; quiet, contemplative, somewhat minimalist video; tongue-in-cheek allusions to modernist art history and popular culture; post-Hans Haacke blurring of curatorial and artistic boundaries. None of which has resulted in much of a fuss. Even the usually dependable Daily Mirror has struggled to find much to get upset about, not generally being known as Haacke purists.

Is this a sign of the growing acceptance of contemporary art by the broader public? Or are artists retreating from engaging with the language of popular taste?

Berliner Salon: The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and Alec Soth

Disclaimer: the following post is biased, self-indulgent, anecdotal and probably too long for a blog.

Yesterday I had the delight of seeing one of my all time favorite people for the first time in almost two years, the brilliantly poetic photographer Alec Soth. Alec was in Berlin for two openings, Dog Days, Bogotá at Wohnmaschine and Fashion Magazine, Paris/Minnesota at C/O Berlin, the latter of which was being presented in conjunction with the annual Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, given this year to Esko Männikkö. Alec had been shortlisted for the prize in 2006, which was ultimately rewarded to Art21 Season 4 artist Robert Adams, who then promptly donated the entire £30,000 cash award to a human rights organization.

I first came to know Alec when he was picked up by Gagosian Gallery, where I had recently begun working after graduating from a small liberal arts college in Vermont. The combination of a modest, laid-back Minnesota native and an idealistic and totally naïve Vermont transplant, both (relatively) new to the elite milieu that is Gagosian had the potential to be utterly disastrous. Fortunately, we somehow managed to survive his first exhibition at the gallery, despite the opening being pushed up by several months, not to mention technical difficulties at the printers and a slew of other behind-the-scenes obstacles.

Alec’s show, NIAGARA, was well received and the accompanying monograph, published by Steidl, won that year’s Golden Light Book Award. He is a Magnum Photos associate photographer and he was recently exhibited at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and yet, Alec remains one of the most humble, self-deprecating and genuine artists, with whom I have had the pleasure of working. “I was just in China and I’ve been wearing the same clothes for I don’t know how many days. I just want to hide,” he told me before leaving Wohnmaschine to give his speech at C/O Berlin. “Don’t worry,” I assured him, “wearing the same clothes for multiple days means you’re truly a Berliner.”

When addressing the audience that had gathered in C/O’s upper floor in honor of the Deutsche Borse, Alec stayed true to form, emphasizing that he had, in fact, been a Deutsche Börse “loser.” His works on view, a series of photographs depicting the world and personalities of couture fashion, are not emblematic of his signature style (typically melancholic portrayals of banal beauty and subtle humanity), which Alec also noted. “These are fashion photographs, but I’m not a fashion photographer. There are also advertising photographs, but I’m not an advertising photographer…and I’m here in Berlin, with stylish 20 year-olds everywhere I look, but as you can see,” he gestured towards his black t-shirt over black jeans, “I’m not really stylish, and so I’m not really a Berliner.”

The connection between Alec’s photography and the shortlisted nominees for this year’s prize is precisely the social conscious, however fragile, that Dog Days, Bogota exposes. Images of forlorn stray animals, vacant decaying living quarters and other intimate spaces, wide-eyed children and overcast ramshackle urban landscapes dominate the exhibition. Similarly, John Davies (UK), Jacob Holdt (Denmark), Esko Männikkö (Finland) and Fazal Sheikh (USA) all address these themes through their individual lenses, converging in an exhibition that speaks of the human spirit, as well as the pain that we, as a collective society, inflict on ourselves and on our natural habitat.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize will be exhibited at C/O Berlin through July 18. Dog Days, Bogota will be on view at Wohnmaschine until June 28. Both exhibitions are absolutely worth seeing and every photographer included should be accredited with contributing a powerful and honest voice to the international discourse of contemporary art and photographic imagery. Schoenes Wochenende.

Carnegie Prize Goes to Vija Celmins

Vija Celmins (Season 2) has been awarded the Carnegie Prize for her work Night Sky in the Carnegie International’s Life on Mars exhibition.  In addition to a monetary award of $10,000, the honor from the nation’s oldest survey of contemporary art also comes with a bronze medal designed by the American realist sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, given at every Carnegie International since the series began in 1896.

The 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art runs through January 11, 2009 and recognizes the work of forty emerging and established artists, including Art:21’s Mark Bradford (Season 4), Barry McGee and Mike Kelley (both Season 1).

Applebroog Award to Rafael Sanchez

As reported on Artnet, performance artist Rafael Sanchez has won the $10,000 Ida Applebroog (Season 3) Award at Exit Art in New York, established to nurture outstanding artists at critical points in their careers. The biennial prize, which is in its inaugural year, also includes a solo show in the Exit Art project room. A native of Newark, N.J., Sanchez is known for performances like Calienté/Frio (2007), in which the artist traced the migration process of two women from Cuba to America during the 1960s.

“Art:21″ Season Four wins Peabody, Aurora, Hugo, and Remi Awards

Art21 is thrilled to announce that Season 4 of Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century has won three more awards in addition to the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award bestowed earlier this month, making this our most honored season to date:

• Platinum Best in Show from the Aurora Awards
• Gold Remi from the 41st WorldFest Independent Film Festival
• Silver Hugo from the 44th Hugo Television Awards

We extend our warmest congratulations to all of the extraordinary individuals and organizations who have contributed to making Art:21 such a phenomenal and continuing success!

Download the press release with full details here.

Art:21 Wins Prestigious 2007 Peabody Award!

Season Four of Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century has been honored with a George Foster Peabody Award - the premiere international prize in electronic media - in the 67th Annual Peabody Awards Competition.

The Art:21 series was recognized for providing “a unique forum for the display, analysis and appreciation of myriad forms of contemporary visual art” by the University of Georgia’s Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, which has administered the Peabody Award program since its inception in 1940. The Season Four episode Protest, featuring the contemporary artists Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, An-My Lê , and Nancy Spero, was singled out for its examination of the ways in which contemporary artists picture and question war, express outrage, and empathize with the suffering of others.

Selected from over 1,000 entries, Art:21 is the first visual art series to win a Peabody since 2002, and among only a handful of visual art programs to claim such an honor in the Peabody’s history. Art:21 is one of thirty-five recipients honored from the world of news, entertainment and radio, including such high profile programs as 60 Minutes, NOVA, Frontline, Planet Earth, Project Runway, The Colbert Report, 30 Rock, and Mad Men.

“The latest Peabody recipients reflect great diversity in content, genre and source of origination,” said Horace Newcomb, director of the Peabody Awards, at the announcement ceremony. “The Peabody Awards, in all their diverse and innovative examples, are models for what can and should be done across the board.” The Peabody Awards, the oldest honor in electronic media, recognizes distinguished achievement and meritorious public service.

The Peabody Awards will be presented on June 16 at a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. Brian Williams, the distinguished anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, will be the master of ceremonies.

The Peabody Awards, the oldest honor in electronic media, recognizes distinguished achievement and meritorious public service; the awards do not recognize categories nor are there a set number of awards given each year. The Peabody Board is a 16-member group, comprised of television critics, broadcast and cable industry executives and experts in culture and the arts, that judges the entries. Winning entires become a permanent part of the Peabody Archive in the University of Georgia Libraries — one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most respected moving-image archives.

SAVE THE DATE!
A special screening of Protest, followed by a discussion with featured artist An-My Lê , will be held May 5, 6:30pm at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the The New York Public Library. This event is free and open to the public.