“[At] MOCA’s new show on Latin American light and space art … a lifeguard will be in attendance. Towels will be handed out. And disposable bathing suits will be sold at the bookstore. All so that visitors can see and experience for themselves what looks like a psychedelic swimming pool. The highly immersive artwork was conceived by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica and filmmaker Neville D’Almeida in 1973.”
Category: visual
The Turner Prize’s Oddest Year Yet?
“Monday’s Turner prize ceremony was the oddest – and in some ways the most moving – that most regular guests of the annual event can remember.”
Repatriation And The Story Of Art
“It seems more interesting to see antiquities restitutions not as an emptying out of Western museums but as part of a larger trend–the reverse migration of objects, from the West to the regions and cultures from which they came, along with the flow of Western art to new centers of power.”
Philadelphia History Museum Selling Thousands of Items From Collection
More than 2,000 items have been “quietly sold by the Philadelphia History Museum over the last several years, all part of an effort to cull its collection of 100,000 artifacts and raise money for a $5.8 million renovation of its 1826 building.”
Hockney in Pixels
“David Hockney thinks his current exhibition may be the first one that’s ever been 100 percent e-mailed to a gallery.” All the paintings in the show were made on – and are displayed on – iPhones and iPads.
Protests At Smithsonian Over Removal Of Wojnarowicz Video
“In 1989 Senator Jesse Helms demonized Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexuality, and by extension, his art, and with little effort pulled a cowering art world to its knees. His weapon was threatening to disrupt the already pitiful federal support for the arts. And once again, that same weapon is being brandished, and once again we cower.”
An All-Too-Predictable Culture War
“Against this remarkable backdrop of landmark civil rights advances, long thought impossible, came last week’s Smithsonian dust-up. The public had registered no complaints about the show, but a small, familiar cast of voluble anti-gay pressure groups, politicians and media did. They have read the civil rights handwriting on the wall, and they threw a tantrum. The Smithsonian acquiesced.”
Susan Philipsz Winning the Turner Prize Is ‘The Right Result’
Adrian Searle: “Her sense of place, and space, memory and presence reminds me, weirdly, of the sculptor Richard Serra at his best. Her art makes you think of your place in the world, and opens you up to your feelings.”
Elevator Transformed Into Art Space To Combat Graffiti
University of Wisconsin officials were tired of removing graffiti from an elevator in the Humanities building. So they turned the elevator into an art project…
Phillips Collection To Reopen After Fire
All the work will be finished by Jan. 15, the museum announced, and a celebration will begin that day to welcome back the famed paintings. The art was not harmed in the Sept. 2 fire, which was restricted to the roof and the suite of offices right under the roof. But there was extensive water damage to 12 galleries in the 1897 building.