“Digital-age publishers are obsessed with the idea of community; of building it and/or finding it and/or representing it. There is no such thing as “community,” at least as far as it relates to how people consistently or predictably respond to the things you put in front of them. Therefore, don’t take any “community” for granted. It doesn’t really exist.”
Category: visual
The New Whitney: “A Giddy, Irrational Space For Spectacle”
“It is said that museums have gone from “being about something” to “being for somebody,” racing to shed their old skins and remaking themselves in our image. So all museums must now become revisions, articulated interventions and reinterpretations of their former selves and their place in the cultural world—a compulsion now embraced by the new Whitney.”
Frick Museum Abandons Controversial Expansion Plan
“It just became clear to us that it wasn’t going to work,” said a museum official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the board had not yet made the decision final with a vote.
Frick Collection Abandons Controversial Expansion Plan
“Facing a groundswell of opposition to a proposed renovation that would have eliminated a gated garden to make way for a six-story addition, the [Fifth Avenue] museum – long admired for its intimate scale – has decided to abandon those plans and start over from scratch.”
Museum Workers Versus The Museum Of Modern Art
To be clear, this isn’t a group of laborers that are raking in massive amounts of cash. According to a press release sent out by the union prior to the demonstration, the salary of “entry-level museum staff starts at approximately $29K per year and the membership, which includes professional staff such as curators, librarians and conservators, averages $49K.”
Now That Everyone’s A Photographer, It All Seems So Democratic. Except For Artists…
“Many artists are ready to self-fund their first opus because they believe that they need a release early on in their career rather than after having developed a 30 or 40 years practice. That’s fine if it changes their life. But if it doesn’t make a difference, I wonder if they’ll be in a position to spend another 20 or 25,000 dollars the next time around. In a way, it has become about whether or not you have access to money, rather than the value of your work. It isn’t as democratic as we like to think.”
This Florida Artist Wrapped His House And Trees In Aluminum Foil. The Neighbors Object…
Tarpon Springs police Sgt. Ed Miller claims residents have called his landlord and city arborists have inspected the trees, but so far no one can find any justified reason for Janowski to be forced to remove the foil. “Code enforcement is still trying to determine if the project is violating any ordinances.”
Iraq’s National Museum Is Open Again – Now People Have To Start Coming
“Guides and curators say the museum has averaged about 300 visitors a day since it reopened [in February] … Those who do brave the risks of terrorist attacks and the traffic, which is snarled by regular checkpoints, say they are thrilled to see the museum’s collection, which has been largely closed to the public for the past 20 years.”
Anti-Democratic? Why Do Museums Hide So Much Of Their Collections?
“Big museums have long refused to recognize their unexhibited collections of duplicates and minor works as a financial resource. As a consequence, they are wasting value by keeping these works hidden. If they were redistributed to smaller institutions, and even to private collectors and businesses, they would fund an explosion of the value for which we have museums in the first place: people looking at art and getting more out of it when they do.”
Silicon Valley Has Been Great For Art! (No It Hasn’t)
“The global industry of technology has so many synergies with art and it’s such a creative community that it only made sense to bring a high quality fair to Silicon Valley. We believe they will be the next great caretakers of the art market. You could talk about just the wealth and you need a certain level of affluence to collect art, but we think it’s beyond that.”