Lecture: Design for the Other 90%

Tonight Cynthia Smith, curator at the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum will be speaking at Pratt’s Brooklyn Campus.

Thursday, November 15 2007

6:30 PM

Main Building (Brooklyn) Room 230

Kara Walker Breaking My Heart at the Whitney

Want to be amazed, emotionally scarred and heart broken – check out the Kara Walker Show at the Whitney

Kara Walker Exhibit at Whitney – now until February 3, 2008

Here’s a quote from the gallery guide:

…they’re satisfied with triumph over evil, but then triumph is a dead end. Triumph never sits still. People forget and make mistakes. Heroes are not completely pure, and villains aren’t purely evil. I’m interested in the continuity of conflict, the creation of racist narratives, or nationalist narratives, or whatever narratives people use to construct a group identity and to keep themselves whole.

Don’t take a date to this exhibition – take someone whose mind rocks your world – or go alone

Did You Leave a Goya in My Basement?

Last week a New Jersey man was arrested for the theft of a 1778 Goya painting insured for $1 million from an unattended truck. The man arrested was a fellow truck driver. Here’s the kicker, the arrested truck driver claims he found it in his basement!

Read AP story here

The painting was on its way from the Toledo [Ohio] Art Museum to the Guggenheim. It was recovered within days – as I mentioned in another truck driver’s basement- this was last November -er…the truck driver was arrested last week. Amazingly, the Toledo Museum agreed to re-loan the piece to the Guggenheim in February 2007.

Leading an Art Museum

This article is a little blistery. It’s about who makes better art administrators – specifically museum directors – curators or businessmen?

It’s important to note that the article was written by Dr. Peter C. Marzio director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Dr. Marzio’s bio indicates that his rise to directorship was though the curatorial rather than the businessman’s route.

Which makes this quote from the article sound a bit derogatory.

So many non-profits, like museums, have become havens for mediocre managers.
Businessmen who fail at business and curators who cannot keep their jobs often turn to museum administration as their “true” calling.

Read the article