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

Intern
College Art Association (New York NY)
The College Art Association is seeking individuals with excellent organizational, interpersonal, and computer skills for an unpaid, Internship position beginning immediately. Preference will be given to individuals who are committed to a degree program in the visual arts. Depending on background, experience, and interest, the Intern will assist the Membership, Development, and Marketing Department with internal and external member recruitment and retention using CAA’s new software database. Flexible schedules are available but reliability is essential.

Applications deadline: Résumés and accompanying letters of interest will be accepted until November 10, 2007 and may be submitted online at nyoffice@collegeart.org.

Association Profile: The College Art Association is the largest and most comprehensive professional organization for art historians and visual artists in the United States. Founded in 1911, College Art Association, with 16,000 individual and institutional members, promotes the highest levels of creativity, intellectual inquiry, and technical skill in the practice and teaching of the visual arts, as well as the highest standards of scholarship and teaching in the history and criticism of art. For more information on CAA, please visit www.collegeart.org.

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.

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

It’s over now but check out some footage.

The first video gives overview set to a rocking tune (Baby I’m a renegade?), the second is a close up of the Italian Pavillion. Click here to scan for footage from other pavillions.

Biennale 2007

Italian Pavillion

Official Biennale website

I haven’t seen this show yet. Immediately I wonder about viewing Florentine objects out of context. Granted these original gates no longer hang in the entryways of the Baptistry – so maybe they’re out of context anyway in the Duomo Museum – but in Florence you can see the reproductions and then walk a short distance to see the originals.

NY Times Review

Most of the historic sculptures, frescoes and edifices of early-15th-century Florence are not the least bit portable. It’s simple: You want to see them, you go to Florence. But right now nearly a third of one of the city’s greatest glories can be seen without leaving town, by visiting “The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Closing this week

Konrad Cramer (1888-1963) Photographs

September 11, 2007 – November 03, 2007

Zabriskie Gallery -41 East 57th Street, 4th Floor New York, NY 10022

See some images & get more info

Also there’s a cool Artist Book Fair this weekend too! http://www.eabfair.com/

Earlier this month BH Friedman, a close friend of Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner and our professor Janet Kardon, spoke to our class. He read from his 1972 biography Pollock: Energy Made Visible, the journals he kept of his experiences with many of the artists of the New York School, and shared a part of art history that he had and continues to live first hand.

Friedman has written catalogues and monographs for artist friends like Lee Krasner, Alfonso Ossorio, and Robert Goodnough. His other works include biographies on Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and – of course- Jackson Pollock. In his alternate life as realtor, construction company owner and trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art, he oversaw the construction of the Madison Avenue building designed by Marcel Beauer in 1966.

The world wide web describes him as a novelist, biographer, playwright, and art critic.

The things that came up in our lecture:

For Art’s Sake

Pollock Foundation

For fantastic kicks

Helene Wasserman

Could be a Pollock, Must be a Yarn

Internship Application

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum offers a variety of internships for undergraduates, recent graduates, and graduate students in art history, administration, conservation, education, and related fields.

Contact the Internship Coordinator, Michelle Jubin, at mjubin@guggenheim.org if you have questions.

This looks interesting – it’s closing this week.

Mr. Pierre Levai, President of Marlborough Gallery, is pleased to announce that Marlborough Chelsea will open at the new Chelsea Arts Tower, 545 West 25th Street, on October 4th with exhibitions by sculptor Tom Otterness and painter Steven Charles. The exhibitions will continue through November 3, 2007.

Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea