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CUNY

Wednesday Links: Starchitect Corpse Turned Diamond, Melania Trump Turned Goth

by Michael Anthony Farley on May 24, 2017

“It’s curious that the intellectual and artistic community transforms its aesthetic unease or personal disgust into a longing for a type of patriarchal and pre-modern moral authority,” Cuauhtémoc Medina, chief curator of Mexico City’s MUAC, speaking about the controversy surrounding Jill Magid’s exhibition at that institution. (But really, such an apt observation on any art world scandal). Magid has turned the cremated ashes of legendary architect Luis Barragán into a diamond. This diamond is being offered to art historian Federica Zanco in the form of an engagement ring as a bartering chip (Zanco owns Barragán’s professional archives in her private collection in Switzerland, denying access to other scholars. According to rumor, the archives were gifted to her as an engagement gift decades ago). Magid’s intent is to liberate the archives to the trust of an institution for public access, but many see the project as disrespectful, tacky, sacrilegious, or even an act of cultural imperialism. The problem I identify here is the choice of an engagement ring. It contextualizes Barragán’s physical remains—in addition to his archive—in a form to suit Federica Zanco, adding insult to injury. [The New Yorker]
New York’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Art has opened with a four-person show that accidentally features all women artists. Dana Awartani, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Nasreen Mohamedi and Zarina Hashmi all deal in geometric abstraction and obsessively-controlled craftsmanship. It sounds like a surprisingly tame show given contemporary identity politics. [Hyperallergic]
This glass-and-concrete artists’ retreat upstate looks like pastoral utopia. Whoever the mystery artist is (a photographer who apparently is quite successful) should invite us up for a weekend! [Dezeen]
Wow. 103-year-old Margaret Ricciardi has been taking art classes every semester at CUNY’s College of Staten Island since becoming widowed in 1983. She still stands while oil painting. Now, she’s receiving an honorary Doctorate from the school. Not a bad way to spend one’s retirement! [New York Daily News]
Wassan Al-Khudhairi is taking over the controversy-plagued position of chief curator at St. Louis’s CAM from Jeffrey Uslip. She certainly has her work cut out for her. I can’t think of another institution as hated by its host city. Thankfully, Al-Khudhairi’s internationally-nomadic lifestyle seems to have given her plenty of experience listening and adapting to new communities. And maybe some global perspective can move the museum beyond its local tensions. [Riverfront Times]
Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump accompanied the president to meet the Pope. Their outfits were INSANE. Totally snatching these looks for our next goth ball. [People]
Speaking of the batshit crazy first family, Trump once again wants to eliminate funding for the NEA. We have some other suggestions for budget trimming. [artnet News]
Baltimore artist-run spaces take note: if you’re a nonprofit or other tax-exempt organization, the state is handing out some healthy-sized grants this year, and the Bromo folks will help you with your application. [Bromo Arts and Entertainment]
“A serious dreamer, he welcomes without begging analysis, and takes analysts, even critics, seriously. The evidence of his generosity is that he doesn’t give his own interpretations. There are so many artists who think they can do my job. I let them. I like writing about art that leaves space.”—Sarah Nicole Prickett on the strange joys of watching David Lynch’s weird-AF-reboot of Twin Peaks as an art critic. [Artforum]

This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Happy Not-My-President’s Day

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 20, 2017

Kick the week off with the closing reception of an anti-Trump poetry show at EIDIA House, part of their “Plato’s Cave” exhibition series. Tuesday, artist Hakan Topal and curator Joanna Lehan talk about representations of refugees at CUNY’s Graduate Center, and Wednesday two artists plunge into the aesthetics of capitalism and consumption at respective openings downtown.

Things lighten up a bit starting Thursday. We’re looking forward to the NYC debut of North Carolina artist Carmen Neely at Jane Lombard Gallery and Monica Bonvicini’s oddly sexy work at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. On Friday, AFC friend Saul Chernick is opening a collaborative show at NURTUREart in Bushwick, and Saturday Liinu Grönlund’s rat-centric video work goes live at Open Source Gallery. End the week with a timely show about barriers and portals from A.K. Burns at Callicoon Fine Arts.

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Nightmares Before Christmas

by Michael Anthony Farley on December 12, 2016

This week there’s not a lot of art stuff happening beyond holiday parties and craft fairs. One could say NYC’s taken an unexpectedly Middle-American turn in that regard, were it not for how morbid so much of the week’s happenings are. Tuesday night, scholars Sam Tanenhaus and Richard Wolin perform a post-election autopsy on the American Republic and speculate about its afterlife (hint: It’s not looking good) at CUNY. For a slightly less depressing evening, head to Ubu Gallery where German artist Heide Hatry is opening a new series of drawings made with the ashes of human remains. If that’s not enough mortuary holiday cheer for you, Con Artist Collective is throwing a fake memorial art show for the comedian Bill Murray (one of the few national treasures that hasn’t died in 2016). Thursday night we’re looking forward to a subversive holiday group show at Kate Werble Gallery, and a six-hour night of discussions about Art After Trump at Housing Works.

Friday night, things get a little less bleak city-wide. P! and Beverly’s are hosting events for a Bard CSS project that sprawls across Chinatown and continues with satellite events all weekend. At Brooklyn’s Orgy Park, a group show invites painters to make something collaborative, and in Queens, MoMA PS1 is throwing a holiday party for artists that looks totally bonkers. Have some spiked hot chocolate. After a week of thinking about Trump and death, you’re going to need it.

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Painted Rooms, Painted Faces, Digital Everything

by Michael Anthony Farley on September 6, 2016

Well, we hope the art world had a good summer vacation because school is officially back in session. There are so many good shows opening on Thursday night in Chelsea we just couldn’t list them all—Matthew Barney at Gladstone, Rashid Johnson at Hauser & Wirth and Lynda Benglis at Cheim & Read, to name a few.

We’ve focused on the absolute can’t-miss openings and those that might get overlooked below. From Wednesday night’s opening exhibition on the work and collaborative legacy of early digital/conceptual artist Alison Knowles at The Graduate Center to Thursday night’s absolute must-see double exhibition of Meleko Mokgosi [pictured] at both of Jack Shainman’s Chelsea locations there’s plenty to see and do.

But to offer a quick summary of where the most openings which nights, expect to spend Wednesday on the LES, Thursday in Chelsea, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday rushing from neighborhood to neighborhood. This should be a good week for Uber.

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Monday Links: After Six Years at the Same Pay Rate, It’s Time for a Raise

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on May 2, 2016

Xaviera Simmons, Number 18, Production Still, 2013, Curated by Cecilia Alemani/ High Line Art

Judging by the documentation featuring dancers in oversized pearl strings and employing movements that reference both the baroque and vogueing, Pablo Bronstein’s Tate Britain Commission dance performance looks worthwhile. Taking place in the Tate’s Duveen Galleries until October, the Argentinian artist discusses artifice and his love of architecture. [Artspace]
Xaviera Simmons has launched a kickstarter with the goal of raising $20,000 for her latest performance at the Kitchen, CODED. The performance will explore constructed male and female identities by drawing on archival images. Support at virtually any level gets you a limited edition or original artwork by Simmons so this is definitely a campaign where you get back what you put in. [Kickstarter]
A recap of Berlin Gallery weekend, which involves over 50 local galleries coordinating their openings, points out the following trends: guest artist curators, the term post-internet art apparently falling out of favor, and splashy shows by local photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans at Galerie Buchholz. [Art Newspaper]
A newly defunct tax break created almost half the affordable units added to the city by the de Blasio administration. [Crain’s]
A profile of Larry Gagosian. A few tidbits: Gagosian himself is estimated to clear 1 billion in sales annually. He says he believes in the popularizing of art. Also, his original story is recounted—he began selling posters before hooking up with Leo Castelli. Great read. [The Wall Street Journal]
Fascinating look at how the housing recovery is leaving predominantly black neighborhoods behind. In Atlanta, for instance, while homes in the mostly white North DeKalb zipcode codes area have seen an increase in value, homes in the mostly black South DeKalb area are still 24% below what they were over ten years ago. The explanation isn’t solely race, however, but the ways in which these communities were targeted for subprime loans during the bubble. [Washington Post]
Ostensibly, the Brooklyn Museum’s new smartphone app, ASK Brooklyn Museum, allows visitors to text questions and receive rapid-fire responses from from the one of six full-time staffers behind the project. But this also the way in which data-gathering is impacting curatorial decision-making. All the user chats are saved, and the data was consulted when the museum re-opened three of their permanent collection galleries after re-installing. [New York Times]
After over six years working without a raise, CUNY faculty are voting today on whether or not to strike. The vote comes at the heels of the austerity measures of last month’s state budget. [WNYC]

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Friday Links: RIP Zaha Hadid

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on April 1, 2016

Zaha Hadid’s Innovation Tower at Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Zaha Hadid, 65, died yesterday from a heart attack. Dezeen has not one, but two slideshows commemorating her work. [Dezeen]

Jersey City’s Art House Productions, a 501c3 nonprofit exhibition space and theater, had a pipe burst in their building last month. It caused extensive damage, so they’re fundraising to recover. Today at 7 pm, there’s a wine tasting with music and snacks. Tickets are $50, but they’re tax deductible. [Art House Productions]

In this interview with a ‘top curator” at Amazon Art, we learn that the platform is trying to legitimize itself in the art world with promotions like prints from street artists. Uh, good luck with that strategy. Her job description also sounds suspiciously nothing like “curator” and everything like marketing/sales. [The Huffington Post]

It’s April Fool’s day, which means stay off the web. Last night, Gmail introduced a “mic drop” button that allows users to “mic drop” out of a thread, complete with a minion GIF. And a bunch of people lost their jobs using that function. The joke reinforces the idea that the company is rife with frat dude employees with computer science degrees. Google’s since apologized and pulled the joke. [Metafilter]

New York has announced its budget deal which turns out not to be the total disaster for New York City that Governor Andrew Cuomo had threatened earlier this year. CUNY had its funding restored, New York City was not asked to pay for CUNY, or hundreds of millions in Medicaid. And minimum wage rates will go up. Not so bad! [The New York Times]

Here’s an article with more than you ever needed to know about the Ibrahim Mahama v.s. Stefan Simchowitz and Jonathan Ellis King case. Mahama is now countersuing the dealers, who had sued the young artist for disowning pieces made by cutting up his installations. Everyone in this case sounds insane. [ART News]

The Longhua Funeral Parlour in Shanghai is 3D printing body parts for damaged or “incomplete” corpses. [The Telegraph]

Columbia students are protesting a Henry Moore sculpture they call a “monstrosity”. In an op ed at the Columbia Daily Spectator four students write. “Whatever its artistic merits, placing the sculpture in front of Butler Library will put an eyesore on an otherwise crisp, geometric, and symmetrical landscape. Moore’s ghoulish figure clashes with the neoclassical aesthetic instantly recognizable to generations of Columbians.” And this jewel, pulled out by Jillian Steinhauer. “All of this is not to say that modern sculpture has no place at the University. It just doesn’t belong in the center of campus.” [Hyperallergic]

An old firehouse that once served as Andy Warhol’s $150/month studio is now on the market for close to $10 million. [artnet News]

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Is Claire Bishop Mired in Citational Modernism?

by Rea McNamara on November 5, 2015

Going to lectures where the speakers workshop their book on you sucks. This was the case last Wednesday evening, when a crowd of artists, students and academics packed an OCAD auditorium for “Déjà Vu: Contemporary Art and the Ghosts of Modernity”, a free public lecture by art historian Claire Bishop.

From what I could gather during the lecture, Bishop believes we’re stuck in a rut she describes as ’“reformatted modernism”. The self-invented term refers to a historicist strain of contemporary art, where our downloadable obsessions with Eames chairs, van der Rohe skyscrapers and archival forms of display (think slide projectors) have rendered Modernist references in art that are all image and no function.

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: None of Them are Poverty-Themed Raves

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on November 2, 2015

Don’t get us started on that “Bronx is Burning” rave. (That’s for another post.) This week, as many of us are still cleaning off the paint and glitter from last weekend’s Halloween costume, there’s thankfully a mix of screenings, openings and performances to help ease you back into your regular schedule. Tonight, Ben Coonley organizes a group screening of artists’ first “hard-fought” 3D works at Brooklyn’s Microscope. Then there’s the opportunity to shake the spirits of the past, whether it be Tuesday’s Duane Linklater CUNY talk on museum’s colonialist legacies or Wednesday’s opening at Robert Blumenthal of an ambitious installation from Derek Fordjour evoking childhood-era psychic spaces.

Meanwhile, the rest of the week offers heavy fluxus drone (Thursday, Yoshi Wada) and an online journal launch (Friday, Bard’s aCCeSSions). The weekend promises new directions (Saturday, MoMa’s New Photography opening) and guilty pleasures (Michael’s, specifically, with Sunday’s Jessica Stockholder opening at a Greenpoint storefront space).

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: You’re in Luck if You Like Digital Art

by Corinna Kirsch on October 13, 2014

Actually, there’s a lot of every type of art to see this week. Even petri-dish art.

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Red Hook Moves to Manhattan

by Corinna Kirsch and Whitney Kimball on February 19, 2014

It’s a typical week in New York: psychedelic painting, Brooklyn criticism, feminist archives, the Yiddish cannon, Julie Ault, and a Red Hook gallery opens a Manhattan outlet.

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