With the recent boom in museum building and expansion, there has been a recurring discussion of what makes a good space for art—as though an objective answer could be determined through a calculation of square footage, flexibility of design, and the ratio of natural to electric light. Indeed, the Museum of Modern Art in New York opted to demolish and rebuild its recently acquired neighboring building,[…..]
Taravat Talepasand’s work takes on the representational codes and image systems of the Iranian state: national currency, political propaganda, religious iconography, and gendered forms of identity making. The paintings in Not an Arab Spring open up the ideological assumptions that index Iranian identity, state power, and gender in order to consider how the body (male and female) comes to signify the state as well as[…..]
While walking through her retrospective Botched Execution, Portland-based artist Heidi Schwegler recounted a story about a lost baby boy. He disappeared during the night—last seen falling asleep in bed between his grandparents. In the morning, he was gone. The police arrived to search the home and surrounding area, and they turned up no trace. Hours later, in the bedroom, an officer heard a small cough—a[…..]
Today from our archives we bring you a look back at John Zarobell’s review of Water City Berkeley at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. The first line of the review says it all: “Why celebrate when the world is going to hell?” This article was originally published on December 22, 2013. Why celebrate when the world is going to hell? Kim Anno’s ambitious effort to envision the future of humanity[…..]
From our friends at Glasstire, today we bring you an excerpt from Terry Mahaffey’s review of the inaugural installation at the Byzantine Chapel in Houston. Mahaffey explores his memories of the site—it originally housed a series of frescoes, now gone—and wonders if Janet Cardiff and George Miller’s installation would be better presented in a more neutral space. This article was originally published on April 20, 2015. Dominique de Menil’s[…..]
The first retrospective since On Kawara’s death in July 2014, On Kawara—Silence at the Guggenheim Museum presents fifty years of the artist’s work. At the core of the exhibition are the daily practices that constituted Kawara’s life and art: the conceptual rituals that produced the Today, I Got Up, I Met, I Went, and I Am Still Alive series. Each series represents a different way[…..]
From our partners at Art Practical, today we bring you a review of Diana Thater’s current solo exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art. Author Genevieve Quick notes that this exhibition is remarkably similar to ones the artist has already presented: “I am unconvinced that Thater’s minor changes constitute new works or the experimentation that the series seeks to support.” This article was originally published on April 28,[…..]
