Last week, Deadline reported that the New York Times discontinued regional coverage of the arts. Significantly, in her August 6 column, NYT Public Editor Liz Spayd asked, “Why should a newsroom that just announced lofty international ambitions spend resources covering news of no interest to readers in Beijing and London?” Below the surface of this question lies the implication that cultural events happening in smaller[…..]
#art #class #wealth #access #innovation #middleclass Writing for Artnet in January, Ben Davis’s “Do You Have to Be Rich to Make It as an Artist?” raised an important question about the relationship between privilege and access to a life in the arts. Examining the upbringings of a number of artists currently or recently on view at museums in New York, Davis drew the conclusion that if[…..]
DSAP director Patricia Maloney selected today’s installment for our Best of 2015 series: “Ashley Stull Meyers doesn’t shy away from calling out an exhibition with as grand a title as The Great Debate About Art for what it leaves unexamined. The effort to determine the limits or properties of what constitutes art is a quixotic task, and Meyers acknowledges the absurdity inherent in the premise right from[…..]
“Art” is a contentious word. Endless positing over any succinct, defining properties has spawned countless op-eds, theses, and textbooks. The topic is comparable to that of discussing religion in mixed company—differences of opinion have more than once drawn blood. The Great Debate About Art, currently on view at Upfor in Portland, Oregon, is a small group exhibition contextually centered on Roy Harris’ 2010 book of[…..]
Today from our friends at Guernica, we bring you an excerpt from Alex Zafiris’ recent interview with Ben Davis. Zafiris notes: “As with all empires, the art world is driven by money. What differentiates it, at least in some cases, is its very particular set of values.” This interview was originally published on October 1, 2014. In 2010, Ben Davis, a young art critic and regular contributor to[…..]
Today from our friends at Art Practical, we bring you an essay by Simon Lee and Eve Sussman about “the intersection of and differences between entertainment and art.” This article was originally published on July 9, 2014. I’ve been a fan of Eve Sussman’s work from the first moment I watched her film Rape of the Sabine Women (2007) during a screening at the San Francisco Museum[…..]
Today from our partners at Art Practical, we bring you Chris Cobb’s essay on counterculture, money, and the annual Burning Man festival. Cobb wonders: “…what if successful tech companies—the ones whose leaders have bought into the Burning Man/Black Rock value of art that ‘connect[s] community members in creation, curiosity, and wonderment’—decided to allocate one or two percent of their investment income to cultivating the arts[…..]
