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Repository 217: Hilma’s Project
After a transcontinental red eye from the West coast, I dropped my bags in the West Village and took the subway uptown. On twenty-eight hours of no sleep, I arrived at the Guggenheim to see the “Hilma af Klimt: Paintings for the Future” show. This was a pilgrimage, as a woman artist who knows 100 percent that we have not been given our due in the art world, that our natural creativity and depth of thinking have not been explored…
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Repository 186: What We Call Love | Love is All We Need
This past Fall my husband and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary in Ireland. In Dublin we were able to see the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s current show, up through February 2016, titled “What We Call Love”. This ambitious show celebrates visual artists’ take on the ever-changing idea of love from the Surrealists to Louis Bourgeois and Jim Hodges. While our ideas of love change throughout time, the feeling is always the same. There were three pieces in…
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Repository 184: A Man and His Messy Muse | Francis Bacon Studio Redux
I’ve always been comfortably obsessed with the art and life of Francis Bacon (1909-1992). While his work is received popularly as tortured, emotional and expressionist I’ve always found it to be a fairly clear representation of what tension and violence feels like. This is neither a good or a bad thing – it’s not violence in the sense of domestic abuse, it’s violence in the sense of wanting something when you absolutely can’t have it, the violence of a frozen…
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Repository 180: The Whitney’s New Digs | A Jewel Box for American Modern Art
Last week I visited the brand new Whitney’s home in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, a stunning 8-floor building designed by Renzo Piano. While the new museum is much larger, and light filled, the layout of the old museum on Madison felt in tact: elevators centering the design, with galleries flanking either side of the elevator entrances. Standout design additions are the outdoor sculpture areas, large bar and restaurant, and peaceful seating areas on each floor to give your eyes a rest…
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Repository 173: Ann Hamilton Review | the common SENSE
A Review of The Henry Art Gallery Installation In true Ann Hamilton form the exhibit at University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery in Seattle is a constellation of words and pictures coupled with formal and intimate exchanges that attract and repel depending on what you bring to the work. It is a careful, multi-layered presentation of the physical place, her specific vision and your participation. Collectively the seemingly soft touch of each artistic choice and chosen object packs a cumulative wallop…
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Repository 161: Art History Book as Checkbook
“Art should make us feel more clearly and more intelligently, it should give us coherent sensations we otherwise would not have had…that is what market culture is killing.” – Robert Hughes I just received the November issue of ArtForum – heavy, and full of art that looks better in the pages of a magazine than any real slice of life or contemplation. Much like a dress looking better in a photograph of a-102 pound model in the streets of…
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Repository 154: New Museum | Landlord for Artists or True Visionary
Almost half a year ago I caught wind of the New Museum launching an incubator, New, Inc. – which in business speak is a place where you coddle and launch profitable businesses – the hotter it is in the oven, the hotter it will be in the marketplace. The New Museum has an awesome and radical history. Its founding director Marcia Tucker was expelled in a way from the traditional museum scene (the Whitney), and she pushed the boundaries, tore…
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Repository 151: Art as Trojan Horse | König’s Russian Manifesta
The German curator Kasper König was asked last year to curate Manifesta 10, going on now in the venerable, 250-year old Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. He agreed to before Russia’s anti-gay propaganda reared it’s head, and before the aggressive annexation turbulence. While the roving Manifesta has historically been a contemporary art biennial dedicated to exploring intellectual and cultural issues between Eastern and Western Europe, this particular context has proven one of the least safe grounds for exploration and dialog….
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Repository 147: Thoughts on Cartography | Jim Hodges at ICA Boston
the looking itself is a trace of what we’re looking for, but we’ve been more like the man who sat on his donkey and asked the donkey where to go! -Rumi While traveling last week I had the pleasure of accidentally seeing Jim Hodges, “Give More Thank You Take” show at the ICA Boston. Admittedly I go to this museum less for the art and more for the quiet, air conditioned front row seat to an otherwise busy harbor, I…
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Repository 146: Björk at MOMA | Biophilia and Art Fusion
Last week MOMA announced its first acquisition of an app, Björk’s app titled Biophilia, which is the same name of her album released in 2011. The app is a beautiful bundle of music, information and mini-games designed to explore the cross hairs/Venn circles and bridges between nature, science and music. MOMA also announced they will be having a retrospective of her 20-year career in the spring of 2015. The app was launched in sequence with school workshops and residencies, making…
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