"The Misfits of Modern Agribusiness", SVF Foundation Newport, RI; NY Times Slideshow, January 5, 2010
This week What’s Cookin is sent to you directly from Newport, RI an eclectic little city on the Atlantic coast. Home to some of the best clam chowder and crab cakes I’ve ever eaten, everything seems to be within walking distance including a farm of rare animal breeds, mansions preserved from the Gilded Age, the infamous mystery tower, and the country’s first lending library, the Redwood...I’m always hungry to learn more, meanwhile here’s what’s been happening at Art21:
- It’s a mix-tape tape that flirts with Caribbean Kitsch, romance and hushed Rothko reverence, glitter(!), paint and fesis. Curate your mind around Ben Street’s letter on Chris Ofili’s retrospective at the Tate Modern in London. It sounds like an exhibition not to be missed.
- Welcom Leanne Gilbertson, the latest in the Art21 Guestblogosphere! A teacher at the Sam Houston State University she is also preparing a manuscript that explores the relationships between the emergence, in the 1960s, of both feminist and queer consciousnesses, and the intermedia artistic experimentation occurring at both Warhol’s Factory and Judson Memorial Church.
- FLASHPOINTS: How does art respond to and define the natural world? For the past twelve years, Dan Phillips and members of the Commotion, including his wife Marsha, have been committed to building affordable and visually-distinctive housing out of largely post-consumption building leftovers, waste from the fabrication of industrialized materials (including “landscape timbers,” a plywood by-product), and other free or discarded materials.
- Nicole Rounds Them UP! You’ll read about two anniversary exhibitions, 6,000 shapes upstate, masterworks in the Midwest, some road trip souvenirs, a whole lotta prints, and a sale you won’t want to miss.
- Teaching with Contemporary Art: Art 21 has ventured into the land of teacher institutes. Joe Fusaro reflects on the importance of ‘teaching with ideas’ and introduces Year 2 of the Art21 Educators summer institute will run from July 7-14, 2010 and is now accepting applications from pairs of teachers. Click here for more information and to download an application!
- Grand Canyon Journal 3: the Painter of Video to Life. Has there ever been such an elegant dramatization of the power of illusion as David Copperfield’s “The Painter”? Art and magic share the stage (which strangely recalls both David Letterman’s set and Monica’s apartment from Friends) in a trick that only gently conflates the initial discomfort of Harold and Maude with Copperfield’s problems with the law…
- If You Can Remember the ’60’s You Weren’t There. “When I moved from Berkeley to Los Angeles five years ago, I thought I was done living in a town that was devoted to perpetually remembering the ’60s. But I soon discovered that Los Angeles also carries a mega-torch for that transformative decade.” Lily Simonson thinks continues to inspire the Los Angeles as a California culural center in relationship to the Ferus Gallery and the Samuel Freeman Gallery.
- Art21 Launches the next Flash Points topic, The Ethics of Art. Ethics are defined as “a system of moral principles” which constantly factor into the choices we make. However, these decisions can become confused, making this system of principles more gray than black and white, especially when competing priorities are at work. Over the next two months, we’ll explore the relationship of ethics in art from a variety of perspectives and question the role that they should — or shouldn’t — play.
- The Dust Settles After the First Culture Wars. On January 28, Art21 and 92YTribeca piloted a program called Culture Wars: A Night of Trivia with Art21. The night began with a music play list created by artist Mary Heilmann (Season 5).
- VIDEO EXCLUSIVE — Julie Mehretu | Workday. Filmed in her Berlin studio, Julie Mehretu discusses the ups and downs of her daily studio practice. Mehretu is shown working on the painting Middle Grey (2007-2009), one work in a suite of seven paintings commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim as part of the exhibition Julie Mehretu: Grey Area, which travels to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York later this year (May 14 – October 6, 2010).
