Columns & Features

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Getting Around

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Getting Around

Contemporary art education often asks teachers to be in many places and stages at once. This is just part of the deal if you’re going to teach with and about …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | My Dissertation as Document of a Moment

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | My Dissertation as Document of a Moment

Nearly eleven months in my year-long masters program, I am now in crunch time. The first two-thirds of the program was spent in three taught courses, and from May on, …

Problematic: Answering Questions with Questions

Problematic | The Artist As Entrepreneur

Problematic: Answering Questions with Questions

Problematic | The Artist As Entrepreneur

Most artists assume the role of an artist, perhaps by going to school, perhaps by having a studio, or not. Bruce Nauman made it simple by deciding that anything he …

Gimme Shelter: Performance Now

Gimme Shelter | No Future

Gimme Shelter: Performance Now

Gimme Shelter | No Future

I didn’t know I’d go to film for the second post of this performance art column, but here’s a surprise. Miranda July’s The Future. That’s right, a performance within a …

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | Twombly’s Poetics in Print

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | Twombly’s Poetics in Print

Cy Twombly, who died last month at the age of 83, is frequently described as the outlier genius of contemporary art – a member of the post-expressionist triumvirate of Jasper …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Lynda Benglis, The Anti-Kitchen Artist

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Lynda Benglis, The Anti-Kitchen Artist

Once, when artists Liam Gillick and Sarah Morris had legendary minimalist Carl Andre over for dinner, Andre drank a bit much and let his tongue loose. To Morris, he said, …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Three Ways of Seeing

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Three Ways of Seeing

Nancy Grossman, “T.Y.V.L.”, 1970 Image: PS1.org On a recent trip to PS1, I had the unique opportunity to compare a few different approaches to visiting (and hopefully, seeing) exhibitions. Back …

Calling from Canada

Calling From Canada | Healthy Mind/Healthy Body? Berlinde De Bruyckere at Montreal’s DHC

Calling from Canada

Calling From Canada | Healthy Mind/Healthy Body? Berlinde De Bruyckere at Montreal’s DHC

Before the analysis comes rushing in like an insuppressible wave, I am struck with the straight-up “thingness” of Flemish artist, Berlinde De Bruyckere’s corporeal sculptures at gallery DHC in Montreal. …

On View Now

On View Now | Back to the Future: Xu Bing, “The Living Word,” and the Legacy of 1989

On View Now

On View Now | Back to the Future: Xu Bing, “The Living Word,” and the Legacy of 1989

Perhaps the most seminal and certainly the most seismic moment in the history of Chinese contemporary art transpired at the National Gallery in Beijing in early February 1989.  On the …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Fruits of Summer

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Fruits of Summer

Summer offers fantastic opportunities for educators of all kinds to catch interesting group shows and special exhibitions that are happening before we start up the engines again in the fall. …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | Meet Me at the Met

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | Meet Me at the Met

In homage to the recently-opened summer indie movie Horrible Bosses, I thought I’d dedicate this, my first column since the close of the spring semester, to that annual rite of …

Community Arts Training Institute: A Conversation with Roseann Weiss

Community Arts Training Institute: A Conversation with Roseann Weiss

During my time as a guest blogger for Art21, I’ve examined various initiatives that have transformed the cultural landscape of St. Louis. Despite the city’s dwindling population, the arts are …

Creative Rebuild: Theaster Gates in Hyde Park, St. Louis

Creative Rebuild: Theaster Gates in Hyde Park, St. Louis

Artist Theaster Gates likes systems. And what he likes more than a system itself is knowing how to leverage it. Though formally trained in handling clay, Gates also uses the …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Siemon Allen

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Siemon Allen

Siemon Allen is a South African artist who currently lives and works in the United States. He received his MFA from Natal Technikon (now Durban Institute of Technology) and was …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Curators Gone Viral: “Chain Letter” at Shoshana Wayne

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Curators Gone Viral: “Chain Letter” at Shoshana Wayne

Did you receive any unusual email forwards this month?  Unrelated to funny cats?  Initially sent out by Christian Cummings and Doug Harvey, a chain letter has been circulating among artists …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Outside Alias

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Outside Alias

On July 13th, after a full week of the Art21 Educators summer institute, I took the opportunity to interview teachers about their experiences attending workshops, meeting Art21 artists, and beginning …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | South African Photography and the Lingering Political Anxieties of Identity

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | South African Photography and the Lingering Political Anxieties of Identity

Last month, I had the privilege and pleasure of attending a symposium that served roughly as a capstone to one of my graduate courses. The symposium was coordinated in conjunction …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | Kate Hartman Talks to Herself … and the Art21 Blog

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment | Kate Hartman Talks to Herself … and the Art21 Blog

One recurring conversation in art school is the difference between art and design. Nowadays technology has also been thrown into the fray. Artist and educator Kate Hartman has the pleasure …

Of Monuments and Memorials: St. Louis Modernism and Juan William Chávez’s Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary

Of Monuments and Memorials: St. Louis Modernism and Juan William Chávez’s Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary

Notable attention has turned to what many consider the golden age of modern St. Louis—the 1950s—when the city reached its highest population and garnered international attention for its architectural contributions. …

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Embodying Echoes: An Interview with Matthew Goulish

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Embodying Echoes: An Interview with Matthew Goulish

“WE MAY AGREE on the premise that each work of art is at least in part perfect, while each critic is at least in part imperfect. We may then look …

Inspired Reading

Introducing Inspired Reading and Jens Hoffmann’s Istanbul Biennial Reading List

Inspired Reading

Introducing Inspired Reading and Jens Hoffmann’s Istanbul Biennial Reading List

Each month, Inspired Reading features an interview with an artist or cultural producer about their current project(s), focusing on what texts have informed them along the way. Each column includes a …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Sanford Biggers

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Sanford Biggers

Images from popular culture abound in Sanford Biggers’s work, and particularly from hip-hop, East Asian Buddhism, and the Antebellum and Afro-Futurist African-American. Two images that have become particularly emblematic for …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Looking Back on an Inspiring Art21 Educators Institute

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Looking Back on an Inspiring Art21 Educators Institute

From July 6th through the 13th Art21 hosted our third annual Art21 Educators summer institute, which kicks off a year-long professional development initiative between the organization and 16 teachers from …

No Preservatives: Conversations about Conservation

No Preservatives | Making Work: A Continued Discussion with Jeff Jamieson

No Preservatives: Conversations about Conservation

No Preservatives | Making Work: A Continued Discussion with Jeff Jamieson

Artist Jeff Jamieson talks with IMA Conservator Richard McCoy about working with Robert Irwin and other artists.

Testing the Limits: Cultural Activism in the Gateway City

Testing the Limits: Cultural Activism in the Gateway City

When the 2010 U.S. Census figures were released in February of this year, many in St. Louis were alarmed. According to census data, the city’s population declined eight percent in …

Activist Archiving with Mona Jimenez

Activist Archiving with Mona Jimenez

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qh6jRzjmcY] The oft-repeated cliche about the early video movement in the United States is that it was driven by groups of people who came together with a collective desire to …

Letter from London

Letter from London | World on a String

Letter from London

Letter from London | World on a String

Language draws an imaginary line around objects. That demarcation follows through in all the lines in our lives: the Morse code of a Risk board’s borders, anticipatory lines dragged across …

Gimme Shelter: Performance Now

It’s About Time: Gimme Shelter, A New Column on Performance Now

Gimme Shelter: Performance Now

It’s About Time: Gimme Shelter, A New Column on Performance Now

In an interview for Rolling Stone, Mick Jagger described the 1969 hit “Gimme Shelter” as a song about apocalypse, about the end of the world. He channeled the rage of …

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision | Gone Shrimping!

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision | Gone Shrimping!

Forrest Gump was one of those rare films that changed the way people think about random everyday stuff, from a box of chocolates to a new pair of sneakers to …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Since When Is Red a Conservative Color?

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Since When Is Red a Conservative Color?

At a meeting on Tuesday, July 12, officials in California’s Riverside County decided seceding from the rest of the state might not be such a good idea after all. The …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 Educators in Full Swing

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 Educators in Full Swing

Art21 Educators has been in full swing over the past week with professional development workshops, curriculum planning, artist talks, studio visits, special events, museum programs and lots of soul-searching. Tune …

Lives and Works in Berlin

Lives and Works in Berlin | Based in Berlin: Best of

Lives and Works in Berlin

Lives and Works in Berlin | Based in Berlin: Best of

I’ve been thinking about Based In Berlin for weeks.  And while it’s been difficult to keep my pretentious guffaws in check, I have recognized that the show tackles the formidable …

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Fielding Practice Podcast #6: MCA Shifts Gears; Ikea Hacking as Art; and Ai Wei Wei

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Fielding Practice Podcast #6: MCA Shifts Gears; Ikea Hacking as Art; and Ai Wei Wei

This month’s episode of Fielding Practice, a special podcast produced by Bad at Sports exclusively for the Art21 blog, is action-packed and filled with discussion of the latest art happenings …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | Cengiz Tekin

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | Cengiz Tekin

If Şener Özmen (the subject of last month’s Turkish and Other Delights post) is the godfather of Diyarbakır’s contemporary art community, then his long-time collaborateur, artist Cengiz Tekin, is its …

Letter from London

Letter from London | Classic Rock

Letter from London

Letter from London | Classic Rock

The pairing of Cy Twombly and Nicolas Poussin in the current exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery reveals an embarrassment of shared interests that make it surprising they hadn’t been …

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | The Possibilities of Paper Pulp

Ink: Notes on the Contemporary Print

Ink | The Possibilities of Paper Pulp

For this month’s edition of Ink, guest writer Nicole Simpson fills in for regular columnist Sarah Kirk Hanley. — Ed. During these hot days of summer, visions of ice cream, …