Flash Points

Flash Points

The Simpsons Family (Art) Values

Flash Points

The Simpsons Family (Art) Values

It seems The Simpsons has something to say about everything, including the value of art. In “Mom and Pop Art,” a treasure of an episode from 1999, Homer is discovered …

Flash Points

W.A.G.E. LIVE!

Flash Points

W.A.G.E. LIVE!

After reading Trong Gia Nyugen’s great interview with activist group Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), I become really interested in their work. I started to poke around the …

Flash Points

For the Love of God: The Artist as Capitalist

Flash Points

For the Love of God: The Artist as Capitalist

In 2007, artist Damien Hirst exhibited a work at the White Cube gallery in London which is reputed to be the most expensive contemporary artwork ever made. Entitled For the …

Flash Points

W.A.G.E. Against the Machine

Flash Points

W.A.G.E. Against the Machine

Last September, as part of Creative Time’s Democracy in America: The National Campaign event at the Park Avenue Armory, activist group Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) stumped for …

Flash Points

Experimental Economies: Talking with Chicago’s InCUBATE

Flash Points

Experimental Economies: Talking with Chicago’s InCUBATE

In the current state of financial precariousness, artists and arts administrators need to build mutually beneficial trust economies and supportive networks to rally for funding. And with arts institutions and …

Flash Points

Letter from London

Letter from London: Guernica Revisited

Flash Points

Letter from London

Letter from London: Guernica Revisited

It seems impossible now that an institution like the Museum of Modern Art would lend, say, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or The Red Studio at all, let alone to a small …

Flash Points

Feeling the pinch: museums and the recession

Flash Points

Feeling the pinch: museums and the recession

I could preface this post with all sorts of opining about the responsibilities of museums to their constituents and staffs in the face of the ethics crises many are confronting …

Flash Points

My fellow Americans, let’s roll.

Flash Points

My fellow Americans, let’s roll.

On March 28th, Philadelphia hosted a day-long marathon dialogue on the intersections of art and the possibility of social/political change. The day’s events included a symposium on Curating and Activism …

Flash Points

Curating and Activism at Moore College of Art & Design

Flash Points

Curating and Activism at Moore College of Art & Design

Daniel Fuller, Senior Program Specialist at the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, recently helped organize the Curating and Activism symposium at Moore College of Art & Design. The following is a recap …

Flash Points

The value of supporting artists

Flash Points

The value of supporting artists

Taking stock of the value of art is integrally tied to the value of artists. Artists’ work as educators, mentors and citizens of our communities is vital to a healthy …

Flash Points

Letter from London

Letter from London: Face Value

Flash Points

Letter from London

Letter from London: Face Value

You can’t have a job in museum education without being asked, at some point, “What’s that worth?” Depending on the questioner, how well the tour went, and how loyal you’re feeling, …

Flash Points

Flash Points #3: What is the Value of Art?

Flash Points

Flash Points #3: What is the Value of Art?

In the late-1990s I took a graduate seminar on “museums and institutional critique” that focused on artistic and curatorial practices in the 1980s and 90s, and included a series of …

Flash Points

Flash Points: Art+Politics, Looking Back & Moving Forward

Flash Points

Flash Points: Art+Politics, Looking Back & Moving Forward

These last two months have proved to be full of lively posts about the sometimes clear and often nebulous intersection of Art+Politics. Art21’s own Marc Mayer kicked things off when …

Flash Points

Call for writers: new Flash Points topic wants you!

Flash Points

Call for writers: new Flash Points topic wants you!

Attention writers! Our newest Flash Points topic, Contemporary Art + Economics, launches next week. This time, we’re opening up the editorial process and inviting you to participate. Have an idea …

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Making Artistic Noise Part 2: Contemporary Activist Art

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Making Artistic Noise Part 2: Contemporary Activist Art

To continue from my first post, at Artistic Noise, we teach a curriculum that focuses on issues relevant to the lives of incarcerated and system-involved youth and uses art to …

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Making Artistic Noise Part 1: Art and Social Activism with Incarcerated Youth

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Making Artistic Noise Part 1: Art and Social Activism with Incarcerated Youth

noise [noiz] noun – a loud, surprising, irritating, or unwanted sound In 2001, I was approached by Fran Sherman of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project to help develop an arts …

Flash Points

Election 2008: Seizing the moment in the classroom

Flash Points

Election 2008: Seizing the moment in the classroom

One of the things I love most about teaching 12th grade is the sense that I am meeting students on the border between their child and adult selves. They are …

Flash Points

A better “we” through art? AREA Chicago’s Daniel Tucker on art and community

Flash Points

A better “we” through art? AREA Chicago’s Daniel Tucker on art and community

This post is written as a dispatch from California, where I was at the College Art Association conference and speaking in classes at CalArts, SFAI, and the CCA Social Practices …

Flash Points

Fight the man! Three activist artists to watch

Flash Points

Fight the man! Three activist artists to watch

True story: I used to hate activist art. “Why so shrill?” I thought. “Can’t we just talk about this rather than producing a bunch of bad art?” I don’t always …

Flash Points

Authenticity 2.0

Flash Points

Authenticity 2.0

At the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes (Nantes School of Art), I am teaching a course called “Contemporary Art in the United States, 2000-Today.” The premise of the course is …

Flash Points

Practical propaganda: Amy Franceschini reinvents the Victory Garden

Flash Points

Practical propaganda: Amy Franceschini reinvents the Victory Garden

Amy Franceschini is my favorite kind of propagandist: she creates enticing imagery you can’t help but rally around, but backs it up with dirt-under-the-fingernails pragmatism in service of a nearly …

Flash Points

Where’s all the rightwing street art?

Flash Points

Where’s all the rightwing street art?

Learning of Princess Hijab—a Paris-based street artist who culturejams advertisements to include her namesake headscarf—an old question came to mind: where are all the rightwing graffiti artists, stencil afficionados, and …

Flash Points

Share and Share Alike

Flash Points

Share and Share Alike

Artists who garner the most attention in any given time period are those whose work, explicitly or implicitly, reflects the deeper political sensibilities of the era. Right now, contemporary artists …

Flash Points

Chakkrit Chimnok’s banana-leaf utopia

Flash Points

Chakkrit Chimnok’s banana-leaf utopia

Chakkrit Chimnok dreams of a “banana world,” a utopia in which overlooked or discarded items — specifically, the ubiquitous banana leaves that litter the streets in his home city of …

Flash Points

Transcending protest: Looking for pragmatic or poetic art of change

Flash Points

Transcending protest: Looking for pragmatic or poetic art of change

This weekend I went to an opening at The Soap Factory, a scrappy and often-excellent nonprofit art space a block or so off Minneapolis’ riverfront. The description of the work, …

Flash Points

Obama Special, Part 2

Flash Points

Obama Special, Part 2

This continues my previous post about the laptop DJ/performance artist Girl Talk, in which I situate him in a lineage of intersections between art and music and suggest a link …

Flash Points

“Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe & Censorship Twenty Years Later” at ICA in Philadelphia

Flash Points

“Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe & Censorship Twenty Years Later” at ICA in Philadelphia

Last week, people from far and wide gathered for a special conference titled “Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe and Censorship Twenty Years Later,” which was co-presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art …

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Hope and Change, Part 2

Flash Points

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Hope and Change, Part 2

On February 13th I received this message, as many of you did, from Americans for the Arts: Just moments ago, the U.S. House of Representatives approved their final version of …

Flash Points

Sade 2.0

Flash Points

Sade 2.0

On February 7th I drove to the Kasser Theater at Montclair State University to see a performance of The Investigation, a 1966 documentary drama by Peter Weiss (1916-1982), the expatriate German artist and …

Flash Points

Artful Prudence

Flash Points

Artful Prudence

politic adjective 1. marked by artful prudence, expedience, and shrewdness. Art and politics have a complex relationship. In the past week, I’ve seen city officials propose the elimination of arts positions, …

Flash Points

Il a chaud au Cul

Flash Points

Il a chaud au Cul

Not at all surprisingly for a corporate entity, the Associated Press recently established ownership of a photograph of Barack Obama taken at a 2006 National Press Club event by photographer …

Art21 Extended Play

Jessica Stockholder | Beauty & Politics

Art21 Extended Play

Jessica Stockholder | Beauty & Politics

DOWNLOAD VIA ITUNES | SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS EXCLUSIVE: In her New Haven, Connecticut studio, artist Jessica Stockholder discusses the relationship between beauty, pleasure and taste, and how all three have …

Rome on a Roman Holiday

Rome on a Roman Holiday

In the depths of a seemingly endless New York winter, my mind is already thinking toward late spring days on the Adriatic and the 53rd International Art Exhibition at la …

Flash Points

Lilly Ledbetter* Art

Flash Points

Lilly Ledbetter* Art

It is only a coincidence that the world’s largest franchised art fair and the international banking regulatory body share a moniker from their shared base, Basel, Switzerland, but no coincidence …

Flash Points

How might political change affect art?

Flash Points

How might political change affect art?

Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry, 1932-33. North Wall at the Detroit Institute of the Arts. I must say I’m finding the vociferous opposition in Congress over the allocation of a mere …

Flash Points

International Geographic: Interview with Nato Thompson

Flash Points

International Geographic: Interview with Nato Thompson

* Revised February 4, 2009. Lize Mogel, Mappa Mundi, digital print, 2008. Courtesy Melville House and iCI. Melville House and iCI recently co-published the exhibition catalogue for Experimental Geography, an …