Writer-in-Residence

Notes on Nostalgia

Notes on Nostalgia

The Romantic subject, who emerged roughly two hundred years ago as the prototype of the modern subject, who looks at a beautiful vista to see not the landscape but “an …

Susceptible / Silent / Suggestion

Susceptible / Silent / Suggestion

When the war came along, I decided to use only quiet sounds… There seemed to be no truth, no good, in anything big in society. But quiet sounds were like …

New guest blogger: Rebecca Leopold

New guest blogger: Rebecca Leopold

Thanks to our regular writer Alex Freedman for her fantastic posts for the guest blog. Look out for more from her in our Lives and Works in Berlin column. Up …

iheartnewhistoriographies: Conversing with Laurel Ptak

iheartnewhistoriographies: Conversing with Laurel Ptak

I met Laurel Ptak three years ago back when she was coordinating Aperture’s educational programming and I was their intern terrible. Running into her a few weeks ago in one …

How to Explain Sherrie Levine to Your Grandmother

How to Explain Sherrie Levine to Your Grandmother

Museums have spent millions on art education trying to reach out to the young and elderly. But if you have a grandmother like mine, the kind who, despite a PhD …

Disembarking: Christina Knight on “Glenn Ligon: America”

Disembarking: Christina Knight on “Glenn Ligon: America”

I first saw Glenn Ligon’s Negro Sunshine at Harvard’s Fogg Museum in 2007. And for the rest of the exhibition I was trailed by a staff member to keep me …

Waiting for Fonda

Waiting for Fonda

Ronald Regan: Hi Ed. Call me Ron. Edward Said: Hi Ron, you don’t mind do you. Marcel Broodthaers: Hello Edward. Well I’m told we are waiting for Jane Fonda. — …

New guest blogger: Alex Freedman

New guest blogger: Alex Freedman

Thanks to Allison Glenn for her series of compelling posts on Detroit confirming that art is alive and well in the Motor City. Up next is Alex Freedman. You may …

Street Folk

Street Folk

Like this post? Help us fund our guest blog for the next year. Donate to Blog Party, our first-ever blog fundraiser, today! One cannot talk about the relational art projects …

The Lot: A Functional Site

The Lot: A Functional Site

The Lot is a curatorial project that began in 2009 with the goal to provide space for site-responsive performance art while pushing the boundaries of what non-commissioned public art in …

The Performativity of Site

The Performativity of Site

  Collectivity and site specificity are two themes that are incorporated into many artists’ projects in Detroit. Shared information, shared space, and sustained growth are what fuel the brains behind …

Living in the Present

Living in the Present

The abandoned buildings in Detroit have an air of nostalgia and a visceral seductiveness. When encountered for the first-time, they can be overwhelming. No building represents the affects of ruin …

We Almost Lost Detroit

We Almost Lost Detroit

I was in Detroit this weekend catching up with my family and friends and was able to look at the city with fresh eyes. Distance is necessary to have criticality, …

New guest blogger: Allison Glenn

New guest blogger: Allison Glenn

Thanks, Joe Grimm, for stopping by our blog for the past two weeks. Up next is Allison Glenn. Allison is a dual MA candidate in Modern Art History, Theory and …

The Late, Dearly Missed Kathryn Hixson on Comedic Aggression in 70’s Art

The Late, Dearly Missed Kathryn Hixson on Comedic Aggression in 70’s Art

Critic and teacher Kathryn Hixson is the one person I’ve had in my life who felt like a mentor in the deepest sense. She was wickedly funny, challenging, and yet …

Henry Flynt’s Weird Philosophy

Henry Flynt’s Weird Philosophy

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IehN5vfFfRc] I first became a fan of Henry Flynt when I heard his incredible zonked hillbilly fiddle jams. Since I grew up in North Georgia as the son of an …

Ben Russell at threewalls

Ben Russell at threewalls

For some time now, Ben Russell has been tearing it up in the world of experimental cinema, but with his new solo exhibition, he is establishing himself as a force …

New guest blogger: Joe Grimm

New guest blogger: Joe Grimm

Thanks to Lindsay Lawson for her thoughtful posts. Up next is Joe Grimm. Joe  (b. 1978, Safety Harbor, FL) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with light and sound. In …

The Complexity of the Do-Over

The Complexity of the Do-Over

  There is something strangely satisfying about the act of repeating. Perhaps this is because as children we begin our lives mimicking adults to learn language and behaviors that are …

The Cave of the Mind

The Cave of the Mind

Inhale. As you exhale your body relaxes. Exhale moving into a deep quiet place inside you… You can see off in the distance what appears to be a cave. As …

Interesting Times

Interesting Times

May you live in interesting times… This ambiguously Chinese curse implies that interesting (i.e. historically significant) times are usually not peaceful ones. They are times of change and therefore, times …

New guest blogger: Lindsay Lawson

New guest blogger: Lindsay Lawson

Thanks to Thea Liberty Nichols for chronicling the artists, curators, and historians coming through the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Visiting Artists Program. Up next is Lindsay Lawson. …

Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu

“I’m really trying to pay homage to the notion of the sublime and the abject together and using the aesthetic of rejection, or poverty, or wretchedness as a tool to …

Tobias Putrih

Tobias Putrih

“I don’t think art is about consistency. It’s about complexity … The key question for me is how to make an object that expresses its own self-doubt, questions its own …

Yael Bartana

Yael Bartana

“It’s not that I have concrete solutions to the problems … I’m constantly mirroring human conditions and political situations. Is it possible to create this reality or not, that is …

Kori Newkirk

Kori Newkirk

“No one can make a better Kori Newkirk about Kori Newkirk than Kori Newkirk.”(Kori Newkirk: 1997-2007. Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporary Art, 2007, 29) The Visiting Artists Program at The …

Lisa Freiman

Lisa Freiman

“When I first came here, people said, ‘Why are you going to Indianapolis?’ I said, ‘I’m going to Indianapolis because it’s a huge opportunity.’ They answered, ‘What huge opportunity? There’s …

José Muñoz in Chicago

José Muñoz in Chicago

I write with the animating glow of philosophical idealism, and I articulate my thought through descriptions of performances of queer aesthetics practiced in everyday life, literature and art. — José …

The School of the Art Institute’s Visting Artists Program

The School of the Art Institute’s Visting Artists Program

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is one of the oldest accredited art and design schools in the US, and The Visiting Artists Program (VAP), where I …

New guest blogger: Thea Liberty Nichols

New guest blogger: Thea Liberty Nichols

Thanks to Kevin Buist for his terrific posts on design, technology, and dilettantes. Follow his pursuits with ArtPrize here. Up next is Thea Liberty Nichols, a Chicago-based arts administrator, independent …

What Ever Happened to the Dilettante?

What Ever Happened to the Dilettante?

In June, the contemporary art podcast Bad at Sports (and regular columnists on this site) featured an interview with artist Mark Dion. Dion said something in the interview that has …

Clients, Pithy Quotes, and Jenny Holzer

Clients, Pithy Quotes, and Jenny Holzer

Clients are the difference between design and art.    — Michael Bierut Last week I looked at two nearly identical works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Tobias Wong as a way of …

Google’s Art Project and the Uncanny Museum

Google’s Art Project and the Uncanny Museum

Yesterday, Google launched Art Project. Art Project brings the technology of Google Maps Street View into a handful of the world’s best art museums. Users can virtually wander through various …

Art, Design, and Clocks

Art, Design, and Clocks

My latest Internet obsession is Quora.com. Quora describes itself as “a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” It’s like Yahoo …

New guest blogger: Kevin Buist

New guest blogger: Kevin Buist

Thanks to Dorota Biczel for her fantastic series of writings on Polish, Peruvian, and Spanish contemporary artists (and Wojnarowicz too). Look out for more from her in the coming months. …

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

As I am grieving the disappearance of the Minimalist from the pages of the New York Times, I am also pondering Mark Bittman’s statement from his farewell column, “the continuing …