After years of financial troubles, the Corcoran Gallery of Art has been seeking legal permission to dissolve and merge with the National Gallery of Art only to meet with pushback from opponents of the plan, including employees and students of the museum’s art college. In a testimony on Wednesday, the opposition cited “broken fund-raising” as the cause of the museum’s downward spiral and argued that the proposed integration goes against the Corcoran’s deed, drafted in 1869. If the plan goes forward, the National Gallery of Art will take over the Corcoran’s collection, which includes work by Cy Twombly, Ellsworth Kelly, and Andy Warhol, while George Washington University will manage the art college.   (more…)

Ida Applebroog’ s ‘MONALISA” 2009 Installation View All images via Hauser and Wirth unless otherwise noted

Currently showing at Hauser and Wirth Gallery, 32 East 69 St., New York, NY is “MONALISA”, an exhibition of works by an American artist  Ida Applebroog. The present exhibition is a debut of the entirely new body of work, with a centerpiece of a rudimentary wooden structure that the artist’s calls “MONALISA’s House”. The structure’s walls are covered by one hundred drawings of the artist’s genitals that she produced in the seclusion of her bathroom, while living in California in 1969. The artist speaks about her work: “It was a certain period of my life and before I got into the tub I’d sit with a full-length mirror on the floor. It was before my own radicalization.”

Ida Applebroog’ s ‘MONALISA” 2009 Installation View

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Silver Lake Operations #15 (Lake Lefroy, Western Australia, 2007) – one of Burtynsky’s industrial landscapes in Hasted Hunt Kraeutler show via Edward Burtynsky Studio

Edward Burtynsky: Oil has opened at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler on October 1st to compliment the concurrent show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibits showcase the profound work of a socially conscious Canadian photographer who has dedicated his career to documenting the changing landscape of our planet. “Oil” is series that encompasses the various stages in life of the controversial substance – petroleum, from its extraction from the depths of the Earth’s deposits to human widespread consumption to possible depletion. Burtynsky’s epic landscapes and personal efforts to bring a discussion on sustainability to the public eye were a subject of “Manufactured Landscapes” shown at Sundance Film Festival in 2007.  The show runs until November 28th, 2009.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil from Corcoran Gallery of Art on Vimeo.

Related links:
Edward Burtynsky Studio
Oil Exhibition [Hasted Hunt Kraeutler]
Burtynsky Profile [TED]
Burtynsky’s Fuel for Thought [Washington Post]
Oil Exhibition at Corcocan Gallery [Foreign Policy]
Eco Documentaries – Manufactured Landscapes: The Green [Sundance Channel]
Artist of the Month [Slate]
Framing Global Capitalism [The TYEE]
China: Photographs and Audio commentary [Lens Culture]

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