Smithsonian outpost The Freer Gallery of Art in New York will close next January for renovations, a major project that will add additional lighting and updated technological capabilities for the museum. “Some of it will be very subtle, but we are trying to take it back to the way it opened in 1923,” says Katie Ziglar, director of external affairs. (more…)
Google is rolling out a new tech platform designed to make museum exhibitions around the world easily available to users, using a combination of technologies including Street View and YouTube. “Users can use the app to experience virtual tours at home, or they can use it to enhance at the museum,” says Product Manager Robert Tansley. (more…)
London-based artist Jonty Hurwitz has unveiled a series of 3-D printed sculptures so small that they can not be seen with the naked human eye, works that are so small they can be placed inside the eye of a needle. “The challenge is that these works exist beyond the limits of our perceptual capabilities, and as a consequence beyond the realms of what we can visualize,” Hurwitz says. “The thickness of a single hair is something that every person has pondered at some point in their childhood.” (more…)
David Hockney, Woldgate Woods, November 26th (2010), via Art Observed
David Hockney returns to the Pace Gallery this month, showing a selection of new works that once again focus on the artist’s love affair with his Woldgate home, and the continued expansion of his decades of work as a painter into new media forms. Titled The Arrival of Spring, the work is another entry in the artist’s documentation and depiction of the landscapes of rural Britain. (more…)
Just as Sotheby’s is preparing its first pop-up sale in Silicon Valley, rival Christie’s has also entered the fray, announcing a similar event in California focused on works by Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and more, alongside works by young artists including Korakrit Arunanondchai. “While it is well known that the Bay Area is home to some of the most impressive collections in private hands, it has recently become evident that it is also one of the most robust emerging markets for art collecting with a growing group of young and new collectors,” says Christie’s Post-War specialist Charlie Adamski. (more…)
Vik Muniz has ventured to Brazil for his newest project, opening an art and technology school in the Vidigal neighborhood of São Paulo for young students. Developed in conjunction with MIT, The Escola do Vidigal (Vidigal School) follows a similar arts and technology centre Muniz worked on in 2006 in Rio. “We want to prepare kids to live and exist in a very visually challenging environment and to be able to act as producers as well as consumers,” Muniz said last year in an interview with Art Newspaper. (more…)
Thomas Slaughter, Boy Scout Jack Knife (2014), all images courtesy of The Drawing Center
On view at The Drawing Center in New York is a comprehensive group show including work by over 65 artists, curated by Lisa Sigal and organized by Heather Hart, Steffani Jemison, and Jina Valentine. Entitled The Intuitionists, the show explores themes and aesthetics of the database, and how collections of information “in flux” are organized.
As part of new project titled “After Dark”, the Tate Britain will deploy four remote-controlled robots throughout its galleries for five nights beginning September 13th. The public will be able to watch live-stream footage on the Tate’s website as the camera-equipped robots roam the museum’s collection, which includes works by David Hockney, Lucian Freud, and Henry Moore, for five hours each night. Since the robots choose new operators every few minutes, some viewers might get the chance to control the feed and see their favorite artworks in the empty galleries. (more…)
An article in the New York Times reports that Apple has turned to Picasso for inspiration. As part of Apple Academy, the company’s internal training program, one instructor used Picasso’s lithographic series “The Bull” as an example of the streamlining and simplicity in design for which Apple strives. “The Bull” consists of 11 prints, each of which features a bull that becomes increasingly more abstract and simplified as the series goes on. The article features a side-by-side comparison of “The Bull” with several generations of Apple’s computer mice, illustrating the similarities between Picasso’s and Apple’s approach. (more…)
A recent article in the New York Times takes a closer look at a new movement in the physical display of digital art. The movement seeks a middle ground between digital photo frames used in homes and professional digital art displays used in galleries, creating a larger, more sophisticated screen on which art aficionados can display both personal pictures and favorite artists. These screens are capable of showing only one image at a time, however, an effort by developers to encourage a “slower, more thoughtful pace.”
Researchers at Singapore’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering have created an impressively accurate replica of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise using nano printing technology. The new technology, which uses focused beams of electrons and microscopic aluminum rods to print at extremely detailed levels.“Each color pixel on this image was mapped to the closest color from a palette that we created using arrays of metal nanodisks, and the code spits out a series of geometries corresponding to this color,” says researcher Joel K.W. Yang. (more…)
The use of 3D Printing in contemporary art is growing, and this week, the International Foundation for Art Research will host a special event investigating the impact and use of the advanced technology in current studio practices. “The technology, which facilitates replication, has legal implications, such as patent and copyright infringement and, down the road, possibly also forgery and fraud”, says Ifar Executive Director Sharon Flescher. (more…)
The New Museum will launch NEW INC. its new incubator for Art, Design and Technology this summer, and has announced its first wave of technology and entrepreneurial advisors, among them Yancey Strickler (co-founder of Kickstarter), Aaron Koblin (artist and Creative Director at Google Creative Lab), and Lauren Cornell (New Museum Curator, Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects, and Museum as Hub projects). The initiative will continue its search for members through the June 6th deadline.“We’re thrilled to have such a phenomenal group advising us,” says NEW INC.’s Lisa Phillips, co-founder of the program alongside Karen Wong. “They embody the kind of innovative thinking and entrepreneurial spirit we plan to foster in the program and, together with an expanded group of mentors, will be an invaluable resource to our community.”
Next month, Pace Gallery will open a temporary space in the Menlo Park area of Silicon Vallery, part of a new attempt by the art world to cater to the growing wealth of the tech-sector. Pace President Marc Glimcher has been quoted as saying that the pop-up space represents a growing interest from clients for space to sell: “not necessarily a gallery, but we need a moment.” (more…)
The Eyebeam Center has selected the designer for its new center in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, choosing a multi-tiered structure by WORK Architecture Company (WORKac). “It’s a great moment in Eyebeam’s trajectory to think about the relationship between art and technology,” said WORKac Principal Dan Wood. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal reports on MoMA’s efforts to move beyond a brick and mortar museum space, detailing its hiring of Paola Antonelli for the newly created position of Director of Research and Development, a post focused on revolutionizing the museum space through technological advances. Antonelli’s work is seeing its first fruits with the launch of Design and Violence an online exhibition intended to spark discussion and discourse on various art objects and projects. “This is truly the new aspect, the fact that it’s a two-way conversation,” Antonelli says. “It’s a departure point.” (more…)
Haroon Mirza, Frame for a Painting (2013), Courtesy Museum of Modern Art
As is to be expected, MoMA’s first survey into the field of sound art starts with a certain degree of theatricality: 1,500 individually micro-tuned speakers sit on the wall on the way into the exhibition space, filling the space with a sharp white hiss. Shifting slightly with each change of position, Tristan Perich’s Microtonal Wall welcomes a lingering meditation, as viewers pace back and forth, moving their heads up and down close to the speakers or far away, the variance in intensity opening the space around it to any number of perceptual opportunities.
Richard Garet, Before Me, (2012), Courtesy the artist and Julian Navarro Projects, New York (more…)
The Whitney’s new building, scheduled to be finished in 2015, was affected by hurricane Sandy’s floods last year, forcing “significative adjustments.” Located at the intersection of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, the building is just one block away from the river, raising concerns about the possibility of future floods. As a preventive measure, the Whitney has committed to bring top-specialists to remodel the walls, lobby, and basement, to make them waterproof. In consequence, the museum has also increased its capital goal by $40 million to a total expense of $760 million. In this regard, Adam D. Weinberg–the Whitney’s director–says that “77 percent of the total [has] been raised. About half of the additional funds will pay for flood mitigation, […] the other half will cover unexpected costs.” (more…)
Gutai: Splendid Playground (Installation View), Courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The main hall of the Guggenheim Museum’s signature, spiraling exhibition space is currently dominated by an enormous hanging sculpture. Long plastic envelopes swim over the atrium, filled with brightly-dyed water that casts faint, glimmering shadows on the floor below. This is Work (Water), by Motonaga Sadamasa, a foundational member of the Gutai art collective. Hailing from the Japanese town of Osaka, the Gutai helped to define the vibrant Japanese contemporary and conceptual art scene of post-war Japan. Blending an open exploration of the raw materials of creation with a playfully subversive worldview, the Gutai made enormous contributions to the contemporary art practice worldwide.
Shiraga Kazuo, Work II (1958), Oil on paper, mounted on canvas 183 x 243 cm HyÅgo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe
High profile technology companies, investors and entrepreneurs are quickly becoming major players in the art world, financing tech-centered arts installations and entering the currently lucrative art market. Interested less in globally recognized artists and more in digitally forward-thinking projects, these new buyers are changing the landscape and market for contemporary art. An engineer will look at a photograph or video art in a way a banker couldn’t— we think in ones and zeros, we think in terms of screens,” says collector and tech-entrepreneur Trevor Traina.
