“Mobile Matrix” in situ at the Mexico City Library where the work was installed in 2006. Via NY Times
On Tuesday evening of December 15th, in the smaller of the two Titus theaters at the Museum of Modern Art, Ann Temkin enthusiastically beckoned Gabriel Orozco to take the stage. The premise of the followed conversation was, of course, the recently opened retrospective of Orozco’s lifetime body of work. At 47, the Mexican artist seemed grave and stoic in his words, although that may have been the fatigue of several weeks of preparation for the launch of the exhibition taking a toll.
Behind the Scenes: Gabriel Orozco. The artist talks about his long evolving relationship with the Museum of Modern Art and the experience of participating in a retrospective exhibition. Via MoMA
-To benefit Performa 09, party designer Jennifer Rubell invites 600 guests to “Creation” held at X Initiative in Chelsea in New York, where 3,600 drinking glasses, a pyramid of unshelled peanuts and 2,000 pound hillock of honey-soaked ribs were among the excess of food being served (Performa 09/ Food for Thought) [The Moment]
-In related, To mark the start of Performa 09 MoMA invited Fischerspooner to stage a show (Performance Art Enters the Museum) [Artinfo]
-In related, At Haunch of Venison in New York Marina Abramovich, Leandro Erlich, Mickalene and Rob Wynn pair with NYC pastry chefs to create performances; cakes were served by topless models (Kreemart or Cream Art Performance at Haunch of Venison) [NY Art Beat]
-Bikes used by Lance Armstrong and with frames designed by contemporary artists fetch $1.3 million at auction in Sotheby’s, among them Damien Hirst’s sold for $500,000 (Armstrong’s Tour de France Bikes Fetch $1.3 Million at Auction) [Bloomberg]
To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week…(more…)
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Barbara Kruger’s installation at the Lever House on Park Avenue in New York via Lever House Collection –>
–> Whether we realize it or not, our daily lives are filled with multitudes of graphic and visual information. While reading a newspaper, watching television, walking on the street past countless advertisement, we constantly absorb information. It is this aspect of social and public sphere that Barbara Kruger exploits in her current installation at the Lever House in New York. A project commissioned by the real estate mogul Aby Rosen, whose collection features such names as Jeff Koons, George Condo, John Chamberlain, Keith Harring, and Barnaby Furnas, holds tight to its message of “an image is worth a thousand words.” The text as art exhibition, titled “Between Being Born and Dying” runs through November 21st, 2009.
Last night, October 29, marked the inauguration of a new annual art event: Rob Pruitt presented The First Annual Art Awards at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Yorkin association with the city’s oldest alternative art space, White Columns.
The awards were conceived by artist, Rob Pruitt, as a performance-based artwork; for the occasion he recruited the characters of IndexMagazine’s wry satirical web series, Delusional Downtown Divas. The New York Times have reported that “…the Divas schemed to infiltrate the art establishment by any means possible. In one segment they pitched a tent in the Guggenheim, doing their laundry in the lobby fountain.”
-Offered for the first time at public auction as part of Christie’s Old Masters sale, Raphael’s drawing “Head of a Muse”- a study for a figure in one of his Vatican frescoes, if it achieves its estimate £12-16million, will break the auction record for an old master drawing currently held by Michelangelo’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s works [Guardian UK]
-As art collectors become more cautious with their purchases, dealers at Frieze and FIAC fairs put works on reserve, among them $40 million Mondrian allegedly put on hold for Bernard Arnault [Bloomberg]
-Ms. Temkin, the chief curator of painting and sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, introduces unexpected changes, unframing certain paintings and subjecting the almost sacralized permanent collection to frequent renewal [The New York Times]
“Your Mercury Ocean” Skateboard by Olafur Eliasson via aarting
-Another collaboration between Mekanism and Olafur Eliasson results in a 13-ply deck 3d patterned skateboard with a mirror coating [aarting]
-In related, Olafur Eliasson commissions by the mayor of Copenhagen to design a bridge for the Danish capital; the artist shares his plans for a transparent bridge in a close vicinity to the water [The Art Newspaper]
– The survey carried out by the Art Fund, the UK’s independent art charity, shows that despite the substantial drop in public funding and investment income, a figure that proves to grow in the context of economic fall is the number of visits to museums [Art Knowledge News]
-In the midst of economic uncertainty, gallery Matthew Marks, which represents artists such as Jasper Johns, and Peter Fischli and David Weiss, plans on expansion with a new space on the West Coast [The New York Times]
To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week…(more…)
Three Color Curl (CMY: Irvine, California, August 24th, 2008, Fuji Crystal Archive Type C). 2008. Walead Beshty via MOMA
A vanguard showcase of contemporary photographers – Walead Beshty , Daniel Gordon, Sara VanDerBeek, Carter Mull, Leslie Hewitt, Sterling Ruby – is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. An annual program that aims to bring cutting-edge artists to the attention of novelty-craving public has acquired a new thematic dimension. As the Associate Curator and the organizer of New Photography 2009, Eva Respini observes that this year’s select artists come from varied backgrounds and most “actively work in other disciplines” and draw inspiration from “drawing, sculpture, video, and installation.” The exhibit runs through January 11, 2010.
Last weekend was the fifth performance in the Museum of Modern Art’s Performance Exhibition Series. British artist Mark Leckey, who won the Turner Prize last year, gave the North American premier of ‘Mark Leckey in the Long Tail,’ described as ‘part lecture, part monologue, and part living sculpture.’ The Long Tail is an idea originally described by Wired’s Chris Anderson, which explains business and broadcast distribution adhering to a 20-80 Pareto curve, with the top 20% of items vastly more popular. As the Internet disseminates media and corporate hegemony, countless niches have opened up and been made readily accessible to consumers. Companies like Amazon.com and Netflix are able to offer more items at lesser volumes. Those niche interests represent the Long Tail.
Leckey’s talk applied the theory of the Long Tail to his own research of images. Beginning with a photo of a Felix the Cat sculpture in an NBC studio, Leckey explained how he was able to discover the origins of the photo and the meaning behind its mise-en-scène through exploring varied, and often quite small, communities online.
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A detail from Monet’s “Water Lilies” triptych via NYTimes
After a 7-year long absence, the Museum of Modern Art has brought its Waterlilies back along with an interesting recent acquisition and two paintings on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The breathtaking triptych still holds the power to engulf the viewer in its transcendent and meditative quality. The accompanying paintings complete the experience by physically surrounding one in their lightness of color, spontaneous and sometimes pensive stroke, and a velvet-like surface that suggests a deeper psychological imprint of Monet, who worked on these particularly large pieces for years towards the end of his life. The exhibition, occupying a specially intimate gallery space, will be on view until April 12th, 2010.
One third of Monet’s famous triptych, ‘Water Lilies,’ via NY Times
This fall, New York’s two most venerable art museums will each each spotlight famous paintings by two old masters. The Museum of Modern Art is exhibiting all three paintings of Claude Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ triptych together for the first time in eight years. Also in the exhibition is a single large painting, also entitled ‘Water Lilies,’ as well as three smaller studies.
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has lent Johannes Vermeer’s most famous painting, ‘The Milkmaid,’ in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the river that would bear his name. This is the first time in 70 years that the painting has been exhibited in the United States, and it joins the Met’s five paintings by Vermeer as well as works by a small number of other Dutch artists.
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Gilbert & George’s ‘Great Expectations,’ via MoMA
On view through October 5, 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is ‘In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960-1976,’ an exhibition that examines the beginnings of conceptualism and the role that international travel – in this case, particularly between Amsterdam and Los Angeles – played in shaping the movement. The exhibition includes ten American and European artists, from heavy-hitters such as Sol LeWitt and Lawrence Weiner, to the mythologized, like Bas Jan Ader and Stanley Brouwn, to lesser-known and peripheral figures such as Charlotte Posenenske. The focal point is the now-defunct but highly influential Amsterdam gallery Art & Project. Founders Geert van Beijeren and Adriaan van Ravesteijn gifted the museum 230 works in 2007, which make up the majority of the 75 works that appear in the exhibition.
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Sol LeWitt’s ‘Area of Amsterdam Between Leidseple Jan Dibbets’s House and Kunstijsbaan Jaapeden,’ via MoMA
“Camp Forestia” (1996) by Peter Doig. Via NY Times.
On view now until early 2010, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has opened the Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection, which was originally acquired in 2005. The exhibit features over 2,500 contemporary works and surveys “various methods and materials within the styles of gestural and geometric abstraction, representation and figuration, and systems-based conceptual drawings.” Artists showcased in the exhibition include Lee Bontecou, Joseph Beuys, Donald Judd, Hanne Darboven, Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin, Amelie von Wulffen, Mona Hatoum, Lucy McKenzie, Paulina Olowska, Nate Lowman, and more.
From June 24, 2009 through September 7, 2009 the Museum of Modern Art displays their “Project 90,†featuring Beijing-native conceptual artist Song Dong. It is a solo exhibition installation entitled, “Waste Not†(or Wu jin qi gong in Chinese). The piece, done in collaboration between Song Dong and his mother, Zhao Xiang Yuan, was initially unveiled at the Beijing Hua Lang in 2005, and has since traveled to Guangzhou Biennale, the Berlin World Culture Pavilion, as well as the New Art Gallery in Walsall England. “Waste Not†is composed of ordinarily used objects collected by his mother over the span of fifty years, such as pans, plates, buttons, pens, tubes, shirts, buttons, basins, toothpaste and even the original wooden frame of his mother’s home. The moving installation, which occupies 3,000 square feet of the MoMa’s Atrium, is a reconstruction of his parents’ house, which was taken over by Urban Planning in China. Dong’s piece is symbolic of a time when his mother, plagued by poverty, had to abide by the “waste not†dictum as a “prerequisite for survival.â€
Uncertain Economic Times Intensify Need for Private Student Loans.
Education Business Weekly April 21, 2010 Amidst a still-struggling economy and confusion in the market over recent student loan legislation, SimpleTuition, Inc. explains that college financing options, including private student loans, remain readily available. The student loan provision in the recently passed Health Reform Act took private banks out of the federal student loan business, but not out of the education loan business. in our site citi student loans
With the country still recovering from a massive financial meltdown and credit crisis, families have seen their savings and home equity dwindle — traditionally the two biggest sources of contribution toward education expenses. At the same time, school endowments and scholarships are down, while tuition continues to rise, creating a growing gap between federal student loan limits and the money required to fund an education. While the federal PLUS loan helps to enable parent borrowing for part of this gap, for many student borrowers, private student loans remain an option and continue to play a critical role when paying for college.
“For many parents, careful use of private loans is a sound way to manage the gap in financing unmet need at many private colleges and universities and even flagship state universities,” said Nancy Hoover, Director of Financial Aid at Denison University in Ohio.
As an example, a typical student with a $32,000 annual college bill may receive about $10,000 in scholarships and other reductions, leaving a balance of $22,000. On average, federal student loans cover $7,000, leaving students with a balance of $15,000. If possible, families then contribute money from their savings or from parent borrowing, leaving a typical gap of $8,000 a year that students fill with private education loans in their own name. website citi student loans
“Since its inception, SimpleTuition has been a resource to millions of students and parents as they manage the confusing student loan process,” said Kevin Walker, Co-founder and CEO of SimpleTuition. “This legislation simplifies the process for getting federal student loans, but did not increase the amount that students can borrow. And, it may have left borrowers with the impression that ‘private’ student loans are no longer available. In fact, it is federal loans from private lenders that won’t be available. Gap-filling private student loans continue to be issued by banks and other lending institutions.” “With the economy improving, we are seeing an increase in lenders’ interest in promoting the private student loan category,” Walker continued. “We expect to see several new lenders included in the private student loan choices at SimpleTuition over the next several weeks.” The dissolution of the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) is primarily a change in the way federal loans are delivered. Previously, the federal government allowed private banks to provide federal student loans on its behalf. Over the last few years, legislation reduced the amount of money banks generated from the federal student loan program, leading many banks to leave the market. All students will now apply for federal student loans directly from their school, for a loan that will now be provided by the Department of Education.
Gerhard Richter, Cow, part of an exhibition of the artist’s work at MKM. via the Albertina.
Until August 23, Museum Küeppersmühle is exhibiting 80 paintings by legendary German artist Gerhard Richter.  Comprised of works drawn from private collections Burda, Ströher, Böckman, and the artist’s own,  “Paintings from Private Collections” is an exploration of colors, of their uses and limitations.  Works included span much of the artist’s career, from the early 60’s to 2007.
Storm Clouds: Sunset with a Pink Sky (1833) by JMW Turner, via Tate Britain
Currently exhibited at the Tate Britain are works by Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and JMW Turner (1775-1851), two of the world’s most influential painters displayed side by side for the first time. The paintings are part of BP British Art Displays which exhibit a unique array of works from the Tate Collection. Visitors have the opportunity to go between the mediative ambiance of six works of Rothko’s Seagram Murals to the display of Turner works from the 1966 MOMA exhibition which includes experimental watercolors such as A Pink Sky above Sea (c.1822) and Storm Clouds: Sunset with a Pink Sky (1833). Such dreamy, loose, and immersive works demonstrate the great affinity between the two painters.
David Zwirner booth at the Armory, showing Yan Pei-Ming, John McCracken, and Rachel Khedoori.
New York Armory Week 2009 is in full swing, with attendance higher than expected moving into the weekend. Despite the absence of several blue chip galleries – including Matthew Marks and Lehmann Maupin – the gallerists’ collective mood seems hesitant but optimistic. 177 contemporary galleries are exhibiting in the Armory’s 11th year, along with the addition of a Modern wing at Pier 92 selling more established, less edgy work.
The Armory Show 2009 and the Armory Modern
Piers 92 and 94
12th Avenue at 54th Street
March 4-8, 2009
Martin Kippenberger – Spiderman Studio (1996) at MoMA. Photo (c) Jason Mandella.
Twelve years after his death at age 44, Martin Kippenberger collectors and fans can rest easy knowing his prolific work is well-represented in MoMA’s retrospective exhibition, organized by Ann Goldstein of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture. The German artist, known for his hard living, experimentation, disobedience, and loyalty, managed to amass an astounding amount of work in relatively short career, including paintings, photographs, posters, books, music, and installation work.
MoMA
Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective
March 1-May 11, 2009
The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, 6th Floor
The Museum of Modern Art now has on view a survey of the work of Jasper Johns. The exhibition presents a focus on Johns’ reworking and repetition of ideas and motifs, and celebrates the Museum’s recent acquisition of thirteen new works on paper done by Johns in 2001. These untitled works are based around Johns’ ‘Catenary’ theme, so named for the curve of a string between two points, a figure prominent in most of the works. Johns received leftover, rejected prints from the printshop of two aquatints, ‘Untitled (Positive)’ and ‘Untitled (Negative).’ He used those prints to rework the images, collaging, painting, and drawing over the prints.
