Financier and art collector Richard Hollander has donated a large block of photographs by the prominent photographer Edward Steichen to a trio of U.S. museums, ensuring that the artist’s work will be available to the public across the United States.  The photographs were purchased at directly from Steichen’s estate, and will be given to the Whitney Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Block Museum in Chicago.  “I’ve gotten the bug,” Hollander said. “Now I want to share my vision.” (more…)

Wade Guyton, Untitled (2010), Courtesy The Whitney Museum.

Through January 13, The Whitney hosts a mid-career solo exhibition of the work of Wade Guyton.  Often aligned with abstract Modernist giant Andy Warhol, Guyton self-identifies as a painter, despite a body of work lacking the processes of hand-to-paper creation.  Through frequent use of his signature X’s and U’s, Guyton explores the symbols of modernity and calls into question the nature of production in the fine arts.

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‪‬Mike Kelley‘s Artangel project, ‘Mobile Homestead’ to be screened at the Whitney Museum May 16–20. The video portion consists of three different hour-long videos documenting the replica of his childhood home traveling through Detroit

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‪‬The Whitney Museum video-previews their future home scheduled to open in 2015, a 200,000 sq ft design by Renzo Piano in the Meatpacking district at Washington Street and Gansevoort Street

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‪‬Jeff Koons retrospective spanning 35 years of work to travel from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Whitney Museum in New York, and the Pompidou Center in Paris throughout 2014

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‪‬In related news, Occupy Wall Street movement publishes a fake press release from the Whitney Museum announcing museum closure on May Day and various institutional changes in observance of a General Strike on May 1 planned by OWS

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All photos on site for Art Observed by Elene Damenia.

Charles Atlas’ pioneering work in film has evolved since the early 1970s to today, ever re-defining his medium and the field. As Artist in Residence for the 2012 Whitney Biennial from April 18–22, Atlas showcased his recent exploration of live performance, as well as screening Ocean April 11–15, his full-length film of the legendary Merce Cunningham‘s performance at the Rainbow Granite Quarry in Minnesota in 2008. As Filmmaker-in-residence for Cunningham from 1974–83, Atlas explored the technical possibilities of capturing dance on film, conflating time, scale, and angles to create a multi-dimensional viewing experience for a genre whose single viewpoint documentation often drains the piece of its power and effect. Atlas is the self-proclaimed inventor of ‘mediadance,’ a genre of performance conceived exclusively for video broadcast, demonstrative of his active engagement with performers. Known for his collaborative work with performance artists such as Marina Abromovic, Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark, Douglas Dunn, Yvonne Rainer, Mika Tajima and New Humans, Atlas states, “the essence of my work resides ultimately in the relationships that develop with my subjects and my collaborators.”

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Aleksandra Mir, The Seduction of Galileo Galilei, video still (2011). All images courtesy the artist and Mercer Union, Toronto.

The second showing of The Seduction of Galileo Galilei, a video documenting Aleksandra Mir’s experiment with gravity and car tires stacked unnervingly high, is coupled with The Dream and The Promise, another previous series that combines religious iconography with elemental, scientific scenes. In her interview with AO, she explains how her inspiration largely lies between the crossover of the two—science and faith—so much so that each loses opposition, and within time are indistinguishable from one another.

Aleksandra Mir, The Dream and the Promise (2009)

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Ed Ruscha, Give Him Anything and He’ll Sign It (1965)

Collector Emily Fisher Landau made a gift of about 400 works of art to the Whitney Museum. Estimated to be worth between $50 and $75 million, the works of almost 100 artists range in date from 1950 to 2006—the earliest being a Robert Rauschenberg photograph of Jasper Johns in his studio, and the latest a 2006 Lisa Yuskavage etching. To commemorate this remarkable donation, the Whitney is showing eighty of the works in an exhibition titled Legacy on the fourth floor of the museum, which was named for Landau in 1995.

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Dara Friedman, Bim Bam, 1999, courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art is the first part of a two-part exhibition titled “Off The Wall.” The exhibition at large brings together thirty works from 1946 to the present involving performative actions and seven iconic works by Trisha Brown. Part one, “Thirty Performative Actions,” was curated by Chrissie Iles, the Whitney’s Anne and Joel Ehrenkrnaz curator and is scheduled to be on display until September 19th. Part two, “Seven Works by Trisha Brown,” will run from September 30^th to October 30^th. This section features the return of the Trisha Brown Dance Company to the Whitney. Many of Brown’s dances were performed at the museum in 1971, so in addition to the performances taking place in the fall there will be video footage of Trisha Brown’s past work.

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“Off The Wall” Opening at The Whitney Museum of American Art on June 30^th, 2010, photograph courtesy of Taylor Derwin.

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