Jeanne-Claude passes away suddenly

The artist Jeanne-Claude passed away last night from a brain aneurysm at age 74. She was best known as the wife of Christo, though she was an equal collaborator in the creation of work such as "The Gates" in New York's Central Park, arguably their most recognizable installation, at least to the American art world. Jeanne-Claude and Christo were one of contemporary art's most loved love stories. They were born during the same hour, on the same day, of the same year, he in Bulgaria and she in Morocco. Though he was the name to which their collaborations were credited, I think she was the brains behind his projects: "We declared that Christo was the artist and Jeanne-Claude was the manager, the art dealer, the coordinator and the organizer. And, this served us very well for many years...By 1994, though, when my hair had turned gray and Jeanne-Claude’s hair had turned red, we decided we were mature enough to tell the truth, so we officially changed the artist name “Christo” into the artists “Christo and Jeanne-Claude.”

Very very sad....

The big Apple in Paris

iPhone users should download the new Louvre app asap....it's free right now but my hunch tells me it'll follow in the National Gallery's footsteps and join the realm of paid apps...so download now!

The app's recent launch coincided with the opening of France's first Apple store. For anyone who has visited Apple's Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York, the French edition is appropriately located in the Carrousel du Louvre...under I.M. Pei's (in)famous pyramid--the New York store is below street level, accessible through an above-ground glass cube that is reminiscent (if not a shameless rip-off) of the Louvre's controversial glass pyramid that has become a Parisian landmark. It thus seems both fitting and weird that the Paris apple store is also located under a large glass, geometric structure. Now all they need is to smack a big Apple (no pun intended) logo on the pyramid to match the New York version and we'll be perfectly in sync (also no pun intended).

As far as the app goes, it's very pretty, with lots of sparkly, high quality pictures. A (very small) handful of the collection's icons are featured with information about the works' content, history, and technical execution. There is also an option for "more detail" which allows the user to zoom (though the zoom is frusteratingly limited). The app also features several videos, including a tour of the museum, the palace, and videos about the artworks; unfortunately, the videos are all narrated in French, which may seem obvious, but the English text that accompanies the rest app is misleading and makes the French narration unexpected. Hopefully subtitles will be added or there will be English options for the videos. Until then, the images and music that accompany the videos are pretty satisfying.

I don't want to talk about it.

Go Eagles

Lehman's at Freeman's: Wall Street's Loss is an Art Collector's Gain...at least rich art collectors.

I got back from Philly late last night. My weekend consisted of the following: handing out Halloween candy to a revolving door of trick-or-treating Ryan Howards and Chase Utleys, fulfilling my maid of honor duties at my sister's Eagles-themed engagement party by making Eagles goodie bags and entertaining all guests under the age of 7 (picture above for proof--how cute are they!), and opposing all things New York, namely the Giants, Yankees, and liquidated investment banks' art collections.

I tagged along on Saturday with my art collector dad and his artworld friend to check out an auction preview at Freeman's Auction House in Philly, where the impressive art collection left in the Lehman Brother's wake was being auctioned off like sad abandoned puppies begging for a home. It was a fantastically gluttonous display of work in a range of media by everyone from the unknowns to the masters. My first question was why in the world would this collection be auctioned off by Philadelphia's Freeman's instead of a flashy New York auction house--it's about time. The auction, which began at noon on Sunday and lasted well into the night, was expected to earn $750,000....1.34 million dollars later, every artwork had found a new home. Art just costs too much money. Not fair for aspiring art collectors like me.

Read this for more info on the auction that squashed my dreams of becoming an art collector.

PS. How cute are the old people in their Phillies hats in the picture to the left? The one sleeping is my Grammy. Go Phils!

Phlying home to Philly on Phriday

6-1 Phils
Almost too easy.

Headed home this weekend for my sister's engagement party, just in time to be in Philly the same time as the Phils. Fully prepared to extend my trip if necessary, but hoping we'll clean up in 4 games. If not, as of now I'm definitely in town through game 5.


Jimmy, and Ryan, and Chase oh my!

I. Hate. This. New. Commercial.

The supposedly feel-good, empowering Dove/Walmart commercial with a bunch of women singing about their various sagging or otherwise unfortunate body parts to the tune of Do Your Ears Hang Low makes me want to pull my eyeballs out. I don't think I have encountered a more irksome commercial and it just drives home the fact that Walmart sucks. This is a cutesy, nauseating, misguided attempt at promoting real beauty that talks...er..sings....down to its clientele who are a lot smarter than this commercial gives them credit for.

If you're a masochist you can watch the commercial here.

Where the Wild Things Are

As a kid, my family frequented a cafe owned by family friends called Thinny Delites, where they served the world's best chicken and wild rice soup that I basically subsisted on. So when I discovered Maurice Sendak's book "Chicken Soup with Rice," it spoke to me. Immediately this became a favorite on my little kid bookshelf. The rhymes were endlessly amusing...."Fool me once. Fool me twice. Fool me chicken soup with rice."

Since Sendak clearly got me and my love of soup, I naturally should have taken to his blockbuster book "Where the Wild Things Are," but I thought it was a "boy book." Max, the protagonist, was a scrappy, scraggly, mischievous little boy who dressed up like a wolf, which to me was a "boy animal" (I was very susceptible to gender roles). It made no sense to me why Max would befriend big gross hairy monsters and made even less sense to me why he would want to be king of the big gross hairy monsters.

So when I heard about the movie, I was sceptical that such an iconic children's book could be expanded into a full-length feature film that wasn't cliche, farfetched, sentimental, and dumb. I also just wasn't really that interested (though I did like the preview because it featured an Arcade Fire song--FYI the song's not in the movie). My boyfriend really wanted to see it though so I begrudgingly went to a late showing on Friday night, which was packed with adults without a kid in sight, which was probably a good thing...the movie is freaking scary. The soundtrack, written and performed by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs' Karen O, was haunting and perfect and, to my surprise, immediately captured my attention, and completely transported me into the world of the wild things. I left happily converted with a new respect for the book.

Visually the film was eerily true to Sendak's original illustrations, as the wild things, created by Jim Henson's studios, were rendered with incredibly precise detail. Conceptually, the story that was extrapolated from the ten-sentence book maintained and enhanced the integrity of the original story and did not shy away from its dark nature. Sendak is a creepily dark guy, obsessed with death and tormented by an awful relationship with his parents. His art simply takes the form of children's books by default and not out of a purposeful passion for enlightening and entertaining children. The film understands this, exposing the raw, authentic emotions and struggles that underscore the simple story, becoming a portrait of Sendak and his reflections on childhood and the realization that parents are human and family is complicated.

"HIIIIIIGH HOPES" for Phillies!

Phillies are National League Champions for the second year in a row and are headed back to the World Series next Wed! Hoping it's the Yankees cause they're fun to beat....and A-Rod is easy to hate.
GO PHILS!

Use your art knowledge to end hunger

Do you know which artist created this painting?















If so (and even if not) you can help fight hunger!

FreeRice.com will donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program for every painting identified correctly. Other subjects are available as well--play the art game now!

Phillies win game 4!!!!!

Phillies beat Dodgers in bottom of the 9th! Amazing
Watch here!



I wish I could be in Philly to experience the madness that is no doubt ensuing at this moment. So excited for Wednesday's game........

....but I CANNOT believe I have the class for which I made this blog during game 5!

Museum iPhone apps

I'm convinced that iPhone apps are going to become the norm in museum educational media. MoMA posed a question on its Twitter feed asking users "What features would you like to see in an iPhone app for a specific museum?" They were flooded with responses that were conveniently compiled by Fluid Project.

I stole the following link from a post on the Art Ed Ning site featuring the 30 best iPhone apps for art teachers. There are two museum apps on the top 30 list which come courtesy of the National Gallery, London, and the Brooklyn Museum. Finally, I can touch the art! Here's the thing--the Brooklyn Museum app is free, while the National Gallery costs $2.99.

Naturally I downloaded the Brooklyn Museum app first. Released in July 2009, it's a promising start. I like the "randomize collection" option on this app, which pulls in object images from the collection--no information or description beyond the basic object info, but still fun. You can also search for images via keyword or name, which is a handy tool. Other than these search functions, the app provides visitor information and not much else.

It just really makes me want to cough up the 3 bucks for the National Gallery app to see what these apps can really do. Entitled "Love Art: National Gallery, London," this app was launched in June 2009, neck and neck with Brooklyn's. FYI it was originally free before adding the hefty $2.99 charge. It sounds like it's worth the money for art enthusiasts, including audio commentary and zoom functions on high quality images (the app is big at 209 MB).

So what should I do? Buy the app or save my lunch money? Should museums be charging for apps? It would be a way to generate extra revenue...but iPhone users love to boast that they never purchase apps and still find the best apps for free. What do you think? Cast your vote in the poll on the right.

The Brooklyn Museum's blog offers a fun interview with their app designer, Adam Shakelford. It's really exciting to see this kind of forward-thinking, progressive educational development in art institutions. The National Gallery website features a less exciting but informative press release about their app, which claims to be the first museum iPhone application....but it seems like this claim is made a lot. Note the following:

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History "Butterflies Alive!" exhibition app (launched in June): “We are excited to be the first museum to release an app for the iPhone."

Van Gogh Museum "Yours, Vincent" app (launched in September): "The Van Gogh Museum is the first museum on the European Continent to have developed...an iPhone application."

Hmmmmm....

11-0 Phils! Amazing

"On the Scene" at the Art Institute

Located in the AIC's shnazzy new modern wing, "On the Scene" is a photography-based exhibition including work by Jason Lazarus, Wolfgang Plöger, and, my hometown favorite, Zoe Strauss. As much as I wanted Zoe to blow the rest out of the water (funny pun considering the focal point of her work--see below), I have to say Lazarus' collection of found snapshots stole the show. Lazarus conceals all visual content, displaying the backs of photographs to reveal handwritten captions and descriptions scrawled by the anonymous owners of each photo. The result is a kind of reverse picture book; snippets of text describe the images that are frustratingly present yet unavailable to the viewer, who is left to conjure the image on his or her own. In addition to the evident text, residue from adhesives and scrapbooks litter the photos' backs, making each a formal, compositional exploration.

Meanwhile, Strauss' piece exhibits the raw, confrontational, unapologetic quality that makes her work so compelling. Well known in Philly, her work is an exercise in visual, urban ethnography, as she immerses herself in her surroundings, engaging with and showing great compassion to her subjects. Strauss has a strong formalist sensibility defined by careful compositions and confrontational, unforgiving portraits of anonymous people. I first encountered her work in one of her annual installations under I-95 in Philadelphia, in which her photographs were mounted directly onto the beams holding up the highway. At the end of the exhibition, viewers were invited to remove the images from the wall to keep. As a result, I am the owner of two stunning photographs by Strauss and count her as part of my very small beginner art collection.

Anyway, I really wanted to love her work in "On the Scene" entitled "Week of the Perfect Game." AIC invited Strauss to engage with the city for one week in July and develop a visual story--she chose the end of July, the week during which White Sox picture Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game, hence the piece's title. Strauss captured the area south of Chicago's loop to Gary, Indiana, exploring the region's defining political, social, and popular issues: the grief surrounding the death of Gary, IN native Michael Jackson (which struck me as akin to Warhol's fascination with the death of Marylin Monroe); the pedestal on which the city held the Obama family in the aftermath of the election; the hope for the Olympic bid; the hotel workers strike; the mourning of a teen killed by gun-fire; and the reaction to the perfect ball game. While each individual photograph exhibited the compositional qualities I love in her work,the overall product of her exploration seemed too sparse--there just wasn't enough work. I expected a more in depth visual story to emerge from Strauss' week-long journey; instead, the few mementos left over created a disjointed story that barely seemed to scratch the surface of the compelling issues circulating in the area at the time of her visit. The photographs actually feel like an afterthought to the more impressive translucent photograph of Lake Michigan that masks a full wall of windows, acting as a kind of theatrical backdrop against which her photographic story unfolds.

Strauss is giving a talk at the AIC on 11/12, 6-7 p.m. Maybe her thoughts will help me out, as I really want to love the work as much as I love the artist.

PS Strauss has an awesome blog from which I swiped the featured images.

Success! Rendell Scraps PA Art Tax

In what has been an exciting few days for Philly sports fans, the PA artworld can also celebrate the demise of the atrocity that was the proposed arts tax. Rendell is coming back into my good graces. Go Phillies.

Enough said.

"We're going to let people grab any masterpiece they like and just take a shit on it."

According to the ever-trustworthy Onion newspaper, the conservative Metropolitan Museum of Art is now inviting visitors to grope, hug, lick, and shmush their faces all over its prized collections. With the headline "Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons to Touch Paintings," the article is a sign of our times, reflecting museums' struggles to generate extra revenue in an economy in which memberships are renewed at lower levels, if at all, and funding declines with the Dow, only to be liquidated along with the businesses whose names once appeared in exhibition credits. I think that inviting people to touch the art would be a lucrative success, indulging visitors in their desire to touch the untouchable, engage in the forbidden, and interact with "originals"--of course the success of inviting tactile interaction would be incredibly short term, only to make museums obsolete through the destruction of its objects. Still I can't help but wish I could climb into a sarcophagus and assault a Van Gogh.

Ironically, the museum is the forum in which one is most inclined to touch, and not simply because it is forbidden. In a place filled with enticing and unfamiliar textures and materials, the obvious reaction is to reach out and touch. Further, knowing the untouchable object was made through the act of handling and manipulating makes it seem even more appropriate to touch. But alas, we cannot, and for good reason...but it's kind of paradoxical when you think about it.

Most museum educators have felt that pang when their blood runs cold as they see a visitor brush their hand along a painting, lean against a sculpture, or even walk too close to an object, for fear that something will break or tarnish under their watch. But honestly, who hasn't wished they could touch the art? Who hasn't seen people breaking the rules and feel slightly envious that they were able to cop a feel?

A lot of times kids are better at following the no-touching rule than adults, possibly because they are accustomed to following rules--once at the beginning of a museum tour, during one of my "keep your hands to yourself" intro spiels, I was in the middle of asking the kids why we shouldn't touch the art. I was so pleased at how responsive and receptive they were...only to look over their heads and see their teacher leaning against a Rodin.

Another time I saw a docent demonstrate kinetic art to her group by actually moving the once mobile part of a sculpture--of course upon its advent into the museum world, the sculpture was never to move again (funny to think that in a museum's effort to reverse time, even art work that was intended to be touched is rendered untouchable, but that's beside the point). When I called her on it, she insisted that her role at the museum was more important than mine and that she knew how to touch the art while I certainly did not (though I was working in the department in which this particular object was a part). Needless to say I had to tattle on her and a meeting was called to reiterate to the docents that they could not, under any circumstances, touch the art.

Maybe this particular docent was a bit out of touch, pun intended, but twenty-somethings also have trouble keeping their hands off the art--one college student on a tour essentially felt up a nude statue in the middle of my talk to the amusement of his friends (honestly it was kind of hilarious).

Anyway, even though the reasons for prohibiting touching in a museum are imperative to preserve art, it does manifest a barrier between object and visitor. I am never more aware of my surroundings or more self-conscious of the space I occupy than when I'm in a museum...it's like sitting on a white couch holding a glass of red wine. What's frustrating is I'm not sure of a solution. Perhaps offering samples of materials that look especially enticing (lame idea, I know. Just brainstorming). Maybe better education about why not to touch the art--the Philadelphia Museum displays images of what a sculpture looked like originally and what it looks like after years of being handled. More signage of this nature might at least make the no-touching rule less foreign. Perhaps simply offering more interactives with tactile components will satisfy our urge to touch--Met director Tom Campbell seems to agree, as he reported to the Onion: "Sometimes you have to go that extra mile to grab people's attention. Next year we're going to let people grab any masterpiece they like and just take a shit on it."

The Pinky Show: We Love Museums...Do Museums Love Us Back?

This episode of The Pinky Show is hilarious. A pretty cynical, irreverent view of museum work, but worth considering; sometimes it's important to have some cartoon cats cut through the BS.

Favorite Part:

"Blank walls are good so that the visitors won't have to deal with so much context or history.

Then you put a small label next to the object...Make sure the lettering on the labels is very tidy and sharp, and also only use language that sounds academic, otherwise the authority-effect won't be so convincing.

That's the formula: blank walls + nice tidy labels + maybe even shining a light on the object = guaranteed to make any object look extremely important."

Rally to Stop the Arts Tax

Where: Dilworth Plaza (1400 JFK Boulevard) in Philadelphia, PA

When: Tomorrow! (Friday, Oct 2), 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.

What: Rally to oppose "the eleventh-hour proposal to extend the sales tax to arts and culture activities attempts to balance the Commonwealth's budget on the back of one of its most valuable and vulnerable industries."

AIC visit

Admittedly I missed the memo about posting our museum visit evaluations and proposals on our blogs, though this should have been evident to me anyway...I think my brain is still recovering from the Yom Kippur fast. Anyway, apologies to my cyberped class for posting this so late (like, a few hours before class) but the time/date of post will prove that it was at the very least complete before its “deadline.” :)

Okay so my museum visit.

Some thoughts on the use of technology in the museum—

Digital signage:
Clear, readable, and accessible. Definitely makes economical, logistical, and environmental sense. No complaints there.

Audio Tours:
Pretty standard—a kid's tour, highlights tour, Director's tour, and a Spanish tour. Nothing bad but nothing extraordinary.

Touch Screen Pathfinder:
Easy to follow, nicely categorized, could access the museum through all different portals (artworks, exhibitions, dining, shopping, etc.). Much more useful than attempts I’ve seen at made in other museums. I also appreciated the bright red icon with a hand that said "touch here" or something along those lines, as people are hesitant to touch even the things they’re supposed to touch in museums.

BUT—the pathfinders are impossible to find. One is inconveniently located in a random spot on the second floor. No pathfinders were available at museum entrances. I was pleased to learn that there is a hand icon in the Visitor Map depicting where the pathfinders are located in the museum, but I really could not find any in the areas in which they would be most useful…that is areas in which visitors congregate to gather their thoughts and decide where to begin.

I assumed the dearth of these awesome screens was due to funding, but then I noticed that there are two screens right next to each other at the entrance to the Ryan Education Center. One screen is at adult height, the other is at child height, which is adorable and thoughtful, but if they’re stretched for funds and screens, spread the wealth and put the extra one near the entrance, please! I also imagine that lines at the touch screens can pose a problem, as they’re really only conducive to use by one person at a time...but I guess that’s the nature of interactive technology. Fortunately, for those who can’t locate the pathfinders or don’t want to wait to use one, it is available online. (The AIC website is successful at supplementing technology available at the museum itself).

Curious Corner:
The Family Orientation Room in the Ryan Education Center includes four Mac computers featuring “Curious Corner,” a fantastic animated interface with options for stories, matching games, and art activities all relating to the collections and developed for children and families….though I think adults would love it. Curious Corner has also been added to the Kraft Education center in the main building and is available online, which is unfortunate for me as it has quickly become one of my favorite procrastination tools. In lieu of mice for the computers, each screen is equipped with roll-y balls, for lack of a better word, to navigate, and buttons next to the roll-y balls to select. I liked these unique accessories that evidently work well with little fingers…..though these fingers can be pretty germy and in this day of swine flu I’d rather not picture little hands rolling all over the roll-y balls....but again, I guess this is the nature of interactive technology. Just put out a bottle of Purrell maybe?

Now for a quick tangent:
I have to say that I LOVE the new Ryan Education Center in the Modern Wing and the not-so-new Kraft Education Center in the main building. I’ve heard some whines and complaints about the latter…specifically, from a curator who had some not-so-kind remarks about the space during an interview for my undergrad research on interactive contemporary art exhibitions developed for children. I recall her comments being something along the lines of “that unfortunate nursery school place with bright colors” and “not the kind of place in which I prefer to view my Joseph Cornells.” Since that interview, this was my first visit back to the space to which she was referring. I tried viewing it through her eyes...and quickly concluded that the space is nothing less than fantastic, unique, and progressive.

Fine, I get that the colors, interactives, and low hanging artworks scream “FOR KIDS” but really, who cares? Museums are increasingly becoming less about collecting and conserving and more about serving the public. It would be foolish to shy away from this obvious development and detrimental to attendance, which provides the money for said collection and preservation. Further, I don’t see anything wrong with treating a younger audience with the same respect as an adult audience—from a fiscal standpoint, kids are ambassadors to their parents, not to mention the next generation of museum goers. As our culture becomes increasingly visual it is ever more important to provide our visually literate children with a forum in which they are welcome to observe, contribute, and critique.

But I digress.

In terms of a proposal for improved technology….I’ll have to think further. More areas in the museum where visitors can respond to the exhibition would be beneficial. A comment station perhaps? Blogs for each exhibition that could be accessed both online and from within the museum so that visitors can discuss and contribute to the exhibition content that is usually dictated by the seemingly mythical and authoritative voice of the curator. Also, if iPhones become increasingly mainstream, perhaps the next generation of exhibition brochures will be in the form of interactive iPhone apps, in which each object in an exhibition can be selected for further information and Twitter pages could provide discussion. I’m not entirely sold by this idea myself…it's already annoying when people are screwing around on their cells in museums...but it seems plausible and kind of exciting. Right?

Pretty Pictures, Unfortunate Label Text

The following is a list of words/phrases used in the label text at the Art Institute of Chicago's Cy Twombly exhibition:

Inimitable
Incendiary
Transgressive vein
Reverie (twice)
Wet into Wet
Classical Formality

Yawn. No wonder Twombly exhibitions alienate the general public--the translations of his work need their own translators. This awesome opportunity to shed light on one of the most complicated artists is lost in verbose, flowery language and the assumption that every visitor scored well on their Verbal SATs.

Fight the Arts Tax

I love PA and I loooooooooove Philly, but eliminating admissions sales tax exemptions from nonprofit cultural institutions? Absolute BS and a true embarrassment. First Philly adopts Michael Vick and now this. Where's the heart in the City of Brotherly Love? This makes me so sad.

For those of you from PA, call your legislators and let 'em have it. Visit the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance for more info. Here's an excerpt from their summary of the situation:

"It seems that Governor Rendell and the General Assembly think they can balance a budget on the backs of our region's arts and culture. For the first time in Pennsylvania, the state sales tax will be applied to tickets for theater, dance and performing arts events, concerts, museums, historical sites, zoos and parks. The word from Harrisburg is that this revenue generated from these taxes could result in long-term funding for our sector. However, sports and movies - which we all know to be big revenue generators - can keep their tax exemptions in Pennsylvania. Why are nonprofit cultural institutions being singled out?"

I was in Philly this weekend for Rosh Hashanah and stopped by the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see "Etant Donnes", an exhibition exploring Marcel Duchamp's enigmatic final work revealed after his death and created specifically for the PMA. "Etant Donnes" is an installation featuring a nude female sprawled in a lush landscape. The surprising scene is concealed behind wooden doors and can only be viewed through peepholes, one person at a time.

I've been anticipating this exhibition for three years and am struggling with its outcome. The exhibition was an obvious labor of love for curator Michael Taylor, one of the world's leading scholars on Duchamp. Taylor was not only met with the lofty task of shedding light on what Jasper Johns called "the strangest work of art any museum has ever had in it," but was also entrusted to develop an exhibition honoring the museum's beloved director Anne d'Harnoncourt, another Duchampian expert and friend of the artist's family, who passed away suddenly just over a year ago. Not to disappoint, the exhibition and its related symposium have been met with rave reviews by the most critical of critics.

Unfortunately, there were a few glaring voids in the show that no amount of critical praise or rationalizing can coax me to ignore. Though there was no shortage of documentation and artifacts surrounding the work's conception and installation, there was minimal attempt to connect the content of "Etant Donnes" to Duchamp's other work, most notably the "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even," (aka the "Large Glass"). The "Large Glass" is on display in the gallery adjacent to "Etant Donnes" and truly suffered the most as a result of the decision to construct a makeshift wall concealing an important window in the gallery. Okay, so they needed more wall space, but sacrificing a window that was installed at Duchamp's request was a true disturbance. Further, the absent window, which strategically framed the fountain on the east stairs of the museum, was an integral part of the work itself--I recall Taylor's discussion of the deliberate position of the fountain within the scene from a gallery talk given a few years ago. True the exhibition was not about the "Large Glass," but the glass is crucial to understanding "Etant Donnes." Buried in one of the wall labels was the significant fact that "Etant Donnes" can be interpreted as a 3-D representation of the glass, a fact on which the exhibition neglected to build. So why on earth would they allow the glass look so........blah?

Of course the exhibition's catalog eloquently expounds on the work's content, honoring the artist's legacy (and d'Harnoncourt's as well). Unfortunately I did not have time to sit and read the hefty gallery copy all day in search of answers to my questions, nor was I about to shell out an absurd amount of money to purchase the text. I guess this brings to the fore the issue of how much should be revealed in an exhibition versus the catalog. Given Taylor's past successes, I am confident that the decision to leave the exhibition's content so nebulous was intentional, perhaps to preserve the work's ambiguity......or, to be more cynical, maybe the meager explanation of the work was a marketing tool so that people in search of an understanding beyond the work's construction had no choice but to buy the book....but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Regardless, it seems to be a disservice to rely on the catalog to such a great extent in delivering the exhibition's content, even if the intentions are pure.

Anyway, the moral is that the work remains as enigmatic as ever...and there is no excuse for covering up that window.

Herb and Dorothy

Does anyone know when Herb and Dorothy comes out on DVD? This is my favorite art documentary--much better than the relatively recent My Kid Could Paint That or Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock (though the latter was a fun film about the elitism of the art world--Thomas Hoving's portrayal is pretty comical as he contorts himself to view the potential Pollock upside down, as though this will reveal its authenticity). I saw Herb and Dorothy at the beginning of June at its New York premier and have been eagerly awaiting it's release on DVD, especially because I promised it to my dad as a Father's Day gift. Herb and Dorothy Vogel are the most endearing and gifted collectors of twentieth century art who have managed to amass one of the most impressive collections so large that their tiny apartment is literally bursting at the seams as they refuse to sell a single work, despite their paltry combined income (he's a postal clerk and she's a librarian). Every collector/aspiring collector should be obligated to see this film.

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark

I read "Seven Days in the Art World" by Sarah Thornton earlier this year, which I now count among my favorite books. Thanks to Amazon.com's "frequently bought together" suggestions, I am now the proud owner of Don Thompson's "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art" which just arrived on my doorstep today. Hopefully this book will give me some good ammunition so that I can generate some sort of coherent response when a friend asks me why something with no intrinsic monetary value sells for obscene amounts at auction........

Olafur Eliasson at the MCA

I finally made it to the MCA to catch the exhibition "Take Your Time" by Olafur Eliasson just a day before it closed. I've followed Eliasson since 2006, when I stumbled upon "Eye See You," a Christmas window display in the Louis Vuitton store on 5th ave. Using mirrors and colored lights, Eliasson played with the overlapping motifs of the eye, reflection, and the window. He spoke of the work as a "lamp shaped like the pupil of an eye looking out of the window, but which, at the same time, is a mirror. When you stand in front of the window, you see a reflection of yourself looking into this eye.”

Eliasson continues working with the gaze and the role of the viewer as activating an artistic space in the MCA's exhibition. While some of the objects in the exhibition felt isolated and would have benefitted from more context, two pieces in particular were especially successful on their own. In "360° room for all colours," the walls of a circular room exhibit fluxuating colors akin to the late Jeremy Blake's color explorations. I found the most effective way to view this work was by facing the wall, sitting just inches away from it, so that the color filled the entire field of vision, causing all sense of depth and periphery to wane as the viewer is transported into a timeless and meditative world of color (shamefully I can't help but wonder if this is what I'm supposed to feel, but don't, when I look at a Rothko).

Another standout was an early work entitled "Beauty," in which a light mist fills the center of a dark room. A spotlight shines on the water, creating a rainbow that moves and changes with the viewer's movement. Some kids in the exhibition walked into the mist. I followed suit and couldn't stop--I left the gallery drenched.

PS--check out the Olafur Eliasson gangsta rap.