‘Ghost Dance Dress’: Southern Arapaho artist, Oklahoma, circa 1890 (Photo: Joshua Ferdinand) The best way I know of dealing with the scale and scope of the Metropolitan Museum is to walk through and let the objects find you. Art critic Michael Kimmelman did his own version of the “evocation stroll” in the company of numerous […]
Museums
- Aesthetics
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Visitors, Full of Yearning
One room from “The Visitors”, by Ragnar Kjartansson Installation view (Photo: Agostino Osio, courtesy Fondazione Hangarbicocca) The Clock, a video montage/art installation by Christian Marclay, artfully stitched together 24 hours’ worth of vignettes with references to time. Stipulated by Marclay to only be viewed in perfect synch with real time, The Clock‘s sequences are extracted […]
Small is Beautiful
A display at the Museum of Innocence, titled “Istanbul‘s Streets, Bridges, Hills and Squares,” (Photo: Jackie Nickerson) Turkish author Orhan Pamuk (whose books include My Name is Red and Snow, among others) is an advocate of small museums (a topic I wrote about here.) We live in an era of mega-museums that work hard to […]
- Aesthetics
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Willing Magic
Agnes Martin at Dia:Beacon The etymology of the term “jaded” surprised me. It has been traced back to a 14th century Middle English word for a worn-out horse, one that can no longer pull a cart or work the fields. It is about being wearied, exhausted, spent, bored, out of juice. While the roots of […]
- Antiquities
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History in a Box
A shamsa (literal meaning, “sun”) from the Met’s new Islamic Art wing One of my favorite books right now is Between Artists: Twelve Contemporary American Artists Interview Twelve Contemporary American Artists. I have so much more to say about this book, and hopefully I will write about it in more detail later on. But right […]
Still On His Own Terms (But Not Mine)
I have tried to be rational, objective and evenhanded in thinking about the Clyfford Still Museum that finally opened this week in Denver. But it isn’t easy to stay in that place and here’s why. The problem with Still is that many of us are holding a split deck on him and his work. On […]
The Rose Reopens: Art Trumps Money
The Rose Museum at Brandeis University reopened Last night the previously disenfranchised and much beleaguered Rose Art Museum on the Brandeis campus reopened with much fanfare, a celebration being called The Rose Art Museum at fifty. In spite of a torrential rainstorm, the museum was chockablock with donors, students, artists, patrons and, specially introduced to […]
Contemporary Art at the MFA
First floor view of the new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art at the MFA, Boston I’m of several minds when it comes to the oft-argued place that museums should/could/would claim in the cultural milieu of contemporary life. Beyond the obvious tensions—high brow vs low brow (in a world that is increasingly no brow), elitism […]
Boston Museum Update
Two Boston museum recommendations: At the ICA Charles LeDray, Mens Suits (Photo: ICA, Boston) I have looked at examples of Charles LeDray’s work online for several years, but seeing his work in person is a whole different kettle of fish. As an idea his approach seemed almost too precious—his curious obsession (and I mean that […]
Left Coast Report
Back from California, visiting with both the Northern and Southern tribes. As always, the eye gets fed, and sometimes the finds are a surprise and unexpected. San Francisco Richard Diebenkorn: A gallery show at Paul Thiebaud Gallery consists of works that belongs to the late artist’s son Christopher. (In strange symmetry: Paul Thiebaud is artist […]