Julie Caniglia was editor at The Rake magazine until it ceased publishing in March 2008. She currently edits and writes for the museum’s bimonthly Walker magazine, and writes on all manner of cultural topics for other publications as well.
“I traced out that Morandi drawing … Traced that son of a bitch out on a blank piece of paper, and I said, ‘There’s the artwork.’ ” Who says curators aren’t badasses? Read, via Greg.org,a brief yet fascinating account of curatorial license by the legendary Walter Hopps—all with the noblest of goals in mind: to promote the work of Giorgio Morandi, who in the late ’50s/early ’60s was mostly unknown, at least on the West Coast. At an early stage of his long and illustrious career, Hopps founded and ran the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles (from 1957 to 1962), showing the likes of Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Wallace Berman, and Ed Ruscha, in addition to Morandi.
We’ve noticed this, too: “The word ‘curate’,” lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting.” From a recent New York Times piece.
You be the curator, option 1: Help commission a work of art with the stunningly simple FEAST MPLS: Attend a (not all that expensive) dinner. Peruse artists’ proposals with your fellow diners. Vote. The winning artist gets the take from the door (minus the dinner cost). Uses money to create proposed work. Shares work at the next FEAST MPLS dinner. Try it out on November 14.
Chief Curator, Darsie Alexander and Curator of the Permanent Collection, Betsy Carpenter, planning upcoming PC exhibiton, Event Horizon, opening November 21, 2009 and running through August 26, 2012, in Galleries 1 and 3.
You be the curator, option 2: Make your own exhibition at the Walker’s After Hours Preview Party on November 20. Select thumbnail images of works from the Walker collection (including photos, videos, films, performances, or sound pieces). Arrange works on a gallery floor plan. Put the works you care about the most in prominent places. (“Curate” comes, after all, from the Latin for “to care”?) Paint the walls of your miniature gallery. Find ideas connecting the works. And finally, title your exhibition. Get tickets to the After Hours Party here.
The Huffington Post has an AP story today about the contemporary art revolution that has taken place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since the Obamas took up residence there. There have been a few reports on this development since the election — including excited reactions from gallery owners and museum directors — but with today’s story it would appear that the checklist has been finalized (or at least the First Lady’s office released a list earlier this week).
Work by Glenn Ligon and Ed Ruscha, both of whom are important to the Walker’s collection, is on view (at left is a Ligon piece from the Walker – not the White House!), along with pieces Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, and Richard Diebenkorn; the HP story has a pretty extensive slide show of some of the selections, but the Washington Post’s has even more (along with a review of sorts by critic Black Gopnik).
That’s the rhetorical question the author of a new book posed to the New York Times in a fascinating — and still unfolding — story concerning Mexico’s most famous artist (not counting Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera).
The material Barbara Levine refers to is a trove of some 1,200 recently discovered artworks, diaries, letters, and artifacts attributed to Kahlo, which she explores in the newly published Finding Frida Kahlo. Although officials at Princeton Architectural Press say the book states clearly that authentication of the works is still an issue, according to the Times, it is not a central part of the book (let alone its thesis).
The story about the discovery has its own fairly-tale-like quality, involving an art and antiques dealer, a reclusive Mexico City lawyer, and a wood carver in the mountain town of San Miguel de Allende. The carver is said to have made frames for Kahlo, who in turn is said to have entrusted to him several trunks and boxes of her possessions. Now the circle of characters has expanded to include a grand-daughter and other relatives of Diego Rivera; a host of Kahlo scholars and art experts (self-appointed and otherwise), including artists who worked with her and Rivera; officials from Kahlo’s trust; and handwriting and chemical-analysis experts. And, naturally, more lawyers!
There’s also a criminal complaint filed in Mexico and attempts to halt the sale of the book in the U.S., not to mention a whole lot at stake, financially and otherwise. (The Walker’s presentation of Kahlo’s 2007-2008 touring retrospective was among the highest-attended exhibitions here). So stay tuned. And since everyone’s an expert, check out the Times‘ “Frida Kahlos or Frauds? slide show and judge for yourself.
Woodstock nostalgia is so last week: Cool Hunting, the website whose name pretty much says it all, just posted a video report on June’s Rock the Garden music festival at the Walker. DJ Mary Lucia from The Current and the Walker’s performing arts curator Philip Bither weigh in on why 2009’s bands are so very “now” (no past tense, they do still matter, two months later!), and there’s also some chatting with the music-makers themselves — at least Solid Gold, Yeasayer, and Calexico. Decemberists fans will have to look elsewhere for a new fix of brilliance from Colin Meloy and co. (By the way, Solid Gold returns next week, for a whole different and not-your-Garden-variety show on the Walker’s greenspace.)
photo by Cameron Wittig
Young urban kitchen gardeners and other local food growers were the toast of Tour de Farm at the Walker on July 30 — the sole city stop on its sold-out summer ‘09 tour celebrating Minnesota farmers and food artisans. Masterminded by The Corner Table’s Scott Pampuch (with inspiration from Jim Denevan and Outstanding in the Field), the communal dinner had 115 foodies swooning over creations made with local and regional ingredients by seven Twin Cities chefs Michelle Gayer (Salty Tart), Asher Miller (from the Walker’s own 20.21), Alex Roberts (Restaurant Alma, Brasa), Phillip Becht & Jim Grell (Modern Cafe), Mike Phillips (Craftsman Restaurant) and Zoe Francois (Artisanal Bread in 5 Minutes a Day).
At left is a shot from the dinner by Walker staff photographer Cameron Wittig; but you can read all the details in an exhaustive, three-part account replete with gorgeous photos from Kris Hase, examples of which are below. If images of homemade potato chips with creme fraiche or Star Prairie trout with duck-egg pasta don’t get you drooling, they’ll have you running to the farmer’s market. Pics not enough? There’s also an eight-minute video. Just make sure you get out from behind that monitor at some point and enjoy what’s left of a summer for which we’re already growing nostalgic.
photos above and at right by Kris Hase
Last year at this time, we were heading into high-intensity mode for the planning and execution of Merce Cunningham’s Ocean, a monumental dance performance that took place in September in a granite quarry outside St. Cloud. It was an ambitious and unusual undertaking even for this giant of modern dance, and for the Walker as well. Those amazing performances were fitting for what would become Merce’s final presentation with the Walker, where he has performed since 1963, premiering several works here and acting as an artist-in-residence nine times.
Needless to say, this morning we were deeply saddened to hear of his passing. We hope that fans who’ve seen Merce’s work here over nearly five decades will post comments in remembrance. In the meantime, over on Eyeteeth, our friend and former Walker blogger Paul Schmelzer has some commentary about “the genuine Merce” and a wonderful, touching account of Walker photographer Cameron Wittig shooting the portrait above. The New York Times has an exceptional video-obituary with its dance critic Alastair Macaulay, and we’ve got two great interviews with Merce from our Walker Channel archives: Chance Conversations: An Interview with Merce Cunningham and John Cage and Merce Cunningham: Talking Dance.
Perhaps the best thing about artforum.com is “Scene & Herd,” a blog of chatty (and yes, gossipy) dispatches from exhibition openings, auctions, art fairs, and contemporary art confabs all over the globe. The Walker just got the treatment from David Velasco, who attended the opening weekend festivities for The Quick and the Dead. He found the show itself “intelligent and elusive … flush with paradoxes and brainy feints and lunges” — but in keeping with the blog’s title, he’s got plenty of to say about all of the characters in attendance. Read it all here, from the cocktail parties to curator Peter Eleey’s silver loafers to Sturtevant reminiscing about the time Andy Warhol invited her to do one of his piss paintings.
Actions: What You Can Do With the City — you can’t get a more straightforward exhibition title than that. This show, up for a couple more weeks at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, features a number of everyday ideas from everyday people — and, yes, some specialists — that are quirky, odd, and even downright crazy — but all are inspired responses to various ills of city living. Better yet, the CCA compiled all of these ideas on a website as an “actions list” of 99 items. It includes stuff like showing people how to harvest free fruit in L.A. (if it’s hanging over the sidewalk, it’s public property!); adapting abandoned construction sites, as proposed by some Parisian architects; and the “gehzeug” designed by an Austrian civil engineer — a wearable tool that allows pedestrians to take up as much space as a car (great for protests!). Each action-item gets an intriguing name: the three above are, respectively, “Oranges Lead Nocturnal Walk,” “Mapping The Incomplete Creates Housing,” And “Wood Makes People As Big As Cars.”
Another inspiring discovery: Aaron Draplin. First, he and a guy named Jess Gibson posted this video on YouTube, in which Aaron rants about the design of a new motel sign in Missouri and how it represents all that is f’ed up in America. Draplin, who runs a one-man graphic design shop in Portland, Oregon, is as foul-mouthed as he is passionate, and he just became one of my favorite people. (Can’t wait to see the “Draplin Project” documentary that he and Gibson are making.)
I found the video via a just-published story about Draplin on the Creativity website, one that magazine editors added to at the last minute when the news was revealed that Draplin was one of the designers for two new Federal logos, including this one for the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Not sure if it’s Obama or one of his advisors, but one of them clearly knows the value of a good logo … perhaps this job will do for Draplin what the Obama poster did for Shepherd Fairey). But the best part is the Draplin Design Co. website and blog, which brings me to list #2: his “Things We Love,” which includes old maps, shotgun houses in Louisville, 1″ rocker buttons, and, at #72, Minneapolis — turns out Draplin attended MCAD. There’s also, of course, a “Things We Hate” list, and much more.
Walker alumni were tapped last week to fill key museum posts on both coasts. In L.A., Douglas Fogle has joined the Hammer Museum as its chief curator and deputy director of exhibitions and public programs. Fogle got his start here as a curatorial fellow in 1994 and went on to work as a staff curator until 2005, when he moved on to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; you probably remember many of the Walker shows Fogle curated, including exhibitions with Catherine Opie and Julie Mehretu, as well as Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962-1964 (2005) and The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960-1982 (2003) (which traveled to the Hammer). (Fogle’s new home and the Walker’s 1970 building also share an architect: Edward Larrabee Barnes.)
And as Fogle arrives in SoCal, veteran curator/director Richard Koshalek is leaving the area for Washington, D.C., where he will fill the director’s post at the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden that was left vacant more than a year ago when Olga Viso joined us here. Wisconsin native Koshalek also began his career at the Walker, working here from 1967 to 1972 after graduating from the University of Minnesota. More recently he was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years (before its recent troubles), and then president of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. The Washington Post’s story has a more detailed overview of Koshalek’s career, as well as noting his bid “to reposition the Hirshhorn as an international leader in its field because the new administration has acknowledged the role of arts and culture.”
Modern Art Notes’ Tyler Green gives a nice shout-out to the Hirschhorn’s choice of Koshalek in his post today, and brings up a couple of other interesting points with a particular relevance to the Walker. Listing a number of new bosses that have set up in the past year at American contemporary art institutions, he speculates that “This will mean something for those museums and how the public interacts with and experiences contemporary art.”
Green didn’t include Viso’s arrival here last January (granted, it’s been a tad more than a year), but I’d add that between Viso and chief curator Darsie Alexander’s arrival last fall, the Walker is indeed well-positioned to offer some fresh thinking in our galleries and public spaces – and not least, with our public and our permanent collection. Just one sign of that is the major re-installation of our collection coming this November, something that many on our staff are excited about.
That leads me to item #2 from Green’s list of “Five things I think I think.” To wit: “When art museums use their collections and their curatorial staffs to intelligently engage with the present, they do something extra-important: They reach beyond the art ghetto to new audiences, they make the case for why art matters, for why art isn’t just a feature story.” Exactly!
Glenn Brown - Hunky Dory 2005 - © Glenn Brown
Some clever folks at the Tate Liverpool made a web-based slide puzzle in honor of their exhibition of painter Glenn Brown’s work, which opened today. Or at least we *think* such a web feature is an honor … if you put art on a coffee mug, why not a slide puzzle? Anyway, it’s fun and addictive, just like the kind you hold in your hand.
Lee Siegel in the Wall Street journal has a thoughtful overview of Elizabeth Peyton’s portraiture in the context of the Live Forever survey that opens Saturday at the Walker (or Friday, if you attend the After Hours preview party).
She includes a brief history of portrait painting, looking at more recent portraiture in terms of an “American artistic wrestling with the human face in the teeth of photography, movies, television and now the Internet.” Painters like Picasso, she notes, broke down the human visage early last century, no doubt the result of any number of complicated responses to the popularization of photography; later, artists naturally brought about a return to realism — or some semblance thereof (see Alice Neel and Chuck Close, two relatively recent surveys at the Walker).
Siegel asserts that in contemplating at one of Peyton’s portraits, “You suddenly realize that you are not experiencing a person, but a puzzle woven around a person, a social and psychological riddle that is also made up of art-historical allusions, from Antoine Watteau’s wistful youths to Pierre Bonnard’s haunting ellipses. This is not so much the image of a person as a person’s ideal image of himself.” Or, as she states later, perhaps it is Elizabeth Peyton’s ideal image of that person – or Peyton’s own ideal image of herself. Before things get too convoluted, I’ll just close by noting that painting a likeness of somebody, rich or poor, famous or obscure, ultimately does little service to reality. Instead, it opens the door to all kinds of mysteries, not just about the subject, but about the painter herself.
Speaking of mysteries and portraiture, a figure known as “Least Wanted” has a fantastic Flickr collection of that most nefarious form of portraiture: mug shots, – which, whhen you think about it, might be one of the most neutral forms of portraiture. Among the dozens of wide-ranging sets on LW’s account is a quartet of arresting (ha) females from Minneapolis (the images are copyrighted, otherwise I’d show one here). (Thanks to Hrag Vartanian.)