Off Center

Marlene Dumas, Die Babe (from http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk)

A friend just send me this post from artfagcity, on images of babies in contemporary art – something we’re both interested in, being moms of toddlers ourselves. (I’d say we’re obsessed, but being moms of toddlers leaves scant time for obsessing about anything except the toddlers.) AFC’s Paddy Johnson also includes a link to this essay on motherhood and contemporary artists, from The Brooklyn Rail. While reading it, I recalled watching the uptick in strollers on the streets of Williamsburg (Brooklyn) a few years back – but at the time I wasn’t considering that many of those pushing the strollers might be working artists … Then again, isn’t Williamsburg now too expensive for working artists, with or without offspring? Circling back to artfagcity, an artistic comment on both topics.

PS – Margaret, a working artist and mom-of-toddlers and a regular here on the Walker blogs, has a number of thoughtful posts on art and parenthood.

Off Center’s dear old friend Paul Schmelzer wrote a series of posts on his own blog, eyeteeth, about The Miss Rockaway Armada back in 2006. Paul hung out with the collective when the group of artists, performers, and adventurers were congregating in Minneapolis to begin their journey down the Mississippi river on homemade rafts. A traveling community, the artists perform, give workshops, and create spectacles along the journey.

In April, MASS MoCA opened an installation and interactive exhibition by the collective: Being Here Is Better Than Wishing We’d Stayed. There are bunches more images of the installation on the Armada’s blog, including the one below.

From the river: Miss Armada flickr pool

And here’s a clip of the ferris wheel in action (pictured at top, photo via Flickr user tchandler.)

In light of my new obsession with a certain bacon meme (Did you know there were buttons?), I wanted to post this response to the New Museum’s Ugo Rondinone.

Via Paul and Wooster.

Nate Solas blogged Wednesday about the Walker’s participation in ArtShare, a Facebook application allowing you (assuming you’re among the 230 gazillion registered users of Facebook) to show/share selected artwork from museums’ collections on your profile page. The Walker has its own Facebook profile, as do a couple dozen other contemporary art centers and museums around the U.S. and beyond.

A Facebook search for “contemporary art” pulled up some expected major players, a couple of independent magazines, corners devoted specific origin/ethnicity and a handful of thematic sentiments (there are about 350 members of I Enjoy Modern Art and That Doesn’t Make Me an Elitist A**hole).

Here are links to nearly three dozen Facebook profiles of a contemporary art bent:

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, of Washington, D.C. (175 members)

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – contemporary extension (110 members)

Contemporary Art Museum of Houston teen arts council (70 members)

On the Boards, Seattle (160 members)

Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (200 members)

Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (60 members)

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (30 members)

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, United Kingdom (60 members)

Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado (20 fans)

Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Turkey (1,570 members)

Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (40 members)

International Contemporary Art and Design Lovers (780 members)

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (710 members)

Axis — Online Resource for Contemporary Art (800 members)

Chinese Contemporary Art (450 members)

Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia (410 members)

Contemporary Egyptian Artists (375 members)

International Academy of Art Palestine (350 members)

Connoisseurs of Contemporary African Art (275 members)

BM Suma Contemporary Art Center, of Istanbul, Turkey (280 members)

Contemporary Art: Singapore (240 members)

Art Summit Indonesia, a triennial international performing arts taking place in Jakarta (240 members)

Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (200 members)

I Made Something at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (15 members)

I Bet I can Find 10,000 People Who Love Contemporary Art (1,440 members)

I Enjoy Modern Art and That Doesn’t Make Me an Elitist A**hole (350 members)

Art Papers Magazine (2,100 members)

White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art (1,350 members)

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (160 members)

Contemporary Art in Liverpool (100 members)

Contemporary Jewish Museum (100 members)

Contemporary African Art (26 members)

British Contemporary Art (26 members)

Greek Contemporary Art (15 members)

Goteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art!, Sweden (15 members)

Contemporary Ghanaian Artists (8 members)

Filipino Contemporary Art, home listed in Switzerland (3 members)

Contemporary Art New Zealand (3 members)

Cuban Contemporary Art, formed by a gallery in Spain (2 members)

The Walker’s Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes doesn’t open until February 16, but you might appreciate the suburban-focused art and architecture of that exhibition a little more after examining some distinctive urban fingerprints. The WebUrbanist blog, in continuing its thought-provoking Seven Wonders series, trains its latest foray on “the scariest, steepest, longest, widest, narrowest, most confusing and most crooked urban streets in the world!” (pictured, from the series, is San Francisco’s Lombard Street).

Surprising that with “narrow” and “crooked” among the criteria, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue didn’t make the list.