28 May 2009 | Books
Thames & Hudson managing director Jamie Camplin writes in The Art Newspaper: Is there a crisis in art book publishing? … The challenges are real and substantial, but they are only obliquely connected with the economic downturn … The first is the obvious one of reaching consumers. The growth in public interest in art during [...]
28 May 2009 | Books, Contemporary, Photography
In caa.reviews, Matthew Biro considers a new book by Michael Fried: Two related projects are combined in Michael Fried’s well-observed, conceptually ambitious, and beautifully written new book, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. First, the text presents a formal and theoretical justification of tableau photography since the late 1970s … Second, Fried puts [...]
27 May 2009 | Books, Renaissance
In caa.reviews, Susan Donahue Kuretsky considers Christopher S. Wood’s Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art: Wood’s study attempts in part to redress limitations in traditional formulations of the Renaissance (familiarly defined in relationship to Italy) as a myth of rebirth, repetition, and revival of classical antiquity in art following a dark period of [...]
26 May 2009 | Uncategorized
From the Wall Street Journal: The Obamas are sending ripples through the art world as they put the call out to museums, galleries and private collectors that they’d like to borrow modern art by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists for the White House. In a sharp departure from the 19th-century still lifes, pastorals and [...]
21 May 2009 | Museums
In the June 2009 ARTnews, executive editor Robin Cembalest writes that although museum attendance remains good for now, numerous directors are focusing greater energies on luring visitors, be it with esthetic coat checks, Facebook pages, yoga, or belly-dancing demonstrations: … some have begun reaching out to scientists, futurists, game designers, and other specialists outside the [...]
21 May 2009 | Baroque/Neoclassical
In caa.reviews, David Wilkins considers Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni, by Pamela M. Jones: Who wouldn’t want to be an art historian? We spend our days looking at and thinking about beautiful and interesting things, confronting the past and present through works made by individuals, groups, [...]
21 May 2009 | Uncategorized
CAA executive director Linda Downs writes: Like most universities, art museums, and learned societies, CAA has been significantly affected by the global economic downturn … Beginning July 2009, CAA News will only be distributed online … The Art Bulletin and Art Journal will continue to be published. Illustrations, however, will be limited to black and [...]
19 May 2009 | Uncategorized
From a recently lauded commencement address given by former Getty director John Walsh: Make yourself clear. This is risky. To say clearly what you think is to risk being more clearly wrong. To fudge what you think – to qualify it, complicate it, overload it – is usually a defensive move. It’s a strategy for [...]
18 May 2009 | Uncategorized
UC-Irvine historian Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom writes on “The Mythology of Blogs”: Misconception 3: Blogging is a fad that is bound to go away soon, so we can just ignore the phenomenon and wait the trend out. No one really knows how long any form of communication will stay popular or significant. It seems doubtful, though, [...]
15 May 2009 | Conferences, Theory
Patrick Harrison reports on the recent conference, “On the Idea of Communism,” in n+1: … Nearly the entire emerging canon of (mostly male) contemporary Continental philosophers—including Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Rancière, [Terry] Eagleton, and Antonio Negri, [Michael] Hardt’s mentor and collaborator … joined Hardt at the conference … [Hardt's] intellectual performance came straight out [...]
14 May 2009 | Books
In Art in America (which finally went online a couple months ago), Sarah Hromack reviews Manon — a Person: Part photo essay, [it] presents a comprehensive survey of a career that began during the 1960′s in Zurich, where the Berne-born Rosmarie Küng (her given name) began a modeling stint that soon segued into experiments in [...]
13 May 2009 | Teaching
Smarthistory, created by Drs. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker out of discontent with “the large expensive art history textbook,” now with 157 videos, has won a 2009 Webby award for best education website. The Guggenheim Museum won in the category of “cultural institutions.” Dreamgrove won the “netart” category. Keith Tyson won in “art.”
12 May 2009 | Uncategorized
John Armstrong, a philosopher specialising in aesthetics and vice-chancellor at the University of Melbourne, wrote recently: The [humanities'] core problem can be expressed in the language of economics: the humanities are geared to supply, particularly to supply research. They ignore demand … Research needs to be redefined to embrace a wider range of cognitive virtues [...]
11 May 2009 | Medieval, Museums, Renaissance
Recently arrived in our inbox: MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE EXHIBITIONS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA, SUMMER 2009 An incomplete list, compiled by Nick Herman [Ph.D. Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University] Belgium Charles the Bold Groeninge Museum, Bruges, 27 March-21 July Canada From Raphael to Caracci: The Art of Papal Rome Ottawa, National Gallery [...]
8 May 2009 | Contemporary, Museums
From Le Monde: The second edition of the exhibition, “The Power of Art,” has opened its doors. This triennial event, organized by the minister of culture and communication, the Centre national des arts plastiques and the Réunion des musées nationaux, comprises three sections … Among the 42 “resident” artists, just 7 women are presented … [...]
7 May 2009 | Uncategorized
Former Met director Thomas Hoving is publishing a memoir serially on Artnet: Despite my successes, I found that first year [of graduate school] to be exceedingly boring and unfulfilling. I was especially annoyed that all I ever looked at were photographs of originals. No one suggested field trips to the great museums in New York [...]
At Tate Modern through May 17, Rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism has received several interested reviews.
6 May 2009 | Uncategorized
Art is perenially awash in stories of fakes, fakers, and fakery. According to the AFP, The bust of Queen Nefertiti housed in a Berlin museum and believed to be 3,400 years old in fact is a copy dating from 1912 that was made to test pigments used by the ancient Egyptians, according to Swiss art [...]
5 May 2009 | Contemporary, Museums
Lee Rosenbaum attended the press preview for Pictures Generation, “the Metropolitan Museum’s much discussed, uncharacteristically risk-taking theme show.” The preview was convened by Douglas Eklund, the Met’s associate curator for photography, but she found herself more interested in the thoughts of Douglas Crimp, also in attendance, whose 1977 “Pictures” exhibition at Artists Space “provided the [...]
Sociologist Michèle Lamont’s new book is How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment. She “observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length.” She shows how “judging quality isn’t robotically rational; it’s emotional, cognitive, and social too,” particularly when academics serving on multi-disciplinary panels are forced to evaluate [...]
