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MAP magazine

I see Omar Sommereyns around town pretty often and, Saturday night he asked me if I had the latest copy of MAP. No, I didn't. MAP is using the lot next to Snitzer Gallery to pick up copies and sample café cubano with temporary seating and a nice crowd. Omar has ventured into a number of projects and, I do support his efforts. So should you.

MAP magazine:

"Finally, a local magazine that does it right. This is the 4th (quarterly) issue of Map magazine, and the quality has been consistently great, so I’m finally letting myself get attached. Splitting the difference between local and non-local content — this issue’s cover, of the Ravonettes, is the first non-local — the magazine focuses on art, music, and culture.

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The Art Market Goes Global

The global credit squeeze has created all kinds of economic jitters, so why hasn’t it reached the art market?

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Miami Art Machine?

You must read this entire article. While locally it's not news but, I think it has been explained more robustly here. As long as I'm living in Miami (area) I have a vested interest in what's going on here. This is certainly on the upper end of any existing list(s) floating about town.

Craig Robins with some of his art: Thomas Scheibitz's Eingang and Deborah Thomas chandelier.  

(Photo: Iran Issa Kahn)

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Psst! Art Students!

Psst! Art Students!:

"Kids, c’mon. Check out a little history before you go epataying le bourgeoisie.

I want to save everybody some time and effort here. You don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel, do you? For all you Aliza Shvarts wannabes, scan the following list before you start your next art piece. Most of the good ideas have already been taken."

(Via The Chronicle: Brainstorm.)

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Flower Derangement

Unfortunately, I didn't get to this opening but, I hope to get there before it comes down. End of the semester duties have me pretty occupied in addition to having partially moved. Moving will be completed after final critiques, next week.

Flower Derangement:

"Steering clear of her usual gooey weeping willows, Cristina Lei Rodriguez has tapped into the central nervous system of Sixties minimalist and junk art in her new show at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin.

The radical shift strips gears at a pace that seems turbo-charged.

For years, Rodriguez has been known for creating glam-pitched gardens of Day-Glo cobra lillies, venus fly traps, and monkey cups battered in milky coats of resin and spackled in rhinestones and jewels.

The work offered a lush, Little Shop of Horrors-esque vision of an unbridled consumer culture skidding headlong toward at a cataclysmic end. The collision between grotesque vegetation and glitter and glam was as hard to peel the peepers from as a freeway wreck."

(Via Miami New Times | Complete Issue.)

Artblog Moving Notice

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Three cheers for “normative” Yale

There has certainly been a mountain of chatter about one Yale University student's thesis project. I've read lots of it, good, bad, and ugly. While not teaching any such graduating students myself, I wonder what I would have said if such a project had been proposed to me? Knowing my own reactions when students do come up with wild ideas, I probably would have been against it but, I'm also willing to let students slept in the bed of their own making even if they've soiled the sheets.

Three cheers for “normative” Yale:

"In the post below I wrote that Aliza Shvarts ‘probably knew she wasn’t having abortions’ and that her project was likely the result of laziness and lack of imagination abetted by faculty irresponsibility. Looks like I spoke too soon. Ms. Shvarts has written an op-ed insisting, despite Yale’s reassurances to the contrary, that she did [...]"

(Via The New Criterion.)

Yale U. Says Student Must Acknowledge Her Artwork Is Fiction

I was talking to several students over the past couple of days because it's time for finals. Two of them are planning "performance art" works with a high dose of conceptualism. One of them is a former student that I have told he needs to confront himself and make his work have more authority and authenticy, something he seemed to lack for much of his work. He's a good student and I support him totally even if his work fails to reach its mark because, he's sincerely working at it. I also remind him to do more research because without it, one might look uninformed and be vulnerable to harsh critique.

Yale U. Says Student Must Acknowledge Her Artwork Is Fiction:

"A Yale University art student who has claimed that she videotaped her own self-induced abortions will not be allowed to display an art project about the abortions unless she acknowledges that the project is 'fiction,' university administrators announced today.

The project, by Aliza Shvarts, a senior art major at Yale, started an uproar on the campus and in the blogosphere, and a debate over whether her project should be protected by artistic freedom. It is supposed to go on display [22 April, 2008] in Yale’s Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall. Ms. Shvarts has created confusion and angered Yale officials by telling Yale’s student newspaper that the abortions really happened, but then acknowledging to administrators that the project was merely 'performance art.'

Experts differ sharply on whether a planned art exhibit on abortion goes beyond what anyone intended in terms of guarding the right to free expression at universities."

(Via Chronicle.com - Today's News.)

Free of Charges at Last!

Steven Kurtz Cleared of Charges

04.21.08 - The Associated Press reports that a judge has dismissed charges against Steven Kurtz, a college professor accused of illegally obtaining biological materials for an art exhibit protesting US government food policies. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that a mail and wire fraud indictment brought nearly four years ago against the University at Buffalo professor, was "insufficient on its face." Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which has used human DNA and other biological materials in works meant to draw attention to political and social issues. His arrest drew international attention, with artists in several countries protesting the charges as an intrusion on artistic freedom. He became the target of a federal terrorism investigation in May 2004 when firefighters found the materials — two kinds of bacteria — and equipment they deemed suspicious after a 911 call to his home. Kurtz had called to report that his wife was dead from an apparent heart attack. Investigators later determined that the lab equipment used for DNA extraction and amplification equipment was part of his artwork and that Hope Kurtz died naturally. But Kurtz was indicted a month later on mail and wire fraud charges that carried a maximum of twenty years in prison.

Kurtz was accused of plotting with Robert Ferrell, the former chairman of the University of Pittsburgh's human genetics department, to improperly obtain potentially harmful organisms. Prosecutors said Ferrell used his university account to order bacteria for Kurtz from a supply lab that does not do business with individuals. In February, Ferrell was fined $500 but escaped a prison sentence after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of mailing an injurious article to Kurtz. Under sentencing guidelines, he could have received up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine if convicted.

This had been going on for years now. And, what a cost to friends and family. Steve Kurtz is a person I respect and, this decision is great news! I tried to work with him one semester during grad school however, I ended up working with Doug Ashford based on the limited number of students each of them had to work with.