Monday 27 October 2014

Long weekend reading

The New Yorker has been releasing content from its archives, bundling highlights into weekly blog posts. This 1950 interview of Hemingway by Lilian Ross is a mid-century gem, still smartly observed and full of quotable quotes.

Preparing for Peter Peryer's show at The Dowse meant getting to think about how the art world - and art market - has changed its approach to photography since the 1970s. This obituary/tribute in the New York Times for Sam Wagstaff - collector, curator, and patron/partner of Mapplethorpe - captures the story through the lens of a life.

To accompany the new anthology - a Wikipedia entry for Wystan Curnow, prepared by Thomasin Sleigh. This has given me a new idea, to add to the ideas we're already working on ...

Wednesday 22 October 2014

On the radio

Today on the radio I'll be talking about the concept of post-internet art; The Light Show at Auckland Art Gallery; and the Auckland Potters Society Great Mugging event.

Wednesday 15 October 2014

Restaging

A recent article in the Art Newspaper covers the trend for curators to revive or re-work historical exhibitions.

This has, of course, got me thinking about exhibitions - New Zealand exhibitions - I have missed that I'd want to see again. A quick list includes:


  • Alter/Image, Tina Barton and Deborah Lawler-Dormer's 1993 show on contemporary feminism and art
  • The infamous Headlands and Cultural Safety shows, landmarks of the 1990s
  • Several of Colin McCahon's exhibitions at Barry Lett Galleries
  • Auckland Art Gallery's 1961 Painting from the Pacific, an experiment in bringing together work from the coasts of US, NZ, Aus and Japan to see if a geographically-determined link could be discerned (it couldn't)
  • Leon Narbey's opening exhibition for the Govett-Brewster
  • Selwyn Muru's 1979 Parihaka show at The Dowse, when the gallery was transformed temporarily into a wharenui


Which all goes to show that really, what I want primarily to experience is the time that I missed, rather than the art.

Monday 13 October 2014

Wikipedia workshop

The National Digital Forum conference has released its pre-conference workshops.

There's a full day workshop on digital project management, run by Dr. Lynne Siemens, Associate Professor in the School of Public Management at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It looks like a really solid introduction for people new to commissioning software and website projects, and could be a great option if you or your team have a project like this on the horizon.

Meanwhile, I'm taking part in a workshop on Wikipedia and the GLAMs, coordinated by Mike Dickison, Natural History Curator at Whanganui Regional Museum with a group of representatives from the NZ Wikipedia community & galleries, libraries, museums and archives. The session is an introduction to getting New Zealand cultural content into Wikipedia, and will include hands-on editing.

The workshops will be held on 24 November at Te Papa and you can attend even if you're not attending the full conference. All the info is available on the NDF website.

Wednesday 8 October 2014

On the radio

Today on the radio I'll be talking about Simon Denny's new exhibition at the Adam Art Gallery, The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom.

Audio is up, and there's also a gallery of installation shots.