Saturday 26 November 2016

Reading list, 26 November 2016

Jonah Weiner for Billboard on Donald Glover and Atlanta, probably my favourite piece of pop culture this year.

Victoria Wynne-Jones interviews Erica van Zon for The Pantograph Punch, the first in a series of artist features The Dowse is collaborating on with PP.

This week it was my great pleasure to do a 'fireside chat' with ACMI's Chief Experience Officer Seb Chan for the National Digital Forum conference in Wellington. Here's a recent interview with Seb from Sandpit, 'Everything is partially broken'.

Every word Maciej Ceglowski publishes is worth reading: his latest talk is Who Will Command The Robot Armies. As always, it is hilarious, thought provoking and terrifying in equal measures.

Mark Sinclair on the Kinfolk redesign, and a throwback to Rob Alderson's piece last year on the divisiveness of the magazine and its aesthetic.

The ongoing fascination of digital restoration and facsimiles: Daniel Zalewski for The New Yorker on Factum Arte, a “digital mediation” workshop which seeks to “redefine the relationship between the original and the copy.”


Saturday 19 November 2016

Reading list, 19 November 2016

Rob Walker for the New York Times Magazine's Design Issue: Inside the 21st century craze for redesigning everything.

James Surowiecki for The New Yorker: What's in a brand name (when Marianne Moore suggested Utopian Turtletop for a new car but Ford went with Edsel)

Lynda Kelly on audience research for exhibition topics (some points reassuring, some points dismaying)

Nina Finigan frames up Tusk's newest theme: digital frontiers (and museums). See also Jane Groufsky on curating and online anecdotes; Bridget Reweti on her Flightpath podcast.

Elizabeth Merritt of the Center for the Future of Museums on data about the political affiliations of various American museum roles, and areas of conservatism in our field.

Sally Blundell for the NZ Listener on Te Papa's plan for extended art exhibition spaces, released this week.

A congressional panel in the States finds that the country needs an American Museum of Women’s History (to be run by the Smithsonian but the construction to be entirely funded by donations).

Saturday 12 November 2016

Reading List, 12 November 2016

Sometimes a writer just goes to town on a (literally) tiny little subject, and it's a delight to read. To wit: Ian Brown for The Globe and Mail on the Art Gallery of Ontario's exhibition of miniature carved boxwood prayer beads.

Sarah Archer for Hyperallergic on the Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibition of fashion made with Vlisco fabrics: How Dutch Wax Fabrics Became a Mainstay of African Fashion.

Jiayang Fan for The New Yorker on the private/public museums of Chinese billionaire art collector Liu Yiqian.

One of the funny things about taking over a public art gallery is that it somehow feels like you can't say 'Hey, actually, it's great as it is, I really look forward to contributing my own skills and point of view'. Instead, everyone expects you to change things. For example, this interview with the incoming director of the Dallas Museum of Art, who follows on from Max Anderson, who made massive overhauls in how the museum treats its visitors: New DMA director thinks Dallas’ flagship museum is art-rich but needs to change the way it relates to visitors. Having said that, I thoroughly endorse Agustín Arteaga's plan to introduce multi-language interpretation.




Wednesday 9 November 2016

On the radio

On the radio today I'll be talking about the dropping of the art history A-level, MOMA's acquisition of the original 176 emoji, and Koen Vanmechelen's Cosmopolitan Chicken Project.

Griselda Pollock, 'Axing A-level art history only amplifies class divides', The Conversation

Paul Galloway, 'The Original Emoji Set Has Been Added to The Museum of Modern Art’s Collection', Medium

Hilarie M. Sheets, 'Playing Chicken With the Art World', New York Times

Saturday 5 November 2016

Reading list, 5 November 2016

It starts off sounding like a typical "an elephant painted this" story, but Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen's Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is way more interesting than that.

American painters Kerry James Marshall is interviewed by the Art Newspaper on the process of assembling his touring retrospective, and is very straightforward about the way institutions' own rules get in the way of their own projects.

Lana Lopesi reviews Johnson Witehira’s Half-blood for the Pantograph Punch, who are strengthening their visual arts coverage.

Megan Marshall previews her forthcoming book on the relationship between poet Elizabeth Bishop and Alice Methfessel in a long, affecting article for The New Yorker.

All critique and no solution: a British theatre critic (paid to write for the Guardian) queries the emerging American model of arts criticism in newspapers subsidised by philanthropy.

Sounds like sour grapes: Why Do Colleges [actually - college art museums & their exhibitions programmes] Have So Much Art?