Why Carrie Mae Weems Doesn’t Want Your “Black” Art Exhibitions (or Your Women’s Shows Either)

The annual rite of February’s African-American History Month in America feels more and more like a mixed blessing with each passing year. On one hand, setting aside time to learn the story of Jackie Robinson, for example, ensures that the story of the struggle won’t be forgotten. On the other hand, what does designating a specific month for African-American history say about the other months? Can we and should we really compartmentalize history in this way? Similarly, when well-intentioned museums stage group exhibitions for African-American and/or women artists, does the value of making up for past wrongs outweigh the continuation of using such categories? Artist Carrie Mae Weems, subject of the exhibition Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, the first solo retrospective ever of an African-American woman artist at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, believes that the time for racial- and/or gender-based shows is over. Why Carrie Mae Weems doesn’t want your “black” art exhibitions (or your women’s shows either) may help end the days of such curatorial practices and open up a new way of seeing not just these artists, but difference itself. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why Carrie Mae Weems Doesn’t Want Your “Black” Art Exhibitions (or Your Women’s Shows Either)."

What Would Warhol Do?

“They always say time changes things,” Andy Warhol once said, “but you actually have to change them yourself.” Warhol simultaneously embodied and changed his time—a combination that continues to work posthumously through artists working today. In a new exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art titled Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, the inheritors of Warhol’s legacy gather around to assess what hath Andy wraught for the past half century or so. In addition to being a great primer on Warhol’s art, Regarding Warhol acts as a whirlwind tour not just of what artists have done since the early 1960s, but also just how prevalent Warhol’s influence has been beyond the official art world. Regarding Warhol proves once and for all that it’s still Warhol’s world, and that we’re all just living and creating in it. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What Would Warhol Do?"

[Image: Andy Warhol. Self-Portrait (detail), 1967. Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas.]

 
[Many thanks to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for providing me with the image above and other press materials related to the exhibition Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, which runs through December 31, 2012. Many thanks also to Yale University Press for providing me with a review copy of the catalog to the exhibition.]

Why Are Art Collectors Still Shortchanging Women Artists?

It’s no new news that the art world remains a man’s world for the most part, but that the situation’s getting better. Cindy Sherman’s major retrospective exhibition Cindy Sherman, which closes its run at the MOMA on June 11^th (and which I wrote about here), is a clear sign that museums are finally coming around to the idea of featuring female artists on the same scale as they’ve always featured male artists. But even a woman as officially canonized as Sherman cannot command the same auction prices as men. Her Untitled #96 (from 1981, shown above) went for nearly $4 million USD, which is nothing to scoff at, but isn’t even one fifth of what Jeff Koons was able to get for his Balloon Flower. As a recent article in The Economist showed all too clearly, art collectors are spending bigger than ever before on post-World War II artists, but just not on post-World War II female artists. Why are art collectors still shortchanging women artists? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why Are Art Collectors Still Shortchanging WomenArtists?"

[Image: Cindy Sherman. Untitled #96, 1981.]