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If “LA MoCA” sounds to you like something you’d
order from Starbucks, than you probably don’t know anything about the recent kerfuffle surrounding what
is being called the murder of the Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art. Like any great murder mystery, this one
features plenty of high-profile suspects—some physically present, others purely
metaphorically. The fact remains that the MoCA’s severely, if not fatally,
wounded by the forced resignations of curators, subsequent resignations of
artists on the board of trustees, bad reviews of questionably designed exhibitions,
and the highly questionable conflicts of interest surrounding former (and
possibly present by proxy) art dealer turned MoCA director Jeffrey Deitch. As sad
as the current state of what was once known as “the artists’ museum” is, the
real mourning is over whether this is just the first fatality in what might
become a cultural serial murder. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "
Who Killed the LA MoCA?"
All apologies to Michael Jackson, but in
the art world, Andy Warhol
will always be the King of Pop.
The bewigged eccentric didn’t start Pop Art, but his works largely influenced
what we think of as Pop. But who is the Queen of Pop? It might just be Japanese
artist Yayoi Kusama, subject
of a huge retrospective
exhibition at the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York City. Perhaps the most important Japanese female
artist of the 20th century, Kusama’s made art for more than six
decades, including the Pop-crazed 1960s, during which Kusama exhibited
alongside the likes of Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Kusama’s
much more than just that decade, but in many ways she’s still the Queen of Pop
in making her ideas and images pop in the imagination of the viewer. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "
Yayoi Kusama: Still the Queen of Pop?"
[Image: Yayoi Kusama, b.
1929, Fireflies
on the Water, 2002. Mirror, plexiglass, 150 lights and water, Overall:
111 × 144 1/2 × 144 1/2 in. (281.9 × 367 × 367 cm). Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Postwar Committee and the
Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and partial gift of Betsy
Wittenborn Miller 2003.322a-tttttttt. © Yayoi Kusama. Photograph courtesy of
Robert Miller Gallery.]
[Many
thanks to the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York City for the image above and other press materials
related to the exhibition Yayoi Kusama, which
runs through September 30, 2012.]
Performance art and film art have always been
the afterthoughts of museums—the new kids on the block with no room of their
own in the big culture houses. Institutions designed to house paintings and
sculpture usually need to find some temporary corner to stage a performance or
screen a film, implying to the viewer, however subconsciously and unintentionally,
that those media don’t rank a room of their own. With the opening of the Tate
Tanks at the Tate Modern
in London, England, performance art and film finally have a big stage all of
their own—one that not only celebrates those media but can, in return, inspire
practitioners to create knowing where they’ll be working. With such a
significant venue for significant pieces, will the Tate Tanks finally bring performance
art into the mainstream? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "
Will the Tate Tanks Bring Performance Art intothe Mainstream?"
[Image: Washing
Brain and Corn, Sung Hwan Kim, 2010, video still. © Sung Hwan Kim.]
[Many
thanks to the Tate Modern
for the image above and other press materials related to the opening of the Tate
Tanks with the Art in Action program
from July 18 through October 28, 2012.]
