Mass Firings of Faculty at Parsons The New School for Design

Things just get better and better! Now mass firings at Parsons New School of Design. Hrag Vartanian and artcritical.com have the ins and outs.

via Hrag:

This would be ugly under any circumstances but it is particularly ugly in this economy. It is also particularly hypocritical –and socially irresponsible– for an administration and a school that prides itself on its progressive history to take it upon itself to undermine a union so capriciously.

Some background:
You may have heard or read about some of the chaos that surrounds President Bob Kerrey’s stewardship of the New School. The New York Times and The Village Voice (see links) have written about it extensively. There have been multiple firings of Provosts, a vote of no confidence in the president, student occupations of campus sites and overall considerable unhappiness amongst the students and faculty.

[links: NY Times (1, 2), Village Voice (1)]

Despite all this the Fine Arts Department enrollment has been consistently increasing these past five years. The department has been healthy and the community of students and faculty has been lively and progressive.

These firings are part of a larger restructuring of the Fine Arts program aimed at moving away from a focus on art making and contemporary art theory. These curricular changes were arrived at without consultation of part-time faculty and in an atmosphere of fear and secrecy, similar to the nature of the initial reasons for the full-time faculty’s December 2008 vote of no-confidence in President Bob Kerrey. The firings are paired with demotions of senior faculty who have distinguished reputations and many years of service at the New School and Parsons, and the promotions of faculty with less seniority, against union rules.

We wrote a letter condemning these actions and more than 90 percent of the Fine Arts faculty signed it. (Some could not be reached precisely because this was all done during the spring break) As the present administration fears more additional negative press it is our hope that you will join our efforts to reverse these actions by writing an email to the addresses listed below. We have included the original text that our Fine Art faculty sent as its petition. Please feel free to cut and paste from it for your email.

We would also be grateful if you pass the word on to any other concerned academics, artists, union members or –especially– members of the press.

Please identify your email in the subject line: “We stand opposed to the mass firings at Parsons”

PLEASE SEND EMAILS TO:

• President Bob Kerrey: KerreyB@newschool.edu
• Provost Tim Marshall: MarshalT@newschool.edu
• Parsons Interim Dean Sven Travis: TRAVISS@newschool.edu

Transcript of original petition:

We the undersigned hereby affirm our opposition to the summary firing of our valued colleagues from the Parsons Fine Arts department. These fellow teachers and artists have given their time and energy to Parsons for many, many years. They, like all adjunct faculty at Parsons, have worked many hours beyond their contractual commitments and have provided scholarship, skill and guidance to countless students. Furthermore to not rehire faculty in this economic climate is both cruel and socially irresponsible.

While we support the innovations of the school of Art, Media and Technology we cannot do so at the expense of our colleague’s livelihoods. We therefore insist upon an immediate reversal of aforementioned summary firings.

image: NY Times

passing icon- Helen Levitt

From the NPR obit (which features a swell slideshow): "In the 1930s and '40s, Levitt would wander the streets to document the lyrical quality of daily city life. In an era of social radicalism, she set out to make commentary on the plight of the working class. But after seeing the photographs of Cartier-Bresson for the first time, she realized that photography could be art, and that realization informed her work for the rest of her life."

From NYTimes obit: "In Ms. Levitt’s best-known picture, three properly dressed children prepare to go trick-or-treating on Halloween 1939. Standing on the stoop outside their house, they are in almost metaphorical stages of readiness. The girl on the top step is putting on her mask; a boy near her, his mask in place, takes a graceful step down, while another boy, also masked, lounges on a lower step, coolly surveying the world.

“At the peak of Helen’s form,” John Szarkowski, former director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, once said, “there was no one better."

hat tip: T.Buckwalter / Image: Helen Levitt

Office of Blame rising

I was quite pleased to see a mention of the Office of Blame over at Paddy's AFC! The project is the brainchild of artists Carla Repice and Geoff Cunningham, The Office of Blame (OBA) highlights a few fieldwork samples from their archive of blame forms and recorded conversations.

During the presidential elections, I blogged about the project a couple times as they made the rounds of the conventions. I even had the surreal pleasure of subbing in one day here in NY. I'm happy they are getting a much deserved bigger platform. It's a fantastic project with huge potential to screen the national mood and the ghosts that haunt each of us.


Image via: OBA

anatomy of a painting [7]

Some more time has passed since I trotted out this piece for the ‘anatomy series’ of posts. No reason other than it has been on the back burner as other works demanded more attention. Apologies again for the lack of a quality image here but it should give you an idea as placeholder. As you can see from previous posts that the lifespan of this work is starting to become substantial. This is simply circumstantial but also reflects my general interest in slowness as an approach to picture building. The silences between stages are what set up the reverberations I need to advance the work into a more realized state.

Since the last time I spoke of this piece, I have employed the nuclear option. I eradicated the bottom quarter several times with huge swaths of muddy paint in part to fill in surfaces gaps and also to actually submerge the former grid into a sludgy demise like river water saturating turned soil. (some sanding/scraping also to make the current state change)

Next in order is a reworking of the part of the painting that was actually working. First I wanted to expand the sky upward as the darker passage which bracketed it previously was troublesome in that it suffocated the work as a whole. Painting that out presented unforeseen problems. Uneven surfaces seams and some paint loss due to taping lead me to an endless game of reconstruction that is only now complete in a version not pictured here. Despite this, it was the right call as now there is room to work. This leads to what was the center point of the painting, the smoke/chemical cloud that largely acted as the catalyst and entry point for the painting. I was very satisfied with this part of the painting and have clung to it as the anchor point since its completion. However, now that other changes have taken place, this part now has to be removed and reworked.

This is where painting gets hard. The challenge is having the courage to let go of ‘success’ for the betterment of the whole. Generally when an artist paints themselves into a corner as the expression goes, it is because they are holding to a passage at all costs for fear (or realization) that it cannot be improved or replicated elsewhere throughout the painting. The trouble is, painting is a relationship that requires give and take. It is not static. Letting go is central to the process of realization. At this moment, I have sanded down that centerpiece and blown out the former horizon line. I am now ready for the final leg of the work. I hope to have one more posting of this process before the piece is complete.

new works

Thought I would post some new works recently documented. These are the tail end out my output from 2008. The top image is the latest in my WhiteNoise series. The second image is a reworking of and numbering of the first painting in that group. I was never satisfied with the upper portion for a variety of reasons so I reworked it to make it more in line with how the works have progressed.

Pictured above:

WhiteNoise no. 6, 2008
Oil on linen
24 x 18 in.

WhiteNoise no.2, 2008
Oil on linen
24 x 18 in.

Below are some new paper works each measuring 30 x 22 in. These are both oil as well.

The Premier of Brooklyn DIY at MoMA Directors Cut

The James Kalm Report(Loren Munk) has the video on the premier of Brooklyn DIY at MoMA. Marcin Ramocki's documentary explores the history of the artist community of Williamsburg from the early 80's up to today. Looks like a must see for the locals and beyond.

Blurb from Ramocki:

Brooklyn DIY is a long overdue examination of the creative renaissance in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Home to underground warehouse parties, anarchistic street creativity, and artist-run galleries and performance spaces, Williamsburg gave birth to one of the most vibrant and rebellious artistic communities to arise in the 1980s, permanently changing the city's cultural landscape. Featuring interviews with a host of artists and neighborhood characters, Ramocki's film captures life in a utopian universe made by artists, for artists—along with its inevitable decline in the face of real estate development, gentrification, and the post–September 11 market collapse.

My Certain Fate

I'm happy to announce and participate in an upcoming group exhibition curated by Timothy Buckwalter. Hopefully we'll get some cross bloggery going closer to the exhibition dates.

I think he's done an excellent and ambitious job in selecting artists from across the land. That's a lot of artists to deal with! Links below to most of the participating artists.

From Timothy - an explanation:

I made my first mix tape in 1979 while staying up late trying to record Pink Floyd’s runaway hit song “Another Brick In The Wall, Part One.” The 45RPM had been sold out at the local record store for weeks. Lying on the floor with my RadioShack portable cassette player – its microphone jammed against the clock radio’s speaker – waiting for Pink Floyd to come on, I realized that I could go beyond recording that one contemporary song of rebellion. I was soon jotting onto tape anything that evening that seemed connected to that song: Blondie’s Heart of Glass, Billy Joel’s My Life, M’s Popmuzik, The Knack’s My Sharona, Herb Alpert’s Rise and Don’t Bring Me Down from ELO.

Combining photography, painting, sculpture and text-based works in My Certain Fate, I've crafted an exhibition that mimics the dynamic behind the mix tape – a genre I falsely believed that evening I had invented, but which is in fact a popular element within youth culture. Since the mid-70s the creation of a mix tape has been seen as an expression of the individual compiler's taste in music. And, of course, as a gift, it has often been put forward as a tentative move toward creating some kind of emotional relationship with the tape's recipient.

Featuring more than 65 works from 28 U.S. and international artists, My Certain Fate explores and connects the feelings emoting from each piece to create an overarching narrative. Bubbling to the surface of a photo is a mysterious tale of yearning and denial. A drawing begins to crack under the weight of its own smugness. A crisp Minimalist painting offers a space to breathe, a break in the mix. Lurking beneath a sculpture is a less than obvious tale of redemption. The title for the exhibition is excerpted from one of my favorite songs, That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate on Mission of Burma’s 1982 album “Vs. “ –- a track that exudes a boatload of melancholia mixed with the possibility for love through self-sacrifice.

Included in My Certain Fate are works from John Altoon, Angela Baker, Val Britton, Martin Bromirski, Manuel Dominguez Jr., Bill Dunlap, Sacha Eckes, Sylvia Fragoso, Tammy Harper, Kevin Parks Hauser, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Michelle Lewis-King, Joe Macca, Michael Macfeat, Rob Matthews, Mike Monteiro, Marlon Mullen, Christopher Saunders, Jen Siska, Dean Smith, Brian Stechschulte, Katy Stone, Rebecca Whipple, Billy White, Jim Winters, Douglas Witmer, Michael Zahn, and Nina Zurier.

A catalog -- with an essay by DJ and blogger Heidi De Vries, poetry by Suzanne Stein, and a conversation between myself and painter Michael Zahn – will accompany the show. Included will be a mix CD.

Location: Pharmaka - Los Angeles, CA

More soon.

mapping U.S. migration flows

I'm guessing migration trends in the U.S. are heating up with the reshuffling of the economic order here at home. With foreclosures, immigration, major industry shifts and declines where are people thinking they can make a go of it?

Check out these these fascinating maps from Pew Social Trends which employ a clever and simple use of animation and stylized graphics.

Pew Social Trends:

"Who Moves? Who Stays Put? Where's Home?" [pewsocialtrends.org] is a set of geographical data visualizations that display patterns of domestic migration, that is movement of people among the nation's regions and states. They show gains and losses only from people who move from one state to another. The maps use estimates from the American Community Survey for 2005-2007, and from the American census from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 census.

via: information aesthetics

best t-shirt of '09

Brent at Heart as Arena scored one of these Andres Serrano shirts this past week at the Free Store. Jealousy abounds. Perhaps the artist can get some over to the Senate as they 'confront' the AIG bandits.

a city of doors, mostly closed

Massive gates opened into the city, and the winding streets themselves often ended abruptly at smaller doors that defined neighborhood and community boundaries... Whole neighborhoods might be walled off, accessible only by a single door in a narrow street. - Nina Burleigh

Over at BLDGBLOG, a great meditation on the nature of access, labyrinthine and boundary in 18th century Cairo as explored in Nina Burleigh's recent book Mirage. Sounds like an excellent read.

Relique Detroit

An excellent and chilling photo essay at TIME reveals one great American city's dissent into a living apparition. Photography by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.


hat tip: Bill Gusky

Sharon Butler on the artworld and facebook

Sharon Butler of Two Coats of Paint has written an excellent piece over at the Brooklyn Rail about the upsurge in use of Facebook by the 'Art World'. It wasn't so long ago that I was quite skeptical of joining and made the usual groans to my peers about invasive behavior. However, having been a modestly committed blogger the last couple of years, I quickly realized what a fantastic way it is to communicate and navigate my web of relationships. What strikes me as well is that this particular community - the art community - seems to be a natural fit. When I view peers in other fields, it really is a repository of baby photos and inane updates about the toaster oven and what not. Not that this doesn't have its own merits from time to time...

If you are an artist without any kind of presence outside of your studio, you really should consider coming into the light.


A few prescient clips from Sharon's article:

What’s so good about Facebook? Most art bloggers will tell you it’s a good way to connect with the people who read their blogs. They were at the forefront of innovative social networking in the artosphere, and began setting up their Facebook profile pages back in early 2007, shortly after Facebook lifted the requirement that members be affiliated with an educational institution. Links posted on blogs announced Facebook membership, and a few readers began joining, but initial interest was halting and tentative. Skeptical friends either ignored email invitations to join, or joined but discreetly eschewed their newly created profile pages. The digitally unconnected didn’t feel any need for a “social networking” site at that point, and thought Facebook was for lonely computer geeks, singles looking for love, and college kids.

Facebook, as arguably the most handy and versatile social networking tool, has succeeded in erasing geographical boundaries and enabling a more flat, non-hierarchical community in which top critics and curators are at least accessible if not truly friends. For journalists and writers, Facebook is also an invaluable research tool. As Art Fag City’s Paddy Johnson noted, it’s the phonebook for the art world. And not being on Facebook is tantamount to being phoneless. I recently met an artist who barely had Internet access, let alone a Facebook profile. I came away wondering if I’d be forced to write her a letter or call her on an old-fashioned handset. Diehard analoggers, disillusioned with what may seem like superficial connections, may drop out or never join at all, but they’ll wind up farther and farther out of the loop. For the techno-forward, maybe Facebook is a transitional phenomenon that will soon yield to the faster-paced, pared-down Twitter, which in turn may give way to something still more instantaneous and unmediated.

Wherever it stands in the evolutionary scale of art-world communication, Facebook has signaled a sea change in the way artists relate to one another. The barrier between solitary creativity in the studio and social exchange at gallery openings has gone the way of the Berlin Wall. It has allowed artists to invite their self-selected village into their workspaces without sacrificing their privacy or interrupting their creative processes. This is uncharted aesthetic territory, and where it will lead is as unknowable as anything else these days, but at least we know we’ll be among friends.

the art blogger council abides

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Blogix panel discussion shown in the photo above. The Blogpix panel, which took place on Saturday, March 7, followed the Thursday opening of the Blogpix show at Denise Bibro's Platform Project Space in New York. Both events were organized by Olympia Lambert, who also Twittered the event .

The panel covered the general topics one might expect from an audience. Why Blog? Who reads your blog? What qualifications do YOU have? etc.

The panel was gracious and very frank about why they write and for whom they write. Ultimately, you write a blog for yourself and your peers. If it strikes a nerve with an audience, it catches on and takes a life of its own. Not so unlike an artwork does when it leaves the studio. Hopefully, the blog facilitates community and insight for an ever shrinking media field of arts coverage.

The larger question for me is how art blogging is to be defined over time and if will it become overly self referential as the political blogosphere has become with its maturity.


Joanne Matera (the moderator) has more details over at her blogspot.




image: Martin Bromirski (www.anaba.blogspot.com)
pictured: Hrag Vartanian (www.hragvartanian.com); Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof (www.fallonandrosof.blogspot.com); Bill Gusky (www.artblogcomments.blogspot.com); and Brent Burket (www.heartasarena.blogspot.com)

tunnel vision

You know the saying, "build it and they will come" ? It appears to be truer than ever when it comes to the border fence industry. Tunneling is the new the black. For a couple of years now Subtopia has done a remarkable job in examining the worldwide outbreak of border fence building. Here is the latest after dozens of tunnels have been discovered in just one Arizona border town.

As you may or may not know Nogales, Arizona has quickly become the border tunnel capital of North America, as in illegal cross-border tunnel, at least as far as the U.S. government can tell. The latest numbers according to a NORTHCOM Task Force briefing that was apparently secretly leaked over the web just weeks ago, indicate between 1990 and November 2008, 93 cross-border tunnels were discovered, 35 of which were in California, 57 in Arizona, and 1 in Washington State.

Looks like the multi-billion dollar border fence aint working so well after all – what a surprise. In fact it seems to be causing as much disaster as it claims to be trying to prevent, evidenced in nearly every environmental impact review you will read of the fence (not to mention the DHS waived of over thirty environmental protection laws to build it). FAS recently pointed out that the proliferation of tunnels dug underneath the border had been casually categorized as an unintended consequence in a Congressional Research Service report (pdf) drafted last year.

Looks as though the tunnelers are out smarting the rather expensive wall builders. As if the lessons of Berlin never entered the minds of our multi-million dollar govt. planners? Street smarts always trumps the bureaucratic mind.

Continue reading at Subtopia.



hat tip: phronesisaical

the Vanilla Ice apology

via: Timothy Buckwalter

the classroom and the laptop

I thought students and educators might find this of interest.

At the beginning of his Criminal Law class last semester, Eugene Volokh decided to ban laptops as an experiment. So how did it go? As the post-class survey summarized below shows, pretty well. Unsurprisingly, the ban was a net negative for note taking, but it turned out to be a pretty strong net positive on every other scale.

via: Mother Jones/Kevin Drum

the growing climate change lobby

The above is a sobering chart for sobering times. The Center for Public Integrity notes the following:

A Center for Public Integrity analysis of Senate lobbying disclosure forms shows that more than 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence federal policy on climate change in the past year, as the issue gathered momentum and came to a vote on Capitol Hill. That’s an increase of more than 300 percent in the number of lobbyists on climate change in just five years, and means that Washington can now boast more than four climate lobbyists for every member of Congress.

Continue reading here to see what forces the Administration will be dealing with in the coming years.



via: phronesisaical

box of clouds

This is very cool.

Digital artist Kim Laughton made this cloud viewer out of an old keychain photo viewer. The backlight of the LCD screen was removed so you have to hold the box up to the light to see the clouds drifting by inside.

Go here for more cloud cycles.



via: Make

Roubini speaks

so we should listen... I really wish the Administration was listening more to Nouriel Roubini than Geithner and Summers. I really really do. He's been mocked as a doomsdayer for years by many editorial boards but he's been right all along. Here's the latest assessment as seen at Forbes magazine - of all places.

It is now clear that this is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and the worst economic crisis in the last 60 years. While we are already in a severe and protracted U-shaped recession (the deluded hope of a short and shallow V-shaped contraction has evaporated), there is now a rising risk that this crisis will turn into an uglier, multiyear, L-shaped, Japanese-style stag-deflation (a deadly combination of stagnation, recession and deflation).

With its aggressive monetary easing and large fiscal stimulus putting it ahead, the U.S. has done more [than the EuroZone]. Except for two elements, both key to avoiding a near-depression, which are still missing: a cleanup of the banking system that may require a proper triage between solvent and insolvent banks and the nationalization of many banks, even some of the largest ones; and a more aggressive, across-the-board reduction of the unsustainable debt burden of millions of insolvent households (i.e., a principal reduction of the face value of the mortgages, not just mortgage payments relief). [...]

This severe economic and financial crisis is now also leading to a severe backlash against financial globalization, free trade and the free-market economic model.

To paraphrase Churchill, capitalist market economies open to trade and financial flows may be the worst economic regime--apart from the alternatives. However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market-economy capitalism, it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism. Namely, the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation, supervision of financial markets and proper provision of public goods by governments.

There is the failure of ideas--such as the "efficient market hypothesis," which deluded its believers about the absence of market failures such as asset bubbles; the "rational expectations" paradigm that clashes with the insights of behavioral economics and finance; and the "self-regulation of markets and institutions" that clashes with the classical agency problems in corporate governance--that are themselves exacerbated in financial companies by the greater degree of asymmetric information. For example, how can a chief executive or a board monitor the risk taking of thousands of separate profit and loss accounts? Then there are the distortions of compensation paid to bankers and traders.

This crisis also shows the failure of ideas such as the one that securitization will reduce systemic risk rather than actually increase it. That risk can be properly priced when the opacity and lack of transparency of financial firms and new instruments leads to unpriceable uncertainty rather than priceable risk.

It is clear that the Anglo-Saxon model of supervision and regulation of the financial system has failed. It relied on several factors: self-regulation that, in effect, meant no regulation; market discipline that does not exist when there is euphoria and irrational exuberance; and internal risk-management models that fail because, as a former chief executive of Citigroup put it, when the music is playing, you've got to stand up and dance.

Furthermore, the self-regulation approach created rating agencies that had massive conflicts of interest and a supervisory system dependent on principles rather than rules. In effect, this light-touch regulation became regulation of the softest touch.

Thus, all the pillars of the 2004 Basel II banking accord have already failed even before being implemented. Since the pendulum had swung too much in the direction of self-regulation and the principles-based approach, we now need more binding rules on liquidity, capital, leverage, transparency, compensation and so on.

But the design of the new system should be robust enough to counter three types of problems with rules. A tendency toward "regulatory arbitrage" should be kept in mind, as bankers can find creative ways to bypass rules faster than regulators can improve them. Then there is "jurisdictional arbitrage," as financial activity may move to more lax jurisdictions. And, finally, "regulatory capture," as regulators and supervisors are often captured--via revolving doors and other mechanisms--by the financial industry. So the new rules will have to be incentive-compatible, i.e., robust enough to overcome these regulatory failures. [emphasis added]

via Forbes/Obsidian Wings

dry county

An excellent look at the growing drought problem across continents from Tom Engelhardt.

If, indeed, this is "the big one," and does result in a "lost decade" or more, here's what I wonder: Could the sort of "recovery" that everyone assumes lies just over a recessive or depressive horizon not be there? What if our lost decade lasts long enough to meet an environmental crisis involving extreme weather -- drought and flood, hurricanes, typhoons, and firestorms of unprecedented magnitude -- possibly in some of the breadbasket regions of the planet? What will happen if the rising fuel prices likely to come with the beginning of any economic "recovery" were to meet the soaring food prices of environmental disaster? What kind of human tsunami might that result in?

Once we start connecting some of today's drought dots, wouldn't it make sense to try to connect a few of the prospective dots as well? After all, if you begin to imagine what the worst might look like, you can also begin to think about what might be done to mitigate it. Isn't that more sensible than looking the other way?

If the kinds of hits regional agriculture is now taking from record-setting drought became the future norm, wouldn't we then be bereft of our most reassuring formulations in bad times? For example, the president spoke at that press conference of our present moment as "the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression." On an extreme planet, no such comforting "since the..." would be available, nor would there be any historical road map for what was coming at us, not if we had already run out of history.

Maybe the world we knew but scarce months ago is already, in some sense, long gone. What if, after a lost decade, we were to find ourselves living on another planet?

image: Boston.com

Black Cab Sessions

One Song. One Take. One Cab.

This is one of those things where you wonder - "where have I been for the last year"? The Black Cab Sessions is a fantastic web series for music fans. You'll love it.

Radiohead [HD] because I luv you

Glastonbury 2003. That's right the whole concert...

There is also Radiohead in Japan from the recent tour that was a TV broadcast and is incredible, but it was taken down about an hour ago. You will still see clips though, start with that Radiohead at Saitama on the right that is now defunct, and then open the individual songs



hat tip: Geoff

culture purge

This is a bit of a link dump and cross post today regarding MAN's continued coverage of Brandeis and the cudgel being leveled at the arts in this monstrous stimulus plan and state arts funding.

Tyler Green interviews Rose Board Chair Jonathan Lee:

MAN: Last week you said that you wanted to meet with the Brandeis board. Has that happened, will that happen?

Jonathan Lee: I sent the president of the university a letter [Monday] asking to meet with him, with his attorney, and any members of the Brandeis University board that he'd like to have at the meeting. I'd come with a small group of the Rose overseers. I doubt that will happen. My initial outreaches to the board itself have not borne any fruit. My expectation is that won't happen, but I'm making every good-faith effort to have such a meeting.

The LA Times on a need for a cultural jobs bill.

Over at Americans for the Arts we have a replay of the Jesse Helms effect. If you're an artist, most members of Congress don't even conceive of you as a citizen. Check the link and email or call your representatives. Here is the latest bipartisan move.

• Senate Cuts Arts From Economic Stimulus Bill
  02-09-2009: On Friday, February 6, the U.S. Senate, during their consideration of the economic recovery bill, approved an egregious amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) by a wide vote margin of 73–24 that stated, “None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project.”

  If the Coburn amendment language is included in the final conference version of this legislation, many arts groups will be prevented from receiving economic recovery funds from any portion of this specific stimulus bill. Write your Senators today and let them know that this vote detrimentally impacts nonprofit arts organizations and the jobs they support in your state.

I LEGO NY

Check out these Lego analogy/sculptures by Christoph Niemann. Love that Greenpoint makes the cut.


via information aesthetics

Artist Lecture Series/Bidonville Cafe Feb.8

The hardest working lecture series in Brooklyn is on again this weekend.

Sunday, Feb. 8 @ 7:00 pm
Bidonville Cafe in lovely Fort Greene
Willoughby Ave. (b/w Clermont & Adelphi)
Bklyn, NY 11205
718.855.4515
G or C train to Clinton/ Washington and march north

This month's artists:

Diana Kingsley

In my photographs I'm drawn to situations where control is confounded by dysfunction and formal elegance is poised precariously on the verge of the absurd. Subjects are threatened by slight indignities, subtle flaws, or a sense of impending doom: cherished possessions are lost, composure is fleeting, first prize remains elusive, while honorable mentions abound. Although the subject matter varies, a coherent sensibility emerges wherein human frailty and vulnerability are reflected in the most disparate of everyday things. I'm looking for the blunt and unadorned ambiance of a one-act comedy, where psychological tension and pratfalls set a mood rather than force any particular narrative



Giovanni Garcia-Fenech

I am interested in painting that refers back to the constraints of the medium. My visual language is fairly restricted - the work is entirely improvisational, the colors are limited to black and white and the proportions of my supports are mostly square. It is within this purity that I find unlimited possibilities. In my talk, I will discuss my sources of inspiration, from the tiger rugs of Tibet to the trance-inducing music of Terry Riley. Then again, I might panic and just make self-deprecating jokes.

new work

I've been meaning to post this one up. Here is the latest in my loosely titled 'whitenoise' group.

For the most part I'm pleased. The hardest part about these small works is the lower quarter which is only about three inches in height. Very difficult to devise a world in there but I think I'm getting better at it. Just glad to get another one under my belt. One more coming soon if I can get the linen to behave. The precip this winter has been super irritating to deal with.

twitter bowl

The above map may say more about America than any electoral map could hope for - ouch.

In their coverage of last Sunday's Superbowl, the New York Times has created a map showing live twitter chatter during the game. The map visualizes the frequency and location of commonly used words in Super Bowl related 'tweets' between viewers/users. I will say that the tab showing the chronology of catch phrases is very cool. Expect to see much more data visualization like t his in the coming year. The inanity has only just begun.



hat tip: Neil Perkin

desperately seeking Winkleman

Ed Winkleman is offering an excellent bullet point list for artists today. Really just a consolidation of previous threads on his blog, but very nice to have everything neatly accessible. Do read.

Advice for Artists Seeking Gallery Representation

ACS Panel: Bloggers as America's Watchdogs

I received the below via a Facebook friend and looks quite good. If you live near Philly it might be well worth attending. You can RSVP with the ACS here.

Here's gist.

Wednesday Feb. 4, 5:30PM -7PM
University of Penn. Law School
3400 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA

Bloggers as America's Watchdog:
New Administration, New Roles

The blogosphere began during the early months of the Bush Administration with opposition and criticism being the dominant modes for online progressives. With a new administration in the White House, how will the role of the netroots change? How do leaders of online opinion see their responsibilities with respect to the new President?

Featuring:

John Aravosis
Editor, AMERICAblog

Christy Hardin Smith
Blogger, Firedoglake

Baratunde Thurston
Co-Founder, Jack & Jill Politics and
Blogger, The Huffington Post

Daniel Urevick-Ackelsberg
Founder, Young Philly Politics

Moderator: Adam Bonin, chairman of the Board of Directors, Netroots Nation

more Brandeis updates

Tyler Green did the rounds yesterday on all the continuing fallout and opinion regarding the Brandeis situation. Here's the cross post block of activity:

• Today Roberta Smith has a strong piece condemning Brandeis' attempted seizure. I wish it had run last week (umpteen other outlets have been intelligently opining on this for almost a week now), but I still dig it today;
• Jeff Weinstein, a Brandeis alum and ex- of the Village Voice, the Philly Inky and Bloomberg, tells a fantastic, personal story about Brandeis and the Rose;
• The NYT editorial page lashes Brandeis and its president;
• In case you missed it: Harvard's Tom Lentz has spoken out;
• So has Rose Art Museum director Michael Rush -- and on the Rose's own website. Well played!;
  
• The Chronicle of Higher Education's Laurie Fendrich is posting regularly. Instead of linking to each post I'll simply suggest that you go read everything she's writing; and
  
• A nice reminder that the Rose is a functioning, admired art museum: Greg Cook reviews the Rose's current Hans Hofmann show.

image: Boston.com

4 american painters

I promised a friend I would do a plug for his European debut at SCHUEBBE PROJECTS in Dusseldorf. I could not get a press release but the exhibition is an introduction to the work of four American painters. If you are a German reader of this blog, please stop by the show and support these artists.

ALL TOO HUMAN

YOUNG AMERICAN PAINTERS

Justin Allen, Michael Houk, Josh Peters, Andrew Sendor

SCHUEBBE PROJECTS, Neubrueckstrasse 6, 40213 Duesseldorf

Dates: January 31- March 13, 2009

image: Michael Houk

COMESEEART - tonight at Brandeis

As mentioned yesterday:

tonight from 6-8 pm in the Shapiro Campus Center(Brandeis) a group of students will present COMESEEART, a activist performance piece. "Using images from the Rose’s collection of over 6000 art objects. COMESEEART is the beginning of a conversation on the nature of visual imagery and authenticity, the future of art at Brandeis, and how this weak decision can strengthen us as a community."

from the press release:

The “unanimous” decision by the Trustees of Brandeis University to liquidate the Rose Art Museum’s outstanding permanent collection and to close the facility is not only ill advised, but destructive to the entire Brandeis community. We demand a more detailed explanation as to how this decision was reached, considering the Rose is one of Brandeis’ greatest cultural offerings.

This situation must be remedied in efforts to defend both the reputation of the school and its many concerned students and faculty. We must consider the impact that the Trustees’ decision will have on our experience as students, and our future as professionals.

If you are in the Boston area I encourage you to lend support. Also if you are an alumni of the school please make your voice heard. Some suggestions are here. As Paddy at AFC notes, the Trustees decision was made without consulting the museum director, the community, or anyone else who might be effected by the closure. This is a unilateral move with unclear intent.

image via AFC

Creation - Painter Man

via Steven LaRose

the Madoff effect - on Foundations

Nicholas Kristof just published an opinion piece at the NY Times on the Madoff scandal. This is apparently the most comprehensive list currently available. As he points out, most of the media coverage is about the evil genius of Madoff and all the fat cats he suckered. The real story though is how the scheme has been bankrupting foundations - 147 and counting - many that you care about.

Kristof:

Mr. Madoff attracted a large share of investments from foundations and non-profits. If you’re running a Ponzi scheme, you might want to manage foundation money — the principal is likely to stay invested for the long term.

I’m posting the list because this is a matter of public concern: These foundations serve the public interest, and if the non-profits that rely on them have been financially crippled we should get a heads up.

Do click the link above for the pdf. Incredible really, just makes you slack jawed.

Save the Rose Art Museum

I thought I would post some actions being taken regarding the situation with the Rose Art Museum. Get involved if you can. The following is from Adam Schwartzbaum.

If you're in Boston, TODAY at 1 pm an organized sit in will take place at the Rose Art Museum. I have not spoken to the organizer, but I believe this is a wonderful opportunity to bring positive attention both to the Rose itself and to this movement. I request that if you attend to please be respectful and set a good example for all of us who would like to be there. My suggestion is to make this sit in an inspiring and fun event that reflects the artistic spirit of the Rose itself. I encourage people to bring poems to read, songs to sing, instruments to play, and paper and markers to make signs, posters, banners... and how the world what Brandeis University is all about.


On Friday, from 6-8 pm in the Shapiro Campus Center, a group of students will present COMESEEART, a activist performance piece. "Using images from the Rose’s collection of over 6000 art objects, COMESEEART is the beginning of a conversation on the nature of visual imagery and authenticity, the future of art at Brandeis, and how this weak decision can strengthen us as a community." Sounds like it should be very cool

Today at Brandeis University, Jehuda Reinharz hosted a meeting with students on the future of the school. I want to encourage people who attended to share their thoughts and reflection on this event with all of us on the discussion board. A discussion on this topic has already begun on Facebook.

Sign the Petition supporting the Rose and invite others to do so: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/in-opposition-to-the-closing-of-the-ro%20se-art-museum

4. Write a letter to Malcolm Sherman, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and email a copy of it to all the administrators in the news section.
Sherman's address: Mr. Malcolm Sherman, chairman, office of board of trustees, 415 south st ms 102 waltham 02453

Some have also suggested speaking to the Attorney General's office about blocking this sale, which has sparked some controversy. If you would like to take this route, the number is: 617.727.2200.