Let the avalanche of September 11 exhibitions begin. As the tenth anniversary of the attack approaches, the art world gears up to remember and reflect with some of the bigger (and most intriguing) shows slated to run at blockbuster institutions like the Met, MoMA PS1 and the New Museum, as well as the opening of the Memorial Museum itself at the World Trade Center site on September 12. This Wednesday, I attended a small and intimate show at 7 World Trade Center that was a bit of quiet before the storm
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If you had any question that the Metropolitan Museum was the reigning champion of museum attendance in the US, then their latest figures (5.68 million in FY 2011) should dispel any doubts.
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Whether sequestered behind glass in a museum or sold to tourists along Fifth Avenue, the African mask is an image from the non-Western world that we are all familiar with. Yet walking though the African art galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the other day, I felt somewhat disconnected from the African mask. Severed from its intended use for performance and ceremonies, the mask as it is presented in the museum becomes an ambiguous object. Does the mask still have relevance when removed from its cultural context? Can we appreciate it for just its form? Is it art or artifact?
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What becomes a legend most? How are those cultural superstars chosen, the ones whose very names invoke awe, wonder, or at least a gasp? Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, the comprehensive retrospective of the late designer’s ravishing raiment now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art certainly provides a clue. With an hour and a half wait to enter (on a good day), a de facto gala in his honor and almost unanimous praise from critics, the McQueen legend continues to thrive in the eerie, operatic halls of the exhibition space. He may have a spectacular artistic output, and he may have defined an era of rising fashion stars, but the question remains how his deification came to be, how he came to define 21st century fashion with a short, tragically romantic career.
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This week … why are the Coptic churches of Egypt burning, Paul Goldberger is cynical of Rem Koolhaas, video of Alexander McQueen at the Met, profile of Cory Arcangel, tour of the 2011 Contemporary Furniture Fair, want to live on a houseboat on the Gowanus, Luna Park’s Berlin pics, an interview with the Met Opera’s conductor and 8 NYers are suing Baidu for censorship.
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This week has been pretty huge for New York City’s museum community. Newly announced shake-ups mean that the Metropolitan Museum will be taking over the Whitney’s uptown Breuer building as the younger institution heads downtown to a new Renzo Piano-designed space. The Museum of Modern Art is buying the embattled American Folk Art Museum’s 10 year-old building down the block, a sale that has become necessary with the Folk Art Museum’s low admission sales and mounting debt, caused in part by the construction of the building. With all this property-buying and hotel museum-building, New York City has become a giant Monopoly board for art institutions. The question remains — who gets the railroads?
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A YouTube video narrated by the Metropolitan Museum’s associate curator Rebecca Rabinow gives us a quick primer on the Steins, starring Gertrude and Leo. Rabinow tells us the takeaway on one of art history’s greatest collecting families.
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In the mood for some museum news? You’re in luck, because the New York Times has more than you could EVER READ. Their annual special “Museums Section” was just published, and we sorted it for you. Check out a selected list of their stories here, plus stay tuned for an NYT Twitter chat this afternoon about museums and social media. [UPDATE] We have a collection of the best tweets from the #nytmuseums conversation in this liveblog.
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In another giant leap for art online, Google has released Art Project, a collaboration with a group of 17 international art museums, including New York’s own Metropolitan and Museum of Modern Art, to put their collections online. But this isn’t just a rehash of some online slideshow. Museums participating in Art Project can be digitally toured in two ways: as a Google Street View-style walking trip through the physical museum itself, as well as an artwork-by-artwork tour, with masterpieces of museum collections viewable in a slick image window. Here’s what Art Project does better than any other digital art viewer out there.
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For the first time in more than 25 years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will display five of its original Autochromes by Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz for one week only — January 25-30, 2011 — as part of the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand.
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