The death of Kim Jong Il has reinforced the feeling that North Korea may just be one of the most remote places on earth, yet it is a distance not based on geography but psychology. Looking at the retro-seeming images from this faraway land makes me think its population of 24 million has been trapped in amber for decades.
The Carl Beam retrospective now at the National Museum of the American Indian Heye Center in Lower Manhattan could be a response to the museum itself. Located in the imposing Alexander Hamilton US Custom House, a monolithic reminder that New York City was originally built on European immigration, the museum presents artifacts and art by North America’s first people. Beam’s work likewise was always aimed at juxtaposing the modern culture of North America, a transformation of the country that he marked with the arrival of Columbus, with the traditional imagery of the American Indians. Neither the museum nor the influential Canadian artist’s work offers much harmony between these two clashing worlds, but in the resulting collage of Beam’s work is an engaging sort of turbulence.
This week’s Required Reading … Banksy on UK phone-tapping scandal, Hirst-a-palooza at Gagosian Galleries worldwide, affordable Warhols, what do you do with a stolen art work, Sam Maloof, Hans Hoffmann as art teacher, how the “Mona Lisa”‘s became famous and the problem with “minorities.”
A few weeks ago, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA), debuted a new television series. I reviewed the debut of MoCADA TV but Hyperallergic’s editor and I continually had a back-and-forth about the usefulness of TV as a medium, and the fact that this pioneering move on part of the museum could open a lot of new discussions.
With all of these dialogues lingering, I caught up with Kalia Brooks, director of exhibitions at MoCADA, to get a better idea of the series’ aims.
When Apartheid was abolished in 1991, probably the worst thing to be symbolically in South Africa at the time was a white male, as it embodied everything associated with being the oppressor. With the abolishment of Apartheid came a number of important more subtle shifts.
There’s a lot of art news coming out of Milwaukee this week and all of it makes some of us wondering what the hell is happening in the city we normally associate with Laverne & Shirley and bratwurst. First, the director of Milwaukee Art Museum made silly comments that museums should not be political and now the union-busting Republican governor of the Wisconsin has removed a very multicultural painting by local artist David Lenz from a prominent place in the governor’s mansion.
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.
The Brooklyn Museum has an extensive collection of Spanish Colonial painting, but the institution’s relatively new curator of European art Richard Aste knew the museum lacked the same depth in their British colonial works. Recently, Brooklyn’s premiere fine art institution announced the acquisition of a new work by Agostino Brunias, “Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants in a Landscape” (ca. 1764-1796), which will partially fill that gap but there is something else about the painting that makes it interesting to the contemporary viewer, namely its multicultural subjects.
Al-Jazeera reports that the once vibrant center of Jewish life in Beirut, Lebanon, and the city’s largest and oldest surving synagogue, Magen Abraham is being restored by private donations, including from local Muslims.
Molly Norris has been told by the FBI that she needs to change her name and go into hiding because of a cartoon she drew making fun of Comedy Central for censoring South Park. I don’t know what to do about it, but I’m not going to respond by making a cartoon ridiculing Muslims. Maybe I’ll ridicule terrorists and their sponsors, but they just don’t listen to me. Back in May, Hrag wrote about Molly Norris and the stir it caused. I see I clicked Like, and its a good article, but I remember being bothered by Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, and not wanting to participate in it.
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