Art

  • The Horticultural Society of New York gets hip

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    Wow! Check out the upcoming schedule for the new location of their gallery on West 37th Street of The Horticultural Society of New York.

    January 30 – March 9, 2007
    Opens January 30, 6-8pm
    Rowena Dring and Jude Miller, The Artificial Kingdom
    Co-curated by Jodie Vicenta Jacobson and Joseph Wolin

    March 23 – June 8, 2007
    James Welling, New Work
    In conjunction with a concurrent exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery, New York

    June 21 – September 7, 2007
    Peter Coffin, Tree Pants

    March – May, 2008
    Paul Morrison
    In conjunction with a concurrent exhibition at Cheim & Read, New York

    The Horticultural Society of New York
    148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
    New York, NY 10018-6909
    Tel: (212) 757-0915

    [photo from the Society’s website]

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  • New loan fund for arts organizations

    Again from newyorkbusiness.com…

    NYC Investment Fund offers arts loans

    The New York City Investment Fund, an affiliate of the Partnership for New York City, said Monday that it has teamed up with the state Arts Council to launch a new $2 million loan program.

    The initiative — dubbed the Arts Entrepreneurial Loan Fund — aims to fund arts and nonprofit groups, including dance troupes, art, music and theater groups and other art-related programs, throughout the five boroughs.

    The loans, which will range from $25,000 to $500,000, will provide funding aimed at lowering the nonprofit’s overhead.

    “Arts groups frequently contribute to revitalization of the city’s most blighted neighborhoods, but this sector is threatened by rising costs and growing competition for scarce philanthropic dollars,” said Maria Gotsch, co-chief executive and co-president of the $100 million New York City Investment Fund.

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  • NYC art fairs seeking PR help from city

    From today’s newyorkbusiness.com:

    Art fairs seek more city marketing aid

    Some organizers of the upcoming art fairs running Feb. 22-26 say the city could do more to promote the event.

    The two main fairs, The Art Show and The Armory Show, recently scheduled their events at the same time, in an effort to create a major art week in the city. A number of smaller fairs will take place as well. Executives at the Art Show are trying to get Mayor Bloomberg to open their show at the very least.

    “In the art world, things are more event driven then ever before and New York needs to be promoted now that we have so much competition from London and Miami and Switzerland,” says Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Show. “It’s really important that the city take on ownership of this.”

    The city did help The Armory Show secure its new venue at Pier 94 for that week. And NYC & Co. banners advertising The Armory Show and a smaller fair called Scope, will go up this week.

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  • Michael Rakowitz at Lombard-Freid Projects

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    Michael Rakowitz
    Headless Male Figure (Kh. IV 112) (Recovered, Missing, Stolen Series), 2007
    middle eastern packaging and newspapers, glue
    9.65 × 4.72 × 2.76 inches

     

    Michael Rakowitz’s latest show, at Lombard-Freid Projects, deals with the destruction of Iraq’s cultural treasures. Part of the project is an attempt to reconstruct the archaeological artifacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq in the aftermath of the American invasion in April 2003. They are made from Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic newspapers found in Arab communities in America, I believe primarily in New York and Chicago.

    It also has information about the story of Donny George, the former Director General of the Museum. New York Magazine has a profile of him in the latest issue. He now lives on Long Island and teaches at Stony Brook. He moved after his children received death threats. Two of his children, Marian, 21, a medical student, and Steven, 23, a computer scientist, are in Damascus, as the US government wouldn’t give them papers to come to America.

    The University of Chicago has more information including a complete database of the Museum’s holdings before 2003.

    I first heard of Michael Rakowitz via his paraSITE project for providing temporary shelter for homeless people.

    [photo from the gallery’s website

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  • Official portraits

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    Chancellor Schröder’s portrait by Jörg Immendorff

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    Bill Clinton’s portrait by Simmie Knox

    I think we can argue that the Germans are a bit more adventurous when it comes to official portraits. Chancellor Schröder’s portrait is by Jörg Immendorff. This English translation of an article from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung describes it.

    Niklas Maak has had a look at at Jörg Immendorff’s official portrait of ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The portrait, executed by the ailing artist with the help of assistants (see our features on Immendorff here and here), has Schröder looking gold-plated: “Never has a chancellor’s portrait looked so emperor-like, so Bismarckian, and immensely powerful as in Immendorff’s Schröder. Schröder issued in new policies and new images, the portrait announces, showing not the man but the icon, the iron media chancellor, the ruler transformed as image. Yet the picture has some peculiar elements and an unparalleled iconographic programme, as if Schröder’s chancellorship needed explaning. A horde of monkeys cavort round his shoulders. Immendorff says he painted them as an homage to the chancellor, who ‘did a lot for artists.’”

    [Schröder image from faz.net and Clinton image from simmieknox.com

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  • JT Kirkland, “All’s Fair”

     

    JT Kirkland of the Thinking About Art blog is having a guerrilla art show in his hotel room in NYC for three days. The last session is tonight, 7:30-9:30, so email him at jtkirkland@gmail.com if you’re interested in visiting.

    Go here if you have trouble with the slide show above.

    See also: James

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  • “The Next Hour” on WBAI

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    Kate Valk looking at art, photo by Andrew Andrew

     

    James and I ran into Kate Valk of The Wooster Group at the Isidro Blasco opening at DKCT Contemporary last Saturday. We hadn’t realized that she does a radio show called “The Next Hour” on WBAI with Andrew Andrew. They were accompanied by our friend Eric Doeringer and had spent the day look at Chelsea art shows. The show is archived for easy listening, and it’s a lot of fun. Go here and scroll down to January 7, or just use this link to stream it. The recording times are a a little off, so skip about 2 minutes and 50 seconds to get to the beginning.

    You can see Kate, one of the most brilliant performers I have ever seen, in The Wooster Group’s “Hamlet” in DUMBO at St. Ann’s Warehouse beginning February 27. Buy your tickets now, as it will definitely sell out.

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  • Mark Creegan interview / other updates

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    Mark Creegan, Download Smurfette (detail), 2006

     

    Mark Creegan (an ArtCat artist) is the latest entry in J.T. Kirkland’s artist interview series. He was interviewed by Zachary Stadel. Mark (as part of a collective) is in the show that opens Friday at 3rd Ward. [different Mark it turns out]

    In other ArtCat artist news:

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  • Mixing art and politics

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    The website Daily Kos is one of the most influential political blogs / communities on the ‘net. Their second convention, called YearlyKos will take place in Chicago August 2-5, 2007.

    There is a new way for artists to get involved with this year’s convention.

    Calling all artists, poets, performers, musicians and art lovers at DailyKos to check a new Yahoo group, ArtKos, which has been formed to develop and plan some arts and politics related activities and events for this year’s Ykos in Chicago. The idea was spawned recently in KingOneEye’s diary Join the Art Insurgency This groupsite is also a place to make connections, share art related political news, events, exhibitions, websites, and whatever strikes people’s interest, not to mention discussion and inspiration!  This group and our plans are not officially affiliated with or endorsed by the Ykos organization, though they have been informed of our existence and our ideas.

    [image from Join the Art Insurgency]

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  • “Attic” at Anton Kern annex on 21st Street

    This was one of my favorite shows in December. It’s closed now, but here is a slideshow with some not-so-great images of Kate Levant’s work along with some installation shots. We met Kate when she came to Dam Stuhltrager to help Jacques Louis Vidal install his big lightbox for our show. The one up in the ceiling by the fluorescent light had a sound component too.

    The other artists in the show were Brian Clifton, Jeffrey P. Porterfield, Joshua Smith, Mike Smith and Ned Vena.

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