young curators speak

New curators with eclectic backgrounds are helping to define how art is viewed by the next generation of museumgoers. All still in their 30s, four from top New York City institutions talk about their jobs.

From the NYTimes

twombly decorates the louvre

"The Louvre's ceilings already abound with decorative paintings: There are plenty of frolicking maidens, epic battles and racing chariots, not to mention cherubs holding cornucopias.

American contemporary artist Cy Twombly had something different in mind — something simple.

Twombly, the first artist given the honor of decorating a Louvre ceiling since Georges Braque in the 1950s, came up with a geometric design — a deep blue background punctuated with floating disks and emblazoned with the names of sculptors from ancient Greece.

The 400-square-meter (4,300-square-foot) ceiling, inaugurated Tuesday, floats over a gallery of antique bronzes like a deep blue sky. It opens up the long gallery but doesn't overpower it, as was Twombly's intent."

Angela Doland for the Associated Press

See the rest of the article: US artist Cy Twombly creates ceiling for Louvre

See more of Twombly's work here

mona hatoum wins

"Sophie Calle and Mona Hatoum have been recognized for their work with awards. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, Calle has won the Swedish Hasselblad Prize for Photography for 2010 from the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, while Hatoum was awarded the German Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis for 2010 from Berlin’s Akademie der Künste...

In Hatoum’s case, the jurors lauded the centrality of the “human body caught between violence, power, and fragility” in her work. Hatoum, who was born in Lebanon in 1952, moved to London in 1975 and now divides her time between London and Berlin. The Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis is endowed with $16,800."

From Artforum

philagrafika 2010

Oscar Munoz

Gunilla Klingberg

Art Hazelwood

Philagrafika 2010 is the first presentation of what will become a recurring event in Philadelphia, celebrating the role of print in contemporary artistic practice.

The Philagrafika 2010 festival contends that the printed image lies at the heart of contemporary art. Concepts of imprinting, multiplicity, reproduction, and seriality, as well as physically printed forms are frequently used by artists who do not think of themselves as printmakers. As artistic vocabularies have expanded and mixing media has become commonplace, artists have increasingly drawn from inherent characteristics of the print to achieve specific aesthetic and expressive goals.

See more here: Philagrafika 2010

what is a print?

A good interactive site if you're interested in learning about the history and processes of lithography, woodcut, etching, and screenprinting. Gotta love MOMA.

biennial on a budget: the whitney biennial

At a Biennial on a Budget, Tweaking and Provoking

by, Holland Cotter, New York Times

"In what felt like a pre-emptive effort at damage control, the Whitney Museum of American Art
did everything to underpitch its 2010 Biennial. With 55 artists, we were advised, it would be half the size of the 2006 show. Unlike the 2008 version, which spilled over into the Park Avenue Armory, this one would be confined to the museum’s premises. No frills. Tight belts. We’re doing our best. Don’t shoot.

The show lives up — or down — to its billing.

It has no theme; its catalog is slight; its installation, spartan.

Spectacle is out. Much of what’s in is quiet and hermetic to the point of initially looking blank. The prevailing aesthetic is the art of the tweak, minute variations on conventional forms and historical styles: abstract paintings stitched like quilts, performance pieces channeling the 1960s, and so on.

But if the museum gets full points for truth in advertising, it can also claim credit for a solid and considered product. The show has dead spots, mainly where it reflects the retrenched art-about-art spirit of the day. But it also has strong work (particularly in video) that speaks of life beyond the art factory."

See the rest of the article here: At a Biennial on a Budget, Tweaking and Provoking

See more photos of the Whitney Biennial here: Whitney Biennial 2010

reimagining the guggenheim

Saunders Architecture for "Contemplating the Void"

Contemplating the Void: An Exhibition Re-Imagines the Guggenheim Museum

By, Roberta Smith, New York Times

"The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is capping the 50th birthday festivities for its Frank Lloyd Wright building with some navel gazing. Still, there are worse navels to consider. Wright’s spiral rotunda, in fact, could be thought of as the greatest belly button in modern architecture: an innie and an outie all in one.

The rotunda is the inspiration for a frolicking, mostly feel-good show called “Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum,” for which more than 200 artists, architects and designers were invited to redesign or repurpose the space."

Read the rest of the article here: Contemplating the Void

See what heavy hitters such as Zaha Hadid and Anish Kapoor imagined for the void a.k.a. the Guggenheim's belly button here: The Void