Marlo Pascual, a Philadelphia-based artist known for icy sculptural works that drew out piquant, deeply psychological narratives drawn from appropriated amateur photography, has died after a long battle with cancer. She was 48. Her New York dealer Casey Kaplan, whose gallery has represented the artist for a decade, confirmed the news. “Marlo’s work is defined by a ferocious curiosity and a distinct, sculptural approach to photography that will continue to influence the medium for generations to come,” Kaplan said in an email. “Beloved within the arts community, her generosity, warmth, and ingenuity defined her as an artist, professor, partner, and friend.” Related ArticlesPascual’s work had earned the attention of a set of artists for her photo-based work that often combined pictures sourced from eBay and vintage shops with objects such as plants and light bulbs. While her work is still not widely known outside New York, it has achieved cult status—in 2009, the year she had her first solo show, at New York’s Swiss Institute, she was named the year’s best emerging artist at Rob Pruitt’s Art Oscars awards ceremony. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1972, Pascual has been compared to a group of artists from that state who have risen to fame in the past decade and who have also used photographic imagery toward conceptual means, among them Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker. Unlike either of them, Pascual was quick to point out, she had actually studied photography as an art student, having gotten an M.F.A. from Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art. “I applied for photography. When I got there, I didn’t want to take photographs anymore,” she told W magazine in 2012. “But I had to take a painting class, and the first thing I did was pour paint over a photo.” She continued utilizing a similar approach throughout her too-short career by scanning and enlarging appropriated imagery, placing it under Plexiglass, and then manipulating it, lending the images a sculptural quality in the process. Seemingly informed by the Pictures Generation of the 1980s, which tested authorship through the appropriation of ready-made photography, Pascual creatively gave amateur pornography, pet photos, and headshots from the 1950s new life. In one work, she placed an blown-up old-school picture of a woman’s face in the crease between a gallery floor and its adjacent wall, and put a plant atop it; in another, she bisected a large print with a lighting structure, allowing the tube to rest against a rock. This mysterious approach blurs the line between picture’s taker and a picture taker like Pascual, imbuing these found images—few of which were originally intended to be art—with oblique narratives. “I’m not destroying them,” Pascual said of her appropriated photographs in the W interview. “I like to think I’m giving them a new life.” Powered by WPeMatico The post Marlo Pascual, Rising Art Star Inspired by Amateur Photography, Is Dead at 48 – ARTnews appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3bRzmms
0 Comments
Renato Danese Celebrated New York Gallerist and Ardent Supporter of Artists Is Dead at 76 ARTnews4/4/2020 Renato Danese, a New York dealer who passionately supported the artists with whom he worked, has died at 76 after a short battle with cancer. Carol Corey, who has run a New York gallery with Danese called Danese/Corey for more than two decades, confirmed his death. Danese’s career path was unusual for a gallerist, in that he had spent years in the museum world before moving into the market. Having held various positions at notable museums across the United States, Danese had a no-frills approach to working in galleries. In an interview with the Art Dealers Association of America, a consortium of galleries, he was asked what advice he might have for fellow gallerists. He responded, “Have an ethical compass. Make sure the artists are paid first. Work with them as partners and honor your commitment to them. Don’t use the term ‘stable.’ It’s demeaning.” Danese got his foot in the door of the museum world early on. After getting a graduate degree in art history from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., he took a curatorial position at the Washington Gallery of Art, where Walter Hopps, a former gallerist who was at the time one of the nation’s most well-respected curators, saw potential in him. (The museum closed in 1968.) After that, Danese became a curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 1978, Danese departed the institutional sphere for the market and didn’t look back. He briefly operated a branch of Light Gallery in Los Angeles, and two years later, he became a director at Pace Gallery, which is now one of the biggest enterprises of its kind in the world. From 1980 until 1995, he worked at that gallery, and then he was briefly a senior partner at C & M Arts. Danese carried with him an old-school mentality that artists and art mattered more than sales. In a 1999 article written on the occasion of Leo Castelli’s death, Danese praised the dealer for taking such a sustained interest in his artists. “Today there’s so much emphasis on competition and sales and the bottom line and the cost and overhead of running a gallery that those qualities sometimes can get lost,” he told the Baltimore Sun. In 1996, Danese formed his own eponymous gallery, which was at first located in New York’s Midtown neighborhood. In 2008, it moved to 24th Street in Chelsea and then, in 2013, relocated to its current location on 22nd Street, becoming Danese/Corey in recognition of the gallery’s director, Carol Corey, a partner in the business. (Danese had hired Corey away from the now-closed Knoedler Gallery, where she had been a vice president, in 1998, two years after his gallery’s founding.) Danese focused primarily on secondary-market work at first, but the gallery currently maintains a roster of living artists, among them Roz Chast and Deborah Butterfield. “Our job is to help develop the market,” Danese once said, speaking of his gallery’s work, “to do everything possible through the exhibition program to ensure that museums, collectors, and [the] press have an opportunity to recognize an artist’s achievements.” Powered by WPeMatico The post Renato Danese, Celebrated New York Gallerist and Ardent Supporter of Artists, Is Dead at 76 – ARTnews appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3c29aWn On Thursday afternoon, the Whitney Museum in New York informed staff that layoffs were imminent because of a budget crunch spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. The museum has since laid off 76 employees, most of whom had visitor services–related roles and would no longer be able to fulfill their duties during the shutdown. The announcement marks the first round of layoffs for one of New York’s major museums—and a sign that more reductions could be on the horizon as more than 6.6 million Americans file for employment this week. “Our internal discussions throughout have focused on two goals: taking care of as many of our staff as we can for as long as we can, since you are the lifeblood of this institution; and ensuring that the Whitney will be able to stand strong when this crisis ends,” said museum director Adam Weinberg in an email to employees. He added that the museum intends to rehire staff when it reopens. Weinberg said he expects a shortfall of revenue of at least $7 million by the end of this fiscal year, which will be compounded by the adverse impact Covid-19 has had on fundraising and the endowment, which is tied to the stock market. According to him, the Whitney does not anticipate reopening before July 1; the museum’s closure will have an impact on future budgeting, as well. Alongside visitor services staff, layoffs also included temporary employees from departments across the institution. The museum is offering five to six weeks’ pay, dating from its closure in mid-March for all staff who have been at the Whitney for two years or less. Health insurance for affected employees will continue through June 30. Senior staff, including Weinberg, will also be taking pay cuts. “These are painful difficult times,” Weinberg added at the end of his address. “I want you to know I am grateful to all of you for everything you have done.” After this article was published, another major New York institution, the New Museum, also announced widespread furloughs. Nearly one-third of its 150 staff members have been cut, resulting in 41 full- and part-time workers losing their jobs in every department. Senior staff have also taken salary cuts on a sliding scale from 10–20 percent, with the museum’s director, Lisa Phillips, taking a voluntary 30 percent reduction. The organization also said seven employees were laid-off because their programs were being discontinued or cut back. (A spokesman did not detail which specific programs had been affected.) For workers at the New Museum who had unionized at the cultural institution a little over a year ago, the announcement came as a disappointment. “The union is working to negotiate with the museum regarding the impact of these furloughs and layoffs on our members,” said Dana Kopel, a member of the union’s organizing committee. “At this time of incredible stress and uncertainty for all, we stand in solidarity with our members who have been subject to furloughs and layoffs.” The Whitney Museum and the New Museum join hundreds of other cultural institutions who are embracing cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, to save their organizations from bankruptcy during the coronavirus epidemic. Earlier this week, the Museum of Modern Art told its 85 freelance educators that they were out of a job with no further payments made past March 30. Many of those freelancers are artists who work between museums across the city to supplement their income. A few hours after Weinberg’s email, Whitney educators received an email from Heather Maxson, the museum’s director of school, youth, and family programs informing them that her department was planning on launching a new online teaching initiative in response to requests from New York school teachers, community partners, and senior centers. “The program will serve our community during the Covid-19 crisis and will enable you, our dedicated freelance team, to keep working, even though the museum is closed,” Maxson wrote. “We’re hoping to offer online programs from now through the end of the school year.” Details of the program are still being worked out, but the news was welcome for many artist-educators who have lost their entire livelihoods over the last month. “This is very positive given that MoMA terminated the contracts of all educators on Monday,” said one freelancer who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. “The Whitney is sending a powerful message to other museums.” Powered by WPeMatico The post Expecting $7 M. Shortfall, New York’s Whitney Museum Lays Off 76 Employees – ARTnews appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/2V44Iz9 For some years Sean Scully has been making what he calls Landlines, a recent development of his painting that grew out of living in the countryside. One model for their stacked horizontal brushstrokes is his photographs, which show land, sea, and sky in parallel bands. Another surely is his recent sculpture — columns of steel, frame-like shapes, which open up a space within the artwork. In “China Piled-Up” (2014), for example, there is a three-dimensional black latticework, visually like that in his early paintings, composed of stacked steel rectangles. In the Landlines, we find neither the conflicts that began in his 1970s art and came to the fore in the 1980s. Nor do we see the ideal harmony of the 1990s Walls of Light. Instead, the Landlines are Scully’s landscape paintings, showing the shore, the water, and the sky in varied colors. We see the world as it is, but presented abstractly. A new painting, “Black Square” (2020), consists, on first glance, of a Landline with a large square inserted into its lower center. But there’s more to this work, which is a little complicated. In the context of Scully’s career, adding this square constitutes a richly suggestive development. Windows in figurative pictures can open up the depicted room to the out of doors. Caspar David Friedrich shows figures looking out of opened windows, dramatically extending the confined interior space. Scully’s earliest grids from the late 1970s employ narrow horizontal stripes. Then in the 1980s, the windows he inserted in his paintings broke up the otherwise relentless fields of stripes, opening up those pictures abstractly. Now, however, his solid black window has a distinctly different spiritual significance. “Black Square” deserves comparison with Henri Matisse’s famously enigmatic “French-Window at Collioure” (1914), with a window apparently opening onto a pit-black night. When a few years later, Matisse showed some recent works, though not that one, to the aged Jean Renoir, the older artist was shocked by some black “which stayed in place when it ought by Impressionist rules to have disrupted the whole composition.” (Hilary Spurling, Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, Knopf, 2005, page 219). Who knows what he would have made of “French Window.” Black may seem a limited color. But as comparing Franz Kline’s purely black-on-white paintings with his mostly lesser-quality works using color reveals, art sometimes gains from self-imposed limitations. The same is true of Frank Stella’s early black striped paintings. And in the 1950s, the philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto, who much later became Scully’s frequent commentator, made figurative black woodcuts, like “Two Saints and a Martyr” (1955). When I taught in Beijing, I became fascinated with the famous Chinese modernist Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010), who often used black expressively. None of these artworks would have remotely the same expressive effect if executed in other colors. A square in black can also seem a limited format. Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square” (1915), as shown in The Last Futurist Exhibition 0.10 (1915-1916), proposed to end art’s history, as, in a different way, did Ad Reinhardt with his many late, very dark, not quite monochromatic rectangular paintings. When, in a painting, a rectangle’s long side is parallel to the picture bottom, we read it as a stable element. But when, conversely, that rectangle’s short side is in that position, it may appear unstable. Peter Halley often makes use of this dynamic option. A square, by contrast, is essentially ambiguous. How varied are Josef Albers’s Homages to the Square! Unlike a rectangle, a square is unchangeable. Rotate it and it remains the same. It shows what is rather than what might be, and in this sense, it presents absolute negation. By inserting a crisp black square into a set of luminously colored, brushy horizontal bands, Scully is blocking out the romantic connotations of both the landscape and the brushstroke, while at the same time, short-circuiting the nihilistic visions of the end of art’s history that would be fomented by a black square in isolation. Belief versus disbelief are compressed here together. By contrast, for all of his importance for Scully, when Piet Mondrian uses black lines to divide the blue, red, and yellow rectangles, he is a utopian visual thinker, which is why a pure black square is, at least within Mondrian’s mature style, inconceivable. The creator of Krazy Kat, George Herriman (1880–1944), who loved nighttime, often used large, flat fields of black in his comic strips. Black is an end point, the definitive mark of resolution — the color of death. And so it’s the absolutely appropriate color of Francisco Goya’s late ‘black paintings.’ Or, alternatively, black is the color of absolute beginning, the moment before God said, ‘let there be light.’ These associations of expressive qualities with the color black may seem to be cultural conventions. Certainly the politics of the relationship between black pigment and bleak subjects are complex, as a recent visionary exhibition at Columbia University, The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today (2019) effectively demonstrated. (See my review, “Deconstructing Race in Western Painting.”) Meyer Schapiro observed that in China, white, not black, is the color associated with funerals. I would love to know the artistic consequences of this belief. For obvious reasons, it’s hard, if not impossible, to identify many black-all-over figurative works. I would love to discover that some Old Master painted a joke picture, maybe, “Two Saints in the Basement with the Lights Out.” But it’s important here not to respond to Scully’s “Black Square” just in overly solemn ways. When you hear the Rolling Stones sing “Paint It Black” you don’t need a musicologist’s analysis to understand the emotions conveyed. And when you see Robert Rauschenberg’s “Untitled (Glossy Black Painting)” (1951), you don’t need to read a treatise on monochromatic painting to understand, at least in a general way, its place in art’s history. Scully’s art involves what might be called a translation of the color, composition, and themes of Old Master and modernist figurative art. Just as a translator takes literature from one language into another by finding correspondents for the original phrases, so Scully finds equivalents for the features of prior art within his inherently abstract way of working. These correspondences between his pictures and the older works he admires make his abstractions aesthetically and spiritually more significant — becoming something other, something much more than merely attractive color compositions. “Black Square” is an appropriate response to springtime 2020 because it offers abstractly a deeply felt response to our present ways of living. In discussing some of my responses — some perhaps oddly subjective, a few guided by his suggestions — I do not mean to cut off other ways of thinking. The essential generosity of Scully’s art lies, so I believe, in its openness. And like his best works, “Black Square” is oddly exhilarating even though (or, especially because) it is initially grim. A successful artist, it has been said, is someone who makes other people also creative. You need to learn to trust the ways Scully sets your mind in motion. Note: The style of this analysis owes a debt to Joseph Masheck’s ‘iconicity’ essays published in Artforum 40-some years ago. Masheck was an important early commentator on Scully. Powered by WPeMatico The post When a Square Is Not Just a Square appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3aJvrI6 When I was 20, I spent seven months in double traction in a hospital room overlooking a parking lot in Rhinebeck, New York, and got a lot of reading done, including all of the Agatha Christie novels the hospital cart had to offer. It was far better than watching daytime television. A few years ago, before lockdowns and social distancing, I had both knees replaced exactly three months apart, a year after I had two vertebrae fused in my neck. Over the course of this two-year period, I spent a lot of time limited to my apartment and the sidewalk in front of the building where I live. One of my favorite books during this time was Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands: 50 Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will by Judith Schalansky. In fact, even though I have since gone months without opening this book and reading one of its short, precise entries, the Pocket Atlas, with its bright orange cover, has never left my desk. In addition to its evocative entries, few longer than a page, Schalansky’s book contains 50 maps; each one shows a gray, detailed piece of land plunked down into a sea of flat blue, presumably miles from John Donne claimed, “No man is an island.” Perhaps he was wrong. The entry for the island of Rapa Iti begins:
One exhibition that I was looking forward to seeing this month was 25 years 12 works 5 poems: A Solo Exhibition of Greg Colson, which Thomas Park Gallery was going to open at a new location, having closed its former space at 195 Chrystie Street. According to the gallery press release, the delayed exhibition will be “held in convergence with the book, Five Poems to be published by Little Steidl.” Five Poems — a slipcased, five-part artist’s book, the first full-scale monograph on Colson that I know of — would be a welcome addition to my library. Curious about what was going to be in the exhibition, even as I realized it was going to be some time before I saw any of the works in person, I asked the gallery send images to me. I was immediately struck by a linear wall piece, “MARFA” (2014, enamel, acrylic, pencil, ink on wood, metal, plastic. 52 by 64 by 3 inches). When I was looking at Colson’s piece, ostensibly an oversized street map, I began thinking about the Texas town of Marfa, where I have never been, even though I have an open invitation from the Lannan Foundation to write in a house they would provide for me for up to six weeks. Although I have no real sense of how big or small the town actually is — is its population 500 or 5,000? — in my mind, Marfa is big because Donald Judd lived there from 1979 until his death in 1994. He acquired a compound of decommissioned military buildings there, and, over time, transformed the campus into the Chinati Foundation, a museum of both his work and artists whose work he owned. I don’t know how many buildings he bought. Other than the Lannan Foundation residency, the reason that I would go to Marfa is to see the work of John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Richard Long, John Wesley, and other artists carefully and thoughtfully installed in open, airy, light-filled, spaces. I like the idea that Judd took over military buildings and repurposed them to exhibit art. The 798 Art District in Beijing is another place that repurposed former military facilities. Built in 1954, many of the buildings were designed by the East Germans, who derived their ideas from the Bauhaus: large open structures with lots of natural daylight. Odd to think that military architects would interested in natural light, but that seems to be the case. Colson’s “MARFA” is made of metal and wood strips, brackets, bolts, and a pool cue. On each of the strips we read a street name, nothing more. The spaces between the streets are empty, so that the wall is visible behind the skeletal structure. It is likely that he first made a drawing for it. Colson gives you no sense of the town’s topography, nor do the empty spaces between the metal and wood strips offer a clue about what the buildings lining the town’s streets look like. The street names seem to come from different sources and they don’t quite add up. What do “Philadelphia,” “Madrid,” “Dean,” and “Waco” have to do with each other? Streets run parallel to each other, and go off on an angle. We learn a lot about we don’t know while looking at “MARFA,” and I think that is one of Colson’s points. All of this leaves a lot of space for the viewer to move around in, to dream and remember. With “San Antonio Street,” one of the town’s main thoroughfares, inscribed on its shaft, the pool cue helps push my imagination. I imagine that every town in America the size of Marfa has a pool hall, perhaps more than one. There were pool tables in the Grange Hall in Missoula, Montana, the night I went there and listened to a local band. Colson’s “MARFA” is a sculptural drawing made with straight sections that are bolted and bracketed together. The joining together of cut pieces of metal and wood by unpainted bolts echoes Judd’s combinations of fabricated boxes, especially the ones he did after a 1983 trip to Switzerland, where he learned about a small company that used coats of pigmented powder, instead of paint, to color sheets of aluminum. There is something very American and New World about Colson’s “MARFA.” This is not an Old World or European-style map. This is what I find captivating about Colson’s deadpan work: he reveals something about the way we live — through a map, a pie chart, or the silhouette of a piece of machinery — that makes me curious to know more about the subjects he chooses, while underscoring how little I might actually notice about the world we commonly share, its constant parade of signs. There is no indication of the town’s history, no designated landmarks, and nothing to suggest where Marfa is located in the state of Texas. It is a street map in the purest sense, and highly impractical. It reminds me of color-coded subway maps of Berlin, Beijing, Paris, and New York City. A dark green metal strip, made of two sections bolted together to form a widely opened V, reads on both sections, “BNSF RAILWAY,” with “SUNSET LIMITED” just beneath it. One green section extends the furthest out from the others, moving left or what I am inclined to read as West, while the green section bolted to its right end spans the entire map. Not surprisingly, I am reminded of the railroad tracks that ran through Missoula, spanning the city. It appears that Marfa has no curving streets, only straight lines aimed toward the horizon or whatever is out there beyond the town limits. Is their straightness a sign of American efficiency? Where do they all go? Do any of the actual roads end in the middle of nowhere, like they do in a Guhan Wilson cartoon? We have such faith in maps. Once, while driving in Providence, Rhode Island, the GPS didn’t show me the bridge that I was crossing, only the river underneath. Why is Madrid Street, which is near the bottom of “MARFA,” one of three streets (Philadelphia and Washington, both short streets, are the other two) that run parallel to the floor and ceiling, while all the others are at a diagonal? It is hard not to think of the one-paragraph story, “On Exactitude in Science” (1946), by Jorge Luis Borges. In this parable, which is a fictional quotation from an imagined text, Borges imagines a science of cartography that is so exact that it requires a 1 to 1 scale. The map becomes the landscape it is referring to. Colson does the opposite. He frames off areas of empty space and tells us nothing about what occupies them. Where are the buildings? Is there a gathering place for the community, like the Grange Hall in Missoula? With its citation of a railroad, Colson’s map reminds me that we inhabit a circulatory system where things originate, or are delivered, or just pass through. When were the buildings that we don’t see, but know are there, built? Where are City Hall, the town library, the police station, and courthouse? Are they close together? Who were the architects? What about the sanitation department? Where does the town’s water come from? Which families got rich in Marfa, and which lost everything? Are their heirs still living in town? How many churches are there? And what temples, synagogues, or mosques? As the questions pile up, I realize that Colson’s “MARFA” makes me long to go there. Powered by WPeMatico The post Ways of Traveling appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3dWMGYe Join us and become a Hyperallergic Member! Powered by WPeMatico The post Don’t Let Me Be a Lonely Sad Artist appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3bOSBg7 Over a year ago, before COVID-19 changed our lives and took hold of our collective psyche, independent curator and activist Amy Kisch was commissioned by San Francisco’s Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs (OCEIA) to develop an arts-driven campaign to mobilize communities around the 2020 Census. Understanding that the Census determines the distribution of federal money and political power across the US, Kisch, together with Amy Schoening and Brittany Ficken, formed Art+Action, the first-ever coalition for civic participation across art, creative, community, business, technology, philanthropy, activist, and government sectors. Harnessing the power of over 40 artists — including Emory Douglas, Andrew Li, Hung Liu, George McCalman, Masako Miki, Joel Daniel Philips, Clare Rojas, Stephanie Syjuco, Sanctuary City Project, Ana Teresa Fernández, and Arleene Correa Valencia — 90 trusted community partners (including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), Art+Action’s headquarters and Lead Partner), and a host of creative collaborators, they launched Come to Your Census, a large-scale multilingual public media and programming campaign to galvanize communities — particularly those that are vulnerable and hardest to count — to claim their fair share of resources and political representation by participating in the 2020 Census. Now, against the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis, Art+Action is moving its outdoor festivals, public panels, and exhibitions online to continue to motivate communities to complete the 2020 Census — which is currently live — and provides funding for a multitude of essential services. The Census supplies funding for the community programs many of us rely upon under normal circumstances. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear that completing the Census is more vital now than ever as the count determines funds for public health coverage (Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program) and healthcare (through grants to hospitals and clinics), as well as food assistance like WIC, SNAP, and school lunch programs — which many school districts are making available to families through pick-up sites so students don’t go hungry during school closures. In the face of overwhelming isolation and powerlessness, Art+Action is offering tools to urge communities to claim their fair share by filling out their 2020 Census, which closes on August 14. Through weekly emails highlighting digital experiences and commissioned artwork — some of which is available for free in their digital toolkit (featuring posters, factsheets, children’s materials, etc.) — Art+Action is harnessing the role of the artist as a first responder to ensure we advocate for our collective future. To access the Census Toolkit and learn more about Art+Action, visit cometoyourcensus.us/toolkit. Powered by WPeMatico The post Come to Your Census: The 2020 Census Is an Essential Service appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3dOh2fB Cases of COVID-19 are on the rise across the US and much of the world, so Hyperallergic’s news team gathered together for week 3 of our special podcast series to discuss what’s happening at art museums, art schools, and other hubs of the art community during the coronavirus pandemic. I’m joined by Hyperallergic’s news editor Jasmine Weber in Los Angeles, and reporters Valentina di Liscia in Miami and Hakim Bishara in Brooklyn to reflect on the week that was and what we anticipate ahead. Thanks to Kicholas Nage for allowing us to use his new song “Rona” this episode. You can check it out on YouTube. Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s Podcast on iTunes, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Powered by WPeMatico The post Hyperallergic Discusses Pandemic’s Effects on Museums and Art Schools appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/2R6W4Pg A sleuth of black bears has occupied the premises of Dia:Beacon in New York’s Hudson Valley, local police said. Park rangers spotted the bears loitering in Dia’s galleries and gardens yesterday, March 31, as the museum remains closed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “We’ve identified about 16 black bears in and around the building,” park ranger Christopher Robin told Hyperallergic. “We’re trying to carefully evacuate them from the area.” Robin added that the bears, some more than six-feet-tall, were seen grazing on the grass and bushes of the museum’s famous Robert Irwin gardens. Their cubs were found frolicking around sculptures by Richard Serra and Donald Judd. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” the ranger said. “Wildlife is staking its claim in our absence.” Black bears are native to the region surrounding Beacon in upstate New York. Although they are perceived as dangerous, they are in fact discreet animals that tend to avoid human contact. Black bears are omnivores and largely consume grass, berries, fruit, and insects. But they will also eat human food like seeds, honey, and corn. “If you see a bear, stay clear of it and don’t leave any food behind,” Robin instructed. “But if it attacks you for some reason, try to scare it off by carrying a big stick and shouting loudly at it,” he said, adding that black bears are meek in comparison to the more aggressive brown bears. In the case of encountering a brown bear, the best strategy is to “play dead,” according to Robin. “Whatever you do, don’t run!” he urged. Meanwhile, the bear invasion might cause an insurance nightmare for the Dia Art Foundation. “So far, the bears seem to have been respectful of the art,” a spokesperson for the foundation told Hyperallergic in an email. “We are working closely with the police and local park authorities to reclaim the building without causing harm to the animals.” This is not the first time black bears have been spotted in residential areas in the Hudson Valley. Back in January, locals reported that they’ve seen bears at their front door. Similar incidents have occurred throughout the years. “There’s no reason to panic over this, we a bigger fish to fry these days,” Robin assured Hyperallergic. “Folks should take this as just another reminder to stay home.” Powered by WPeMatico The post Black Bears Reclaim Dia:Beacon During COVID-19 Closure appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3bIuAr6 National Endowment for the Arts Chair Mary Anne Carter has just announced that, in an unprecedented move, the US government will be launching and operating its own dedicated entertainment streaming platform, Bigly. With the market already crowded by titans like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and more, Carter noted that the name had been chosen and insisted upon by President Trump to “make it stand out.” “We are proud to be offering some of the most cutting-edge content that the terrifically charismatic members of our government can produce,” the press release explained. “Bigly aims to disrupt and radically transform the traditional means of communicating official US political information, both historical and contemporary. Operating under the advice of multiple former executives of such streaming luminaries as Yahoo! Screen, FilmStruck, Seeso, Jebba, Florkt, Stonk, Broöo, Yxudlsi, and Quibi, we are going to be making our rich archive of premium-optimized content available to all.” This archive of content includes a rich backlog of film material not previously accessible to the public. This includes many hours of behind-the-scenes CSPAN footage, the full, previously covered up version of the infamous Zapruder Film (in which the second gunman on the grassy knoll can be seen), deleted segments from Richard Nixon’s White House audio recordings, and the much-hyped secret Russian recording of Donald Trump and several sex workers engaging in “golden shower” play in a Moscow hotel room in 2013. The “Pee Tape,” as it’s more commonly known, is one of several titles that will only be available to stream via Bigly’s premium “Gold” subscription tier. The administration will also be funneling over $300 million into the production of original content, including a blockbuster action film starring Eric and Donald Trump Jr., a reality dating series focusing on White House staffers, a live Minecraft streaming show hosted by Barron Trump, and more. So keep an eye out for Bigly, coming soon! (As we all know, we simply haven’t been exposed to enough media by and about this administration.) Powered by WPeMatico The post US Government Launches a New “Golden” Streaming Platform, Bigly appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3dL1w4b |
ArchivesCategories |