Author Archives: roberta

Enrique Chagoya’s The Headache – Gone from Rosenbach, now at The Print Center

By roberta | March 11, 2010 | 1 Comment

Enrique Chagoya spent months working with Cindy Etinger’s studio and Silicon Fine Art Prints to make “The Headache,” a complicated multi-process digital print which is part of the Philagrafika festival. Chagoya’s print — a social commentary about President Obama and his health care headaches — is based on a work owned by the Rosenbach [...]

Read More »
Weekly Update – Let’s have a Philadelphia Biennial

By roberta | March 10, 2010 | 22 Comments

Now in its 75th year, the Whitney Biennial is still the big kahuna—the show every American artist wants to be in and every art lover wants to see. This year, the career-boosting show includes no Philadelphia artists. Instead, the curators of this national show sought talent in Chicago, Oregon, Los Angeles and, of course, New [...]

Read More »
Whitney Biennial – noisy, quiet, beautiful, ugly

By roberta | March 7, 2010 | 1 Comment

Now in its 75th go-round, The Whitney Biennial is still the big kahuna, the show every American artist wants to be in and every art lover wants to see. This year the career-boosting show includes no Philadelphia artist.   We had representation in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008 — so much for that trend.  Instead, [...]

Read More »
First Friday roundup of a few good shows

By roberta | March 3, 2010 | 0 Comments

Here’s my pick for First Friday.  See more picks at the Weekly here.
“Dead Flowers”
Sixties underground film icon Tim Carey rocketed to fame with his ability to portray crazy. His brief moments on screen opposite Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James Dean in East of Eden made him a legendary Hollywood ham. Generally, though, [...]

Read More »
Tino Sehgal interviewed on Studio 360

By roberta | February 26, 2010 | 2 Comments

Hear artist Tino Sehgal talk with Kurt Anderson on Studio 360. Sehgal’s ephemeral performance, “This Progress,” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York asks a visitor to climb the ramp and stop along the way for conversations about progress. Four conversations occur — with  a child, a young adult, an adult and a senior [...]

Read More »
Memoirs of an arty nature

By roberta | February 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

We live at a time of unprecedented memoir-izing where people tell all, or as much as they want to reveal (often lots more than a reader wants to know).  Here are two memoirs that have either direct or indirect relationships with the art world.

Read More »
Whitney Biennial today

By roberta | February 23, 2010 | 0 Comments

Hi everybody, we’re off to New York today to the press preview of the Whitney Biennial.  50 artists (none from Philadelphia — boo!), everything all inside the one building (unlike last time when art was off site and temporary and if you missed it you missed it).  Sounds good on a rainy day.  We’ll take [...]

Read More »
The News at Temple Gallery

By roberta | February 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

Long before newspapers, stories were told around the campfire or written in pictures on cave walls. Stories of victory and defeat in war were transmitted by runners carrying the news.  Letters from soldiers — albeit censored — also told stories of war, and then peace.   We have a more sophisticated way of telling [...]

Read More »
Arts, culture and public dollars — what’s the value?

By roberta | February 19, 2010 | 1 Comment

We got this press release yesterday from Amy Adams, Fleisher-Ollman Gallery Director and member of the Mayor’s Cultural Advisory Council.  It’s about a panel discussion with people worth listening to, like Rocco Landesman, the new NEA Director who’s on the giving away end of the public dollars spectrum; Nick Spitzer of public radio’s American Routes [...]

Read More »
Weekly update — Philagrafika at the Print Center

By roberta | February 16, 2010 | 0 Comments

This week’s Weekly has my review of the Philagrafika show at the Print Center.
There are many treats in the print festival Philagrafika 2010. One of the best is in the upstairs gallery at the Print Center—the Space 1026 yurt, a demure, grand dame of an object that is the embodiment of the one for all, [...]

Read More »