NEWS
In bird news, Ursinus College’s Rare Birds exhibit at the school’s Berman Museum presents John James Audubon’s folio of birds side by side with works by contemporary artists who turn their eye and fixation on birds. The exhibit opens Thursday, January 21 and runs through Sunday, April 3, and here’s the contemporary artists included: Brandon Ballengée, Walton Ford, Harri Kallio, Nina Katchadourian, Kate MccGwire, James Prosek, Duke Riley, and the artist duo Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris. More information here.
In other bird news, Congratulations to Bald Spot Comics creator, Gregory Labold, who won 3rd place in the Mummer’s Parade’s Most Original Costume category for his “Free Bird with Juggling Issues” costume! Photo here.
The Live at the Writers House episode with Artblog and St. Claire writers reading from their published works is now available for your listening pleasure! Here’s the link to EPISODE 113 – 10/26/2015 – PHILADELPHIA ART CRITICS…
Produced and hosted by Alli Katz and with some great live music by City Love.
Full program
Alli Katz – Introduction
Roberta Fallon – Introduction and Performance
Andrea Kirsh – Introduction and Performance
Evan Paul Laudenslager – Introduction and Performance
City Love – Introduction and Performance
Matt Kalasky – Introduction and Performance
Suzanne Seesman – Introduction and Performance
Zachary Rawe – Introduction and Performance
City Love – Performance
Alli Katz – Closing Remarks
Learn about Organizing movements in Philadelphia and elsewhere. with the exhibits, events and workshops of Organize Your Own: Exploring the Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements
Featuring newly commissioned photographs and printmaking by artists from across the country, including: Mary Patten (Chicago), Dave Pabellon (Chicago), Dan S Wang (Madison), Rosten Woo (Los Angeles), Robby Herbst (Los Angeles), Matt Neff (Philadelphia), Amber Art & Design (Philadelphia), and Works Progress with Jayanthi Kyle (Minneapolis); with online video projects by Irina Contreras (Oakland) and Anne Braden Institute (Louisville).
This multi-city exhibition and event series will take place in Philadelphia at Kelly Writers House (January 14 – February 17, 2016) before traveling to Chicago where it will be featured at The Averill and Bernard Leviton Gallery (March 3 – April 9, 2016). More information at the Organize Your Own website.
Napoleon/Coop Exchange news – Napoleon Gallery members are showing works at Coop Gallery, Nashville; Coop Gallery members are at Napoleon
For your consideration
Liz Spikol’s interview with Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney
Daniel Gerwin writes about Philadelphia’s art scene for On-Verge
OPPORTUNITIES
Via Kelsey Halliday Johnson…Michener Museum is looking for a Curatorial Program Manager and a a Marketing Coordinator, Michener Art Museum. More at the Museum’s website.
Poster design competition – 20th annual Riverside Festival of the Arts in Easton is looking for your good designs for its festival poster. Winner is awarded $200 and gets to see their poster all over town. More information here and here.
Open call art submissions for Abington Art Center’s 2016 Annual Juried Show. The juror is Leah Modigliani, Assistant Professor and Program Head of the Visual Studies Department at Tyler School of Art. Register for the juried show between Jan. 15-Feb. 15 at the Center’s website.
ARTIST NEWS
Pauline Houston McCall’s new children’s book My Fuzzy Hat and Me is ready for pre-order! Congratulations, Pauline!
ADDITIONAL NEWS
Random conservation news of interest – How the Whitney Is Transforming the Art of Museum Conservation
In “The Custodians” (p. 50), Ben Lerner examines the work of the Whitney’s replication committee—an unusual, but increasingly crucial, body within the museum. “The committee is, as far as I know, the only one of its kind,” Lerner writes. Founded in 2008, it is led by Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, who also leads the Whitney’s conservation department. Conservators, curators, archivists, a lawyer, and a registrar round out the team of fourteen. “The committee convenes to determine when a work of art, or a part of a work of art, cannot be fixed or restored in the traditional ways—when and how it must, instead, be replicated,” Lerner writes. “These discussions result in recommendations that affect the way art works are maintained, classified, and described in exhibitions.” Lerner details their painstaking work, which is done, whenever possible, in consultation with artists. He notes that Mancusi-Ungaro and her peers are conservators of skill: they know a material’s chemical composition, its reflectance levels, its history of usage (and if they don’t know they’ll find out). “In an era when many critics speak of the rise of curation as art—when artists arrange objects as often as they make them—conservation is deeply curatorial, as conservators choose which aspects of a work are presented and how,” he writes. “To treat conservation as it has traditionally been treated—as the behind-the-scenes work of minimally invasive technocrats, bursting onstage every few decades during a cleaning controversy and then receding into the shadows—is to exclude essential questions about culture and value from the domain of contemporary art.” Please see this link for more.
