March 21, 2017 by Roberta

Taller Puertorriqueño, Pafa feature Artblog; Jayson Musson, Becky Suss, Dona Nelson in NY shows/programs; Whitney Biennial protest; Alex Losett project, David Antonio Cruz at DCCC, Cultural Alliance Action Toolkit, Plus Opportunities!

News of Artblog favorite artists, Jayson Musson, Dona Nelson, Becky Suss, plus a protest of a Dana Schutz painting, some great opportunities and even more news, in today’s action-packed News Post.

March 21, 2017 by Michael Lieberman

Person of the Crowd, contemporary art and flânerie at The Barnes Foundation

Michael Lieberman encounters archival performance art from the streets of the world and wonders about contemporary humans fixated on their cellphones and whether we are growing a population of cyber-flâneurs who are not really connected to the streets at all.

March 20, 2017 by Kathy Cho

On intimacy in the age of technology, Brown Girls, and Dana Schutz’s Open Casket painting in the Whitney Biennial 2017

Kathy Cho considers aspects of art and the artist’s life and brings to the reader’s attention several web projects to explore. We find the question of race in Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket, based on a photo of the slain Emmitt Till, especially important to ponder. Why did Schutz make this grotesque portrayal (based on a shocking photo of the young man in his open casket)? Why did the Whitney Museum choose to exhibit it in the Biennial, their signature show?

March 11, 2017 by Roberta

Checking in – Ayana Evans’s conceptual aerobics in Person of the Crowd

Ayana Evans is a perfect reverse-flåneur — a women (not envisioned in the 19th Century flåneur concept) and someone whose endurance performances are active, conceptual, aerobic and the opposite of idle. The artist works in prominent locations (the Rocky steps, one time in NYC in the middle of a busy intersection). And she dresses, purposely, in the most “girlie girl,” non-athletic garb imaginable. She will wear the tiger-striped catsuit and black stiletto heels she wore at the press preview in her 10-hour Philadelphia performance on May 6 at locations all around town.

March 8, 2017 by Roberta

Checking in – Virgil Marti’s “Poufs” in Barnes’ Person of the Crowd

When he was approached by the Barnes Foundation to be involved in the Person of the Crowd project, about flânerie (the art of strolling, idling), Virgil Marti thought to himself, I’m not a flâneur, am I? But then he thought again about the idea of walking the streets and thinking and observing and walking some more, and he decided that yes, maybe he was a flâneur — of Fabric Row, the fabric and notions mecca on 4th Street in Queen Village.

March 7, 2017 by Roberta

Drexel URBN panel on artist activism; Frieda cafe one-day celebration of octogenarian painter, Jean K. Hamburg, Black Oak House Gallery performance sounds great, Plus some good reads and mega-heaping helping of Opportunities from Mutter Museum, City Hall, Vox Populi, DaVinci Art Alliance, Cerulean and Woodmere

Elizabeth Taylor-Mead of Frieda wrote to say the cafe at 320 Walnut Street, is celebrating the art of octogenarian, Jean K. Hamburg, who has never shown her works publicly but agreed to show a selection of her life’s work and to speak about her work for one afternoon, Sunday, March 19, from 3PM – 4:30PM. The conversation will be between the artist and Anthony Latess.

March 7, 2017 by Flora Ward

Self-made saints – Dawoud Bey and Shawn Theodore at the AAMP

Moving between Dawoud Bey’s Harlem, USA, and Shawn Theodore’s The Church of Broken Pieces, both currently on view at the African American Museum of Philadelphia, is like shifting between worlds. Bey’s photos depict the streets and people of Harlem in the 1970s, a place that to us in 2017 seems like a lost world, his use of traditional documentary black-and-white photography enhancing that sense of distance. Theodore’s larger-than-life, staged street portraits are less documentary than metaphysical or theatrical, evoking a mysterious future through the drama of the set-piece in the street.

March 6, 2017 by Andrea Kirsh

Yayoi Kusama’s mind-bending mirrors at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

The Hirshhorn exhibition, curated by Mika Yoshitake, is serious and respectful of the artist, even if it overemphasizes the more spectacular work, and it accommodates an intimidating number of visitors with well thought-out and executed logistics. It offers those unfamiliar with Kusama an introduction to her world, and will undoubtedly leave everyone wanting more.