In her review of Cecilia Vicuña exhibition, Andrea Kirsh calls the works — little cobbled-together objects tacked to the walls or arrayed on a low platform on the floor — marvels. But these objects are not nothings to throw away but objects with magical shadows and poetic meanings, and their mystery delights.
Read MoreThe Art Writing Contest deadline for applications is Midnight, Oct. 31. That’s Halloween, yo. Don’t party too hard. Type up your piece while sitting in your costume eating candy. You can handle it! Here’s a video with Artblog’s star Managing Editor, Imani Roach, talking about the nuts and bolts of applying and other aspects of the contest, like the $1,000 grand prize and two $250 second prizes! Below the video are details about how to apply and a link to the Google form for submitting your story/poem/review/essay/free-form writing.
Read MoreThe bibliography of politically-committed art by African American women has gotten considerably richer with the publication of several exhibition catalogs, all of which are essential resources on their subjects. Here, in part 1 of a two-part series, Andrea Kirsh reviews the catalogs for “Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and “Joyce J. Scott: Harriet Tubman and Other Truths” at Grounds for Sculpture.
Read MoreAndrea Kirsh takes a trip to Chicago and shares her experience of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s recent Howardena Pindell retrospective. Across an impressive range of media and techniques, Pindell’s work tackles race, labor and the technologies that bind. This long-overdue exhibition, which was on view at the MCA from February 24 through May 20, will travel to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art later this year before showing at Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum in early 2019.
Read MoreAndrea shepherds us to the French coastal town Dunkerque to review the exhibition at Lieu d’Art et Action Contemporaine (LAAC) organized by composer and musicologist Jean-Yves Bosseur. She writes, “While tracing familiar territory, it offered a broad view of the subject and a number of surprises with artists, both earlier and contemporary, who were new to me….This exhibition succeeded with a challenge that faces many museums today: how to present work and ideas that stimulate a knowledgeable audience while offering something for a more general public which may not be familiar with contemporary art.”
Read MoreThis year the curatorial statement for documenta 14 followed suit with the general state of the arts by concentrating on political unrest, economic disparities exploitation, and the displacement of people. Andrea shares some of her favorite moments of the quinquennial festival, and also gives us a critical review of some of the unfortunate selections made by a few curators.
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