Art & Its Institution

Julia Scher - always there-surveillance bed, 2000

Janine Antoni, Loving Care, 1993

The End(s) of the Museum includes work by fourteen artists. Some of them have created work especially for this exhibit, others are showing previous work relevant to the questions raised by the exhibition.

In her series Last Seen..., Sophie Calle creates a poetic remembrance of a famous crime: the theft in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston of five drawings by Degas, a vase, a Napoleonic eagle, and six paintings by Rembrandt, Flinck, Manet, and Vermeer. Gardner's stipulation in her will that the arrangement of the galleries remain fixed ensures that a sense of loss remains a permanent fixture of the museum. Calle interviewed curators, guards, and other staff members, asking them to describe the absent works; their varied responses are displayed as a counterpart to photographs of the labels, empty pedestals, and bare wall hooks left behind after the theft. Sophie Calle. Last Seen... (Vermeer, The Concert). 1991. Ektachrome print and text, 66 3/4 x 50 7/8" (169.5 x 129.2 cm); text 34 x 30 11/16" (86 x 77.9 cm). Collection The Bohen Foundation, New York. Photo: courtesy the artist

TITLE: Girl with Dolphin and Monkey (The Whitney Museum of American Art 75th Anniversary Photography Portfolio)

ARTIST: Jeff Koons

WORK DATE: 2006

CATEGORY: Photographs

MATERIALS: Chromogenic crystal archive print

EDITION/SET OF: 25

MARKINGS: Signed and numbered

SIZE: Image size: 25.5 x 37.25" / 64.8 x 94.5" (paper size: 30 x 40 “ / 75 x 100 cm)

STYLE: Contemporary (ca. 1945-present)

PRICE*: Contact Gallery for Price

GALLERY: Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art (212) 645 2030 Send Email

DESCRIPTION: From a suite of four photographs in a custom made cloth covered box, published by Carolina Nitsch for the Whitney Museum of American Art 75th Anniversary Photo Portfolio

ONLINE CATALOGUE(S): The Whitney Museum of American Art 75th Anniversary Photography Portfolio Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art Inventory Catalogue

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Comfort is My Silence), 1981

pg 349, Kruger embraced the commercial side of art, noting, " I wanted them (my art works) to enter the marketplace because I began to understand that outside the marketplace there is nothing- not a piece of lint, a cardigan, a human being."


Jeff Koons says, "The market is the critic now."





How do we view the Institution of the Museum today?

I view it as a place that I can go to see a presentation of what critics and art world players want to show me as the "cream of the crop" of art work that is being made past and present.
-Heartney says on pg 347, "Artists have taken aim particularly at museums, those loftl establishments that serve as gatekeepers, deciding which artists will go down in art history and which will not. -- also see futurist manifesto-- funny.

2. What strategies do artists use to expose corruption within the museum?

according to Heartsley, pg 350, artists dig into museum collections, creating arrangemants of objects that underscore the social and political agendas underlying patterns of patronage and collection. others deflate curatorial pretensions with pseudo-exhibitions that mack the practices of that profession. Artists may appropriate and reinvent the apparatus by which art is presented to the public, Or it may document the way in which art is presented, revealing the artifice at work in supposedly "neutral" presentations of art and other museum artifacts.

Also, Moma had a show in 1999 called "Museum as Muse" which allowed artists to make an axibition about the museum--


The Museum as Muse: Artists Reeflect ... blurb follows-- interesting!

Marcel Duchamp. L.H.O.O.Q. 1919. Photographic reproduction and pencil, 7 3/4 x 4 7/8" (19.6 x 12.3 cm). Private collection ©Succession Marcel Duchamp 1999, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris, 1999. The public museum, since its founding in the late eighteenth century, has enjoyed a complex, interdependent, and ever-changing relationship with the artist. This Web site was created to accompany the exhibition The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, which explores this rich and varied relationship through a broad-based, international survey of works about museums and their practices and policies. Focusing on the postwar period, the exhibition also features earlier artists such as American painter Charles Willson Peale, several nineteenth-century photographers, and Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky. The artists in The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect have studied nearly every aspect of museums--from their curatorial and administrative policies, to their exhibition strategies and priorities, to their fund-raising practices--using a range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, installation, audio, video, and performance art, to frame their critiques. Many have appropriated aspects of museum practice as a conceptual or formal strategy, and some have even constructed their own personal museums. The word museum stems from the Greek museion, meaning "house of the muses," the nine goddesses of creative inspiration. During the twentieth century, the museum has expanded its function as a home or repository for the arts to become a locus for artistic inspiration and activity.

Do you feel there is a corruption within that system? Why or why not?

I am sure there is but I usually don't think about it much-- just more negativity to cloud my vision. I think there is because there is corruption on every level of every situation in life from the bottom on up-- that is just the way it is.

How does the museum play a role in your own life? What was positive or negative in that experience?

Living in NY for the past 16 years, they have played a huge role. I must admit a large enjoyment factor. I go to museums as an event, a pleasurable outing to enjoy an evening or afternoon out. For years, I go to the Moma when it's free on Friday nights and enjoy music in the garden during the summer concert series, and the same at the guggenheim I have not once thought about corruption of that side of things-- I usually experience the moment there and make judgement calls on what I liked or didn't like.

What alternatives do artists have to the traditional avenue of the museum if any?
Well-- like what we're doing for our show to benifit Doctor's with out borders-- The pop up shop-- get a group of friends together and have a show anywhere anytime-- studio shows-- wealthy friends hosting an evening celebrating your work- The museum is soo far removed from my world-- I only know guerilla style showing and the occasional group gallery show... sad but true.

What does the institution serve & in what way?
What? or Whom maybe? It serves the public on a grand scale. It serves people. It is a place that can bring art to the masses and give anyone a chance to participate.

Art & Globalization

Yinka Shonibare in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Space Walk(detail), 2002. Fiberglass, silkscreen print on cotton sateen and cotton brocade, and plastic. Installation dimensions variable. Photo: Aaron Igler.


Do- Ho- Suh, Cause and Effect, 2007

Adeela Suleman

Feroza (Turquoise)
2005, reproduced in 2008
Cooking utensil, spoons, jar, powder coating & enamel paint; inside padded with foam & cloth
H. 18 x W. 10 x D. 10 in. (48.3 x 25.4 x 25.4 cm)
Collection of the artist
Photograph by Artists Documentation, courtesy of the artist

Alighiero e Boetti Aerei 1978 © DACS, London 2007





One of the most popular projects of the documenta 11 exhibition . . .

. . was that of the Swiss artist Hirschhorn in the Northern part of the city, that is traditionally a social focus with a high rate of unemployment. Hirschhorn used second hand products, old wood and a lot of parcels tape for the . . .

. . . the installation of a temporary café, library, television studio and the monument in the centre of the old working class estate. A lot of unemployed youngsters, many of them with Turkish roots, found a job there during the time of the exhibition.


What is the difference between globalism and globalization?

Globalism is the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations.^[1] Political scientist Joseph Nye, co-founder of the international relations theory of neoliberalism, argues that globalism refers to any description and explanation of a world which is characterized by networks of connections that span multi-continental distances; while globalization refers to the increase or decline in the degree of globalism.^[2] Globalism may be contrasted with individualism, localism, nationalism, regionalism or internationalism.

Globalization (or globalisation) describes a process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communication and trade. The term is sometimes used to refer specifically to economic globalization: the integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology.^[1] However, globalization is usually recognized as being driven by a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural, political, and biological factors.^[2] The term can also refer to the transnational circulation of ideas, languages, or popular culture through acculturation.

In Art and Today Pg 292, heartney talks about globalism, saying one facet is the proliferation of the International Biennials and art shows after the cold wars end, and also technology leveling the playing field with easier and instant communication globally.

Globalisms proponents see it as:

PROS- a counterbalance to nationalism
-opens new movements
-starting unprecidented economic opportunities
-reveals diversity of cultural expression
-as Thomas Freidman puts it in his book, The World is Flat, the convergience of technology and -geopolitical developments has broken down barriers to international compotitions that once -favored the U. S. and Europe over India and China.

CONS -increased disparity between rich and poor nations
-favor cultural synthesis
-pg 292, Noam Chomsky says that institutions such as International Monetary Fund and World Bank are "ploys to cement the privileges of the dominant corporate elite.
-pg 292, Centralized $ and power is undemocratic, shifting resources, jobs away from the needs of theindividual, to serve interests of multinational corp., generating intense poverty among globalisms losers

How does globalism shape the identity of the western art world?
It levels the playing field. Our identity becomes more homoginized by the influx of art and artist from all over the globe

How does globalism affect the inclusion of women artists?
It allows for more women to be included, especially from countries that are not as rich as ours

Is globalism a freeing up of art venues or an invitation to more competition between the established art institutions? More competition and a freeing up of other art venues both. With the whole world as a format for showing and celebration of works by myriads of artists, both are happening.

How does glabalism effect your point of entry into the art world? It should make it more competition for me but I don't think it will effect me until I already have entered the art world

Art & Nature (Presenter)

Review Criteria

When researching art reviews in Art in America, Art Forum, Ceramics Monthly, and American Craft, I found some common criteria relating to subject, object, form and content. Based on my research I developed my own criteria as follows:

1.Begin with an introduction of the artist or the venue or the work being reviewed.

2. Develop a thread for my reader to follow throughout my review.

3. Consider the Artist's intention as best I could while giving my reaction.

4. Is the work visually compelling and thought-provoking?

5. What was the connection of the works to the bigger whole/ theme of the show?

6. What were the reactions of other viewers at the show?
7. Tie the writing together in a conclusion with an overall critique of the show being a success or failure and why.

Art and Identity

Michael Ray Charles, Forever Free, Beware, 1994.


Cindy Sherman, Untitled #186 & #187 1989


Jeff Koons - Ilona on Top (1990)

Nikki Lee, The Exotic Dancers Project (#4), 2000

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (I shop therefore I am), 1987



Adrian Piper, Everything #10

Why do Artists like Cindy Sherman, Nikki Lee, Yasumasa Morimura and Jeff Koons want to be the subject in their art? What drives them to this reenactment of personas?

When will we be able to overcome issues of race and gender in the world that affects our art making?

On pg 242, the question is posed by Linda Nochlin in her essay asking, " Why have there been no great women artists?" She argues that it's institutional, educational and economic barriers, not innate inferiority-- I have to ask does masculine and feminine need to be considered today as Linda did in the late 60's? Why do feminist artists reject "gender neutral" ?

Do artists like Pepon Osorio feel the need to explore their roots as a way to overcome or understand their identity living in one culture displaced from another?

Does Michael Ray Charles cross uncomfortable lines with his depictions of backs in past American culture? Why do people become uncomfortable?

Art & The Body

I celebrate YOU Hannah!!!!!!



Hannah Wilke (1940-93).
Intra-Venus Series #7, August 18, 1992 (right panel of diptych).
Performalist self-portrait with Donald Goddard.
Chromogenic supergloss print, 47 1/2" x 71 1/2".
Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.


Zhang, Huan: 1/2, 1998





Carolee Schneemann. Meat Joy, 1964.

MACLA’s Performance Art Program presents Cabaret Unkempt
In residence from October 5 - 11

In their week long residency made possible with the support of the National Performance Network, Miami-based performance art duo Jennylin Duany and Elizabeth Doud kick things off by leading a series of community workshops related to performance and body-image at the Billy De Frank LBGT Community Center. Later in the week they perform Cabaret Unkempt, an irreverent and satirical theater piece which uses projected media, music, and poetry to explore Duany's Cuban-American background, her body, her self-image and her moving, often hilarious, experiences as a performer of "size" in a culture where size definitely matters. The work offers audiences a voyeur's pleasure of peeping into a world of sensual audacity to explore moments when all of us, regardless of size, must confront our body-trappings and face our deepest insecurities.

The performers ruminate on the bombastic expectations of control, body mass, plastic surgery and self acceptance in a world obsessed with body image. The work surveys the landscape of "unkempt women," and creates a cartography of her body's journey.

The photograph “Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints — Face),” above, made in 1972 by Cuban-American performance artist Ana Mendieta, is one of more than 60 works of art depicting the body or traces of the human figure in the Princeton University Art Museum’s exhibition “Body Memory,”


For most women in the 60's and 70's, being acknowledged as an artist and not a woman artist, was what they worked for... so, what is happening today? Have we truly broken the barrier of gender specificity when defining the artist?

Why does art need to be analyzed as man or woman great? Why can't it be human great?

I ask why does Abramovic choose to make her art about feats of endurance, risk, and self control? pg 219 I am enthralled by her focus and ability to try to have "transcendence through corporeal action." pg 220

The book says, "performance art suggests the transgressive potential of the body as an art medium--" pg 221 Is this symbolic? Challenging and deconstructing gender also?

I was intrigued and disturbed by Hannah Wilkes Intra- Venus. Does Hannah transcend feminism and bring a quality of humanism by baring her soul like this?

Art & Abstraction

Richmond Burton I am (Holographic), 2002 Linocut Image Size: 36 1/8 x 44 3/4 inches Paper Size: 38 x 46 1/4 inches Edition of 30 Published by Pace Editions, Inc

Richard Deacon
Throw 2004




Brice Marden, "Post Calligraphic Drawing," 1998.



Paul Klee
Ancient Sound, Abstract on Black 1925
Oil on cardboard 15 x 15 in
Kunstsammlung, Basel




Paul Klee
Highways and Byways, 1929
83.7 x 67.5 cm Oil on canvas





Wassily Kandinsky
Several circles, 1926.
Oil on canvas, 55 1/4 x 55 3/8 in.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

I liked the quote from the lecture Abstract Art Now, "the less there is to look at, the more you have to look, the more you have to be in the picture." YES!

Why is abstract art relevant?

Is it true that the viewer brings the meaning to the work?

Can there really be a critique of abstract art in content?

Is it really possible to capture the void so to speak like in Serra's work?

Is Abstract sculpture onthe same page as abstract painting?