Ferocious Fighting Men

Just got accepted to a conference in February in Los Angeles at USC to present a paper on phenomenology, chess and the berserker. Exciting! These little guys are currently on display at the Cloisters, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York - on loan from the British Museum, which is where I fell in love with them first. If you get a chance this holiday season, head up to the Cloisters, or check out the awesome Game of Kings blog at the Met.

Book Review

Finally scanned a book review of the excellent "Second Suburbs" by Dianne Harris that I wrote earlier this year for Bard Graduate Center Journal West 86th. Link is here

A Shade of Red

My dear friend Alyson Fox has made a very beautiful book of her photos. Through a series of chance encounters and word of mouth she visited, spoke with and photographed more than 100 women, most of whom had never before had their portrait taken. The only thread that tied them together was their willingness to wear a single shade of red lipstick. See more here.

The Summer Internship

New post up for Art 21 on my summer internship experiences at the Gugg and the Met. See it here. If you haven't checked out the Met's "Connections" feature yet, you really should. Curators, educators, conservationists, interns, security guards and other Met Museum staff talk about their favorite works from the museum. What better place to start than with Hermes Knauer, the Armorer at the Met and one of the people I'm lucky enough to intern for this summer.

Charlie Finch loves Art Star's Pop Up Gallery

Katherine Newbegin, Hotel Slavija, Belgrade, Serbia, 2009

Writing in Artnet, Charlie Finch hails ArtStar's recent pop up show, "What Works," as the reason why the gallery model really isn't dead, even though we're all inundated with art fairs, temporary exhibition spaces and biennials.

Museum Education and the Pedagogic Turn

When is an artist an “artist” in the museum? When is something “pedagogic” and when it is “educational”?  My attempt to initiate a conversation about how we construct contemporary histories of art, and the hierarchies implied by the terms we use.  New piece for Artwrit Quarterly here.

Slashstroke at the V&A

I love writing for Slashstroke because I love reading Slashstroke. Editor David and friends recently took over the William Morris room at the V&A and produced some really beautiful images with visitors. See more here.

I'm going to be writing a little for the Slashstroke blog this month on the Cory Archiangel show currently at the Whitney, and talking (I hope) to Aaron Pfenning, formerly of Chairlift, about his new project, Rewards. More soon.

Primetime

We went by the Young Artist's Sale at the lovely Scarlett B's Primetime on Sunday and snapped up a work by our friend Ben Phelan. Even better, he's promised to come install it at home over dinner next week. Ben's light sculptures have been a fixture at Yeasayer shows for the past while, and although this one doesn't incorporate light, the amorphous shape (reminsicent of Keith Haring lines) and its connection to the rest of Ben's 2D and 3D work makes me super-excited to have a piece of his to look at each day. Here's an image from the Guggenheim "It Came From Brooklyn" series with Ben's light sculptures at work on stage and in the audience.....

The Now Museum

I took part in an international conference held at the New Museum in New York earlier this year, and there's now video up of the participants (who included some great speakers on contemporary art - Paul Chan Philippe Vergne, Claire Bishop, Bruce Altschuler, Terry Smith etc) Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the final panel on "Artists and the Museum" for my paper.

ArtStar

From Chris Heaney's Harland and Wolff series

I'm really excited about working with ArtStar, a great NY-based company who promote affordable art prints, especially as it means I get to support work I love. My first "curator's pick" is a photographer whose career I've followed since art school in Glasgow. Chris Heaney photographed the (then recently-decommissioned) Maze prison back when he was an undergrad, and his work has grown ever more haunting beautiful since then.

What I admire most is how he blends a successful commercial career with his art practice. I don't see a division between "art photography," "documentary" and "commercial." The most compelling photography blends these elements rather than creates divisions (this is the truncated version of my thoughts on this, maybe for another, longer post). Here's my short interview introducing his work, where you can also find links to his prints on ArtStar if you want to take a peek.

From The Switch Room series

From Incarceration series

My writing buddy

And this is who has been keeping me company while I write. Harry, our year-old cat and the apple of our eye. Quite a sweetheart. As I've been researching Mayan archaeologists for my lecture on Ancient Maya Art, I came across the wonderful Russian epigrapher Yuri Knorosov who also seems to have had a Siamese Blue kitty too. Pretty wonderful expression on his face.

New Website for Writing

I finally have a site where all my writing projects are collected, hurrah! I've added some new pieces in the last few months, with more to come as I keep myself busy over the summer. And, this 'ere blog will be in use more as I begin another project that has been pushed back until this summer vacation - building a cache of teaching materials after my first year of teaching art history survey. More to come! For now, I'm excited about my new website.

New Writings for Art 21

Whoops! The new semester started and I forgot to post to this blog in the whirlwind of new classes, new teaching assignments, and new writing assignments. I've been writing on Art 21 as a guest poster this spring, find some of my ramblings here. My latest post concludes with Hennessy Youngman breaking down Relational Aesthetics for the general populace. This stuff is the best I've seen on the internet in ages. Check out his other videos: an obituary for Louise Bourgeois ("another fallen soldier"), Curators, and Post-Structuralism.

Getting ready for Back to School

It's called procrastinating, but I'm getting ready to go back to school by making loooong trips to Staples to pick out pens, paper, binder and highlighters. I stopped by the MoMA design store on my way home to pick up a birthday present for my lovely BF's lovely mum and found this. Totally getting one for the new school semester for me too!