Broad Museum

Monday Links: Cindy Cheng Wins Sondheim Prize, “Art Barbie” Fails to Win Art Battle L.A.

July 17, 2017

Frida Davidsson, winner of Art Battle Los Angeles. Image via @fridadavidssonart Instagram, [h/t artnet News]

There’s now a booming outlet for fanfic, including stories “portraying a near future where the Trump administration has criminalized selfies, radicalizing Kim Kardashian as a freedom fighter for women’s rights.” The Toronto startup Wattpad has moved the online subculture closer to the mainstream publishing world, and former AFC editor Rea McNamara has written a fascinating profile on the subculture and its transition. [NOW]
Designer Raul Lopez has deconstructed the uniforms of corporate America into genderless cubist forms and they’re amazing. [Vogue]
The Broad’s upcoming exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors is expected to be a huge blockbuster when it opens on October 21. The museum announced yesterday that they’ll be pre-selling all 50,000 tickets for the show online on September 1st at noon. I’d be worried about servers crashing from that volume of traffic. [Los Angeles Times]
In other L.A. news, Art Battle just took place in the Arts District and it sounds like it was terrible. It’s a live painting competition, which involved lots of paintings of pop culture things, dollar signs, hearts, and someone named “Art Barbie”. [artnet News]
Wow. Add this to the bucket list: the late French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle left behind a 14 acre sculpture park in Tuscany inspired by Gaudi’s Park Güell. Her “Tarot Garden” is populated by giant goddess figures and a feminist takes on the tarot deck. This looks really cool. [Artsy]
Hong Kong high school students just set a world record for a display of 1,214 3D-printed sculptures of buildings from the city’s skyline. It kinda looks like a Won Ju Lim installation! (The 3D printing marathon was organized to celebrate the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to mainland Chinese rule… which has been a less than great thing so far for the city’s pro-democracy activists, but that’s another story). [South China Morning Post]
Congrats to Cindy Cheng, winner of the 2017 Sondheim Prize of $25,000. (As a curator, I’ve worked with Cheng before and can vouch that she totally deserves it!) Here, Angela N. Carroll, Bret McCabe, and Cara Ober discuss all the finalists. [BmoreArt]

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Tuesday Links: Tiara-Clad Curator Bites Airline Passenger, Rich People Do Other Crazy Art Things

February 23, 2016

Shi Xinning, “Duchamp Retrospective Exhibition in China” now on view at Hong Kong’s M+

Art collective Meow Wolf has convinced investors, including Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, to help them acquire and transform a Santa Fe bowling alley. When it opens, the space will be a psychedelic Victorian interior with maze-like secret passageways to sci-fi landscapes. It sounds insane. [Los Angeles Times]

At LA’s new Broad Museum, all of the floor staff receive 40 hours of training to become “Visitors Services Associates”. That means the people taking your ticket or guarding the artworks are also paid to talk to you about the art, like a docent. I’m not sure if this sounds great or super annoying. [NPR]

M+, Hong Kong’s newest contemporary art museum, is pretty ballsy. The institution is hosting a pre-opening exhibition entitled Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art that sounds as if it’s curated to piss off mainland censors—showing everything from artwork about Tiananmen Square to sculptures by persona non grata Ai Weiwei. Although the former British colony enjoys different freedoms from the rest of China, Beijing has been cracking down on dissidents. This is going to be a culture war battle to watch. [The Guardian]

DIA’s new director Jessica Morgan sounds awesome. The institution is back to showing artwork in NYC after she scrapped multi-year renovation plans, and more importantly, she’s a curator artists respect and like working with. [Vogue]

In other glamorous curator news, Stacy Engman has been accused of assaulting a fellow passenger on a flight from Istanbul to New York, where she was reportedly wearing a tiara and bit the other woman. Where’s the Vogue photoshoot for this? [artnet News]

Apparently Ken Griffin dropped $500 million on paintings by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning before the market cooled off. This would be a record for a private sale. [The Telegraph]

The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts will be free for over a month as a gesture of goodwill following the mass shooting in the area. [mlive]

Thomas Schütte is designing and building his own museum to show and house his own work. [artnet News]

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