Posts tagged as:

GRAMSCI MONUMENT

Art in Need of a More Open Engagement

by Corinna Kirsch on April 23, 2015
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I’m an art critic; I don’t often get asked about how I’m working toward revolution. Looking around the city’s museums and galleries, it’s hard to figure out how optically pleasant paintings enact social change. Outside the galleries, there’s activist groups like Occupy Museums or W.A.G.E. that nod to revolution by targeting institutions. Either way, the focus remains on art and art institutions, which can leave the soul feeling empty.

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How Do People Feel About the Gramsci Monument, One Year Later ?

by Whitney Kimball on August 20, 2014
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One year after Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument came down, I wondered: was this a net gain for a Bronx housing project? Or will it ultimately be remembered as art world conscience-laundering?

I went back to the Bronx for follow-up interviews.

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Best of AFC: Summer Edition

by The AFC Staff on August 30, 2013
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Did you beach too hard and forget to read this summer? Fear not, art lovers, for we bring you the second annual AFC Best of Summer list. We’ve brought together the blog’s greatest summer hits from staff and contributors, because, let’s face it, you might have missed out on days or weeks of AFC when you were traveling to Venice, Basel, or closer to home, the Rockaways. We’ve published some great artist essays with our STUFF series, started our “Diary of a Mad Gallery Owner” series, and continued to bring you reviews and opinion pieces. Enjoy.

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How Do People Feel About the Gramsci Monument?

by Whitney Kimball on August 16, 2013
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“Another monument to his monumental ego,” Ken Johnson recently labelled Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, a big wooden community center which looks like a set from Peter Pan, and occupies the Bronx’s Forest Housing Projects through September. Rather than a towering chrome figurehead, the monument is an intellectual playground; a drastic improvement to the quality of life at Forest; and an overwhelmingly loving event.

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Art Fag City at The L Magazine: Gramsci Monument Talks

by Paddy Johnson on August 15, 2013
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To form an opinion about Thomas Hirschhorn’s GRAMSCI MONUMENT, you only have to hear about it. In my first significant conversation about the project, a curator friend lit up as she excitedly told me Hirschhorn would host a daily lecture by philosopher Marcus Steinweg for the residents of Forest Houses, a housing project in the Bronx. Whatever the rest of the work was about, I instantly had concerns. The value of imposing scholarship on a group that would likely have few means of interpreting it seemed limited at best. After all, wouldn’t such alienating lectures do more to discourage people from self-education than encourage it?

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