New Museum Six Degrees

Writing the Canon: Notes on Art Education in Egypt

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:59:02 -0400

Six Degrees encompasses critical essays, in-depth research, and diverse opinions about the arts and its contexts from practitioners around the world, as well as dispatches by New Museum staff. In this essay, Omar Kholeif, curator, writer, and Senior Editor of Ibraaz.org, reflects on his involvement in MASS Alexandria in relation to the current state of arts education in Egypt.

Writing the Canon:...

Museum as Hub: Reflections on the 2013 Conference by Natasha Marie Llorens

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:26:26 -0400

On April 12–13, 2013, the Museum as Hub hosted a conference to mark the sixth anniversary of the Hub initiative. The conference aimed, in part, to consider strategies for the next phase of the project, while also reflecting more broadly on the rapidly shifting global context it inhabits. Through four panels that featured curators from Hub partnering institutions, as well as those from significa...

On Instituting A New Space For Thought

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:28:29 -0500

In the late spring of 2012, curators Sarah Rifky and Jens Maier-Rothe had both planned to be in Beirut. A fortunate turn of events kept them in Cairo a little longer than planned and founding Beirut, an art initiative and exhibition space located in a three-story 1940s villa in the Agouza neighborhood of Giza . In this residence, the initiative affords thinkers, artists, artworks, and even othe...

Six Degrees: A Roundup of Archive Initiatives

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:07:43 -0500

It’s January—the time of year when contemporary art periodicals publish their “Best of the Year” selections, summarizing what has happened or what is to come. These annual reflections often present an array of projects but rarely develop an idea or concept. To start 2013, this posting plays off this impulse to collectively reflect with a roundup of international contemporary art initiatives tha...

What's Art Got To Do With It?

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 10:36:40 -0500

Brazilianification is a term that was coined to describe the process in which the middle class disappears and the gulf between the upper and lower classes widens. On my recent trip to São Paulo , I found vital signs of a reversed Brazilianification—prosperity percolating through the lower strata of Brazilian society. It was quite a different energy from fourteen years ago when I briefly lived t...

Museum as Hub: ENDNOTES: Was it a Question of Power?

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:29:10 -0500

O my body, make of me always a man who questions!
—Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

There is a passage in Bessie Head’s 1974 autobiographical novel, A Question of Power, in which a teacher hides in the toilet from the principal in order to take a few sips of his brandy. The blissful few sips turn into a few more, leading to intoxication. The hiding becomes reversed as the now drunk teacher o...

Museum as Hub: Interview with Beta-Local by Ruba Katrib

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:56:49 -0500

Beta-Local is a nonprofit center for contemporary art initiated in 2009 and located in the heart of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. I met the three cofounders, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Michy Marxuach, and Tony Cruz in 2010 in their storefront space, which was filled with long tables and chairs, surrounded by bookshelves packed to the brim, sofas, and a small kitchen. While Beta-Local doesn’t exhibit ...

Whirlwind at Art Basel Miami

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:10:52 -0500

Every December, Art Basel Miami and the hundreds of satellite events can be equally illuminating and frustrating. There are many ways to skin an art fair—and in this post, New Museum’s Gary Carrion-Murayari, Curator, and Karen Wong, Deputy Director, share some highlights.

Gary Carrion-Murayari

A forty-eight hour visit to Miami is an arduous and less-than-productive proposition—a few hours at the ...

Museum as Hub: Archiving Roberto Chabet

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:01:10 -0500

This past summer, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, launched The Chabet Archive, comprised of over eight thousand documents that span fifty years of work by pioneering artist Roberto Chabet . Perhaps best known for his inquisitive, conceptual compositions of readymades and common materials, Chabet conveys a sense of resourcefulness and ingenuity in his work that presents an alternative to representa...

A Prompt for Architectural Theory

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:20:03 -0500

Following a lively exchange on the topic of networks during an IDEAS CITY: Istanbul panel, Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler closed with a jarring prompt. “Perhaps,” he considered aloud, “networks are a new religion.” Much as the nuclear age had its obsession with science, he argued, our age too has its demigods. From the internet entrepreneur whose creation has raised more funds for creat...

Museum as Hub: Introducing de_sitio

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:30:57 -0500

In 2011, Amanda Echeverría, Catalina Lozano, and Daniela Pérez cofounded de_sitio, a nonprofit platform based in Mexico City committed to supporting the development of contemporary art projects. The platform is the product of a unique combination of curatorial and managerial practices. Before her work as an independent curator, Lozano was responsible for Gasworks Residency Program in London. Pé...

IDEAS CITY: Istanbul Workshops or A Byzantine Experience

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:49:04 -0500

How to write about an event in another city when my memory has been interrupted by a devastating event in my own city? Is there a connection between out-of-control urban transformation in Istanbul and an out-of-control climate in New York?

The workshops—our final events for IDEAS CITY: Istanbul—were held at SALT Galata, a cultural and research center in the heart of Istanbul. SALT was a crucial ...

IDEAS CITY: Istanbul—Tossing Adjectives

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:25:17 -0500

The New Museum took its movable project, IDEAS CITY, to Istanbul—invited there by the Istanbul Design Biennial and sponsored by Audi Urban Future Initiative. We hosted a keynote address by Amanda Burden, Commissioner of the New York City Department of City Planning, two panels devoted to the topic of Untapped Capital , and two workshops in collaboration with SALT Galata. A final panel was devot...

IDEAS CITY: Istanbul or "How to obtain a building permit for Central Park?"

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:04:41 -0500

New York is a truly “global city” and Istanbul is rapidly becoming one as numerous figures indicate. Istanbul is one of the twenty most visited cities in the world, ranked ninth in terms of international meetings organized there and first for both real estate investment and development in Europe. Both of these metropolises are two of the few nodal hubs that knit the global economy together.

Glo...

IDEAS CITY: Istanbul—Amanda Burden's Keynote

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 16:57:32 -0400

As the design community descended upon Istanbul for its inaugural Design Biennial, the New Museum presented IDEAS CITY: Istanbul—a three-day conference exploring the future of cities around the globe with the belief that arts and culture are a driving force behind the vitality of urban centers.

Turkey shares its Asian border with five countries, its European border with two, and is embraced by ...

Museum as Hub: Reflections on “Edificio Metálico” at TEOR/éTica in Costa Rica

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:48:46 -0400

As part of a conversation supported by the Museum as Hub initiative, I was invited to share some images and thoughts about the exhibition “Edificio Metálico,” which offer insight into the exhibition and raise questions that will drive TEOR/éTica’s future program.

I was recently appointed Associate Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, an art space in San José, Costa Rica, started in 1999 by Virginia ...

Art & Science in DC

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:06:32 -0400

One of the themes of the New Museum’s recent exhibition “Ghosts in the Machine” was the complicated and ongoing relationship between artists and scientists working in a variety of fields. The exhibition considered works by artists like Stan VanDerBeek who embraced shifts in technology and anticipated our current digitally saturated world. Others included initiatives such as Experiments in Art a...

Museum as Hub: New Residents in the Copan: An Interview with Pivô

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:26:04 -0400

The symbolism of São Paulo’s Copan Building is incongruous. Like so many historic landmarks, the events it has survived are at odds with the vision upon which it was founded. Built between 1957 and 1966 by Oscar Niemeyer, the Copan is an emblem of Brazil’s modern project—which was interrupted by the country’s turbulence and political events. Modeled after Le Corbusier’s famous concept of “Unité...

_Five Car Stud_ Still Gripping

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:26:24 -0400

Edward Kienholz, Five Car Stud, 1969–72. Installation view: “Five Car Stud 1969–1972, Revisited,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011–12

The Louisiana is one of my favorite museums of modern art. At the end of the summer, I had a chance to visit this glorious and romantic setting for art, architecture, and nature overlooking the Øresund Sound, thirty minutes outside of Copenhagen. So it was a...

“Silver” for the US Pavilion in Venice

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:28:01 -0400

As the London 2012 Olympics came to a close, the tamer 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by English architect David Chipperfield, opened in late August. The various national pavilions jostled each other for the Golden Lion—the award for the presentation that best exemplifies the theme of “Common Ground.”

“Spontaneous Interventions,” 2012. Exhibition view: US Pavilion, 13th Venice Archit...