Nov 21, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
Every historical moment seems to produce a movement that speaks to the needs of those disenfranchised by the status quo. I have been thinking that in this moment Arte Povera and its message of humanism provides a framework for art as a way forward. Arte Povera was, in...
Nov 14, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
The singer-songwriter, poet and visionary Leonard Cohen passed away last week. Rolling Stone noted that Cohen wrote, “evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression,” over a career spanning fifty years. Of...
Nov 7, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
As I write this, I am in Limerick Ireland, flying home tomorrow in time to vote. Knowledge of all kinds is rapidly becoming decentralized; seemingly flowing rhizomatically in all directions. The metaphor of the “world-wide-web” (as we know) has become literal,...
Oct 31, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
It seems that often, in both art and culture, we want our truth to be the truth, to be legitimized by others and pushed forward as a movement, to go viral as it were. We want to be iconoclastic at the same time, to be the one artist who rises above the fray. This is...
Oct 24, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
I was talking last week about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, an event that, according to a number of recent think pieces, “redefines the boundaries of literature.” So too does a recent project by the artist Ryan Mendoza continue to...
Oct 17, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
This has been a week of cultural activity wherein, issues of gender equality, violence against women and the 1960’s icon Bob Dylan were somehow juxtaposed in the midst of an increasingly noisy political moment. Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in...
