From the Chair

Nov 11, 2019 | Essay, From the Chair

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. -Traditional Hymn Why make art? Answers to such a question would vary of course, depending on who is asked; what their particular life experience is in relation to the practice of art, even the definition of art...

From the Chair

Nov 4, 2019 | Essay, From the Chair

Whatever art is, it is no longer something primarily to be looked at. Stared at, perhaps, but not primarily looked at. What, in view of this, is a post-historical museum to do, or to be? -After the End of Art Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, 1996 by Arthur...

From the Chair

Oct 28, 2019 | Essay, From the Chair

I keep an ever-expanding list of artists I am interested in. Mostly, I become aware of them from a distance; through a review in The New York Times, an accidental encounter with their work in a museum or gallery, happenstance or by chance. I have been following the...

From the Chair

Oct 21, 2019 | Essay, From the Chair

When searching for calm amidst the chaos of daily life, I often find myself doing one of two things: taking a walk in nature or taking a walk through a museum. For me, both museums and nature provide a similar sense of calm, both create order from chaos, and both...

From the Chair

Oct 14, 2019 | Essay, From the Chair

There is much anticipation surrounding the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, after a long period of construction and a conceptual pivot that promises to mine the museum for a much less traditional method of projecting the historical and contemporary...

From the Chair

Oct 7, 2019 | Essay, From the Chair

Culture is a readymade, often treated as such by both artists and consumers of art. It is digital low-hanging fruit in a perpetual remix. In such remixes, we see the vestiges of history in a chaotic freefall. The history of art is bound up in history generally, and...