New Museum

Helping artists to fabricate and install new works entails trust, commitment and risk taking. All of those elements went terribly wrong in a project with the artist Christoph Buchel. Ever escalating demands resulted in legal action that brought Mass MoCA to a standstill. Eventually a judge found in favor of the museum. It is painful even now to revisit the incident from which Joe Thompson and the museum have moved on.

The Artist-in-Residency Program at the Gardner Museum is 20 years old. Now, with a dedicated gallery and two resident apartments, it is poised to take on a higher profile. Curator Pieranna Cavalchini talks about the program.

The gleaming new wing at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum demonstrates how great design can preserve a historic structure. Through great vision, hard work and patient persistence, Executive Director Anne Hawley, her staff and board worked over seven years to complete a brilliant reconfiguration of a venerable art institution. Starchitect Renzo Piano masterfully created a gem.

The Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design announced a significant donation from Bank of America. Pleiades (1982), an important wall-relief sculpture by American artist Lynda Benglis, was recently added to the Museum's collection.

In this fourth and final installment David Ross discusses the phenomenon of museum expansions and the creation of global satellites by the Guggenheim. He applauds Adam Weinberg for moving the Whitney to the Meatmarket. Surprisingly, he says that as the Whitney's director he would have lacked the guts for such a bold decision.

In 2001 David A. Ross, after a four year "honeymoon" was fired as the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Prior to that he served as director of Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Since departing as a museum director Ross has been a chameleon after decades in the art world with more than nine lives. Today he performs as lead singer with the band Red. His day gig is running a graduate program for the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Istanbul is up there with Venice and Sao Paulo among the art biennials that matter. The 2011 edition explores the relationship between art and politics. Aesthetically pleasing, it is a sophisticated, rewarding show, which runs to November 13.

Concluding our attendance at the sixth annual Berkshire International Film Festival yesterday we attended three films: Part Time Fabulous, On the Ice, !Woman Art Revolution. While problematic for different reasons the films were consistent with the remarkable quality of the festival organized by founder and artistic director Kelley Vickery.

For the past few decades, cities and prominent institutions have focused on creation of iconic buildings by star architects to underscore their prominence. After three major attempts in the last 25 years, The Whitney Museum of American Art has given up on building expansion of their Marcel Breuer designed iconic structure and are building a new museum downtown in NYC's Meatpacking District. This is a major statement about institutional icons.

Artist Nari Ward will create a massive new exhibition comprising several interconnected works and encompassing an entire floor of MASS MoCA. Visitors can experience the new show, titled Sub Mirage Lignum, as both a large-scale environment and as a series of smaller yet connected spaces. Ward's dramatic sculptural installations are composed of material systematically collected from the neighborhoods where he lives and works or is personally connected to

Kate McNamara has been appointed to the position of director and chief curator of the Boston University Art Gallery. She has experience curating at MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY), Cleopatra's (Brooklyn, NY), Ramapo College (Ramapo, NY).

Can one be a servant of two masters? What happens when art critics Greg Cook of the Boston Phoenix and Charles Giuliano of Berkshire Fine Arts wear more than one hat as artists and curators. This installment of their extended dialogue focuses on Giuliano's epxeriences working with artists as director of exhibitions for New England School of Art & Design at Suffolk University.

Yet again the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is developing plans for a satellite museum. This time in Helsinki Finland. Former Guggenheim director, Tom Krens, initiated expansionist ambitions. Now they appear to continue under his successor Richard Armstrong.

It’s there for all to see in the thrilling new wing for the Art of the Americas, a museum within a museum. It’s so good it might make you fall in love with American art all over again.  

There is a domino impact for the arts in the Berkshires with the merger, over the next year, of the Colonial Theatre and the Berkshire Theatre Festival. A more dynamic Colonial increases the critical mass and leadership of Pittsfield as the matrix and hub of the arts and cultural economy. It is equidistant from the boundaries of the region that represent more than an hour to drive from one end to the other. Strengthening the thriving arts community in Pittsfield changes the paradigm for the region. It increases the potential for synergy or competition.

After much anticipation and over a decade of planning, fundraising, design and construction, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has opened to great fanfare its new Art of the Americas Wing. Under the guidance of Director Malcolm Rogers and the design of Foster+Partners, the new wing adds 27% new space to the building, creatively installed galleries and a refreshed experience for the MFA visitor. This is a stunning addition to a great cultural institution.

Recently, the California collectors Sonny and Gloria Kamm visited Pittsfield during a national search for a museum to partner with housing their collection. Over 30 years they acquired 10,000 vintage and contemporary tea pots. Some of them through Pittsfield Gallerist Leslie Ferrin. She hosted a reception in their honor. Today, she and Stuart Chase, director of the Berkshire Museum, announced that the collection will not come to Pittsfield.

In the exercise of power, influence and ego art critics often like to make or break individuals and movements. The combative stances perpetuate the notion of artists as warriors. High art is depicted as a clash of the titans. The great artists are simply the last ones standing.

After 6500 miles and 33 days, we returned home ! We had traveled through more than ten states, visited many museums and other cultural sites. We saw America's natural wonders, spent lovely days with old friends and met many interesting people along the way. Please follow us through our journey via photos and entries in my diary.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), presents Any Ever, the American premiere of artist Ryan Trecartin’s 2007â€"10 body of work, July 18 through October 17, 2010, at MOCA Pacific Design Center. "Ryan Trecartin has invented a new cinematic language that corresponds to the way people experience the Internet. His work has inspired a younger generation of filmmakers, as well as other artists,” comments incoming MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch.

In an historic decision for the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Board of Trustees has voted unanimously to break ground on a new museum building in downtown Manhattan in May 2011. Located in the Meatpacking District on Gansevoort Street between West Street and the High Line, the six-floor, 195,000-square-foot building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, will provide the Whitney with essential new space for its collection, exhibitions, and education and performing arts programs in one of New York’s most vibrant neighborhoods.

The Amherst Public Arts Commission (APAC) announces the inaugural Amherst Biennial to take place in October and November 2010 at the Nacul Center, Amherst Town Hall, and additional satellite sites in town. The jurors for the Biennial include the artist/ cuator, Terry Rooney, the artist Susan Loring-Wells and Tony Maroulis the former co founder and director of the gallery Wunderarts.

In the art world equivalent of musical chairs Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art has snatched its new chief curator, Helen Molesworth, from Harvard. Not long ago the ICA lost a young curator, Jen Mergel, to the MFA. What next in these musical chairs with an empty seat at Harvard which has put on indefinite hold its plans for a new modern/ contemporary museum.

The great architect's landmark building was completed in the fall of 1959. This summer, The Guggenheim Museum is celebrating its golden anniversary with a wonderful exhibition of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs. Bringing together 64 projects, many of which have never been seen by the public, this exhibit broadly demonstrates the resonance and continued influence of this unique architect.

One of the first major buildings constructed after German reunification, the Jewish Museum (Judisches Museum Berlin), was, after winning a competition, designed by prominent and often controversial architect Daniel Libeskind. One of the foremost proponents of Deconstructivist theory, Libeskind illustrates this design approach by the museum's architecture. The museum exhibits are underwhelming and somewhat confusing, but the museum structure is daring and compelling.