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The Arts Blog ~ News and notes on Orange County's world of arts, from Tim Mangan (classical music), Laura Bleiberg (dance), Paul Hodgins (theater) and Richard Chang (visual art).

Archive for the 'Visual Art by Richard Chang' Category

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Getty names Judith Keller senior curator of photographs

February 2nd, 2010, 2:04 pm by RICHARD CHANG, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

judithkeller2_editThe J. Paul Getty Museum announced today that it has named Judith Keller as its senior curator of photographs.

Keller joined the museum in 1986. She has been acting head of the department since January 2009, following the retirement of the department’s founding curator Weston Naef. She will assume her new position immediately.

“During the extensive search process, Judy was always a candidate for the position,” Getty Museum acting director David Bomford said in a statement. “After much consideration and seeing the admirable manner in which she has led the department for the past year, it became clear that she would be the ideal person to take the department into the future. We look forward to seeing continued great things from Judy in her new official role.”

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Historian Howard Zinn dies at 87

January 27th, 2010, 4:13 pm by RICHARD CHANG, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Historian Howard Zinn, who wrote “A People’s History of the United States,” died today (Wednesday, 1/27) in Santa Monica from a heart attack. He was 87.

Zinn was supposed to speak and introduce a documentary at the Santa Monica Museum of Art on Thursday, Feb. 4. The title of the 8 p.m. presentation was to be “A Collection of Ideas… Howard Zinn: The People Speak,” and it was to feature his new documentary titled “The People Speak.”

At this point, it is unknown whether this event will still take place. The museum may still plan something at that time in memoriam, a spokeswoman said.

Update: The event is still scheduled to take place, a museum spokeswoman said. It will now become a tribute to Zinn and his remarkable work as a social activist, according to a statement released by the museum.

SMMoA also says this on its Web site: “The Santa Monica Museum of Art was deeply saddened to learn of Howard Zinn’s death.”

To read more about Zinn and his career, click here.

Previous posts on Visual Art by Richard Chang:

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Getty Foundation gives $3.1 million to 26 SoCal arts institutions

January 27th, 2010, 3:14 pm by RICHARD CHANG, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The Getty Foundation announced today that it is awarding $3.1 million in grants to 26 arts institutions across Southern California as part of the initiative, “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980.”

“Pacific Standard Time” will be a series of concurrent exhibitions throughout the region that highlights the significance of art in Los Angeles (and Southern California) in the post-World War II decades. Exhibits and related programs are set to begin in fall 2011 and conclude in spring 2012.

The new grants bring the total awarded by the Getty Foundation for “Pacific Standard Time” to $6.7 million. In 2008 and 2009, the foundation awarded nearly $3.6 million in grants to support research and planning for the exhibitions.

The Los Angeles County of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A. and the Hammer Museum are some obvious, L.A.-based recipients. Here in Orange County, the Orange County Museum of Art has received $225,000 for the presentation of the exhibit, “State of Mind: Art from California, Circa 1970,” scheduled for Oct. 24, 2011-Feb. 19, 2012.

Earlier, OCMA received $175,000 from the Getty Foundation for the planning of “State of Mind.”

“We’ve established a wonderful relationship with the Getty Foundation,” said Dennis Szakacs, director of OCMA. “It’s a testament to the quality of the museum’s programs. We’ve received $550,000 from Getty Foundation over last 4 years. It’s extraordinary. It’s a real ringing endorsement.”

According to the museum, “State of Mind” will be the first in-depth investigation of the development of California’s seminal conceptual and avant-garde activities during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sweeping political and cultural shifts of the time coincided with experimentations with new art forms including video, sound art, performance and installation.

The exhibit will provide a fresh art historical perspective by presenting lesser-known work by well-established figures and introducing new artists and their production to the field. “State of Mind” is co-organized with the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive.

“I think a lot of the exhibitions in the ‘Pacific Standard Time’ (project) will kind of help to set the record straight in what artists in California were doing, and how they had a much broader impact nationally and internationally than is often acknowledged,” Szakacs said. “There’s a good bit of revisionist art history that’s going to go on with this project.”

The $225,000 grant caps a successful year for OCMA, which is announcing its largest quarter of institutional fundraising during the past five years. The museum received more than $1.1 million from private foundations, government agencies, corporations and individuals over the past three months.

For a full list of “Pacific Standard Time” recipients and projects, click on “Read the rest of this entry” below.

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Arts attendance and charitable giving hit record lows

January 25th, 2010, 4:05 pm by RICHARD CHANG, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

More bad news on the arts attendance and donation fronts. According to Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America, attendance to arts events declined in 2008, along with subsidies and charitable donations to arts organizations.

The Washington D.C. and New York City-based organization has debuted the National Arts Index, a new measure of the health and vitality of arts in the U.S. That index fell 4.2 percentage points in 2008, hitting a decade-low 98.4 percent. The drop reflects losses in charitable giving and declining attendance at large cultural institutions — even as the number of arts organizations grew.

Even though arts organizations have grown over the past decade, one out of three failed to achieve a balanced budget during the same time. Sustaining capacity continues to be a challenge.

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Laguna Art Museum to host ‘OsCene 2010′

January 21st, 2010, 5:58 pm by RICHARD CHANG, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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An image from Jocelyn Foye’s “Derby Girl Smash Down,” a live event to be held Feb. 18 at Laguna Art Museum.

The Laguna Art Museum is gearing up for its semi-biennial exhibition, “The OsCene: Contemporary Art and Culture in OC.”

Curator Grace Kook-Anderson has selected 49 artists who will be included in the museum’s signature show, scheduled for Feb. 21-May 16. In addition, guest film curator Keiko Beatie has chosen film and video works to be screened during the run of the exhibit.

“OsCene 2010″ will feature painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, multimedia installations, video, architecture, performance and design. This year, “OsCene” will extend to Long Beach and San Pedro, sometimes considered the “blurred boundary” between Orange and Los Angeles counties. At least, that’s what the press release is saying.

“Despite the geographical framework that ‘OsCene 2010′ takes on, it’s exciting to see the range of artists in this exhibition with diverse backgrounds and practices,” Kook-Anderson said in a statement. “There will definitely be some threads of dialogue between these different artists and their works.”

The first “OsCene” was in 2004, and the second was in 2006.

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$5,000 fellowship available for SoCal artist

January 21st, 2010, 2:33 pm by RICHARD CHANG, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Here’s a great offer for an up-and-coming artist living in Southern California. The Los Angeles Municipal Gallery Associates (LAMAGA) is offering a $5,000 award fellowship for any artist living in Southern California who has not received a bachelor’s degree before May 2000. The selected artist will also be given a solo exhibition in the Project Room of the Los Angeles Art Municipal Gallery, in conjunction with the C.O.L.A. mid-career artists’ exhibition, May 20-July 18, 2010.

The Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg Feitelson Arts Fellowship was conceived by the Feitelsons, seminal Los Angeles Modernist painters, and their friends as a way to encourage artists early in their careers by offering financial grants. Lorser was one of the founders and leading proponents of Hard-edge painting.

The juror for this award is Tyler Stallings, former chief curator at the Laguna Art Museum and current director of the UC Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery.

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Letter from Europe - Part 4: Kirsten Dunst is Turning Japanese

January 18th, 2010, 4:49 pm by RICHARD CHANG, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Kirsten Dunst wears a blue wig and turns Japanese in a video at the Tate Modern directed by McG and produced by Takashi Murakami. Photo by Richard Chang/The Register.

Greetings, dear readers. This is the final post in a series called “Letters from Europe.”

Previously, I told you about Tony getting stuck in the Louvre loo, the amazing ruins of Rome and losing my dearly beloved in the Sistine Chapel.

Now, for the record, I returned from Europe several weeks ago. But I wanted to discuss our time in London before I forget. And I didn’t want to leave any of you fine readers hanging, in case you were waiting for the conclusion.

Incidentally, I lived in England for a year, a long, long time ago in the 1990s. I was on a study abroad program at the University of Bristol. Since then, I’ve gone back to visit a couple of times. What’s my impression of the British between then and now? Well, they’ve certainly gotten ruder. Many can’t even bother to stop and acknowledge you when you ask for directions. “Two countries divided by a common language,” as George Bernard Shaw once said.

In any case, it was a Sunday in December when Tani and I took the Eurostar Chunnel train from Paris to London. This was before the disastrous shutdown of that mode of transportation, which affected about 40,000 people on both sides of the English Channel.

We stayed at the Harlingford Hotel, in the Camden neighborhood of Bloomsbury. They serve excellent English breakfasts there, in a sunny ground-floor room, not in the basement, as many other bed and breakfasts do. The rooms are clean, the prices are reasonable, and I would definitely recommend it.

On Monday, we visited the world-famous British Museum, which was within walking distance from our hotel. Now, to really see the British Museum, you would probably need a few days — it’s that big. In fact, it houses one of the largest collections of art and antiquities in the world. For visitors to Great Britain, it is a must see.

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