It’s never too late to pay a compliment, so let me give a shout-out to the New Museum, not for one of its exhibitions, but for a different initiative: The Bowery Artist Tribute.
The issue that arrived in my mail the other day was Vol. 2 — but if I received the first volume, last year, it got lost in the avalanche of press materials I receive.
The New Museum started this tribute, which will document the artists who have called the Bowery neighborhood home, soon after it opened its new home there in late 2007. Along with a full-sized magazine of articles and interviews with Bowery artists (Vol. 2 includes Roddy Bogawa, John Giorno, Mary Heilmann, Kellie Jones, Adam Purple, Arleen Schloss, Billy Sullivan and Dash Snow [no interview]), plus a long list of artists and their past or current address, the Tribute has its own webpages, with an interactive map.
The New Museum says that more than 100 artists have lived or worked in the neighborhood in the last 50 years alone, so oral histories can go on for some time. This is an important project.
The New Museum this month is opening two exhibits, The Last Newspaper, which explores changes in the publication and distribution of information and Free, which explores artistic strategies made possible by the Internet. And sometime this fall it will unveil a new facade sculpture, Rose II, by German artist Isa Genzken.
And in case you missed it, last week the New Museum announced the “Festival of Ideas for a New City,” set for May 7-8, 2011, which will panels, roundtables, symposia, and workshops; an outdoor street fair; and dozens of projects, performances, and events, opening simultaneously at multiple downtown venues. The Bowery is the spine of the event, anchored by Cooper Union on the north and the New Museum on the south. More information is here.
I can’t say I love everything the New Museum is doing, but it sounds as if it’s fitting right in down on the Bowery.
UPDATE, Oct. 29: Work to install Genzken’s Rose II, which is 28 feet tall, begins tomorrow. It will go on the second-floor ledge, which was designed for a rotating program of sculptural installations. It will replace Ugo Rondinone’s Hell, Yes! (2001), which has been there since the New Museum opened in its current location in 2007. Rondinone’s work will be installed somewhere else “soon,” the museum says.