In the week that brought us the Google Art Project (which I have not yet explored in depth, but which looks pretty fascinating on first glance), dare I cite something that is now as common as a podcast?

Yes, I will. Museums are making more videos, and my attention has been called to a series that the Detroit Institute of Arts has produced for its Fakes, Forgeries and Mysteries exhibition.

The show opened last November and runs through April 10, and DIA is using these podcasts both to spread the word and go deeper on the discoveries made for the exhibitions.

I find them fun, and so — though I’ve already written about the exhibit here — I’m posting again.

DIA plans to do five podcasts — four  are up, and the fifth will be posted on Feb. 10. But it may have “enough” to produce a sixth one, too, according to Matt Fry, the marketing director.

As part of the attraction, DIA gives away free exhibition tickets (worth $12) to the first 10 people who watch the video and answer a question about the authentification process correctly.

Each videocast lasts about 3.5 to 4 minutes. They are easily findable on the DIA website: click on the exhibition and “Podcasts” appears on a tab, along with tabs for “Visitor Information” and “Faux/Real?”

They are also findable on the DIA’s YouTube channel, where (at the moment) they are not getting heavy viewership.

And, according to Fry, they are also available on ArtBabble, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, Vimeo and iTunes, and viewers have reposted them on other sites, like Facebook and Twitter. So it’s pretty impossible now to tell how many views they’ve had, though Fry says the museum will review the analytics after the series ends. He adds:

People are definitely learning about the science and research, and we’re having fun asking them to watch the videos and answer questions about the authentication process. We don’t currently have a survey mechanism in place to determine how many visit the show as a result, but we’re working with our internal researchers on a market segmentation type study that will help determine this in the future (“where did you hear about us”).

Are these the best podcasts out there? I couldn’t say, as I haven’t seen enough competitors. (Any informed critics out there?)

But I think they’re the way the museum world is going, and worth noting. We’ll be seeing more of these initiatives.

Photo Credit: Detroit Institute of Art

If you have never seen the works of Carlos Cruz-Diez, you may be in for a surprise. I was.

Cruz-Diez is a Venezuelan artist I became aware of last summer, when the first in a series of bilingual books on Latin American artists called Conversaciones (published by Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros) was released. But looking at art in a book, and looking at art in person are two different things, as we all know.

On a recent visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, I was treated to a sneak preview of Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time, an exhibition that will open on Sunday and run through July 4.

I was charmed.

Even though many works had not been hung — they were sitting on the floor instead of occupying a wall — and even though the lights were, mostly, off, the show looked magical.

The young and the young-at-heart will enjoy his playful “color structures,” which change with the viewer’s perspective. They cleverly engage people in a game about the changing nature of color. At the MFAH, there’s also a site-specific installation made of light. And Cruz-Diez made paintings that, until you are close-up, might be a “structure” or might not.

Though he was born in 1923, this is the first large-scale retrospective of his work, MFAH says.

The operative quote from the curator, Mari Carmen Ramírez, in the press release is this:

Generally considered in the context of Kinetic Art, the significance of the large body of work produced by Cruz-Diez since the 1950s extends beyond issues of movement, vibration and sheer retinality. From the beginning, Cruz-Diez focused his research and experiments on one critical issue: the investigation of color as a living organism that is in a constant state of transformation. This exhibition aims to show his radical and unprecedented achievements in this area.

In the site-specific work, Chromointerférence (above), visitors will walk into a large white room in which “two planes of color continually undulate in bands projected onto the walls and floor, dissolving the surrounding volumes–including the viewers’ bodies–into color.” I entered, in stocking feet (MFAH will provide booties), and was able to see something of what this will look like.

The show is meant to travel, but I do not believe any other museum has as yet committed. They should. Cruz-Diez is interesting himself, as well as a window on Latin American art.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of MFAH

 

In case you missed it, I want to point out an article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal by Pia Catton, which attempts to set the record straight on some misunderstandings about David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly,” the work yanked from the National Portrait Gallery’s “Hide/Seek” exhibition.

For a start, she says, quoting the artist’s executor, the work had nothing to do with his case of AIDS or the AIDS epidemic, as so many people have written. Including the wall label at MoMA, according to the article.

Even today’s Washington Post, which reports on the outcome of yesterday’s meeting of Smithsonian regents on the affair — no surprise, they supported Secretary Wayne Clough though, according to various reports, they did not vote on whether or not the film should have been removed from the exhibit — contains these passages:

The mistake was not having enough time to explain the iconography of the art itself and its meaning at the onset of the AIDS crisis.

And:

The video by the late Wojnarowicz was created in 1987 to show the pain and sorrow that the AIDS epidemic was creating, especially in the gay community. 

The whole episode is, imho, a manifestion of everyone losing his or her head, too quickly, without knowing all the facts. Instead of creating a teachable moment, everyone stoked the controversy. Thus no one has done himself, or herself, proud.

While I encourage you to read the whole WSJ article, here are a few critical passages:

…the people closest to the artist’s estate say the film and its creator have been too narrowly interpreted….

…”A Fire in My Belly”–which was made on Super8 mm film and is not, contrary to media reports, a “video”–predates Mr. Wojnarowicz’s discovery that he was HIV positive, which Mr. [Tom] Rauffenbart said occurred in March 1988. “The film was shot before David was diagnosed and before he got involved with the AIDS movement,” said Mr. Rauffenbart, who was the artist’s partner for seven years. Considered in a broader context, the film’s footage of street scenes in Mexico and of various forms of fighting reflects the artist addressing themes of violence, individuality and the effect of culture on a child.

…Regarding the crucifix scenes, Mr. Rauffenbart said they should be viewed in terms of Mr. Wojnarowicz’s extensive use of Catholic imagery: “He had a positive image of Christ and had his own version of what Christ represents. He was tied to saints, too, that suffered and were martyred.”

Rauffenbart, along with NYU, which holds Wojnarowicz’s papers, have compiled a fact sheet, which demands bigger circulation. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal

 

Not unpredictably, the new Art Gallery of Alberta did not turn out to be a big tourist draw — despite its great expectations, fostered by the Guggenheim-Bilbao experience. But on some other scores, AGA’s inaugural year did turn out well, as we shall see.

The AGA opened about a year ago, boasting on its website that “this architectural icon will draw visitors from around the world with twice the former gallery space….” Uh, uh, I said — don’t count on it. Edmonton, its home, is the northernmost metropolis on this continent with a population of more than 1 million. Except for skiers, most tourists prefer warmer climes.  

The first year brought more than 111,000 visitors to the museum, up from about 20,000 the year earlier, according to the Edmonton Journal. But the comparison is hardly fair, considering that the old museum was in a small gallery nearby, and — if the experience of many other museums is a guide — many people will come to see new architecture, even more than the art inside. 

On the other hand, AGA’s membership jumped to 5,300 in 2010, from 1,650 a year earlier, and that’s a good sign.

But here’s the rub: 82% of the visitors came from Edmonton itself, and another 8% came from the Edmonton region. Only 10% came from “elsewhere in Alberta or beyond.”

Executive Director Gilles Hebert is quoted as saying: “We have to expand our reach so people throughout the province come to our gallery.” Ital mine: AGA’s goal seems to have shifted from a year ago. 

And here’s another rub: while increased school groups accounted for some of the increase, a good thing, late night parties called “Refinery” appear to be the real sell-outs, with 200 people turned away at the last one.

Meantime, “operating costs [at the $88 million building] have been running higher than all but a few galleries in the country,” at $6.4 million annually, the Journal says.

A cautionary tale for all museums, I think.

UPDATE, 3/10/11: The Toronto Globe & Mail has weighed in on the Refinery parties, including this passage:

“I wonder in the end how effective these things really are. I’ve been to some of these things and heard people say things like: ‘Has anyone been here before?’ Or, ‘Does anyone know what they do here?’ ” [Charles] Reeve [a Toronto-based curator and associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design] said.

The results at Saturday’s AGA event were mixed. The crowd cheered and danced throughout the night, but was thicker near the booze than near the art. Many were surprised to learn the party’s $25 ticket didn’t generate any profit to benefit the gallery, while others said becoming a monthly donor is a tall order for young parents…

 

It’s hard to tell when developments in Cairo are happening so fast and are so volatile, but it seems that the damage to the Cairo Museum is worse than has been reported in some newspapers. It goes beyond damage to two mummies.

Al Jazeera has two videos (here and a long one here) calling it “tragic damage” with the best footage inside the museum that I have seen.

MSNBC, meanwhile, consulted Margaret Maitland, an Egyptologist at Oxford, who matched up the damage pictures with artifacts from King Tut’s tomb. The report said that “three gilded wooden statuettes of the boy-king may have been broken off their pedestals.”

Here are before and after shots of one of them:

Maitland’s own blog post has the best descriptions I’ve seen, with details on what was destroyed

And where is Zahi Hawass? I would have expected him to run to the museum on Friday — or even Thursday — to help defend it. But reports say he got there after the damage was done, and that he minimized the vandals’ impact, saying nothing was stolen, according to CNN.

UPDATE, 1/30 evening: Several reports have come in citing looting at various Egyptian archaeological sites and other museums, including the National Museum in Alexandria, the Royal Jewelry Museum and the Coptic Museum. 

Hawass now apparently says that many objects have been stolen. A report by the Canadian Broadcasting Company quotes him as fearing for the Cairo Museum because of attacks on party headquarters next door.

Internet service is down in Egypt, but Hawass has faxed a report to colleagues in Italy, who posted on his blog.  

[Read more…] about Demonstrations Take Toll on Cairo Museum — UPDATED, With Hawass Blog Link