Friday, April 8, 2011

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Image Library at LACMA

A library of high-resolution images of artworks in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is now available online. Comprising images of sculptures, paintings, photographs, ceramics, and other work that LACMA states are in the public domain, the library's holding currently represent approximately 2,000 of the museum's more than 100,000 objects; LACMA notes that it will be adding to the database over time. While access to the Image Library is free, LACMA asks that users first read and honor the terms & conditions, which cover attribution and other issues.

Images of artworks not listed in the library may be requested online. 

LACMA on FaceBookTwitter, Flickr, and YouTube

Artists' Books Online

By chance, I recently came upon an extraordinary digital repository of artists' books, curated exhibits, related essays, and links to other collections and resource materials in the field: Artists' Books Online (or ABsOnline). Established in 2004 as an ongoing project hosted at the University of Virginia and directed by Johanna Drucker, ABsOnline is intended to "promote critical engagement with artists' books" and serve not only artists but also art scholars, critics, curators, librarians, and interested readers. Go here to read about the conceptual framework of the project and then head to the FAQs, where you'll find useful information about the organization and use of and access to the collections. Searches are permitted by title, artist, publication date, and collection.

Current curated exhibits include a chronology (beginning in 1972) of Drucker's work, 20 issues of The Journal of Artists' Books, and works from an ABsOnline artists' conference. They include images, critical gloss and text, and other relevant commentary. (Given the riches in these three exhibits alone, you could spend hours in this section of the site.)

This PennSound page for Drucker, a professor in the information studies department at UCLA who also is an internationally known book artist, poet, visual theorist, and cultural critic, is a wonderful resource, too. Drucker's Website is here. A 40-year retrospective of Drucker's work is planned at the Columbia College Gallery in Chicago.

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Opening April 13 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is "Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective", featuring at least 60 works dating from the 1970s to the present. On view until August 28, the show is the first such retrospective of Serra's drawings.

Among exhibition-related events is a showing on May 24 and May 25 of a two-part film in which Charlie Rose joins Serra on a tour of his 40-year retrospective in 2007 at the Museum of Modern Art and talks with the artist aobut his creative process.* On May 18, the artist joins the Met Museum's Magdalena Dabrowski and Lynne Cooke in a talk about different aspects of his drawings and how they are both independent of and related to his sculpture. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Met Museum of FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Foursquare

* "A Conversation with Artist Richard Serra" also can be accessed here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

✭ In Washington, D.C., Addison/Ripley Fine Art is presenting through April 23 "Julia von Eichel: New Work", a show of elegant constructions.

Julia von Eichel (Be sure to visit the site to see the many images of von Eichel's installations, shadow box sculptures, and 2-D works.)

Profile of von Eichel and Images on Gallery Website

✭ April 10 marks the opening of "Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass" at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. The show, which will be on view until August 7, will include new and archival works. Three monumental glass sculptures — Lime Green Icicle Tower (see detail in image above, at left),  Boathouse Neon II, and Amber Cattails — have been installed in the museum's Shapiro Family Courtyard and surrounding spaces in advance of the exhibition. One installation, Mille Fiori, occupies nearly 60 feet of space. 

A slideshow can be accessed from the exhibition page above, as can a series of four videos.

Accompanying the show is the color-illustrated catalogue by Gerald W.R. Ward, Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass.



MFA Boston on FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube

This brief video includes images of Chihuly's works installed in late 2010 at Cheekwood Botanical Garden  & Museum of Art in Nashville, Tennessee:


For a carousel of images from the Cheekwood show, go here; more about Chihuly in Nashville is here.

✭ A solo exhibition of paintings by Suh, Kyoung-Ja is on view until April 23 at Able Fine Art, New York City. Included are a beautiful series of acrylics on canvas, called Meditations.


Suh, Kyoung-Ja, Meditation II, Acrylic on Canvas, 2009
72.7 cm x 60.6 cm

Able Fine Art on FaceBook and Twitter

5 comments:

Daisy Hickman said...

What an excellent overview of exhibits, Maureen. When we lived in St. Louis, we loved going the the St. Louis Art Museum. And in Indianapolis, the Eiteljorg was our favorite museum. Now, in eastern Dakota, we have the Washington Pavilion and the SD Art Museum. I can only go a few weeks without visiting some kind of art gallery! There is something deeply inspiring about viewing art ... fresh air for the soul!

Anonymous said...

i wonder if you would consider doing an all art blog.

i suggest this only for selfish reasons of my own.
as i get overwhelmed with post that have a lot of info. and i tend to forget to come back and finish what i have not seen, so i miss out on some of your posts. my problem...i know.

but, i was thinking that if you could post less...more often of the art stuff, then it would be easier for me to process it.

i know...it's a lot to ask...
but, i thought you would excuse my forward pushiness because you know that i am weird and like me anyway.

Anonymous said...

oh...and pictures..i need pictures.

i'm pushing it arn't i ?

Maureen said...

Nance, as summer rolls in, I may cut the number of posts per week I do, or perhaps I'll do more but much shorter. I don't always have the same features or the same number of items per feature in All Art Friday. I do not want to have another blog, however. Almost all I write about falls under the heading "arts".

Anonymous said...

thanks for answering.
i'm going to try and do better at picking out one thing to check on and read when i feel overwhelmed. i'll just take a deep breath and relax.

you said that magic word... "summer". ahhhh.

it feels good just saying it.