All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ Iranian-born filmmaker and photographer Shirin Neshat created a video, "Winter", for The New York Times; a still from the video with an excerpt from Forugh Farrokhzad's poem, translated from the Persian by Farzaaneh Milani, was posted to the newspaper's opinion pages in December.

✦ A trailer for Alison Klayman's forthcoming Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry also was released last month:

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry  TEASER from Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry on Vimeo.

Ai Weiwei was runner-up for Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2011. See "Ai Weiwei: The Dissident", Time, December 14, 2011.

✦ Late this past December the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities announced the selection of five curators to complete 25 "ground-breaking" public art installations for the 5x5 Public Art Project to be presented during the Centennial Celebration of the National Cherry Blossom Festival March 20 - April 27. The curators are Amy Lipton, New York City, co-director, EcoArtSpace; Justine Topfer, San Francisco, international curator and writer, Out of the Box Projects; Richard Hollinshead, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, United Kingdom, director, Grit & Pearl, and an artist, designer, and curator; Laura Roulet, Washington, D.C., sole local curator for 5x5, an independent curator and writer specializing in contemporary and Latin American art; and Steve Rowell, Culver City, California, artist, curator, and researcher. The projects are temporary (not to exceed four months). Additional information about the curators and the five artists each has selected is here and at the 5x5 Website.

5x5 Project on FaceBook and Twitter

5x5 Project Blog

DC Arts Videos on Vimeo

DC Art Bank Collection

DC Creates! Public Art Program

DCCAH's Calls to Curators and Artists

DCCAH on FaceBook and Twitter

National Cherry Blossom Festival on FaceBook and Twitter

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ A solo exhibition, "Steven Katzman: Human Abstract" is on view through February 18 at Masters & Pelavin, New York City. Drawing on two decades of the artist's edgy, often disturbing photography, the show addresses the themes of love, death, religion, afterlife, and faith.  

Steven Katzman Photography

Masters & Pelavin on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Last week saw the opening of "Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. On view through May 20, the more than 70 photographs in the show, taken between April and May of 2011, will tour nationally. Eventually, the images on display will  be added to the museum's permanent collection. Among Leibovitz's photographic subjects are Niagara Falls, Walden Pond, Yosemite Valley, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, sculptor Daniel Chester French's plaster casts of his own hands, and the homes of Emily Dickinson, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Elvis Presley. The book Pilgrimage is available through the SAAM store. The photographer, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, spoke before a sold-out audience on January 24.

Annie Leibovitz, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, 2009

© Annie Leibovitz

From Pilgrimage (Random House, November 2011)

Annie Leibovitz on FaceBook

Terence Monmaney, "Annie Leibovitz's American Pilgrimage", Smithsonian Magazine, January 2012 (This comprises a selection of images with commentary.)

Vincent Dowd, "Annie Leibovitz Captures America", BBC, December 8, 2011

SAAM on FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, and ArtBabble

✭ The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, showcases "Dan Flavin: Drawing", beginning February 17. Comprising more than 100 sheets from every phase of Flavin's career, this first retrospective of the artist's drawings also includes nearly 50 works on paper from Flavin's personal art collection, from landscapes by Hudson River School artists, to Japanese drawings by such artists as Hokusai, to works by 20th Century minimalists Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt, among others. The exhibition will run through July 1. Among exhibition-related events is a symposium, "Minimalist Drawing: The 1960s and 1970s", scheduled for April 27 (tickets are required).

The Dan Flavin Art Institute

Morgan Library & Museum of FaceBook and Twitter

✭ A not-to-be-missed survey of photography by three dozen international artists, "An Orchestrated Vision: The Theatre of Contemporary Photography" opens at the St. Louis Art Museum on February 19 and runs through May 13. As the show's title suggests, the works are to be viewed as "meticulously construct[ed] environments" that "operate in the boundaries between fact and fiction." Among the three dozen artists represented by the more than 40 images in the exhibition are Tina Barney, Edward Burtynsky, Nan Goldin, Thomas Struth, Carrie Mae Weems, collaborators Alexander Birchler and Teresa Hubbard, Andrew Moore, and Gregory Crewdson. A related installation, "The First Act: Staged Photography Before 1980" is on view through April 29. Related exhibition programs are described here. 

List of Works on View (pdf) and Digital Images (pdf)

Andrew Moore, Palace Theater, Gary, Indiana, 2008

Chromogenic Print, 40" x 50"

Collection of Robert Verdi

© Andrew Moore

Courtesy of Artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York 

SLAM on FaceBook, Flickr, and YouTube

Notable Exhibitions Abroad

✭ At the Wellcome Collection you'll find "Miracles & Charms", comprising two exhibitions on view through February 26: "Infinitas Gracias: Mexican Miracle Paintings" and "Felicity Powell - Charmed Life: The Solace of Objects". 

The first features more than 100 votive paintings from the collections of museums in and around Mexico City and two sanctuaries in the Bajio region. It includes images, news reports, photographs, devotional artifacts, and films and interviews. The virtual Votives Gallery includes a selection of stories and that paintings that bring them to life. Exhibition-related films are available online. The second displays 400 amulets, some simple coins and others elaborately carved shells, as well as 10 artworks by Felicity Powell. Browse the online Amulet Gallery and learn more about the objects and  their owners.

The video below previews both exhibitions, which opened last October:

✭ The V&A Museum of Childhood is not just for the young. If you're in London, be a kid again and go see "Magic Worlds", continuing through March 4. The show, featuring costumes, tricks/illusions, film merchandise, optical toys, paintings and ceramics, dolls and puppets, illustrated books, and interactive activities, promises to delight anyone who enjoys fair tales and fantasy literature and wants to know more about the origins of magic. 

Ackermann & Co., England, Fantascope, 1883

Museum No. E. 1879-1954

Selection of Exhibition Images

Victoria & Albert Museum