Posts archive: July 2005

The Chronicle’s Kenneth Baker weighs in on Bay Area Now 4

today.

- Meredith Tromble [Saturday, July 30th, 2005]

Buoyed by the success of The Gates, Christo and Jeanne Claude are looking west, towards Colorado’s stretch of the Arkansas River. The Denver Post reports on their proposal.

- Meredith Tromble [Saturday, July 30th, 2005]

Dominic Willsdon, a curator in the education department at Tate Modern in London since 2000, is coming to town as SFMOMA’s new Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs. He’ll arrive in late 2005. Over at New Langton Arts another former Londoner, Sandra Percival, is taking over as Executive Director. Percival is the author of The Vision of Artists and the Mechanics of Funding, now out of print. Chris Gilbert, formerly the contemporary curator of the Baltimore Museum of Art, is moving into the Matrix Curator position at the Berkeley Art Museum left vacant when Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson accepted the directorship of the Aspen Museum of Art.

- Meredith Tromble [Wednesday, July 27th, 2005]

James Luna and Rebecca Belmore. The Washington Post interviews them about the relationship between their traditional and contemporary cultures.

- Jeannine McDonald [Monday, July 25th, 2005]

Is it a showdown between the La Brea tarpits and LACMA? The LA Times reports.

- Meredith Tromble [Monday, July 25th, 2005]

Photo San Francisco 2005 opens at the Festival Pavilion in Fort Mason tonight, with a 6-9 pm reception benefiting benefit Instituto Terra, a non-profit organization helping to conserve and restore Brazil’s threatened Atlantic Forest through education, research and reforestation. A lecture and seminar series will also be held with guest speakers including Mary Virginia Swanson, photography consultant; Stephen Perloff, editor for Photo Review/Photograph Collector; and internationally acclaimed photographers Bill Owens, Todd Hido and Catherine Wagner.

- Meredith Tromble [Thursday, July 21st, 2005]

Adam Rompel is apparently finally closing down Lucky Tackle, the upbeat installation-oriented art space on San Pablo Avenue in North Oakland. This will be a big loss locally, as Rompel is an extremely astute curator who has managed to consistently present art that is both fun and good. He’s shown, among others: Jason Byers, Christian Maychack, Juliana Paciulli, Michael Arcega and Yoshimi Hayashi. I have never seen a bad show there.

The current exhibition, the next-to-last, is Tim Sullivan’s Amazing Luminous Fountains, which is up until August 13th. The one-night-only closing exhibition will be For Tomorrow: the very, very last lucky tackle show ever, honest on August 20th.

- [Tuesday, July 19th, 2005]

Overheard at the frenzied Bay Area Now opening last night:

Cool, it’s like a two-headed monster colander.

It’s about time we saw some reality in a museum. These photos are what it really looks like, finally.

Wow…it’s always weird to see someone who’s anorexic.

Man, I love me some low art that’s masquerading as high art.

Was that guy wearing an eye patch before?

It’s like an alternative reality, you know. Like his own particular way of decoding the world.

Bear skin rug vest behind you.

This is fucking full circle, you know what I mean?

Are you trying to listen to what we’re talking about?

- Tucker Nichols [Saturday, July 16th, 2005]

at the top of the Albany Bulb like Wells’ Martian war-machines. This week the dumpsters are gone, filled no doubt with the grass house, the wood house and other familiar Bulb structures. Allegedly to allow for removal of homeless encampments, new 10-foot -wide dirt roads have been torn through the tall forests of fennel. Is this the beginning of the final taming of one of the East Bay’s last wild spots? The paintings done by the now-disbanded Sniff art collective are still there, but for how much longer?

- [Thursday, July 14th, 2005]

The Lab’s website confirms that two more members of The Lab’s board of directors have resigned since the recent change in management structure. Lauren Davies’ resignation was not unexpected, as she had not supported the change. Roxxie Rosen’s resignation is a little more surprising, since she was one of the three people who did vote for the change. The Lab’s already-small Board is now down to six directors.

- [Sunday, July 10th, 2005]

As one of the few cultural institutions included in the new World Trade Center plans, New York’s Drawing Center is suddenly under fire for showing art that on occasion expresses a political viewpoint. The Daily News started it with this front page story, other tabloids have joined in and now Pataki has caved to the pressure.

So our response to a terrible attack on New York City is to stifle free expression? Feels like evidence of defeat to me. Imagine a “Freedom Center” that offers as many perspectives as there are visitors—then I’d believe our resolve had truly strengthened.

- Tucker Nichols [Monday, July 4th, 2005]

There was a nervous excitement in the air at the press preview for the Richard Tuttle retrospective at SFMOMA this week. Tuttle has probably inspired more “my kid could do that” responses by viewers than any major artist, and SFMOMA is gambling people will turn out to see the show. But the payoff isn’t just good press and accolades. If you can open your mind wide enough to let the work swim around for a bit, you may come away thinking you need to start looking at art all over again.

- Tucker Nichols [Friday, July 1st, 2005]

From the editors