Tag Archive "scott-burden"

The Afterlife of Things: Virgil Marti’s “Set Pieces” at the ICA at Penn

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) invited the artist, Virgil Marti, to create an exhibition from works in the store rooms of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), and Marti’s discoveries among the museum’s overflow, dis-attributed, unfashionable, and otherwise overlooked collections were a spur to his imagination. The objects in storage reminded Marti of the final scenes of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, with its panning shot of the endless, largely unopened crates of Kane’s accumulated treasures. In Set Pieces (at the ICA through Feb. 13, 2011), Marti gives previously-silent objects new lives in a sequence of tableaux sprung from his ... More » »

More Museum Studies; Artists as Docents

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam with banner for For the Love of God Damian Hirst, November – December, 2008 I arrived in Amsterdam on Dec. 14 on an overnight flight, took a nap and awoke to the suggestion from my friend, Barbara that we go to the Rijksmuseum for the last day of an exhibition. The work in question was For the Love of God, Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull along with a small room of paintings that Hirst selected from the museum’s collection.

Summer in Boston

Anish Kapoor, S-Curve, 2006, Polished steel, 85 1/4 x 384 x 48 in. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: John Kennard. I was in Boston last month for a college reunion (my first; it took me decades to attend one) and managed to fit in two important institutions devoted to contemporary art on my way in from the airport. First was the Institute of Contemporary Art in its prize-winning new building by Diller Scofidio + Renfro; what they’ve given up in terms of walk-in traffic at their previous Back Bay location is made up for in harbor views, although the ... More » »