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Matthew interviews Serbian performance artist, Tanja Ostojic, whose recent project was a research and art mission to meet and work with all the women she could find who bore the same name. She met and worked with 33 Tanjas with her same last name. The Tanjas project raises issues about naming, identity, gender, war and migration.
Read MoreA memorial service is scheduled for A.M. Weaver, our late friend, who contributed so much to artists and the arts in Philadelphia. Also, John Thompson and Daniel Oliva organized a show on the important topic of immigration, and the images look terrific.
Read MoreOlivia Jia profiles two women who are deeply invested in local art criticism: writer Julia Clift and editor Samantha Mitchell. Both women are also artists in their own right, with serious studio practices and the multiple day jobs it takes to keep it all going. Here Jia speaks with them about the challenges associated with wearing multiple hats, and reflects on the vital service they provide to the Philadelphia arts community at large.
Read MoreMichael visited the art fairs in Miami in December and writes about one artist he found whose work resonated loudly and who, now in her 50s, is beginning to break into the national art scene.
Read MoreAndrea writes about the pioneering light artist, Thomas Wilfred, whose use of electricity and projected light in the early 20th Century was an influence on artists of later eras, including James Turrell. Wilfred’s works were on view recently at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in a show (closed Jan. 7) organized by Yale University Art Gallery. The works are difficult to conserve and that may explain why the artist fell out of circulation, as his works sat in storage waiting for tune-ups or fixes. The Museum of Modern Art owns one of Wilfred’s seminal works and Andrea thinks MoMA should bring the piece back for a new audience.
Read MoreCarl(os) Roa visits Mina Zarfsaz’s Dead Ringer, a multimedia installation on view through January 21st at Vox Populi Gallery. An assemblage of found objects and recorded voices sandwiched between two mirrors, this absurdist sculpture begs for audience participation, and Roa puts himself right in the scene.
Read MoreEvan gives props to the famous New York portraitist, Chuck Close, for being a virtuoso of photo techniques (everything from daguerrotypes to large-format Polaroids). But in a show of 90 prints, all very well executed, some of the works — and especially the celebrity photographs — fail to ignite empathy or excitement, he says. NOTE: This post was written prior to the sexual harassment charges against Close were made public. The article is about the artist’s photographs and does not deal with his behavior towards women.
Read MoreAndrea Kirsh runs down to Richmond to check out the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and touch base with its Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education, Michael Taylor. We at Artblog remember Michael fondly when he was Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the PMA! It looks as if he’s brought some of his Philly love to the VMFA with acquisitions of works by Tristin Lowe and Daniel Heyman! Andrea reports.
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