In this essay, Chuck Patch recounts color photography’s commercial origins and history via the career of photographer Pete Turner.
Read MoreAs we await The Museum of Modern Art’s newest expansion, Andrea Kirsh reflects on her experience visiting MoMA over the past fifty years— during which time she has witnessed two other building expansions. MoMA will re-open on October 21, 2019.
Read MoreOn view at the Museum of Modern Art through January 1, 2019, Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams is a comprehensive survey featuring the recently-deceased artist’s “extreme maquettes” — sculptural cityscapes rendered in bold geometries, jubilant hues. Here Katerina Lanfranco fills us in on Kingelez’s unorthodox use of materials and his utopian vision for the future.
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 MoreAndrea immerses herself in Doug Wheeler’s “PSAD Synthetic Desert III” from 1971, currently on view at the Guggenheim. Wheeler created a soundless environment inspired by the deserts of northern Arizona. Unfortunately, she writes, the 10 minute slot allotted to visitors isn’t quite enough to feel the full sensory effect of this remarkable piece.
Read MoreWhen Jean Tinguely unpacked his “Hommage to New York” in 1960 and turned it on in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art on March 17, 1960, the sculpture did more than self destruct–it exploded, caught fire, and was drowned by the New York Fire Department. But art history was made amid the shattering bottles, smoke spumes, and firey blow up. Tinguely had brought his kinetic junk to the world of art and succeeded in spectacular failure.
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