No, we’re not putting down myspace.com. As a matter of fact, Sierra Arts is in the process of whipping up a drop-dead gorgeous MySpace.com page. But in the meantime, we’d like to direct your attention to a site called MyArtSpace.com. Like My Space, but aimed at artists. It’s not only got interviews, calls for artists, info on galleries and competitions, but it also sends out a weekly e-newsletter with links to recent news of note for the arts community
Here’s an example, from this past week’s edition;
“Museums Learn To Mimic Hollywood “In the era of movies with elaborate special effects and video games with graphics that cause players to marvel at the feeling of being inside the game, its no wonder museums are scrambling to keep up. For many, the answer to a more sophisticated audience and one with, perhaps, a shorter attention span is interactivity and immersion. Science and childrens museums have long trafficked in hands-on, sensory experiences. Now, with improved technology, the experiential exhibit is reaching new heights and turning up in a variety of venues.” The Christian Science Monitor 10/19/07
Queen-Sized Bed, Bath, Cable TV, And A Van Gogh An innkeeper in France is attempting to raise $30m or more to purchase a Van Gogh landscape at auction. If he is successful, the painting would hang in the attic room where the painter died two days after shooting himself in 1890. “The plan is dismissed as a mad fantasy by some curators and art dealers,” but the innkeeper seems to be skilled at attracting backers. The New York Times 10/18/07
The Art of Sex A London exhibition showcasing erotic art through the ages is rekindling old debates on art and pornography. “The exhibition throws light on how different cultures at different times have viewed sex. What it reveals above all is how styles of art have changed over the centuries, while human beings and their desires have essentially stayed the same.” BBC 10/16/07
A Portent For The Art Market? “A buyers’ revolt against escalating Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol values, and rising demand for Chinese and lower-priced Western art at London’s five-day auctions may be a guide to New York’s November sales.” Bloomberg 10/17/07
Assessing This Year’s Frieze London’s Frieze has only been around for five years, but it has rapidly become the UK’s largest and most influential art fair. “Some 151 galleries from 28 countries were chosen to take part this year, drawn from 450 applicants; each has a booth displaying its best pieces — or at least pieces it hoped would sell or provoke… To the extent there is a buzz at Frieze this year, it has centered on the booth run by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, a New York gallery, which has been turned into a flea market organized by the artist Rob Pruitt.” The New York Times 10/13/07
Audience Participation Comes To The Art Gallery “Since Rudolf Stingel’s sleek midcareer survey opened at the Whitney Museum of American art in June, hundreds of visitors have been allowed to depart radically from traditional museum protocol (hands off) and have a go at the walls in the exhibition’s first gallery, using anything they happen to have with them: pens, money, credit cards, cellphones… Over the intervening months New York’s art-viewing public rose to the occasion: The room’s lower half is now equally dense with a kind of populist, manic, talking-in-tongues wallpaper.” The New York Times 10/13/07
Art That Refuses To Live In Fear Picasso’s Guernica is on display in Spain, where the painting’s anti-war message stands in stark contrast to the terrorist attacks endured regularly by Spaniards. Guernicaitself has been the target of violence over the years, to the extent that it used to be displayed only under heavy glass. These days, it hangs unprotected, and Michael Kimmelman says that public trust is what makes art, and the museums that house it, so uniquely human. The New York Times 10/13/07
Professor Pleads Guilty In Kurtz Art Case A genetics researcher at the University of Pittsburgh has pleaded guilty for obtaining biological materials for a friend’s art exhibit. Robert Ferrell “was indicted in June 2004, along with Steven A. Kurtz, a former Carnegie Mellon University art professor and founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which uses art to examine the impact of science and technology on consumer culture.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 10/11/07″
So, until we get our MySpace up and running, check in with MyArtSpace.com for art related digital networking…
