Hard Work

If there is one thing on everyone’s minds these days, it’s jobs. Roughly 1 out of every 11 Americans is unemployed; Obama’s Jobs Bill just got voted down; the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to squares and campuses across the nation; and news segments endlessly discuss potential economic plans for job creation. In her infinite wisdom, Curator Susan Cross has channeled this timely and contentious discourse (and its historical roots) into her show, The Workers, on view at MassMoCA through March 2012. In it, labor emerges as the dominant theme that is taken up in different contexts by the 25 international artists and filmmakers featured. Here, the artists talk about work while making work. Adrian Paci’s 2007 video of a mass of laborers stranded in the middle of an empty runway, poignantly addresses the plight of the migrant worker; Mary Lum’s billboard project of personally stamped brown paper bags (whose work will also be featured in The 2012 deCordova Biennial) elevates and personalizes the worker; while other projects like Sam Durant’s sculptural gallows remember a darker history of labor activism. More than just a timely reflection – The Workers showcases the variety of perspectives and thinking about industry, economy, and the jobscape today.

Adrian Paci, Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, 2007, video still

Mary Lum, Made with Pride by Terry Russell, 2011

PLATFORM 7 – now up!

Tory Fair just finished her sculptures on the Pollack Terrace. The installation, Testing a World View (Again) is the 7^th iteration of our ongoing PLATFORM series and is the first to address this fantastic terrace space! The installation features four identical cast figures of the artist’s body in a nice pink resin with aluminum leafing. Placed on and around the terrace in surprising ways (note the wall…), Fair asks us to test our own world view with our bodies and minds!

On Saturday, August 6^th visitors are given an opportunity to listen and try out their own line of questioning. There is a Platform Discussion with Tory Fair and documentary filmmaker Robb Moss, where the two will chat about other strange interactions between the body and nature. There is also Yoga in the Park where visitors can use this opportunity to see how their bodies respond to only to the movement of the positions but the space of the sculpture park. 

--Jenny

Abby and Brian installing

Tory directing

Tory with her cast



View from the Terrace, photo by Tony Luong



Little Rhodie

This week I found myself in Wakefield, RI, visiting the historic Hera Gallery. A pioneer in alternative exhibition spaces and one of the earliest women’s cooperative galleries in the US, Hera is unusual in having been established in a non-urban setting – and just a stone’s throw from the water. You really couldn’t ask for a nicer locale!

Currently on view is a selection of works from member artists featuring this particularly excellent staged photograph of sculpted cake icing (as a fan of Ace of Cakes, I couldn’t help but love this) and some smart constructions by Michael Yefko.



Mara Trachtenberg



En route back to Boston I dropped by the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown in Providence where outgoing curator Maya Allison and AS220 director Neal Walsh curated a sharp round up of Providence painting. Shawn Gilheeney took the back wall and transformed it into a ghostly, layered mural of a decaying landscape while Lisa Perez takes paint into the sculptural with fantastic constructions that play off the wall with color and form. Local writer Greg Cook has a nice write up about it on his ever-fantastic blog.

Shawn Gilheeny

Lisa Perez

And finally, you can’t leave Brown’s art building without stopping in at the stairwell (which you’ll need to do anyhow if you need the bathroom), which Brown art and art history students have been tagging for years. A wise and fun take on the hallowed halls of academia…

-         Dina Deitsch

Botanical Take-Over: deCordova on the Greenway – part II

A prevailing theme in contemporary outdoor sculpture is the relationship between nature and culture. Urban Garden, deCordova’s latest off-site public art exhibition is located in the heart of downtown Boston on the Rose Kennedy Greenway between Pearl and Congress Streets, nestled between city, park, and water, and the perfect location for just such an exploration. James Surls’ Walking Flower Times the Power of Five (2010), Tom Otterness’ Tree of Knowledge (1997), and John Ruppert’s Pumpkin Series (1996) transform this green-scape into a fantastical garden. The monumental gourds and towering flowers appear as large and unyielding as the steel and glass buildings that surround them. Urban Garden is organized by Nick Capasso, deCordova’s Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, and will be up from June 2011 to October 2012.

--Jenny Gerow

James Surls, Walking Flower Times the Power of Five, 2010

John Ruppert, Pumpkin Series, 1996

NATURE SPECIAL - deCordova on the Greenway, Part I

Opening crowd at Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion

July 16^th was a day of spectacles. Along with the Stanley Cup touring through Boston streets and bars came another exciting unveiling in Boston—Nature Special, a video installation in the brand new Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Curated by associate curator Dina Deitsch, Nature Special features five videos about our mediated relationship to the great outdoors by artists Jim Campbell, Sam Easterson, William Lamson, and Suara Welitoff. The installation inaugurates a guest-curated video program, a fantastic way to expose audiences to new ways of interacting with public art and a program that we hope continues well into the future. Shown on two 8 x 10 foot low-resolution LED screens, the installation is housed in the structurally and ecologically beautiful new Pavilion designed by the architectural and design firm Utile that transforms the greenway into compelling destination to welcome visitors to the Boston Harbor Islands national park area. 

Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion

Don’t miss Sam Easterson’s video of the burrowing owl peering out of its little home. The footage was created by a micro-video camera and like many Easterson videos places us within the viewpoint of the animal. Visitors to the Pavilion will be mesmerized late into the night by this little bird!

Nature Special will be on view in the Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion each evening from 7pm-11pm, Jun 16, 2011 - Oct 31, 2011.   

Sam Easterson, Burrowing Owl, 2010

Jenny Gerow

Curatorial Intern

Hudson Valley Expedition

Now that spring has actually arrived, I ventured forth to the Hudson Valley to make some visits that had been long-postponed by our recent terrible winter weather.

First I spent a whole day with artists Ken Landauer and Julianne Swartz, a married couple who share a custom-built home and studio in Kingston, NY. In addition to visiting their studios to see works-in-progress by both artists (and enjoying a delicious home-cooked lunch!), I also discussed the possible loan of Ken’s outdoor sculpture King, originally created in 2007 for the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. This beautiful and poignant work involves a king-sized bed, fitted with extremely expensive and elegant Pratesi linens, set within a Plexiglas and steel architectural reliquary box. Later that day, we visited the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz to see the exhibition Thick and Thin: Ken Landauer and Julianne Swartz, a sharp and beautiful juxtaposition of their work by curator Brian Wallace. Back in 1994, I had co-organized the group exhibition The Computer in the Studio with Brian, which was installed both at deCordova and at the now-defunct Boston Computer Museum. Julianne Swartz will soon install a major public art piece for the High Line in New York, and in the fall of 2012 deCordova will present her first large-scale museum solo exhibition, Julianne Swartz: How Deep is Your.

Jon Isherwood in his studio

On Day 2 I visited sculptor Jon Isherwood at his studio in Hudson, New York. Jon works primarily in stone, and I had seen his work exhibited extensively in galleries, museums, and sculpture parks both here in America and in England (he was born in England but is now an American citizen). I’d been meaning to meet up with him for quite a while. I was most impressed by his studio, and by the artwork that filled it. Jon and I are now in discussions about possible loans to the deCordova Sculpture Park. Jon runs the sculpture program at Bennington College in Vermont, and is also deeply involved with the Digital Stone Project in New Jersey, a non-profit atelier that offers cutting-edge resources for artists to learn and apply digital sculpture technologies in their work.

DeWitt Godfrey, Picker Sculpture, at The Fields



I then spent the afternoon strolling the landscape at The Fields Sculpture Park at the Omi International Arts Center in nearby Ghent, New York. The Fields exhibits works by both internationally-recognized and emerging sculptors on 60 acres of fields, forest, and wetlands. During my visit I saw spectacular sculptures by (among many others) Mel Kendrick, Tony Cragg, Bernar Venet, and Orly Genger. I also ran into some old friends, so to speak – sculptures by artists Philip Grausman, Mary Ann Unger, and Dove Bradshaw that had previously been exhibited at deCordova! And, I was particularly interested in seeing a major installation by DeWitt Godfrey, who will be creating a monumental work for our Sculpture Park in summer, 2012.



Philip Grausman, Leucantha, at The Fields



Mary Ann Unger, Misericordia, at The Fields





Bernar Venet, installation of Arcs, at the Fields





Nick Capasso

Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs

Western Ho!

I realize that driving 2 ½ hours west of Boston isn’t exactly reaching the great frontier but in the aptly titled Purple Valley, in the shadow of Mt Greylock, one could find a veritable world full of art treasures. North Adams alone could fill a week – with its vibrant studio scene, street front galleries, and of course, the largest contemporary art space in the US – Mass MoCA. And right down the road is the ever bucolic Williamstown, a theater-haven in the summer, and art haven all year round between the Clark and the Williams College Art Museum (WCMA). 

In a hurried, or as we like to say, efficient, trip, the Biennial team made a number of studio visits this month but also had a few moments to visit both Mass MoCA and WCMA where we were stunned by scale and brilliance in the first and smart art historical thinking in the second.

Michael Oatman: All Utopias Fell, 2010

With galleries scaled to the ginormous size of contemporary art (as well as old, unused New England factories) Mass MoCA is expanding its campus even further with a new installation by the Troy, NY-based Michael Oatman. Known for his collages and collection-savvy installations, Oatman goes 10 steps further in All Utopia Fell – an installation of epic proportions that begins with a precarious climb up a three-story catwalk and ends with an elaborate narrative of an Airstream trailer flying too close to the sun and now holding solar panels.

Katharina Grosse: One Floor Up More HIghly, 2001, installation view

But Mass MoCA’s ode to the epic and monumental begins much earlier on with an entrance piece by Federico Diaz – an abstracted deconstruction of the building’s façade via thousands of computer-generated little spheres. Even more impressive is the Katarina Gross installation, One Floor Up More Highly, in Building 5, Mass MoCA’s famous football field-sized space devoted to single artist installations each year. In this round, Gross has seized the space with grit and boldness – quite literally. Her signature dirt piles spray painted with primary colors are punctuated by enormous styrofoam icebergs and the convenient bench, here and there. The space is converted into the stuff of painting – color and light – in a spectacular new way. Nari Ward’s show Sub Mirage Lignum has a similar effect on the 2^nd floor. Connecting the rarely-associated locals of Ward’s native Jamaica and the very New England North Adams, the installation converges on thematics of the sea, tourism, migration, race and poverty with a simply amazing suspended fishing boat and a 30-foot fish trap. We are indeed all lost at sea…

Nari Ward, Nu Colossus, 2011

In the academic enclave of Williamstown, WCMA holds one of the best art collections of any American college. Over the past year, they wisely reinstalled their encyclopedic collection, which is especially strong in contemporary art, under educational themes such as Art about Art, or how an artwork is made and commissioned. In a contemplative space, they’ve even set up a single object – currently Janine Antoni’s timely Deficit, 1991 - for a focused look in a new series called Room for Reflection. There are some wonderful gems of American art from mainstays like Grant Wood, Maurice Prendergast and Edward Hopper that are nicely abutted with contemporary international work. If only we could take the week! But sadly – we rushed back down Route 2 the very next day.

Janine Antoni, Deficit, 1991

 ‘Till next time-

Dina