In this KCRW podcast from August 2007 "KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour and Art Critic Edward Goldman speak with Museum Director Marla Berns" about El Anatsui's show at the Fowler Museum at UCLA and his presence at the Venice Biennale.
The Fowler Museum's website is well worth browsing around. Their online archives have links to some amazing online collections. The earliest online exhibits or 'photo tours' I could find are from 2006 but descriptions of exhibits go back to 2000.
El Anatsui's website provides some information about the artist and a few pictures, but I'm guessing it hasn't been updated for a while. A Google search found this exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art which is mentioned in the KCRW podcast. There are some good (but not excellent) images of Anatsui's sculptures and sound files of him decribing three of his works.
I didn't have a whole lot of luck finding good images of Anatsui's exhibit at the Venice Biennale. I did find a good set of images from the October Gallery in London, either here or here - there are different images in each collection.
October 21, 2008
El Anatsui at the Fowler Museum at ULCA
October 15, 2008
It's Blog Action Day again
This year the theme of Blog Action Day is raising awareness of poverty. This means looking at not just the abstract concept of 'poverty' but realizing how it effects your neighbour - next door, down the street, on the street corner, around the world.
In the spirit of this blog, when I get around to posting, that is, I'm going to provide some links to organizations which try to put a human face on poverty.
Make Poverty History Canada addresses poverty more as a political issue, pointing to the impoverishment of people resulting from the action (or inaction) of governments.
Oxfam Canada points out a variety of issues that lead to poverty, and shows what you can do. Today, at least, and I hope on most days, the title picture on their website shows a variety of images following the theme "This is what women's rights look like". Women's rights are part and parcel of human rights, empowerment for everyone, and as the pictures show, a sense of community.
Tomorrow, October 16, is World Food Day, an event "established by FAO's Member Countries at the Organization's Twentieth General Conference in November 1979". Their 'History' page has posters going back to 1981.
I did a search on Google using World Food Day 2008 as my search term. The variety of events are quite impressive.
The Stephen Lewis Foundation "helps to ease the pain of HIV/AIDS in Africa at the grassroots level". It goes without saying that if people weren't dying with AIDS at such a high rate, if they had access to health care and food and necessary drugs, then maybe they could think about getting out of poverty.
October 08, 2008
... and then there was more
On Robert Horvitz' page about Jack Burnham, one of the articles referenced is Edward A.Shanken's The House That Jack Built... (PDF is here). In that paper, Shanken discusses the exhibition Software that Burnham curated at the Jewish Museum in 1970. The Museum has some archived past exhibits but they go back only to 1998. This site is worth exploring, especially if you can find the images that have the magnifying glass icon. There aren't many of them but the ones I saw did zooming in very well.
See, I've digressed again.
Next time, I'll follow a lead or two from the Horvitz and Shanken papers.
October 04, 2008
One thing leads to another ...
which is exactly why I never finish reading a book on computer art. I have to go off on one tangent or another, and then I find another book or article or web page. If it's online it has links that I have to follow. If I have a paper copy, then there are references which I have to search online.
The following is a case in point. I found a thesis on the history of computer art at the University of Western Australia. In the first paragraph of the introduction the author, Grant Taylor, mentions the problems caused for artists and curators by their involvement with computer art. The endnote for this point refers to Jack Burnham and an article he wrote in a book by Kathleen Woodward, titled The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture. The book is available in many libraries and if you want to follow up, then enter the title in the WorldCat search box in the side column.
I searched Google for Jack Burnham and found many links. A very good site, with more links, is Robert Horvitz' Node for Jack Burnham. More next time on what I found there.
