Category: visual

How Did The Banal Banksy Make It Big In The Art World?

“Banksy is a talented graphic designer with a flair for self-promotion, no more or less. He is not an artist. His work lacks the breadth and ambiguity to carry multiple interpretations vital to serious art. Banksy makes one-liners that are mildly amusing, sometimes clever, but never more than one-liners. There is a place for comedy and satire, but mistaking that for art or insightful social critique is foolishness.” – The Critic

Darren Walker Joins National Gallery Board

Walker has emerged as one of the country’s preeminent voices for the arts, and social justice, and for new strategies to ameliorate inequality. He has delivered the annual Nancy Hanks Lecture sponsored by Americans for the Arts and was the subject of a glossy profile in the New York Times titled “The Man With the $13 Billion Checkbook.” And in September, the National Gallery of Art announced that Walker would be joining its board, one of the smallest and most exclusive governing bodies in the art world, with only nine members, four of them ex officio positions, including the chief justice of the United States and the secretaries of the Treasury and State departments. – Washington Post

Was John Baldessari The Most Important Art Professor Of The 20th Century?

Starting in the early 1970s, Baldessari became one of the first professors at the California Institute of Arts, a school in Santa Clarita that became a locus of artistic experimentation on the West Coast when the art scene there was perceived as less significant than New York’s. Baldessari, famously, taught a class whose name signified a lot: “Post-Studio Art.” – ARTnews

An Artist Using Virtual Reality To Make Climate Change More Real

“The technologies allowed me to show things to you—for example, how past landscapes can change overtime, how you can look from the scale of a beetle, how you can change your perspective. These things are what this technology is very good at. You can also jump around in time and you can slow down time in virtual reality—you can change your scale in different dimensions.” – Artnet

Can An Artist-In-Residence Really Transform A Big-City DA’s Office? This One Means To Try

Muralist James “Yaya” Hough, 44, was released last year after 27 years in prison, and within a few months he was hired for the new artist-in-residence position in the office of reformist Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. “Hough told Hyperallergic that he was looking to program workshops that will foster conversations between the DA’s 600 or so employees, survivors of crimes, and those currently serving time in the criminal justice system.” – Hyperallergic

He Left The Philadelphia Museum Of Art After Hitting On Subordinates. Now He’s Running Another Pennsylvania Museum

Joshua Helmer, 31, had been an assistant director at the PMA and was viewed as a rising star in the art world when, in early 2018, he “was separated” from the museum. Several female staffers say that he both asked them out (some said yes) and belittled their abilities, and two months ago he was actually barred from the PMA building. Just a few months after leaving Philadelphia, though, he was named director of the Erie Art Museum at the other end of the state — and he’s already been accused of trying to date an intern there. – The New York Times

A Conservative Director Takes Over A Leading Polish Contemporary Art Museum And Aims To Change Its Politics

Artists are expected to make work about fighting climate change and fascism, or promoting gay rights, Piotr Bernatowicz says. “Artists who do not adopt this ideology are marginalized,” he said. Bernatowicz wants to change that and promote artists who have other views: conservative, patriotic, pro-family. His plans are transforming the museum into the latest battleground in Poland’s culture wars, which pit liberals against the governing populist Law and Justice Party, as well as other conservative groups. – The New York Times