Apr 18, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
I have been thinking and writing a lot about aspirational ideologies that are apropos of contemporary life. Aspirational ideologies are perhaps, the contemporary answer to the manifestos of the 20th century. There are too many out there to discuss, however those I am...
Apr 11, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
Which best describes the current practice of art? Post-studio, relational, postmodern, social practice, post-historical? Or, all or none of the above? In 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, the critic Ben Davis describes the “the agents whose interests determine the dominant...
Apr 4, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
In Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, the author and critic Claire Bishop makes the case that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part in such work, new “emancipatory” social...
Mar 28, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
Art is not monolithic. It is, in a sense, the oldest form of crowdsourcing, a product of perpetual revision. What gets traction, what gets left behind or elided by history is unpredictable. Genres and styles are constantly being parsed into smaller and more hybrid...
Mar 14, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
As I was writing the catalog essay for the Quadrennial Faculty Exhibition, I was thinking about Joseph Beuys, whose work is permanently installed in the Chazen Museum. Despite his international fame as a maker, Beuys was never far from teaching. Beuys initially taught...
Mar 7, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
One of our new initiatives in the Art Department is an open forum for graduate students held once per semester. This offers the grads an opportunity to have a voice in the department; to report back to us about their concerns and help us to make the department better....
