Rose Art Museum to close

Brandeis to sell school's art collection

By Geoff Edgers and Peter Schworm - Boston Globe Staff
January 26, 2009

Rocked by a budget crisis, Brandeis University will close its Rose Art Museum and sell off a 6,000-object collection that includes work by such contemporary masters as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Nam June Paik. ...

Read more from the Globe here. And more here and even more here. And more from the Globe again here and here.

UPDATE:
A must-read. Modern Art Notes Q&A with Michael Rush, Rose Art Museum Director. It offers a whole new perspective...

Petition here.

Polaroid...possible?

A group of past Polaroid employees and visionaries have acquired an old Polaroid factory in the Netherlands in the hopes of reviving instant pack film. And there was much rejoicing!

Dubbed "The Impossible Project," this intrepid group has a fascinating web site. Check it out here and enjoy the wonderful vintage video about SX-70s by Charles and Ray Eames above. It's worth the 10 minutes, so be sure to stick with it. The images are amazing; this duo is the bee's knees!

Vote vote vote! for the Boston Art Awards

Greg Cook of the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research just posted the ballot for the first (and hopefully annual) Boston Art Awards. Thank you for your efforts!

The rules are here and the ballot is here. Greg recommends pasting the ballot into an email and deleting those who don't get your vote, thus leaving those for whom you are voting.

The PRC's landscape show New England Survey is up in a couple categories (Best reflection of our local community, Big idea show, and Local curator of locally made art), but of course participation is what counts. It's good for you and good for the community.

Hurry, though, you have only until next Friday, January 23rd at 6pm. Now, go vote!

Witness a whole year in 40 seconds

I came across this fascinating video on yahoo. It's a whole year of a landscape in Oslo, Norway seen in 40 seconds. Similar to condensed multi-year video portraits on youtube (which seems to have continued according to his website), it's a viral hit.

I did a little digging on the photographer's web site, eirikso.com, and found some interesting tidbits. In short, he took all of the images manually as stills using his Canon from the same location. After converting to HDR, he used photoshop to layer them into a stack (so they would all line up exactly), cropped, and then pulled them into final cut pro. Eirik's blog is quite great and has some other interesting photo tech stuff, so I encourage those who lean towards social media, internet, blogs, etc. to check it out - this is you DK!

Time has been on my mind as of late (see my show Keeping Time), as has landscape (see New England Survey). Although on a more vernacular level, this video idea certainly also recalls Jem Southam's work as well as Boston's own Karl Baden (who has been photographing himself for over 20 years). Southam's work was on view at the Davis Museum this past year (you can read a great interview with him here) and Baden's entire "Every Day" project was on display at Howard Yezerski's in 2007. In the latter, contact prints were for sale for $10 on a first-come, first-served basis. I bought three.

Hopefully 2009 won't go as fast as the above. Enjoy!

Nominate Nominate Nominate!

The gregarious Greg Cook of NEJAR (New England Journal of Aesthetic Research) has initiated the 2008 Boston Art Awards, in part to make up for the AICA awards not being held this year. Thanks Greg - Boston needs this and we appreciate all of your hard work.

Please help by nominating your favorite everything in the below categories. (Of course, if you particularly enjoyed an exhibition held at a venue using a three letter acronym that starts with a P and ends with a C, it would be much appreciated!) Either way, it's just good to get involved and support our local arts community. I just submitted mine and it was fun!

In order to jog your memory of Boston area exhibitions and events from the last year, browse the following Spring and Fall 2008 previews from the Phoenix as well as scroll through a whole year of Randi Hopkins's picks.

Nominations are accepted via posting in the comments or via email. Instructions are at this link as well as a partial list of those submitted so far.

Put your thinking cap on and ponder the below categories:

When making nominations, please list name of artist or curator and place and date of exhibit. Also, some broad categories to consider: favorite local artist, local curator, local show, new media, photography, conceptually-driven installation/performance (including video thereof), favorite gallery show, favorite school show, favorite museum show, favorite historical show, favorite contemporary show, best survey/retrospective, favorite solo show, favorite group show, favorite public art (or best non-exhibition space project), favorite on-line project, favorite outdoors project, favorite art book/publication.

Mappy Nude Rear!

In a reprise of a few years ago, I present you with Tim Garrett's fabulously funny new year's postcards. Every year for ten plus years, he has produced a postcard with a phrase that rhymes with "happy new year." The newest creation is pictured above.

You can find out more info and purchase a set of postcards here. Tim is the co-founder of www.photobooth.net, which we featured in the PRC's 30th anniversary exhibition along with Tim's own photobooth art. Tim was nominated by our local fav Henry Horenstein. We had an awesome time when Tim visited, as you can well imagine.

From www.fullchordpress.com