Spending the War Without You: Virtual Backgrounds
This week I watched another Norton Lecture, the second of six virtual presentations by Laurie Anderson, recipient of the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship in Poetry at Harvard. I have to admit to having been totally mesmerized by her hour-long presentation. I just kept thinking wow, some people are just so talented and brilliant. Laurie also happens to be a close friend of my dear friend Sharyn, and I can also report that she is equally lovely. Some people really do have it all!
Porcelain
3 1/2″ x 4″ x 4 in
Mindy Solomon Gallery
I have now watched two Zoom-based Harvard artist tours with Linda Lopez, and both were wonderful. Linda Lopez is so likable, and now I know her process. Her work is just one of those examples of art that I wish I had bought years and years ago, when I first saw it.
The New Museum had a great conversation with Dawaud Bay. I liked him a lot!
Oil on canvas
72″ x 59.8 in
Saatchi Gallery
When I think about Amy Sillman, I always think about the artist’s choice installation at MoMA. It was a beautifully curated collection, that my friend Sharyn and I saw on my last visit to NYC before the pandemic set in. I have always liked Amy Sillman’s own work, and was excited to get to hear her interviewed through a Frieze talk.
I tend to remember life events based on art I’ve seen, and this virtual existence proved no different. My phone rang while I was thinking how much I liked Amy Sillman as a person too, and it was the Walmart Pharmacy 45 minutes away from my home asking whether my husband and I could be there in 40 minutes for vaccines about to go to waste! While I was sorry to miss the end of the talk, I am pleased to report that we now have had our first doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and will be fully vaccinated by mid-April.
Oil on linen
39 1/4” x 32 in
Whitney Museum of American Art
Hemp
12” x 29” x 29 in
Collection of Deedie Potter Rose
Wood, paint, and nails
10 1/4” x 21 1/4” x 3 3/4 in
The Rachofsky Collection
Galvanized Metal
1” x 4 7/8” x 1/8 in
The Rachofsky Collection
Aluminum
48 in
The 92nd Street Y in NYC was the first virtual art series I started watching years and years ago. I don’t miss a single talk. This week was Virtual Clay: Experiments and Experience” with Anna Sew Hoy.
My favorite talk of the week was the virtual opening of Alice Neel: People Come First at The Metropolitan Museum of American Art. I cannot wait to see this exhibition. It just opened this week and will run through August 1st. During the excellent walk through, I kept thinking how exciting it is that I will be fully vaccinated and able to travel to New York to see this one in person! (Ok, and to see my kids too.) I’m waiting on the catalog to arrive, which I pre-ordered, and have watched for the second time the documentary that her grandson Andrew Neel directed. I purchased it, as I plan to watch it over and over again.
I’m in the middle of watching several lectures on Julie Mehretu, who has a show at the Whitney Museum of Art that started this week and runs through August 8th. I’ll be certain to see this in person too.
Oak cabinet containing a series of 160 facsimile postage sheets bearing portrait heads of soldiers who lost their lives in the conflict in Iraq between 2003 and 2009
Finally, this week at my house we are watching British filmmaker Steve McQueen’s five film anthology, Small Axe. We have watched two of the five, and are eager to watch the rest. McQueen can do it all. The Tate Modern held a McQueen retrospective in 2020, his first major exhibition since having won the Turner Prize in 1999.