Unearthing the New King Tut

The King Tut of the 1970s is the museum gauntlet, thrown to us all, daring museums to be popular over elitist and inspire the desire for knowledge among the masses through wonder. Inevitably… Continue reading →

Obscuring the Wunderkammern: Figurehead in the Peabody Essex Museum

Installation artist Charles Sandison has coated the Peabody Essex Museum‘s East India Marine Hall in a dark, drifting sheath of digitized ship logs and journals .  Titled Figurehead, the enlarged strings of writings… Continue reading →

Pop Culture on the Rocks: Lost Guggenheims, Fallen Showgirls and the Liberace Museum

The last time I visited the Liberace Museum, an older woman invited me to try on a giant, patchwork coat. Providing the requisite opportunity for participation the way almost all American museums now… Continue reading →

The Revolution Begins with a Trash Can

Exhibiting art created for city streets in a museum setting is a difficult undertaking. The interior of an institution can often be one of the farthest environments from an “urban landscape.” As gated… Continue reading →

Through the Disney Portal: Jellyfish and Oil

The experience of the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride at Orlando’s Walt Disney World is one burned permanently into my memory, despite having taken the fantastical journey only once. I recall the… Continue reading →

Visual Extras: Rachel Whiteread and SOIL in Residence

In “The 2010 Film Issue” of The Believer, Alex Rose writes on the bonus disc phenomenon and the impact of its philosophy on contemporary culture. The bonus disc is the information excess and… Continue reading →

A Post-Precarious Disquieting

When asked to reflect on the art of the first ten years of the millenium, Hal Foster focused on the precarious: works that created meaning from the uncertain circumstances of their time. The… Continue reading →

Con Leche and Coca-Cola: Abstracting the Olympic Experience

Various groupings of Diet Coke bottles march through urban streets and alleys in Jordan Wolfson’s Con Leche, a 20-minute video piece. The bottles are filled with milk and exist as animations in a… Continue reading →

Bifocal 5: Dreams Come True and NBC

“There’s a reason why the otherwise antithetical Leno and Conan camps are united in their derision of NBC’s titans. A TV network has become a handy proxy for every mismanaged, greedy, disloyal and… Continue reading →

The Heartland Machine and Other Concepts from the Future

Parked inside in a small gallery of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art is a Heartland Machine. Heartland Machine is a mobile sculpture that began as a speedboat.  Conceived by Detroit-based Design 99, over… Continue reading →