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I think it's about time to come back from my vacation. The first half of the interval was the good part, the rare visit of two members of Barry's family, here on separate but overlapping schedules. The second half, not...

untitled (posted) 2006 The site is the Huguenot Street Farm in New Paltz, New York. We pulled up across the road this afternoon, captivated by the unearthly-fresh green Richter meadow. We had arrived just after a torrential downpour....

Augusto Marin's notorious provocation This is just one of five sculptures by Augusto Marin which is included in the Brooklyn College MFA thesis show shut down three weeks ago by the Brooklyn Parks Commissioner. This self-appointed guardian of New...

Barry writes:I don't enjoy coming home to the level of discourse I get when my post on Jean Rohe's speech has such a high Google rank. From now on, all comments must be approved. I don't need to hear people...

Xavier Deshoulieres Saint Georges 2006 oil on canvas 51" x 77" [installation view] [detail] Virgil de Voldere is showing new work by gallery artist Xavier Deshoulieres. This French painter working in Cologne has developed a stunning technique which may...

WHEN DOES A PHALLUS DESERVE RESPECT?* Robert Mapplethorpe Louise Bourgeois 1982 [image of Bourgeois holding her "Fillette"] Now it's official. Er, maybe I should write "anti-official": The Brooklyn College 2006 MFA thesis show is re-opening, mostly. It was shut down...

I've just gotten word that the Brooklyn College MFA Press Conference originally scheduled for 1 pm today has been POSTPONED. Details to follow. I'm not going to speculate here, but I find this last-minute change very interesting. On a related...

we get letters I love comments, and I get really excited about comments about comments. I rush to open each of them when they are announced in my mailbox. Unfortunately I often have to wade through a flood of...

POST CARD Jack Pierson Roses Roses Roses 2005 metal, plastic, wood, found letters, as floor piece 30" x 87" x 70" [view of installation] Maybe I'm just feeling competitive, Barry having uploaded such a great image of a great piece...

and I also have a bridge you can buy Gee willikers, Uncle Sam! It's as if up to now we've only had to worry about the civil rights of our native Al Qaedans! Why is it we don't hardly...

UPDATE: [noon, Friday, May 19] The Brooklyn College MFA Press Conference originally scheduled for 1 pm today has been POSTPONED. Details to follow. FIGHTING THE CENSOR'S (ST)INK Brooklyn College MFA students, members of the faculty and attorneys Norman Siegel and...

POST CARD Gedi Sibony Untitled 2004 mixed media [installation view] A group of overly-designed empty boutiques on West Broadway may not be the best space to show new work, unless perhaps that's how the targeted shopper lives, but much of...

United States Border Patrol agents make use of All Terrain vehicles as they patrol along the U.S. border with Mexico in this undated photograph provided by the Border Patrol. [Reuters caption] The Great Wall of China, Hadrian's wall, the...

POST CARD Olafur ELiasson The uncertain museum 2004 steel, projection foil, wave mechanism, HMI lamp, rubber, water, wood 9' 8" high x 14' 7 " diameter [exterior detail of installation] Olafur ELiasson Inverted mirror sphere 2005 stainless steel, mirror, wire,...

POST CARD Jennifer Coates Grotto 2005 acrylic on canvas [detail from installation] [full view] Jennifer Coates is showing fanciful "landscapes" figured with extravagant abstractions in the front gallery at Feigen. Can an abstraction be surreal? Regardless of tags, they're absolutely...

Jenny Holzer WHITE 2006 Nichia white LED's mounted on PCB with aluminum housing 192.25" x 216.5" x 5.25" [capture from moving light of installation] Jenny Holzer HAND yellow white 2006 oil on linen in eight panels 33" x 25.5"...

going through the debris Eighteen Brooklyn College MFA students were not only dispossessed of a graduate thesis exhibition when the New York City shut it down and padlocked the doors in downtown Brooklyn. On Saturday, five days after their...

POST CARD Glen Fogel is showing a new magical video [no title given] at Momenta which sort of documents Christian rock warm-up bands at the Billy Graham Crusade in Flushing Meadows Park last summer. There is absolutely no sound, but...

Lèse Majesté? Was sex the beard for political censorship? From a story in the Fine Arts section of the NYTimes on Friday:In addition to the hand-and-penis sculpture, works in the show included a video with sexual overtones in which...

Elise Engler Rapture 2005 pencil, colored pencil, gouache, watercolor on paper 22" x 30" [installation view] [detail] It's been a good five-week run, but "Tax-onomies", Elise Engler's show at Cynthia Broan closes tomorrow. Unfortunately however the actual "rapture" of...

POST CARD Mark Schubert Penguin Pusher 2006 mixed media 47" x 24" x 26" [installation view] Mark Schubert Wheelbarrow Rose 2006 mixed media 63" x 21" x 22" [installation view] Monya Rowe is showing five "life-size" [my phrase] sculptures by...

[this editorial is too good to stay in the Bronx; Barry reformatted it from a PDF so I could upload it here] THE RIVERDALE PRESS Thursday, May 11, 2006 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The return of the censors In 1988, Chicago police arrested...

Donald Judd's Untitled, 1990 (90-2b Menziken) left, and Untitled, 1991 (91-5 Donaldson) right We really had intended to see the display at Christie's of the 26 Donald Judd works which the Judd Foundation had decided to de-accession, but we...

"WERSUPPOSEDTOACTIMPRESSED" is Wayne White's cheeky contribution to ART ROCK 2006, which opened on the plaza above the golden Prometheus in Rockefeller Center last night. The sign hovers just in front of and above the central pavillion of an art...

I've been much too neglectful lately in posting items about the art stuff we've seen. If I have an excuse it's that I've been distracted by construction and other projects inside the apartment. Hey, it's a large apartment, and sometimes...

outraged students try to retrieve their art from a truck bed before being stopped by NYC police: Is this how a real school treats its graduate students? Is this the role of a real city? The show of Brooklyn...

Paul McCarthy's mixed-media installation "Bang-Bang Room" (1992) in the former Jewish School for Girls. Now I wish we were there. Barry and I don't like travelling in the pursuit of art fairs and I was going to try not...

detail the long view the day unfolds The erotic frisson of much of the work in his earlier walls is missing in the installation Joe Ovelman completed early this morning. Ovelman has been spending a lot of time in...

It was a very small piece of paper on the back of a traffic signal. I couldn't read the words from down on the sidewalk, so I held the camera high above my head and aimed. I took the...

In the last 24 hours I've heard or read comments from several people suggesting that the Brooklyn College MFA thesis show difficulties [see also] might have been avoided had the gallery posted a "warning label". I'm also dismayed by the...

We visited the two floors of the School of Visual Arts MFA open studios event last weekend where Sarah Schich was projecting a small moving image onto one wall of her darkened studio. The walls were all shingled with...

Crain's reports that Brooklyn College has opted to move their school MFA exhibit rather than fight the City's shutdown."In keeping with the public nature of the space, as well as its position as an honored war memorial, Brooklyn College has...

maybe our guardians now plan a special exhibition of their own Don't they ever learn? NYC Parks authorities have abruptly shut down the MFA thesis exhibit for the art school of Brooklyn College/CUNY. It will be interesting to see...

Joe Ovelman (São Paulo wall) Joe Ovelman will be doing another of his huge photo installations on a very fortunate Chelsea wall early Saturday morning. This will essentially be the first street project to include work done while he...

coming soon to a neighborhood which may be your own I spotted this developer's sign hanging on the side of a building next to the [momentarily] empty lot on 6th Avenue and 28th Street. Does the zoning department know...

Judy Glantzman Untitled 2004 oil on canvas 90" x 80" [installation view] [detail] We've lived with two drawings by Judy Glantzman for years, one of them quite small. We've also seen her small paintings over even a longer period,...

Downtown at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council artist studio program the New Orleans artist Christy Speakman had installed a number of works relating to environments where materials are in transition, with or without borders. I stopped by on Sunday,...

is he even capable of understanding what Colbert said? Clearly, the only news worthy of reporting about Saturday's White House Corresponents' Association banquet was Stephen Colbert's amazing performance zap, but the NYTimes story doesn't even mention it. The only...