All posts in Contemporary Art

Is Bigger Better? Some Most-ASKed About Artworks

In a recent conversation with colleagues from the Peabody Essex Museum, Sara and I fielded a question that frequently arises: which works of art do…

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Latoya Ruby Frazier Interview PDF

A Conversation With Artist LaToya Ruby Frazier

One of the best parts of working in contemporary art is that we often work closely with artists, and are able to build relationships over…

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Yoko Ono's Wish Tree

Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree

Since the 1990s, Yoko Ono has created her work Wish Tree in locations all over world.   In honor of Ono’s acceptance of the Brooklyn Museum’s…

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Yeon Ji Yoo

Join us in Celebrating GO

It’s hard to believe we are here after dozens of artist and voter meetups throughout the summer; an exhilarating open studio weekend that resulted in…

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Making Choices to Create an Exhibition

Once we had our group of the ten most nominated artists, Eugenie and I set out on our part of the collaboration. We visited the…

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GO installation

Creating a Framework to Collaborate with the Public

You have been following us from the 1708 studios to 9,457 nominations to 10 nominees to the 5 featured artists. Let’s take a look at…

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Going Gangnam Style in Support of Ai Weiwei

In late October, acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei and friends performed a parody of the “Gangnam Style” video by the South Korean rapper PSY. The video,…

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Our GO Featured Artists

Since our announcement of our top ten nominated artists in late September, Eugenie Tsai (John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art) and I have visited their…

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Double Cosmetic Tube

Looking at Glass

Jean-Michel Othoniel has noted that he is fascinated and inspired by fragile glass objects that have survived for centuries, imbued with the unknown histories and…

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GO Nominated Artists

Your Ten Nominated Artists

After approximately 147,000 studio visits to 1,708 artists, and then 9,457 nominations, we have our top ten nominated artists. In alphabetical order: Aleksander Betko, Cobble…

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Heat Map

Moving Toward an Exhibition with 9,457 Nominations

As you saw in Shelley’s previous post, we were thrilled about the level of participation over the open studio weekend. At the same time, we…

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Open Studio Weekend Visitation Statistics

As the nomination phase of GO continues this week, now is a good time to review the weekend and share some statistics about weekend visitation…

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GO See Art in Brooklyn This Weekend!

Our borough-wide open studio weekend is finally just days away! On September 8th and 9th, more than 1800 artists across 46 neighborhoods in Brooklyn will…

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Getting Beyond the Like Button

The open studio weekend is just 16 days away and as we get closer, it’s worth taking a look at some of the participatory design choices we’ve…

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Red Hook Houses and GO Open Studios

Partnering with NYCHA for GO

GO is a project that’s rooted in community, but “community” is one of those words that can have a lot of different meanings. As Sharon…

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The Open Studio Model

As we’ve noted in our posts, the inspiration for GO came from two primary sources: ArtPrize and the long and burgeoning tradition of open studio…

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ArtPrize in 2010

Learning from ArtPrize

As we continue to move forward throughout the summer, it seems fitting to talk about the inspiration behind GO.  I’ve already mentioned that the Brooklyn…

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1861 Artists Will Open Their Studio Doors Sept 8-9

When Sharon and I first started discussing the project that would become GO, one of our sources of inspiration was a map that the Brooklyn…

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Why Artist Registration for GO Continues to Surprise Me

As Sharon mentioned in her post yesterday, we continue to get a lot of questions and wanted to answer a few of them prior to…

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Why I Hope Artists Will Participate in GO

I have received a wide range of questions about GO from artists. Some of the more skeptical ones have included “So, it’s a contest?” and…

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Team GO

Going Local with a Distributed Network

You’ve probably heard that if Brooklyn were its own city, we’d be the fourth largest in the United States. With a land mass of 73…

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Open Studio Weekend September 8-9, 2012

Calling All Brooklyn Artists!

When Shelley and I first started brainstorming the ideas that have now become GO, we were thinking about how to build upon some of the…

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GO: a community-curated open studio project

Let’s GO

Over the years many people have asked me if we’d do Click! again and my general response has been to say that we wouldn’t do a…

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Santi Moix

Santi Moix

Perched high on a lift in the fourth floor contemporary galleries, Brooklyn-based artist Santi Moix is drawing directly on the wall with charcoal to create…

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Mary Lucier

Playing House: Working with Artists

In the exhibition Playing House four artists, Betty Woodman, Ann Chu, Ann Agee and Mary Lucier, install their own artwork into and around several period rooms…

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Raw/Cooked: Lan Tuazon

What drew you to the Egyptian Galleries?

One morning in late September, I went to Lan Tuazon’s studio in Bushwick with Pierce Jackson, who is making the videos for Raw/Cooked. Lan was…

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Latino List

Behind the Scenes on The Latino List

If you’ve visited The Latino List exhibition, you may have wondered how Timothy Greenfield-Sanders creates such monumental photographs. It all starts with the camera. For…

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Terpenning family

Calling Rapaljes, Rapeljes, Raplees and all descendants!

Get ready for some surprising encounters when you visit the Brooklyn Museum’s beloved period rooms this February, when several of the rooms will be the…

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What’s the deal with the pumpkins?

If you have walked through Raw/Cooked: Kristof Wickman then you have probably noticed the abundance of cast pumpkins. As the Coordinator for Raw/Cooked, I had the…

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Lee Mingwei

Give a Flower, Share Your Experience

As Eugenie noted in her post, The Moving Garden is installed in our Rubin Pavilion and the artist invites the visitor to take a flower…

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The Power of Flowers

A long granite table top filled with roses now welcomes visitors as they enter the Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway.  You might be tempted to…

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Latino List in the App Store

How has your culture shaped your life and accomplishments?

All eyes will be on you this fall when you enter the Great Hall and encounter the twenty-five massive photographic portraits by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders that…

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A Tree Blossoms in Brooklyn

In preparation for the exhibition Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective, conservators took part in preparing and installing Blossom, 2010, a recent acquisition to the collection….

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Collection Pyramid, 2001

A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned

Judging from the aphorisms “a penny saved is a penny earned” or “a penny for your thoughts,” the copper cent at one time possessed a degree…

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Black Lincoln for Dooky Chase by Skylar Fein

Skylar Fein and Abraham Lincoln: a look into Brooklyn’s collections

With the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War it is a good moment to look back through time and how Americans have been depicted…

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Situ Studio installs reOrder in the Great Hall

reOrder: Breaking Ground

Some may have seen my post in December about my visit to a drafty construction site in Manhattan to view Situ Studio’s full-scale mock up…

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Early Installation Drawing

reOrder Takes Shape

As many may know Situ Studio, a Brooklyn based architectural and fabrication firm, has been preparing for their installation reORDER, which will be presented here…

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Object of the Month: August 2010: Miscegenated Family Album

It’s when a work of art is able to communicate on many different levels at the same time – when it can speak to audiences…

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Hank Willis Thomas on View

Last year I blogged about a great new acquisition, Hank Willis Thomas’ “Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America.” I am thrilled that we have…

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Object of the Month: July 2010: A Little Taste Outside of Love

It’s big and sparkly like the proverbial girl’s best friend, but that’s not the only reason I like Mickalene Thomas’s, A Little Taste Outside of…

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Get a Key, Unlock Doors

Last time you were at the Brooklyn Museum, you probably didn’t notice the hidden door next the portrait of George Washington in the Luce Center…

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Peace, Love and Posters

The other day I started blogging about the museum’s cool collection of psychedelic posters.  These posters were displayed mostly in hippie boutique windows and on…

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Terence Koh Performa 09

Terence Koh’s Untitled, a stack of thirty-three glass cases, is a striking presence in the Contemporary galleries.  Almost every case contains an artifact that’s been…

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Psychedelic Rock Posters from the Vault

With the exhibition Who Shot Rock & Roll:  A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present, opening tomorrow at the museum, I thought now would be…

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The Heat is On

Here at the Brooklyn Museum, we’re never one to shy away from inter-museum competition of all sorts. I’ve blogged before about how art museums and…

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Sun Bleaching in the Sculpture Garden

What is the Brooklyn Museum’s important Arshile Gorky lithograph doing outdoors?  And why is it immersed in water?  I received these questions many times from…

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Shonibare at Play in the Period Rooms

Mother and Father Worked Hard So I Can Play is a work that was made specifically for our period rooms. Last spring when Yinka Shonibare…

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An Adventurous Painting

One of the things that I love about museums that have blogs is how easy it can be is to get a hold of counterparts…

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Sarah Baley

Sarah Baley’s show “Bois” opened at Collette Blanchard Gallery on the Lower East Side last Thursday night and we are very happy to have this…

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A visit from artist Seher Shah

Seher Shah recently stopped by the Brooklyn Museum to see her large drawing Jihad Pop Progressions 5 – Interior Courtyard 2, 2007 on view in…

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Re-making the mess

Have you ever had one of those days where everything falls into place? When Eugenie Tsai blogged about Valerie Hegarty’s Fallen Bierstadt back in October,…

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Bringing Sun K. Kwak’s Enfolding 280 Hours to Brooklyn

People have been asking how I learned of Sun K. Kwak. I first noticed Sun’s work well over a year ago through the gallery that…

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1stfans Meetup for March 2009: Artist Matt Held

When 1stfans launched with the Swoon printing event on January 3rd, it was a pretty crazy night. Though Shelley and I didn’t get to meet…

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1stfans Twitter Art Feed Artist for March 2009: Joseph Kosuth

If nothing else, Shelley and I think the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed is a pretty cool concept. We readily admit that we have no idea…

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1stfans Twitter Art Feed Artist for February 2009: Mary Temple

We all know this feeling, right? When you walk into an exhibition and there’s one work that really stops you in your tracks? On a…

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1stfans Twitter Art Feed Artist for January 2009: An Xiao

In the same spirit that we asked Swoon to launch 1stfans in person (that is to say, with the Museum’s existing community in mind), we…

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Contemporary Take on Landscape Painting

Valerie Hegarty (American, born 1967). Fallen Bierstadt, 2007. Foamcore, paint, paper, glue, gel medium, canvas, wire, and wood. Gift of Campari, USA , 2008.9a–b. Photo…

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Gilbert & George take Times Square!

If you’ve been in Times Square lately, you may have seen this already, but we were waiting to post until we had some good photos….

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Jesper Just at the Opera

The catalogue for the show Jesper Just: Romantic Delusions draws our attention to how Jesper Just uses a variety of popular songs in his films,…

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Kehinde Wiley Here and Around Town

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977). Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, 2005. Oil on canvas. Collection of Suzi and Andrew B. Cohen, L2005.6. Photo…

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Reflections on Click! by James Surowiecki

Much of the critical reception of Click! has focused, understandably, on the artistic quality of the photographs that the crowd liked best, with a number…

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Petah Coyne – New Installation on 5th Floor

New on view on the 5th floor is an installation of works by Petah Coyne from the collection. These works are individual pieces that have…

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Who Shot Rock will ROCK

On October 23, 2009, we’re launching a major exhibition, Who Shot Rock: Photographers of Rock and Roll. Who Shot Rock will be guest curated by…

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© MURAKAMI Preparations!

With just a day left before the opening of © MURAKAMI, installation has wrapped up here at the Brooklyn Museum. We will be presenting nearly…

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Get Ready for ©MURAKAMI!

We said goodbye to Infinite Island at the end of January. Packing up: The artwork from Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art is crated in preparation…

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Pandora’s Book

If Marshall McLuhan were a gypsy and his teacup the art world, the tea leaves would be artists’ books. —Ingrid Sishey (National Arts Guide, vol….

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Art:21 @ Brooklyn Museum

As an educational programmer I am always on the lookout for organizations with which we can collaborate to bring innovative and diverse programs to the…

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“Infinite” Questions Answered…Tomorrow!

Infinite Island opened nearly three weeks ago at the Brooklyn Museum, and thousands of people have already visited the exhibition. We’ve been getting great feedback…

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Visualizing Caribbean Art and Culture in the Twenty-first Century

Artist Steve Ouditt installing his Infinite Island work, “Excerpts From the Propagandist’s Diary of L. Padre Grande,” 2007. What happens after an exhibition opens? Even…

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A Delicate Balance

Only two days left until Infinite Island opens here at the Brooklyn Museum! I have enjoyed regaling you with descriptions of huge, complicated installations, and…

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Shopping “Infinitely”

Contemporary art often employs cutting-edge techniques, technologies, and materials, and our Infinite Island artists are proof in point. I would love to share some of…

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The Heat Is On

We are well into August, and things are really heating up here at the Brooklyn Museum. Six artists will be coming to the Museum this…

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I Wish I Had Wheels

Like most New Yorkers I was stuck in/on the subway for nearly three hours yesterday! Being from California, I’ve missed having a car, but I’ve…

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Let the Countdown Begin!

We are now exactly one month from the opening of Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art, and activity in the galleries is already well underway. The…

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Earlier this week, we installed two striking new photographs in the Museum’s American Identities galleries on the fifth floor, Soldier Claxton and Soldier Mickelson. They…

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