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GO: a community-curated open studio project

DATES December 1, 2012 through February 24, 2013
ORGANIZING DEPARTMENT Special Exhibition
COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art
  • November 1, 2012 The Brooklyn Museum has announced the selection of five Brooklyn artists whose work will be featured in GO: a community-curated open studio project. The exhibition will open on December 1, 2012, at the Museum’s Target First Saturday evening of free art and entertainment, and will be on view through February 24, 2013. The artists selected are Adrian Coleman, Oliver Jeffers, Naomi Safran-Hon, Gabrielle Watson, and Yeon Ji Yoo.

    The five Brooklyn artists were selected following studio visits by Brooklyn Museum curators Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, and Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, from a short list of ten artists. These ten artists were nominated following a Brooklyn Museum–sponsored September open studio weekend during which, despite torrential rains and two tornados on the first day, some 18,000 visitors made more than 147,000 visits to 1,708 artist studios in 44 Brooklyn neighborhoods, resulting in 9,457 nominations.

    Adrian Coleman, who lives in Prospect Heights and works in Fort Greene, was trained as an architect, which has informed his choice of medium and subject matter. Born in England in 1984, Coleman began using watercolor in his architectural renderings, a technique common to the drafting process. He later translated this professional experience to subjects inspired by the industrial landscape of New York City. His work includes images of graffiti-covered buildings of the Gowanus, the iconic Kentile Floors sign, and a subway interior, complete with passengers.

    Oliver Jeffers, who lives in Columbia Heights and works in Boerum Hill, is a painter and children’s book illustrator. Born in Australia in 1977 of Irish parents, his work explores memory and the passage of time through enigmatic narratives in a style that suggests bygone eras. In Before My Time, he uses a childhood photograph of himself as a point of departure. In Without a Doubt, Part 2, a complete portrait of a female subject was dipped in turquoise paint, obscuring the subject’s features, while revealing traces under the turquoise veil.

    Naomi Safran-Hon, who lives and works in Prospect Heights, is an Israeli born in England in 1984. She has photographed the damaged and abandoned buildings of Haifa, Israel, where she grew up, transforming the images with cement and lace in works that vary from the abstract to the specific. In her pieces, the lace is penetrated by the cement, setting up a tension between the tactile surface of the work and the illusion of depth.

    Gabrielle Watson, who lives and works in Crown Heights, was born in New York in 1981. Initially drawn to painting as a way to respond to the emotional moments in her life, Watson began to make portraits of family and friends. Working from photographs she has taken, she transforms her subjects using a vivid palette that alters their appearance. A practicing lawyer, she taught herself how to paint and uses her work as a meditation on her own struggles and the “greater non-political black experience.”

    Yeon Ji Yoo, an American born in South Korea in 1978, lives in Greenpoint and works in Red Hook. She creates installations and drawings that connect her memories of the South Korean farmland of her childhood and her training in environmental science. Her work explores the ideas of decay, loss, and regeneration. Her use of paper as both a support and a material from which she constructs large-scale installations creates a dialogue between her drawing and collage.

    This Brooklyn-wide initiative was aimed at connecting the community with the vast number of artists working throughout the borough. It was launched in May 2012 with a call for artist registration, followed by the open studio weekend on September 8 and 9, after which participants were able to nominate as many as three artists. The ten artists with the most voter nominations comprised the short list from which the final five were selected. The project is co-organized by Atkins and Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology. GO: a community-curated open studio project was inspired by two established programs: ArtPrize, an annual, publicly juried art competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the long tradition of open studio weekends held each year in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, DUMBO, Gowanus, Red Hook, and Bushwick.

    GO is sponsored by Deutsche Bank.

    Additional support provided by The Brooklyn Brewery and MailChimp.

    The L Magazine is media sponsor.

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  • May 18, 2012 Brooklyn, NY....The Brooklyn Museum is launching a borough-wide initiative in which Brooklyn-based artists will be invited to open their studios, allowing community members to visit and nominate artists for inclusion in a group exhibition to be held at the Museum. Brooklyn Museum curators will visit the studios of top nominated artists to select works for the exhibition. The open studio weekend for GO: a community-curated open studio project will be held September 8 and 9. The exhibition will open during Target First Saturday on December 1, 2012, and will be on view through February 24, 2013.

    Web and mobile technology will be a central component bringing artists and community together to share information and perspectives on art. All participants (artists, voters, and volunteers) will be able to create a personal online profile at the project’s website, www.gobrooklynart.org. Artist profiles will include photos of each artist and their studio, along with images and descriptions of their work. Volunteers will be connected with their respective neighborhoods online, and voters will have profiles that track their activity during the open studio weekend and provide a platform on which to share their perspectives.

    The project organizers are Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, and Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology. GO: a community-curated open studio project is inspired by two predecessors: ArtPrize, an annual publicly juried art competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the long tradition of open studio events that take place each year throughout Brooklyn.

    GO is sponsored by Deutsche Bank.

    The L Magazine is media sponsor.

    GO is a wide-ranging and unique project that will transform how Brooklyn communities engage in the arts by providing everyone with the chance to discover artistic talent and to be involved in the exhibition process on a grassroots level. Through the use of innovative technology, GO provides every Brooklyn resident with an extraordinary opportunity to participate in the visual arts in an unprecedented way,” says Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman.

    The project will launch on May 18 with volunteer registration. Volunteers will identify and work with local groups and businesses within specific neighborhoods to engage artists and potential studio visitors. The Brooklyn Museum will also partner with the Brooklyn Arts Council, open studio organizations, the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office, and Heart of Brooklyn to promote participation in GO. The New York City Housing Authority will also play an important role in engaging residents living in public housing developments in Brooklyn.

    Artists will have an opportunity to register their studios at www.gobrooklynart.org in June. Artist registration will be followed by voter registration in August and early September. In October, Sharon Matt Atkins and Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, will make studio visits to the top nominated artists to select the work for the exhibition. Curators and community members will engage in a public dialogue about the selection of work.

    GO continues the Brooklyn Museum’s long tradition of highlighting the borough’s community of artists. Since its 2004 exhibition, Open House: Working in Brooklyn, the largest survey to date of artists working in Brooklyn, the Museum has continued its commitment to Brooklyn artists with exhibitions by Fred Tomaselli, Lorna Simpson, and an upcoming exhibition by Mickalene Thomas, among others, and the current Raw/Cooked series of five exhibitions by under-the-radar Brooklyn artists.

    A pioneer in crowd-sourced exhibitions, the Brooklyn Museum also presented Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition (2008), a photography show in which nearly 3,500 community members evaluated the work of 389 local photographers. More recently, Split Second: Indian Paintings (2011) invited the Museum’s online community to participate in the selection of works to be shown in an installation of Indian paintings.

    “With more artists working in Brooklyn than ever before, this project offers artists and communities alike the chance to engage with one another and participate in the exhibition process,” state the organizers.

    The project’s website can be found at www.gobrooklynart.org and will be updated throughout the process until the exhibition’s opening in December 2012.

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  • July 17, 2012 Brooklyn, NY....Members of the public will nominate the artists whose work will be considered for GO: a community-curated open studio project, an upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, by registering online to vote beginning today, and by visiting artist studios during the GO open studio weekend on September 8–9, 2012. 1,861 Brooklyn-based artists will open their studio doors in 46 of Brooklyn’s 67 neighborhoods, covering Brooklyn’s 73 square miles.

    Today marks the launch of a new phase of the GO website, which showcases participating artists and allows voters to register. By visiting www.gobooklynart.org, voters can create and share itineraries of artist studios they plan to visit on September 8 and 9. Itineraries can be accessed on the GO iPhone application, so voters may take their plans with them as they travel around Brooklyn during the open studio weekend.

    On September 8 and 9, artists will open their studio doors to the public from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. Voters must check in using either the GO iPhone app or SMS text messaging using a unique number assigned to each artist and posted on a sign in their studio. Voters can also write down artist numbers and enter them later at the GO website. To be eligible to vote, registrants must check in at a minimum of five studios. After the close of the open studio weekend, eligible voters will receive an email from the GO team with nomination instructions.

    The public nomination period will begin on September 12 and end on September 18. During that time, voters will have the option to comment on the artist studios they visited. The comments will be publicly available on the GO website and may be selected for inclusion in the exhibition GO: a community-curated open studio project. Each voter may nominate as many as three artists for inclusion in the GO exhibition, which will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum from December 1, 2012, through February 24, 2013. The ten artists with the most voter nominations will receive studio visits from Brooklyn Museum curators Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, and Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, who will make the final selection of works to be included in the exhibition.

    The GO project launched in May with the goal of transforming how communities in Brooklyn, and beyond, engage with the arts by providing the public with the opportunity to discover artistic talent and get involved in the exhibition process at a grassroots level. The project is co-organized by Atkins and Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology. GO: a community-curated open studio project is inspired by two established programs: ArtPrize, an annual, publicly juried art competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the long tradition of open studio weekends held each year in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, DUMBO, Gowanus, Red Hook, and Bushwick.

    GO is sponsored by Deutsche Bank.

    Additional support provided by The Brooklyn Brewery and MailChimp.

    The L Magazine is media sponsor.

    Press Area of Website
    View Original

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