It's Museum day e'reybody! It's also another rainy day! oh boy!
I'm about to move house, so that's fun! Went to the PEM yesterday to see Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection, which proves that a rich couple with a singular interest can bring together a collection of pretty great works. There are a few stand-outs and a bunch of filler, but it's a pretty good selection of work.
Worth the price of admission: Isaack Koedijck's Barber-Surgeon Tending a Peasant's Foot, van der Heyden's View of the Westerkerk Amsterdam, Ruisdael's View of Haarlem, Cuyp's Orpheus Charming the Animals and the one Rembrandt, a portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh (scrabble won't accept that spelling).
The PEM's Freeport exhibitions continue to be great. #2 from Marianne Mueller is a collection/installation. The overall feeling you get is confrontation. Things from the PEM's collections are held in opposition--two objects are kept in tension over and over again. The walls are covered with very specific pantone colors. Mueller included some of her photographs in the installation too. There are three videos of women standing facing the camera. They are, again, confrontational. I do want to know why women as video subject, are they to be gazed at, or are they gazing at us, or both? It seems deliberately gendered either way.
Freeport #3 is up at currently too, Susan Philipsz has an 8 channel sound piece installed. It's her singing the same song 8 different times exposing the differences in song. It comes in and out of focus over and over again. I assume it considers the change in oral histories over time, as it's a multi-version layering of a traditional song.
The NGC And MFA Acquired Christian Marclay’s 24-Hour Video, The Clock recently. I've been thinking about it and its place in art right now. It's a hit. I don't know how long it will last, if it's an instant classic or if it's going to change over time to a dated work. One of the reasons why I think it's popular outside of hardcore contemporary art circles is that it is a collage of popular movies. It has the same connection to popular culture as the new Beastie Boys video. Not that interesting, unless you care about seeing celebrities when you don't expect them. I personally can't wait to experience the sharpening of time in it. But I'm an insomniac, so it might just feel like another day...
Installations from Ai WeiWei, Olafur Eliasson, and Tomás Saraceno were exhibited at Harvard. I think that you can experience 2/3 of it via video the same way that you would have in person. The Eliasson was more intimate and wider in scope at the same time. He put more into his work.
The cyberarts festival is done. I almost agree with Greg Cook's review, which is a rare. There was something disjointed about this year's festival. There seemed to be fewer cyber artists and more +1's who wanted the publicity. The stand outs are Jim Campbell at Howie's gallery, the German videos at Goethe Institute (my writing about that- symposium and works), and the Drawing with Code exhibition at DeCordova (review is in draft form at Printeresting.org).
Anyway, off to the Harvard Museum to make more museum memories. But before I go, if you are in Boston area, go to meme's closing this weekend, a sad/happy event.
