Director's Blog: Art Worlds Every Day
Director's Blog: Art Worlds Every Day
Posted by: Lesley Wright
June 8, 2011 - 2:13pm
In May 2011, Grinnell College students were involved in a wide range of exhibitions, both as the makers of the art on view and as the curators of the exhibitions. These experiences provide an excellent complement to the learning that goes on in the classroom: learning that focuses on the history, theory and challenges of museums, as well as the history, theory, techniques and conceptual underpinnings of the creation of works of art. For their exhibitions, students had to make decisions... Read More...
Posted by: Lesley Wright
February 11, 2011 - 11:27am
State Rep. Scott Raecker, a Grinnell alumnus, has introduced a bill in the Iowa Legislature to sell a painting, Jackson Pollock's "Mural," owned by the University of Iowa Museum of Art in order to create a fund to pay for scholarships for art students. For more on the original story see:
http://www.whotv.com/news/who-story-pollock-painting-bill-021011,0,5431588.story
Here is the letter I sent to Representative Raecker explaining why I think this is a terrible idea.
Dear Representative Raecker,... Read More...
Posted by: Lesley Wright
January 27, 2011 - 11:51am
Once upon a time, communicating took a great deal of work. Paper was made by hand, writing was done with a handmade pen and handmade ink, and every word was handwritten. Printing presses allowed for multiple copies, but early type was hand carved, hand-set and the pages of text were pulled by hand. Nowadays in our so-called paperless society, children learn to print then go straight to “keyboarding.” Cursive writing is becoming a lost art—will we have to have special classes in creating a... Read More...
Posted by: Lesley Wright
January 18, 2011 - 3:23pm
Art Looking Life in the Eye
South African artist Diane Victor has traveled to the frozen fields of Iowa to complete drawings for her exhibition Of Fables and Folly, which opens here at the Faulconer on Friday, January 28. She is currently working on oversize drawings, made of smoke from candles, of South African prisoners—people whose lives are as ephemeral in the grand scheme of social power as the smoke that depicts them. These portraits are haunting, but bearable. Her prints on view in the... Read More...
September 10, 2010 - 8:47pm
This week has been a flurry of activity at the Faulconer Gallery. Our summer exhibition came down on Monday, and the first of them shipped out Tuesday. By Friday, all four of the new exhibitions were on their way to completion. The walls had been repositioned and prepped. Artists were hard at work on creating site specific installations. Art was retrieved from storage and readied for hanging.
Meanwhile, Dan Strong, our associate director, alarmed by the news reports of potential qur’an (Koran)... Read More...
July 23, 2010 - 3:08pm
This fall, the Faulconer Gallery will be presenting an exhibition made with and about the community of Grinnell. Entitled Culturing Community: Projects about Place, the show tries to get at aspects of our little town that are not apparent on the surface. The artists involved use art and culture as a means to inspire participation by those who might not otherwise see themselves as a part of the constituency around the gallery. The show includes projects that focus on a cemetery... Read More...
June 26, 2010 - 10:19pm
Shanghai was our last stop in China, and I was unable to post a blog about our experiences before we flew home. As the largest city in China, Shanghai (the city) is home to as many people as Florida (the state). Not only do about 20 million people call the city home, but Shanghai is currently hosting World Expo 2010, which is averaging about 500,000 visitors A DAY. Needless-to-say, Shanghai was crowded, particularly in the places which tourists frequent. We made our pilgrimages to... Read More...
June 17, 2010 - 3:51pm
Television is a funny medium. It brings us together through shared viewing experiences, and it isolates us in a pool of light in a darkened room. We look to the ubiquitous box for information, forgetting that what we see is produced and edited to fit a format. What we receive is someone’s creation.
How fitting, then, for artists to create art from the created reality of television. The four summer exhibitions at the Faulconer Gallery (Grinnell College) delve into the least scripted... Read More...
June 14, 2010 - 8:35pm
In a few hours, we will be boarding our flight in Shanghai for the nonstop flight to Chicago. We are eager to be home, but not yet ready to leave China. Here are some final impressions.
The images we will retain (like these two pictures) span the unimaginable scale of everything, and the precision of small meticulous details. Cities, buildings, spaces, and projects of all kinds are huge, remarkable, and almost beyond imagining. Architectural detail, finish, landscaping, historic sites are often... Read More...
June 14, 2010 - 1:44am
Nanjing is not one of the biggest cities in China. Despite a population of over 7 million, it has a modesty about it. The traffic though congested, flows along in a civilized way, a sort of ballet between cars, bikes, scooters and pedestrians. There are flashy shopping areas, but they aren’t enormous. Most everything is on a reasonable level, a human scale. Anything edgy or provocative is kept under wraps.
Given our interest in art, we have been perplexed by the lack of a contemporary art... Read More...
