Artists
Work of the Week: Yo Mama by Wangechi Mutu
As part of Wangechi Mutu’s mid-career review at the Nasher Museum – A Fantastic Journey – the artist discusses her career trajectory and the importance of collage in contemporary art with Nasher Museum curator Trevor Schoonmaker. In this podcast, Wangechi talks about her diptych, Yo Mama, that she created 10 years ago.
Work of the Week: Museo del Prado 5, Madrid by Thomas Struth
I came upon Thomas Struth’s photograph, Museo del Prado 5, Madrid (2005). Struth is a well-known German photographer, and this piece is part of his acclaimed Museum series, which depicts individuals as they view various works of art. This photograph shows a group of uniformed students standing in front of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1565) and not a single one of these adolescents looks at the painting.
Work of the Week: Outside Amarillo by MJ Sharp
The Nasher Museum recently welcomed MJ Sharp for a lecture and we got to learn a little about her love of the South, her nighttime photography techniques, and everything else…including her kitchen sink.
Traditions
I have been working to catalogue the collection and create artist files that correspond to the artwork files already in our database. Poring through these files is an interesting process. You’re bound to find plenty of dry documents that tell you nothing about the artist or their background but, at the same time, you could come across a treasure. It was the act of searching through these files, and a little online research, that led me to Ai Weiwei.
Modern Art Notes Podcast: Wangechi Mutu
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Wangechi Mutu. Respected arts writer Tyler Green conducts a thoughtful interview with the artist on intriguing topics.
The human position
I could not be more excited about this upcoming exhibition, and not just because I was involved in the process. The Human Position will contain works from the Nasher Museum’s permanent collection that have not been recently displayed and will also bring together pieces that at first appear drastically different but actually have common themes and elements.
The art spectrum
Within the dizzying spectrum of modern and contemporary artworks featured in the Nasher Museum’s current exhibitions, which sample everything from Ansel Adams’s distilled landscapes to Wangechi Mutu’s supernatural mediations on human form, a 5th-century BCE calyx krater may seem something of an outlier. How, you wonder, could the ancient Athenians have created anything even remotely comparable to the serene Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico or other-worldly Funkalicious fruit field?
Work of the Week: Low Tide by Anthony Goicolea
Anthony Goicolea’s black and white digital combination print, Low Tide, 2007, shows an ocean bay besmirched by the hands of progress. Surrounded by natural rock formations, the once idyllic cove has been invaded by alien machinery.
Work of the Week: This Sporting Life, September 1978 by Larry Fink
The perspective of the camera angle is lower than the praying mantis and, in doing so, this normally insignificant insect becomes larger than life. Fink’s angle switches the roles of the human and the bug. We can see how the mantis must view its world.