The BMA spent $2.57 million on art by 49 women in 2020. Guess how many are from Maryland?
I have a confession to make. After fifteen years as an arts writer, I still do not understand the art market, especially institutional collections.
Art in Suspended Animation: Ten Best Baltimore Exhibitions of 2020
These ten exhibits of 2020 provide a fractured but highly ambitious roadmap, messy and democratic and full of brilliant tangents, the perfect puzzle for a precarious and undetermined future.
What We Can Learn From The BMA’s Recent Deaccessioning Announcement
We can argue this endlessly because museum acquisitions and sales are still a subjective and hierarchical process; they can be sifted and spun to support a variety of conflicting agendas with no clear-cut answers. One thing we can all agree upon is that decisions to sell off works from a museum’s permanent collection can sow dissent and undermine public trust in museum leadership. These transactions are sensitive and should be undertaken with the utmost caution because a wide variety of people really care about the art in their local museum and its purported mission to perpetually house, display, and protect those objects. Read the whole thing here.
Monsieur Zohore's "The Last Supper" at the BMA
“I was thinking about ‘The Last Supper’ as a form of protest in itself,” he says. “By inviting all these Black and brown and queer performers who were willing to stand up with me to protest, it meant I was asking them to take a professional risk. Some people declined to participate because of their level of comfort or their fear of stepping on institutional toes and I totally respect that.”
Sex, Art, Feminism, and Freedom: Carolee Schneemann
In 1975, a beautiful, naked 36-year-old woman stood in front of 300 people and extracted a scroll from her vagina. She read it aloud slowly, unfurling it into a long, thin tendril of paper. The text was a critical diatribe by film critic Annette Michaelson, denouncing the artist’s own work for being too messy, feminine, and a “diaristic indulgence.” The artist, Carolee Schneemann, created many more canonical works in painting, film, performance, and photography over six decades, which challenged previously held taboos about female sexuality, ecstatic expression, and gender politics. Unsurprisingly, her work was misunderstood, criticized, shunned, and marginalized as pornography by the art world, until she was finally recognized in her 70s with her first career retrospective, exhibited in Salzburg, Austria at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, in Frankfurt at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, and in New York at MoMA PS1. Soon after, she received a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement from the 2017 Venice Biennale.
Schneemann died from breast cancer on March 5, 2019, at the age of 79, and the art world that once criticized her has lauded her a pioneer, a brave visionary, and a protean artist who helped define contemporary avant-garde, an influential feminist force to be reckoned with.
To read click here.
NY Magazine/ Vulture: John Waters is the Godfather of Baltimore's Art Scene
November 1, 2018
Artspeak and Audience: Art Writing as Bridge or Barrier
Artspeak and Audience by Cara Ober was commissioned by BmoreArt as part of Field Perspectives 2019, a co-publishing initiative organized and supported by Common Field. Field Perspectives 2019 invites thinking that reflects on the future of the artist organizing field. The program, a collaboration between Common Field and nine arts publications, is published in two parts. Part 2 includes texts by Art Papers, The Artblog, BmoreArt, Momus, Terremoto,The Third Rail, and Title Magazine. Part 1 included texts by Chicago Artist Writers, The Rib, and Sixty Inches from Center. Generous support for Field Perspectives is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
To read click here.
Location, Location, Location: The Problem of Site Speceficity and Mark Bradford at the BMA
Mark Bradford’s Tomorrow is Another Day Part II at the Baltimore Museum of Art by Cara Ober
In real estate and contemporary art, the impact of context cannot be overstated. In the right neighborhood, a rickety dump with a bad roof and a 1970s kitchen can garner a million dollar price tag, and in a less desirable area, the same house will sit, unoccupied, indefinitely. Artisanal bathroom tile with radiant floor heating can only get you so far; their impact upon home value is inconsequential compared to location and the whims of a volatile real estate market.
Although we often think of art in a vacuum, the impact of environment actually plays a huge part in its success or failure. In a global art world, it is customary for museum exhibitions to travel, but site-specific work, made for a particular place and time, does not always translate effectively in a new setting. This explains why Mark Bradford’s Tomorrow is Another Day, conceived and executed for the United States Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale but now at the Baltimore Museum of Art, is essentially the same show as the original, but only musters a fraction of the energy.
To read click here.
Context and Celebrity: Amy Sherald at Hauser & Wirth
Considering the impact of fame, celebrity, and context in the paintings of Amy Sherald in her first New York solo show.
Vulture: 27 Artists on the Worst (and Best) Advice
I interviewed John Waters and Joyce J. Scott as part of this list of advice for artists.
Hyperallergic: The Relentless Efforts of Maren Hassinger Result in an Overdue Retrospective
Maren Hassinger at the Baltimore Museum of Art
Hyperallergic: Provocative Nat Turner-Inspired Portraits Fuel Debate After Their Removal
Following an employee complaint, Stephen Towns removed his paintings from his solo show at Rosenberg Gallery. The decision has since inspired some much-needed dialogue.
September 8, 2017
Hyperallergic: A Wedding Ceremony Takes the Shape of an Art Exhibition
In Baltimore, two artists have upended the traditional wedding, realizing it as a month-long gallery exhibition and queer performance series.
October 26, 2017
https://hyperallergic.com/407800/spacecamp-zachary-z-handler-and-nick-horan-golden-girls-marriage/
Hyperallergic: Democracy’s Dark Side and a Glimmer of Hope in Mark Bradford’s Venice Biennale Show
In the US Pavilion, the artist’s work takes on a new context: wrestling with the hypocrisy of Jeffersonian democracy.
May 17, 2017
Hyperallergic: How Philip Guston Found Salvation in Poetry
Philip Guston and the Poets, currently at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, shows the significant influence of poetry on Guston’s work, especially after he retreated from the art world.
June 21, 2017
https://hyperallergic.com/386454/how-philip-guston-found-salvation-in-poetry/
Hyperallergic: Two Transgender Artists on the Importance of Queering Home
Rahne Alexander and Jaimes Mayhew’s installation at the Baltimore Museum of Art invites viewers to connect their own domestic lives to those of LGBTQ people.
May 10, 2017
https://hyperallergic.com/378017/two-transgender-artists-on-the-importance-of-queering-home/
Hyperallergic: The Seduction of Screens and Neon at Night
BALTIMORE — Around seven in the evening, dusky pink light and car headlights from North Avenue ricochet off the glass walls of the KAGRO building, adding an extra layer of nuance to Victoria Fu’s Bubble Over Green.
March 26, 2015
https://hyperallergic.com/193686/the-seduction-of-screens-and-neon-at-night/
Hyperallergic: The Uneasy Beauty of Joyce J. Scott’s Seductive Forms
BALTIMORE — The golden man is tiny, but he’s got a penis like a garden hose. Naked, he stands over a much larger woman, holding a long loop and pointing the tip at her face, which is obscured by what appears to be a thin, white cloth but is in fact ejaculatory fluid. Her body is voluptuous with perky, upturned breasts. She lays on her back with legs curving towards the sky, supporting his feet with her open hands. She is languid, as if engaged in a powerful yoga maneuver or floating in water, while he hovers over her. Although he dominates her, this is definitely a consensual act; her body practically purrs with pleasure.
July 11, 2016
https://hyperallergic.com/310313/the-uneasy-beauty-of-joyce-j-scotts-seductive-forms/
Art Papers: Sarah Oppenheimer at the BMA
Available in print edition March / April 2013
Art Reviews for ARTnews 2013-2009
2013: ARTnews: “Behind Walls at Grimaldis Gallery”
2009: ARTnews: “Sublime Structure at Grimaldis Gallery” December Issue
2009: ARTnews: “Manon Cleary at Addison-Ripley Gallery” November Issue
2009: ARTnews: “Moira Hecht at The Ralls Collection” September Issue
2009: ARTnews: “Leo Rubenfein at the Corcoran Gallery of Art” March Issue
2009: ARTnews: “Emerging Forces” February Issue
2009: ARTnews: “Nick and Sheila Pye at Curator’s Office” and “Kendall Messick at Hemphill Gallery” January Issue
2008: ARTnews: “Chul-Hyun Ahn: Visual Echo at Grimaldis Gallery” December Issue