This is the type of piece me myself would like to write about the National Museum in Norway and it's founding director Sune Nordgren. The newspaper Dagens Nćringsliv (Financial Times of Norway) produced a major piece of journalism when the showed in a long feature how a small group of men did an intensive effort to discover and expose how Norgren in his role a director squeezing the National Gallery, The Contemporary Art, The Architecture and the National Museum of decorative art and design under one administration, banned part of his staff - did a bad job at Baltic etc. The feature expose who these men are, how they fed a few major norwegian art critics with material. This material was again used by the critics without exposing it's source.
The feature shows that in every witch hunt, this one as well used slight, doubtful and useless evidence. The mafia standing behind this tried to feed journalists and editors with the same material, but it never stood ground when they dug deeper into it.
This case is a very complex case, and even though the article was explosive when it was published, it show many a great gap in the structure and history.
BAck to MoMa, Tomkins have spent almost half a century at MoMA and has a memoryt about it before most of today's artists and curator even could spell 'art'. He talks about the new museum, takes into consideration some rumours and lies that have been said about MoMA, about the curatorial staff, its director etc. and then talks to all involved. This is what I would like to do about the National Museum in Norway: talk to those involved. No one ever talked to the curators at the museum, they never ever entered the debate. neither did other museums directors. IT is all so quiet.
So why is this something?
Norgren resigned - something I do not think would have happened it a bigger country.
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( 3 / 1987 )I have found the blog I am longing for, the blog I always wanted to read. It got the perfect protagonist: a female young art worker, nerd and buzz˙ bee working hard, in the same part of the world as I. It is updated daily, it is part art world gossip, part serios, part update on the news front, project descriptions, statements, comments on different things and a clear cut "I-am-an-art-world-maniac" profile. I am loving every single sentence. Actually, it is the blog I would write if I was half as good and a even near that well connected and updated.
It's like reading from someone you love and have dear, someone you know for a very long time - like a sister or a lost friend.
It's recent posting includes themes like the exhibition African Remix, Frieze Art Fair, Art Forum Berlin (long, very long and very subjective - mixture between the anal Scene and Herd of Artforum and personal letter/ email), David Elliott's predecessor at Mori Art Museum (Fumio Nanjo), about Kunsthalle Basel's Adam Szymczyk curating the next Berlin Biennial, hints and tips about the best art critics around (Searle and Saltz if you wonder) etc.
It is a great blog. the best around.
why I do not link to it?
Hidden Blog
This blog is "hidden" as in: you cannot search it on any search-machines or find it by looking for it. I'd like to keep it this way. This is a blog created for myself to be able to just post shit on my mind as a kind of therapy almost. Don't want to become a pro with this, I'd like to keep it simple, so IF you do send the link on I won't like it even though I can't stop you from doing it - I'd like to make it clear that this is NOT an official blog, I only post things related to myself in a very informal and easy way. I don't want other than very good friends to read this. I am not going to update on a regular basis. I am not going to be a "real" blogger, I'm just gonna keep the diary-thing going. AND I'm gonna talk about stuff that ONLY myself could possibly be interested in, I'm not gonna start adapting the content to any possible readers other than just as large art nerds as myself. So - please be careful with passing the blog-address on, will you? And if you do: please be selective...? Thanx!
posted by ****** at 7:06 PM
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( 2.9 / 1771 )Power Ekroth have finally curated a show in Sweden again (I think the last exhibition she made was I could be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky with Lena Malm and Nikolaj Recke in Enkehuset in 2001... I might be mistaken there...).
This time she did a show in a newly opened kunsthalle far up in Northern Sweden; Skellefteĺ Konsthall.
The exhibition is called In Moment and features Pierre Bismuth, Gabriel Lester, Johan Thurfjell and Clemens von Wedemeyer - they all uses slide projectors.
She got a stunning review in the local newspaper. He does not understand anything, he stares at the exhibition as well as the text power has written and feels pushed out of the open and discursive public project that an art hall is, or should be. Only third time reading it did he understand the meaning of
"one of them received an Academy Award for best original screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".
that’s fine.
He also feels insecure about the meaning of the term 'narrative structures'.
that is also fine.
he feels stupid since this exhibition did get a lot of media attention (as if that is something important).
All this is fine, and I do appreciate the fact that Contemporary art is something that is not easily accessible to all. The problem with this article is, and it is written in a good mixture of gonzo and essay form, that he doesn’t even try to understand. There is not the slightest try to produce nothing but a good text that says; this is bad because I do not understand it. By no means does this text even try to go beyond and discover what might be hidden in the exhibition, small hints and suggestions, there is nothing but contempt towards contemporary art, and I do think that this is a typical stand that the media in Scandinavia holds. They do not even try to write texts that enlighten their readers just a single bit, and thus they, in my opinion, does not do a proper job – they think that their readers is either a) stupid or b) not interested, and thus this populist way of writing about it. Sad but true. Someone should address this to the state of the media in our part of the world.
Anyway, below there are some installation views, all taken by Power Ekroth.
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( 3 / 1927 )Please check out this podcast about Jan Christensen's exhibition Forward Momentum.
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( 2.9 / 2098 )Sabine Lang and Daniel Baumann are installing their hotel project Hotel Everland at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig these days, and it might just be, as the slogan says; the coolest hotel room on earth.
I would very much like to test out the romantic myth and place it in Lofoten (can you imagine; Hotel Everland in No Mans Land ?).
;)
It is just that Carsten höller is working on a more site spesific project for Artistic Interruptions not far from my home town, I think I cannot.
Anyway, I wisited the hotel room today and I would very much like to test it, but I have to see if any magazine might be interested to reimburse me for it.
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