Tag: midtown

Afterwork @MoMA

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Reaping the benefit of having MoMA at walking distance between home & work.

  • Dorothea Lange || Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona. November 1940
  • Dorothea Lange || Woman of the High Plains, Texas Panhandle. June 1938
  • Dorothea Lange || Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. March 1936
  • Dorothea Lange || Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. March 1936
  • Dorothea Lange || A Destitute Mother: The Type Aided by the WPA. March 1936
  • SITE, James Wines || Highrise of Homes, project (Exterior perspective)1981

    James Wines, a founding member in 1970 of the SITE (Sculpture In The Environment) architectural group, described the Highrise of Homes project as a “vertical community” to “accommodate people’s conflicting desires to enjoy the cultural advantages of an urban center, without sacrificing the private home identity and garden space associated with suburbia.” The plan calls for a steel-and-concrete, eight-to-ten-story, U-shaped building frame erected in a densely populated urban area. The developer would sell lots within this frame, each lot the site for a house and garden in a style chosen by the purchaser. The result would be a distinct villagelike community on each floor, with interior streets. A central mechanical core would serve these homes and gardens, while shops, offices, and other facilities on the ground and middle floors would provide for the residents’ needs.

    Developers considered Battery Park City, New York, as a possible location for the project, but it was never built.
  • Marlene Dumas || Chlorosis (Love sick), 1994 [detail]
  • Marlene Dumas || Chlorosis (Love sick), 1994
  • Marlene Dumas || Chlorosis (Love sick), 1994 [detail]
  • Frances Benjamin Johnston || From the Hampton Album 1899-1900. Geography: Studying the Seasons
  • Frances Benjamin Johnston || From the Hampton Album 1899-1900. Geography: Studying the Cathedral Towns
  • Frances Benjamin Johnston || From the Hampton Album 1899-1900. Stairway of Treasurer’s Residence: Students at Work

”After setting up her own photography studio in 1894, in Washington, D.C., Frances Benjamin Johnston was described by The Washington Times as “the only lady in the business of photography in the city.” Considered to be one of the first female press photographers in the United States, she took pictures of news events and architecture and made portraits of political and social leaders for over five decades.

In 1899, the principal of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia commissioned Johnston to take photographs at the school for the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The Hampton Institute was a preparatory and trade school dedicated to preparing African American and Native American students for professional careers. Johnston took more than 150 photographs and exhibited them in the Exposition Nègres d’Amerique (American Negro Exhibit) pavilion, which was meant to showcase improving race relations in America. The series won the grand prize and was lauded by both the public and the press.

Years later, writer and philanthropist Lincoln Kirstein discovered a leather-bound album of Johnston’s Hampton Institute photographs. He gave the album to The Museum of Modern Art, which reproduced 44 of its original 159 photographs in a book called The Hampton Album, published in 1966.” [source]

February 7th, 2020

Vera Paints a Scarf

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”Vera Paints a Scarf was a selection of the work of artist Vera Neumann (1907-1993) and her contributions to the field of American design. Neumann was among the most successful female design entrepreneurs of the 20th century, and an originator of the American lifestyle brand. Over the course of her career, which spanned from her label’s debut in 1942 to her death in 1993, Neumann produced an iconic line of women’s scarves all signed with a cursive “Vera” and stamped with a ladybug, as well as thousands of textile patterns based on her drawings, paintings, and collages. This exhibition was the first to comprehensively examine her career—and highlights the keys to her success: her joyful and inventive aesthetic, democratic design ethos, fusion of craft and mass production, and clever marketing.”

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)

December 26th, 2019

Prickly Pear Don’t Care

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Artworks

Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Nopales híbridos: An Imaginary World of a Rascuache-Futurism, 2017
Terra cotta, porcelain, underglazes, gold luster, and terra cotta slip

When Jiménez-Flores moved to the United States he spoke limited English. Art became his primary method of communication and means of commemorating his heritage. His practice prioritizes the depiction of Latinx people to ensure their representation in art for future generations. The “Nopales” series (nopales is Spanish for “prickly-pear cacti”) uses humor to challenge existing Latinx stereotypes in the United States. Likenesses of the artist, wearing shiny sunglasses and sticking out his tongue, are portrayed on cactus pads made of terra cotta and porcelain. This irreverent aesthetic references the work of Robert Arneson, father of funk ceramics, and also draws on the rich history of portraiture in Latin American visual culture, from Frida Kahlo’s paintings to Peruvian Moche vessels. The nopal, notable for its resilience in extreme conditions, is an important icon in Mexican culture—so much so that it is emblazoned on the country’s flag. For the artist, the cactus’s endurance symbolizes hope for the future.

Amber Cowan
Dance of the Pacific Coast Highway at Sunset, 2019, Flameworked American pressed glass
Snail Passing Through the Garden of Inanna, 2019, Flameworked American pressed glass

Two of the finalists for the Burke Prize 2019, in recognition of an artist’s extraordinary achievement in craft.

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)

December 26th, 2019