Thursday, February 04, 2010

Did we mention the marching band?


More than 1,880 people have voted in the 2009 New England Art Awards. Now the winners will be announced at the New England Art Awards Ball at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 8, 2010, at the Burren, 247 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts. As if that weren’t enticing enough, the terrific Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will open the ceremony. And you are invited!

Admission is free and all are welcome. Creative attire is encouraged. As are giant foam hand cheering mitts.

The awards are a contest organized by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research to honor the best art made in New England and exhibits organized here in 2009. More details about how it works here. Read the final ballot here.

The Gardner Museum addition










From our report on unveiling of Italian architect Renzo Piano's designs for an addition to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston:
On January 1, 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner invited 300 guests to a private concert by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the opening of her new museum on the Fenway. After performances of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, the mirrored doors of the first-floor concert room rolled open to reveal an extraordinary vision: a four-story-tall courtyard in the center of the building filled with flowers and lit by Japanese paper lanterns.

Guests wandered off into candlelit galleries, each lavishly furnished with a mix of old master paintings (Botticelli, Titian, Vermeer, Rembrandt), contemporary works (John Singer Sargent), antique furniture, architectural details, and tapestries. When they sat down to supper in a second-floor gallery full of 17th-century Dutch masterpieces, many must have shared the thoughts of philosopher William James. "The æsthetic perfection of all things," he wrote, "seemed to have a peculiar effect on the company, making them quiet and docile and self-forgetful and kind. Quite in the line of a Gospel miracle!"

In our era, when museums increasingly feel like the group-think of corporate teams, Gardner's ravishing, theatrical, treasure-packed, idiosyncratic one-woman gesamtkunstwerk is ever more a miracle. On January 21, when the Gardner Museum unveiled Italian architect Renzo Piano's designs for an addition, the question was whether his sleek, boxy, copper-clad, glass-and-steel structure, at a cost of $114 million, would sap and distract from Gardner's original Venetian Renaissance-inspired palazzo.
Read the rest here.

Previously:
March 5, 2009: Court oks Gardner expansion, demolition.
March 5, 2009: Court’s ruling on Gardner.
March 9, 2009: Gardner buildings slated for demolition.
July 7, 2009: Gardner carriage house RIP.

Pictured from top to bottom: Rendering from Evans Way Park; section through the special exhibition gallery; elevation from Palace Road; and elevation from Evans Way Park. Note that these illustrations below can be misleading because they suggest transparent walls in the upper floors of the Gardner addition, which we're told will actually be clad in opaque copper. All pictures © Renzo Piano Building Workshop.


Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Brandeis hires Rose to litigate Rose

Brandeis University has switched from a former Massachusetts attorney general to a lawyer named Rose to defend itself against a suit filed by three overseers of the school’s Rose Art Museum last July aiming to force the school to not sell the museum’s treasured collection and to keep the museum open and functioning as it was until Brandeis administrators threatened in January 2009 to close it.

Thomas Reilly (pictured at left), the former state attorney general, had been representing the Waltham school in the case as well as in its response to the current Massachusetts attorney general’s investigation into possible misuse of donations to its Rose Art Museum stemming from school leaders’ threat to shutter the museum and sell off its collection.

But now Brandeis has switched to Alan D. Rose (pictured at left) of the Boston law firm Rose, Chinitz & Rose to represent it in this matter. Rose is apparently no relation to the Rose family who gave the Rose museum its name – it’s just a delightful coincidence.

A Brandeis spokesman did not respond to requests for comment about the switch.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for March 3 at Suffolk Probate and Family Court in Boston.

Previously:
Dec. 23, 2008: Rose freezes curator search
Jan. 26, 2009: Brandeis to close Rose
Jan. 27, 2009: Update: Brandeis to close Rose, sell art
Jan. 27, 2009: Brandeis president’s e-mail on Rose
Jan. 27, 2009: Brandeis’s money
Jan. 27, 2009: AG on Brandeis's plans
Jan. 29, 2009: Brandeis’s liquidator-in-chief
Jan. 29, 2009: The first painting Brandeis should pawn
Jan. 29, 2009: Question: Brandeis financial management?
Feb. 5, 2009: Brandeis won’t close Rose?
Feb. 5, 2009: Will defunct Rose replace defunct Safra Center plan?
Feb. 9, 2009: Open discussion at the Rose tomorrow
Feb. 11, 2009: How do you solve Brandeis’s budget crisis?
March 16, 2009: Rose family objects to closing Rose museum
March 16, 2009: What is the Rose family saying?
May 15, 2009: The end of the Rose?
May 20, 2009: Voices from the Rose.
May 20, 2009: Rose collection treasures.
July 27, 2009: Rose overseers sue to preserve museum, stop sale of art: If museum can’t be saved, they say give art to new Rose Preservation Fund.
July 31, 2009: Key weaknesses in the Rose suit.
Sept. 15, 2009: Brandeis seeks dismissal of Rose lawsuit.
Sept. 25, 2009: Brandeis president announces resignation.
Sept. 28, 2009: Brandeis’s Rose Museum: Where to go from here?
Oct. 2, 2009: Administrative exodus from Brandeis.
Oct. 8, 2009: Rose budget increased?
Oct. 14, 2009: Brandeis agrees to not sell some Rose art: Attorneys disagree on what happened at hearing yesterday.
Oct. 16, 2009: Attorney General investigates Brandeis over Rose.
Oct. 28, 2009: Quiet protest at “Rose at Brandeis" opening: Cops attend too, while Brandeis board meets.
Nov. 1, 2009: Brandeis considers suing Harper’s Magazine.
Nov. 3, 2009: Brandeis seeks art curator … but not for Rose.
Nov. 10, 2009: Review of “The Rose at Brandeis” exhibition.
Dec. 18, 2009: Brandeis looks for new Rose staff.

5 Traverse is closing

















Sad news: 5 Traverse gallery in Providence is closing.

The gallery has posted this message on its website:
"5 Traverse, 'the gallery,' is closing its doors. It has been a fantastic trek and we are thankful for all who have enjoyed and participated over the last two phases of the gallery’s existence. The two people who have run the space, Maya Allison and Jesse Smith, are going to curate many more projects. These may be local or global events and 5Traverse.com will keep you posted as to how to follow their creations."
5 Traverse, which Smith opened in April 2007, has been one of the sharpest galleries in New England, exhibiting a range of local established (Jonathan Bonner) to emerging artists (Michael Bizon). Coming right on the heels of the closing of Stairwell Gallery, this will leave Providence without any commercial galleries seriously engaged with the boundary-pushing art of today, the art engaged in the dialogue with where art is and where art is going.

More soon.

Pictured: "Tape Art Artaquarium" exhibit at 5 Traverse Gallery in 2008.

Yao, Reynolds and Easton at Chazan Gallery














The exhibit “Passengers” at Chazan Gallery at Wheeler School presents work by May Yao of Pawtucket, James Reynolds of Providence and Steve Easton of Providence.

Yao presents "Swallow’s Nest" (pictured above), an sedan chair elaborately decorated with scallop-patterned fabric, red curtains and braided tassels. Then things get odd. Four rats sit on the top corners staring at a pot on top. When you sit on the stool inside, two panels on the outside illuminate. One shows a woman in a sleek black pants suit holding a white penis that pokes out of her trousers. The other panel shows a woman in a more traditional silk blouse. But the blouse is pulled down to expose fake breasts. The women in the photos turn out to be Yao. The piece seems speak of her Chinese-American ancestry, and certainly something about gender, but its meanings remain elusive.

Reynolds bangs out shallow reliefs from tinplates. Images include sirens, lightning bolts, a little walking man, roses, an M-16 rifle. The prettier ones flirt with schmaltz. The designs are more striking when they have a bit of menace – like the gun or a pair of scaly snakes curled around a tree branch – that rhymes with the toughness of the metal.

Easton casts orange, yellow and lilac glass into little classical columns, portrait busts and chairs. There’s a fussiness to his work that combined with its diminutive scale can make his sculptures seem like just knickknacks. It helps somewhat that here he groups dozens of them together into a sort of shrine. The power of the piece is revealed when light shines in the windows behind them and the colored glass positively glows.

“Passengers” featuring May Yao, James Reynolds and Steve Easton, at Chazan Gallery at Wheeler School, 228 Angell St., Providence, Jan. 15 to Feb. 4, 2010.

Pictured from top to bottom: May Yao, "Swallow’s Nest"; James Reynolds, "While Wilbur Watched"; and Steve Easton, "Hero Worship."

Monday, February 01, 2010

Bread and Puppet's “Tear Open the Door of Heaven”















Bread and Puppet’s “Tear Open the Door of Heaven,” which the Vermont troupe performed at the Boston Center for the Arts from Jan. 28 to 31 and in New York City in December, is an omnibus show touching on God, revolution, a savior, mining by mountain top removal, Iraq, enhanced interrogation techniques, Gaza, and an unemployment agency’s “ever-growing clientele.” At first viewing, it feels all over the place, a list of concerns that are not necessarily related. But upon reflection, it seems perhaps to be about faith – faith in what our government tells us, faith in business, faith in religion, faith in Heaven, or at least some sort of ancient elemental form of ecstasy.

It begins with a prologue, narrated by Bread and Puppet founder Peter Schumann at the back of the audience. “The stars predict revolution in the immanent future,” he says while manipulating various flat cardboard and cloth figures and crowds. “The government takes preemptive action against the imminent future. One is saved and therefore is made the savior. The people’s eyes are asleep. The savior tears them open. He pronounces revolution. The people faint. The government arrests the savior. And the people walk over his arrested body. When the savior is dead his star rises. And the people follow the star. And then the situation is about to return.”














The show then gets underway, focused on a box stage that resembles a sort of caricature of a television, and framed by cardboard panels decorated with papier-mache relief crowds of figures. To the right stands a chorus of performers in dark suits. To the left a narrator in a dark suit stands at a music stand. “God, his daughter and stepdaughter preside over dynamic quantities of light,” she says, “and order reasonable and unreasonable distribution of light and darkness.” Schumann saws away at his violin while doing a kind of growly throat singing. Inside the stage, behind a clear plastic curtain, three giant pink papier-mache faces seem to drift in the air, and are joined by little floating crowds of papier-mache people. The gorgeous vision is apparently a glimpse into heaven.

Again to the box stage, where a performer in a gray mask and long black coat conducts a brief dance of feet (performers on their backs peddling their legs in the air). A woman comes out of the chorus, erects a bare tree in the center of the stage, and announces, “The first dance intervention is the Boston rush hour crowd forest admiration dance.” The chorus shuffles to the tree, kneels down, raises their hands in exaltation, then shuffles back to the right. (The show’s six dance “interventions by the Lubberland National Dance Company” recycle almost the entire “13 Dirt Floor Cathedral Dances” show that Bread and Puppet performed at its home base in Glover, Vermont, last summer.)














The narrator announces: “Mountaintop removal protesters confront mountaintop removal machinery.” A broom and rake repeatedly clobber two large clown-like faces in the box stage, as a man and woman of the “Ta-ta-ta choir” sing operatically. The narrator concludes: “Minor consequences, a few tractors demolished, a few heads busted. One regional prison is flooded with surplus population elements.”

A small puppet show follows in the box stage, featuring a shepherd (seemingly just a rumpled handkerchief) and rumpled paper sheep climbing a green blanket mountain. Narrator: “Sheep-like clouds issue from a crack in the door of heaven. When the shepherd reaches the not yet removed top of the mountain, his flock joins the flock of clouds and becomes part of the sky.” Schumann sings: “Oh you brother sun with your arms stretched over the horizon! Oh you pink sky in your fancy evening coat! Oh you fast-traveling day beneath my fleeing pasture! I don’t want to leave you! I don’t’ want to be without you!”

Narrator: “Eternity University behind closed doors. Heavenly boredom lecture, taught by God’s stepdaughter.” As two violinists play, in the box stage another glimpse of heaven: Little floating crowds of papier-mache people are joined by a single hovering giant pink head that slowly wiggles back and forth.

The woman comes out of the chorus again and announces: “The second dance intervention is a deforestation dance to create parking for deforesters.” In unison, the chorus raises their hands behind the tree at center stage, hugs it, shakes it, pulls it down and then drags it off stage.














Three mask heads sit behind a red table on the box stage: the Desert Storm Potentate, his wife, and the Secretary of Everything. They bicker over a meal of ham, until the Secretary interrupts, saying “Can we now proceed?” Potentate: “With what?” “With the perpetrators.” “Sure, why not.” “Just like that … in broad daylight?” “Sure” “Start the procedure.” A large brown papier-mache body drifts down, hiding them.














A man comes out with a device on the end of a stick. He swings it around and it makes a loud clacking. The chorus members, seated before the box stage, each awkwardly bend their left arm around in the air. Little flat clown puppets pop up before the red table and quiz each other: “Do you believe?” “Yes, I do believe.” “Do you believe?” “No I don’t believe.” “Then take that!” And each one is stabbed by scissors in turn. “Now I beeeliievee,” the wounded puppets groan.














As the chorus blows on empty bottles to make a hooting noise, the woman comes out of the chorus again and announces: “The third dance intervention is a pillow dance and this dance is dedicated to the children of Gaza who were killed in last January’s attacks.” She is joined by three performers costumed as women in large white masks, white head scarves, and black gowns. They unfurl a banner scrawled with the names of the dead. (I first saw this banner used in “27 Dirt-Cheap Money Dances” in Boston last March.) The chorus woman folds the banner into a pillow. One of the masked women lays down on it. A solder marches past robotically. The woman is helped up by her partners.














A man in a white mask and dark suit emerges from the chorus holding a cardboard airplane. The chorus hums ominously. The man with the plane freezes. The solder dashes out and places a stuffed doll body on the ground below, like the corpse left by a bombing. The women try to exit, but are interrupted by the man with the plane and the soldier bringing a body twice more. Finally they exit.














Narrator: “Strategic exercises by pedestrians to tear open the door of Heaven.” In the box stage, a runner jogs while observed by a doctor, both of them wearing Groucho Marx masks. Then the announcer stands spot lit at center stage, next to a painting on a large sheet of cardboard of large fleshy man firing a gun. And next to the painting is a flat cardboard puppet of a topless woman and an anguished child – a sort of Pieta. The announcer says: “Peace-loving war-mongers make preparations for victory. Cemeteries for victory’s spoils have to be adequately constructed. Military solutions to otherwise merely local and locally confined conflicts have to be invented. … Even the most atrociously maimed bodies of the alleged innocent cannot distract from the basic truth: war is peace. … The dissemination of organized truth is an essential part of the effort. The public wants to and must share in its government’s accomplishments.”














The woman comes out of the chorus again and announces: “The fourth dance intervention is the dance of the foolish woman who tries to bring back to life the children who were killed in Gaza.” A man in a dark cloak carrying a lantern enters the darkened stage. He reveals a horned figure hiding under his coat. They study the bodies left by the soldier. They drag a woman in white with long blonde hair onto the stage. (The character is a variation of the angel who resurrects the slaughtered horse at the end of “The White Horse Butcher” shows of the mid 1970s, a character which developed from earlier suffering or savior angel White Ladies.) One by one, she carefully picks up the bodies, then dances wildly with them, swinging her rope hair about, then throws the dead body back down. The lantern man and the horned creature finally pull her off stage. They return. The lantern man picks up one of the bodies and places it into a wheelbarrow brought on stage by a man in the chorus, who trails the rest of the chorus behind him. The lantern man exits. The horned creature puts the second body into the wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow man puts on a skull mask, places the third body into the wheelbarrow, then exits with the chorus following behind.














In the box stage, a pair of “stargazer” puppets with black tube telescopes stare across the stage – and then across a giant nude female torso that floats into the right side of the stage. Schumann plays violin as he recites: “Oh you stars, Oh you horses and tigers of the sky. … Oh you light of no meaning, Oh you singers of no songs, Oh you funny holy Nothingness, Oh you enormous belly, so pregnant and beautiful, I want to bend my knee and distort my neck to admire you forever and ever.”

An NPR reporter interviews a “money artists” (both costumed in Groucho Marx masks) about the meaning of the design of money. “It has no meaning,” the artist says. “We are money artists and the significance of our work derives from its aesthetic value mixed with its exchange value.” The artist slams her door in the face of the reporter.

The woman comes out of the chorus again and announces: “The fifth dance intervention is seven seven-second dances.” The chorus performs a series of group dances that resemble goofy exercises from a dance class. Some bend over, hold their ankles, and stop around. Some line up and move their arms like train gears. Etc.

Narrator announces a “Hocus-pocus parade with effigies of major and minor representatives of Heaven, including God, God’s daughter and stepdaughter.” Four costumed performers come out and perform a chain reaction dance. A finger bangs a drum on the back of a pink lady, who clashes a cymbal on her head with the one on the back of a monkey. Then the rooster at the front of the line crows.














The chorus sits in the middle of the stage and makes bird noises as a large Madonna and child puppet is slowly winched up (via a squeaky pulley – if something can squeak in a Bread and Puppet show is must squeak) to the ceiling at right. Her dress lifts to reveal a gray globe-egg, that splits open. Inside is a white puppet (operated by two cloaked performers bunraku style), “Heaven’s public relations specialist.” He says, “Allow me to bring to your attention the totally serious beauty of the ecstasy department’s activities, though behind closed doors. … Please make no attempt to grasp the glory of the non-existing angels in their endless diving swirlings and do not try to imagine their sexual wholesomeness expressed in diaphonic singing white penetrating each other … And as always, when the angels depart, their wings bring down the walls of the cages in which humans live. And as for the above-mentioned unbearable delights, they are displayed in the serious store-windows of our own high culture and are made available to the public again and again, but to no avail … And yet our highest aspirations are linked to exactly these serious store windows.”














In the box stage, behind the plastic curtain (now defined as a store window into heaven?), giant papier-mache heads and nude female torsos float, bathed by white and then blue spotlights that give the scene an otherworldly underwater feel. Then darkness. The scene is simple: some large roughhewn paper sculptures slowly waved about by hidden performers under dim lights. But the effect is magic, ancient campfire magic.














The woman from the chorus announces, “The last dance intervention is a sermon delivered by the deeply superstitious practitioners of the papier-mache religion.” Schumann stands behind a music stand in the center of the stage and declares as he saws on his violin. The chorus fills the back of the stage, improvising behind him – pointing to the ceiling, crouching down, hopping, pulling on their ties, leaning this way and that. “Papier-mache religion … unlike all other religions is not necessary and this its unnecessity is exactly what necessitates it,” Schumann says. “It emerges from the depth of nowhere at a time when the traditional religions don’t feel free to admit their unabashed righteousness and claim an absurd tolerance which directly contradicts their divine inspiration. Papier-mache religion simply says to them: please. However in the case of divinely inspired drone and F-16 bombardment you can’t say please and you appeal to the most hidden and unimportant part of the human brain, which produces reason. … [This section of the brain] pretends to supercede the excessive truth claims of religion only to eventually yield to the obviously religiously organized reality. … The bloodthirsty Greek gods or any wild gods of antiquity seem Christian compared with Christianity. Humanity’s collective babymind produces daddies in the sky and Satans in the innards of the earth to absolve the real daddies and Satans from their crimes. Religion is the nonsense that meaningless life needs in order to make sense. … Papier-machie religion is a generic all-purpose re-ligio, which means a tying back to the origin. Origin of what? Naturally of sky and papier-mache or of puppetry and daylight. … Hallelujah, amen, hurray, forever and ever, hocus pocus, Ta-ta-ta.” All the cast hops up and down. The end.

The numerous concerns raised by the show feel like a catalogue – God, mining by mountain top removal, Iraq, Gaza, etc. It doesn’t seem to build up to something, but rather places disparate things side by side. The most sustained – and moving – section is about the dead of Gaza, beginning with the Gaza banner and the white women, and including the soldier placing bodies, the lantern man examining them, the white woman with long hair trying to recessitate them, and when she fails, the bodies carried off in the wheelbarrow. The mood is broken by a series of absurdist comic acts and the pedantic jabbering of Heaven’s PR specialist. But those glimpses of floating giant heads and naked torsos and crowds of figures are ravishing. So it feels anticlimactic, a breaking of the spell – intentionally, I suppose – when Schumann concludes with his fiddle sermon, criticizing organized religions, in particular for obscuring the responsibility of polluters and warmongers and torturers for their deeds by projecting responsibility onto some abstract evil. But he seems to acknowledge humanity’s need for rituals that help us make sense of the world. He seemingly places himself, his company, in the position of prophet who damns society’s evil ways. His final speech is ultimately a defense of his puppet magic, and its pagan roots, and its power to heal our hearts.

Photos by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research. You can purchase these and other Bread and Puppet photos here. And disclosure: We sold our photos of Bread and Puppet at the BCA during the troupe’s run, which is just one of the ways we might be biased in the company’s favor.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

2009 New England Art Awards ball is Feb. 8






















More than 1,880 people have voted in the 2009 New England Art Awards. Now the winners will be announced at the New England Art Awards Ball at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 8, 2010, at the Burren, 247 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts. And you are invited!

We are very proud to announce that the event will include music by The Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Admission is free. Creative attire is encouraged.

The awards are a contest organized by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research to honor the best art made in New England and exhibits organized here in 2009. More details about how it works here. Below is the final ballot:

Artists

Book


Career survey


Drawing/Printmaking


Installation


New Media


Painting


Performance or spectacle


Photography


  • Isa Leshko in "The Boston Drawing Project 10 Years On and Going Strong" at Carroll and Sons, "New England Photograpy Biennial" at Danforth, and Susan Maasch Fine Art in Portland.

  • John O'Reilly at Yezerski.

  • Harold Feinstein of Merrimac, Mass., "A Retrospective" at Panopticon.

  • Joe Deal New Work at RISD Museum

  • Nicholas Nixon of Brookline at Carroll and Sons.

  • Stewart Martin of Providence at AS220.


Public Exposure


Sculpture


Solo show by local artist (or collaborative)


Standout work by a local artist in a group show



Curators

Concept/theme show


Group show featuring local artists


Historical show


Local curator of locally-made art


Solo show of an artist from Away

Court revises Mass MoCA vs. Büchel














A federal appeals court has ruled Mass MoCA in North Adams may have violated Swiss artist Christoph Büchel’s artistic rights and harmed his reputation by continuing to work on his massive installation “Training Ground for Democracy” over his complaints in 2006 and 2007 and showing the unfinished work to public officials, reporters and others.

The dispute lead to a major falling out between the artist and the museum that exploded from conversations and e-mails into fighting in court and the press.

The Jan. 27 appeals court decision overrules parts of the 2007 summary judgment of federal district court Judge Michael A. Ponsor that, among other things, granted Mass MoCA permission to publicly display the unfinished installation over Büchel’s objections. (Attempting to put the sorry saga behind it, the museum just dismantled the work.) Last week, the appeals court said relevant material disputes of fact should be decided by a jury.

And in an important finding for artists’ rights, the three-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit in Boston, ruled that the federal Visual Artists Right Act protects unfinished works despite Posnor’s original note that “it is doubtful that VARA even covered the assembled materials that constituted this unfinished installation.”

In a prepared statement, Mass MoCA said: “While we had obviously hoped that this dispute had finally been resolved, should Mr. Büchel decide to proceed further with this case, we are confident that we exercised appropriate curatorial care and diligence in our handling of the work in progress.”

The appeals court ruling states:
“After careful review of the record, we are persuaded that a reasonable jury could find that Büchel is entitled to relief under VARA based on the Museum's continuing work on ‘Training Ground’ over his objections. Genuine disputes of material fact foreclose summary judgment for either Büchel or MASS MoCA on that claim. We find no merit, however, in Büchel's claim that MASS MoCA intentionally modified or distorted ‘Training Ground’ by covering it with tarpaulins, and we reject as outside the scope of the statute Büchel's claim that the Museum violated VARA by displaying the installation over his objections. … [However, under copyright law] we cannot say that a reasonable jury could not conclude that the Museum violated his exclusive right to publicly display ‘Training Ground for Democracy.’”
Notably, the appeals court ruled:
“We reject the Museum’s assertion that to find a violation of Büchel's right of integrity in these circumstances would make it impossible for parties to collaborate on large-scale artistic works. The Museum warns that, under Büchel’s interpretation, ‘no one other than the artist himself . . . may ever perform any work in fabricating visual art unless that specific task has been authorized by the artist.’ We disagree. Although the artist's vision must govern, that principle does not prevent collaboration at the implementation level so long as the artist's vision guides that implementation. Here, Büchel alleges a campaign of intentional distortion and modification to his work in which Museum personnel repeatedly ignored his express wishes. Our holding that the summary judgment record precludes an affirmance of the district court on this claim may serve as a cautionary tale to museums contemplating similar installations in the future – guiding them to document the terms of their relationship and obtain VARA waivers where necessary – but it does not prevent museums or other collaborators from working cooperatively with artists on such non-traditional artworks.”
Previously:
Sept. 25, 2007: Mass MoCA removing Buchel materials.
Dec. 29, 2008: Best art review of 2008 (includes Posnor's description of the installation).