Robert Smithson: Entropy and the Newer Monuments

by Lucy Cantwell , Spring 2011 In the past several months, I have taken a postcard from Amir Berbic, another from Francis Alÿs, and a blank poster and a piece of candy from Felix Gonzalez-Torres. They were housed and presented by the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The…

Iconology in the Age of the Algorithm

by Michael Pepi , Spring 2011 Erwin Panofsky, eminent art historian and author of Studies in Iconology (1939) and Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955), was concerned with the interpretive strategies available to the art historian. He gave great care to ensure that those methods were considerate of the distinctively humanistic aspects of the production and experience of art.…

Speaking With Jonathan David Katz, Co-Curator of Hide and Seek

by Avram Finkelstein ,Spring 2011 Those of us only recently acquainted with Jonathan David Katz may have missed something important about this cultural firebrand, the co-curator of the controversial Hide and Seek: Difference, Desire, and the Invention of Modern American Portraiture at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Katz has been writing about the queer voice in American…

Stuff: Hoarding, Collecting and the Ontopology of the Artist’s Space

by A.R. Warwick , Spring 2011 Sigmund Freud, who pathologized everyday life, was a collector. This is of course a great understatement since his collection of Roman, Greek, Assyrian, Egyptian and Chinese antiquities eventually numbered over 2300 pieces that filled his office and consultation room. Peter Gay writes: “The first and overpowering impression that Freud’s…

Does It Still Make Sense to Build an Art Museum?: Dispatches from Planning the William Eggleston Museum in Memphis

by Amy Whitaker , Spring 2011 When the Boston Museum of Fine Arts opened its new Norman Foster wing in January, Eric Gibson wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “The museum world has changed. Gone are the days of 'if you hang it, they will come.'” As the American Association of Museums devotes its May annual…

Thoughts on Originality, Value and Hype in Outsider Art

by Carla Sakamoto , Spring 2011 Having received numerous accolades this past film award season and being recently released on DVD, the Banksy-directed documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, presents ideas worthy of re-examination and most timely within the recent context of “outsider art” traversing into the realm of more mainstream appreciation and acceptance in the…