By Zoë Lescaze 5/10 3:45am

Frieze New York 2013

9 Photos

A detail of Tom Friedman, Circle Dance (2010), which is made out of baking sheets cast in stainless steel.

Balloon Beasts, Rubber Tongues, Metal Men Abound on Tom Eccles’s VIP Sculpture Park Tour

Any lingering storm clouds hanging over yesterday’s VIP preview of Frieze New York were thoroughly blasted away by 4 p.m., when bright sunlight glinted off Paul McCarthy’s Balloon Dog (2013), an 80-foot, cherry-colored sculpture created especially for the fair. “Paul has sexualized the dog,” said the rakish Tom Eccles, former Public Art Fund director and this year’s Sculpture Park curator, as he led a few card-carrying VIPs up to the gigantic piece. Mr. Eccles pointed to the anatomically suggestive shapes of the Koons-esque animal, though they didn’t need much identification. Now executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, Mr. Eccles briefly discussed his curatorial work on Mr. McCarthy’s upcoming installation at the Park Avenue Armory. He described “WS,” which stands for “White Snow” and opens June 19, as a “gory, horrifying tale of Paul McCarthy as Disney, as Hitler, in love with Snow White.” (Spoiler alert: Mr. McCarthy is eventually destroyed by the seven dwarves, but not before he engages in “a sexual frenzy” with them and Snow White.) Read More

By Sarah Douglas and Andrew Russeth 3/15/12 3:25pm

Donations

3 Photos

Robert Sherman, 1983

Exclusive: CCS Bard Names a Gallery for Robert Mapplethorpe, Honoring $500,000 Foundation Gift

This weekend, when the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies’s Hessel Museum, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., opens “Matters of Fact,” a new exhibition of works from its collection, it will also unveil a new name for one of its existing galleries: that of the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

One of the Hessel Museum’s three main exhibition spaces is being renamed the Robert Mapplethorpe Gallery in recognition of an unrestricted $500,000 grant from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the nonprofit organization founded in 1988 as the controversial photographer was dying of HIV/AIDS to support his legacy, photography in general and support research into HIV/AIDS. The gift is part of CCS Bard’s 20th anniversary fundraising campaign. Read More

3/15/12 9:29am

Frieze New York

Mr. Eccles.

Tom Eccles to Select Sculpture Park at Frieze New York

Tom Eccles, the executive director of Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, has been chosen to select the sculpture park at the inaugural Frieze New York on Randall’s Island this May.

The sculpture park will be located on the waterfront at Randall’s Island, overlooking the East River, and will certainly add some aesthetic pleasure to the place, which also houses John McEnroe’s Tennis Center and several athletic fields. Read More