Feed

opinions

By Rozalia Jovanovic 7/26/12 12:42pm

opinions

52nd Venice Biennale artistic director R

Robert Storr on the L.A. MOCA Fiasco

Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art, weighs in on the whole L.A. MOCA debacle over at HuffPost. He kicks off his piece by stating that he’s read Eli Broad’s self-help book, The Art of Being Unreasonable, and asks how someone as deft at business as Mr. Broad could be so “inept and self-defeating” at philanthropy. Ouch.

Mr. Storr continues to paint Mr. Broad and his “enabler” Jeffrey Deitch as two scheming characters in a Shakespearean tragedy whose judgment, clouded by self-interest, is causing the downfall of a great institution. (“Dismissing Paul Schimmel in favor of Deitch is like cashing in all your value stocks and doubling down on junk bonds for the sake of a long-shot windfall.”) It’s quite a read. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 7/25/12 5:47pm

opinions

Ai Weiwei, 2012 (Courtesy Ed Jones/AFP/GettyImages)

Ai Weiwei: ‘I Don’t Believe in the So-Called Olympic Spirit’

On the cusp of the release of the documentary about his life and work, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, the artist and activist Ai Weiwei published a diatribe in The Guardian against the Olympic games. Mr. Ai, who still cannot travel outside the country, explains why he withdrew from participating in the opening ceremony at the Beijing 2008 Olympics (“I only withdrew from participating in fake performances laden with propaganda”), which he says have become commercialized and have strayed from the humanistic motives that initially drove the ancient competition. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 7/10/12 6:00pm

opinions

Peter Brant II, 2011. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

Artists and Collectors on the Outdoor Art They Love

The ever-enterprising Architectural Digest has just published a post called “The Inquisitive Guest,” for which it asked a variety of art types, like MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach and artists Maurizio Cattelan, Marina Abramovic and George Condo, about their favorite places for viewing art outdoors. Their answers are astounding. Which artist loves the Tuileries in Paris? Who considers Pompeii a sculpture garden? And who could do without art in nature altogether? Read on. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 7/09/12 10:47am

opinions

Eli Broad. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

Eli Broad Sets Record Straight on Paul Schimmel

In an effort to “set the record straight” about the departure of Paul Schimmel from the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, which we reported here, Eli Broad, wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Broad, who was the founding chairman of the board of trustees of the museum (he’s now a lifetime trustee there), suggests Mr. Schimmel may not have been staging shows that were popular enough or cost-effective enough considering the museum’s history of fiscal woes. Read More