This July in Waterville, Maine, Colby College will be reopening their renovated Museum of Art. Check out this video on Vimeo that shows the recent installation of Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawing #559.
It’s spring. The birds are chirping. The flowers are blooming. And baseball is in full swing. Unfortunately, the Red Sox are in a bit of a slump after a strong start to the season but it’s still early and a Sox fan never gives up hope. If you like baseball and art, take a look at the site, Flip Flop Fly, created by Craig Robinson. He has a book by the same name, which we should eventually be getting at the library. Robinson creates clever baseball-related infographics and charming digital images that remind me a little of the work of Bruce McCall. The work shown here, entitled Perfect Life, shows a cabin in the woods as a miniature ball park. Notice the birds in the trees that have flown in from St. Louis, Baltimore, and Toronto. Enjoy Robinson’s work and here’s hoping for a Red Sox rally.
Many of us were soothed by Fibers major, Leah Medin’s piece, The Gold Divide, which was installed in the courtyard last week. In a bit of serendipitous timing, Leah was here finishing her final hand-sewing on Monday, April 15th, while the campus was quiet due to the Patriots’ Day holiday. The piece went up the next morning, as the entire community—students, faculty, and staff alike—returned to campus while still in shock and horror over the Marathon bombing. The central location, the sheer size of the piece, the calming effect of watching the way the giant swath of fabric gracefully moved in the wind (sometimes physically “washing over” people), and its constantly changing shapes drew people to the courtyard, and started conversations. This installation provided a much-needed respite and a place to connect with others, as we all attempted to process this violent event that was so close to home. For that, we’re grateful, and thank Leah.
Currently on exhibit at the MassArt library: Aspen
from Aspen 8 the minimalist issueFor those of you who don’t know Aspen magazine it was a multimedia magazine that was published on an irregular schedule by Phyllis Johnson from 1965 to 1971. It was considered “the first three-dimensional magazine,” each issue came in a customized box or folder filled with materials in a variety of formats. Major figures of contemporary art contributed to Aspen. Examples are: Sol Lewitt, Phillip Glass, Richard Serra, Andy Warhol, John Cage, jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg.
To see digital versions of our missing issues go here
I love bridges and all kinds of infrastructure and I love color so you can imagine how excited I was when I saw an article about the painting of NYC’s bridges and the official palette of 7 approved hues. One of the colors mentioned is Munsell Grey, which of course refers to MassArt’s own Alfred Munsell, the inventor of the Munsell Color System.
Some of you out there may know that the MassArt Library has iPads and Nooks that you can check out. You can borrow them for a week at a time. Of course you can use these for regular web browsing. (The Nook is a nice compact tablet and very fast.) You can also download books and use our devices as e-readers. The Internet Archive’s Open Library Project has an enormous trove of classic texts (all of which are free). You can also download any of the library’s 80,000+ ebooks from Ebrary. See instructions here.
According to an article in The Globe today, the FBI and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum received a number of tips from around the country yesterday, leading to new details on the 1990 painting heist from the museum. The US attorney’s office in Boston has joined the FBI in publicly announcing that while they now know the identities of the thieves, they still do not know where the paintings are. The authorities are now focusing on finding the missing paintings, and have launched a new public awareness campaign in which 25 billboards displaying images of the stolen art are up in Philadelphia. It is believed that the public could provide the final clues to the paintings’ whereabouts.
For those who have little or no idea about the heist, in March 18, 1990, two men dressed as Boston Police Officers conned the two guards on duty at the Gardner museum, tied the guards up, and removed 13 artworks, valued at $500 million, including three Rembrandts, a Vermeer and a Monet. The paintings have passed into legend and it is suspected that the crime is connected to criminal organizations in New England and the Mid-Atlantic and the paintings have passed through Connecticut and Philadelphia. The museum is offering a $5 million reward for the return of the paintings in good condition. For more information on the investigation over the years, please view the documentary Stolen (2005). 
If today’s Google Doodle didn’t tip you off it is International Women’s Day and March is Women’s History Month! I am of the view that women should be celebrated every darn day of the year, but I’ll take one official month (the other 11 can unofficially be ours too).
In an effort to bring you some awesome lady created art I hit the internet and came across the Fuck Yeah Female Artists! blog on Tumblr. Like others in the “F— Yeah” blog genre, this is a compendium type blog featuring exclusively female artists from across the internet and art history. It is a great place to browse, but we in the library have opinions on our favorite female artists. Here are a few from the female staff here at the MassArt LIbrary and a book you can check out to learn more about them.
Gabrielle’s Pick: Kara Walker After the deluge
Kara Walker, Salvation, 2000
Abi’s Pick: Mary Ellen Mark Exposure : Mary Ellen Mark : the iconic photographs
Mary Ellen Mark, Shavanaas Begum with Her Three-year-old Daughter, Parveen, Great Gemini Circus, Perintalmanna, India, 1989
Katie’s Pick: Clare Rojas Clare Rojas : hope springs eternal
Clare Rojas, Boundary Lines, 2009
Cori’s Pick: Marina Abramovic Marina Abramovic : the artist is present
Marina Abramovic, The Artist Is Present, 2012 (Performance)
Rachel’s Pick: Tara Donovan Tara Donovan
Tara Donovan, Untitled (Plastic Cups), 2006
Caitlin’s Pick: Artemisia Gentileschi Artemisia Gentileschi : the image of the female hero in Italian Baroque art
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes, ca. 1620
The NY Times has a lengthy piece on Edward Ruscha and the book. As many of you know, the MassArt library has a collection of Ruscha’s early books such as Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations (1962). These works were a departure from the costly and refined hand-made artist’s book of tradition and an attempt to democratize the genre by creating something inexpensive and mass-produced. Echoing the Pop Art movement with which Ruscha is sometimes associated, they focused on “banal” subjects like gas stations and swimming pools and conveyed deadpan wit. As Ruscha makes clear, he has always loved the physicality of books and has turned to them as medium and as subject in his large paintings recently on view at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. The Library will soon acquire two new books on Ruscha and his bibliomania: One is Various Small Books, which deals with books that have referenced Ruscha’s works. The other is Beatrice von Bismarck’s Reading Ruscha, which has not been released yet.
The BBC reported yesterday an article about a church outside of Barcelona, Spain in which the resident priest decided to hire a 2 graffiti artists to spay paint the murals in the once demurely painted church interior. The Graffiti artists House and Rudie where instructed to do their research from the priest.
“I told them they couldn’t start until they visited a museum in Barcelona to study the Romanesque style I was interested in,” Father Borr says. “So they went, and studied, even took out some books.”
for the full story and the anecdote about the above mural please go to the BBC
