Thursday, June 30, 2011

I’m back in Bellagio, Italy after a week in New York for a colloquium organized by Judy Hecker, prints curator at MoMA around the ‘Impressions: Prints from South Africa’ show currently up on the second floor of the museum. Co organizers were the Clark Institute, with Natasha Becker, ex of Cape Town, taking a leading role

Judy Hecker gives a walkabout of ‘Impressions’

With the topic on the table the curating of contemporary African art, a number of interesting issues came up, including the ongoing debate about the pigeonholing of artists into national contexts. Alisa LeGamma of the Metropolitan Museum talked of the need to skew African artists out of the context of African art into more of a global context, and American artist Willie Cole responded by asking what museum departments would do when all the regional departments were blurred into one.

MoMA director Glenn Lowry suggested that perhaps the term ‘global’ is no longer really useful, and maybe what is needed is to uncouple ‘global’ from ‘modernism’ and ‘modernity’.

A post colloquium dinner at Il Gattopardo: Bradley McCallum, Riason Naidoo,

Natasha Becker and Alisa leGamma

In between sessions, it was great to wander round MoMA, but the really incredible museum experience this week, was the Alexander McQueen show at the Met, Every artist could learn from studying his complete mastery of technique, materials and concept, and the way in which he could turn a historical reference into something new and brilliant. It was simply astonishing.

An Alexander McQueen jacket