Lives on the Mississippi

Now thru May 1 @ The Grolier Club:

“Lives on the Mississippi: Literature and Culture along the Great River,” from the collections of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association, explores the history, development and life of the Mississippi River as a distinct yet vast cultural region. Its traditions, lore, and heritage reverberate in literature and art over nearly 2500 miles and more than 400 years — a fertile and fluid meandering of consciousness, vision, and imagination. (source)

EXHIBIT: "Courage: The Vision To End Segregation..."

Thru 12/21/09 @ Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture -

Courage: The Vision to End Segregation, the Guts to fight for It:

Few Americans realize that the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education started in South Carolina, when a country preacher named Rev. J. A. De Laine and his neighbors in Clarendon County filed a lawsuit demanding the end of separate, unequal schools for their children. The Supreme Court’s declaration in 1954 that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional initiated massive change in race relations across the country. This traveling exhibition, organized in 2004 by the Levine Museum of the New South to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, tells the story of that community—people outside the traditional power structure, without wealth and often with little classroom education—and how they worked together to begin the process that ended legal segregation of the races.

Courage: The Vision to End Segregation, the Guts to fight for It was created by the Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte, North Carolina and made possible by a generous grant from Bank of America to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education in America’s schools. (source)

ART: GA Alum Laura Loving tonight...RSVP by noon today

*** NYC DAWGS ART EVENT ***
Laura Loving at the New York Mercantile Exchange

When: Thursday, August 6 5pm-8pm
Where: One North End Avenue New York, NY

Join the NYC Dawgs for a night of culture to celebrate the art of a UGA Alumna and fellow New Yorker, Laura Loving. Laura will have her art on display and for sale at the New York Mercantile Exchange downtown. She is known for her Pop Art works on New York landmarks and people. She has now also created a special collection on Athens and UGA. All will be displayed at this reception.

Because of security at the NYMEX, you must RSVP to this event so your name can be passed along. Please RSVP on the Facebook page for the event (log in first and then enter the address).
You can also navigate there from the "New York City Dawgs" group page under events. If you are not a member of Facebook, you can register through the University Alumni New York page.

RSVP Deadline is 12-Noon August 6th, 2009

Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow

On view now thru January 4, 2010 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage:

By the time World War II began on September 1, 1939, Germany had purged itself of its Jewish professors, scientists, and scholars. Some of these academics, deprived of their livelihoods by the Nazis, found refuge in the United States. But in this new world, they faced an uncertain future. A few dozen refugee scholars unexpectedly found positions in historically black colleges in the American South. There, as recent escapees from persecution in Nazi Germany, they came face to face with the absurdities of a rigidly segregated Jim Crow society. In their new positions, they met, taught, and interacted with students who had grown up in, and struggled with, this racist environment. Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow explores the unlikely coming together of these two groups, each the object of exclusion and hatred, and examines the ongoing encounter between them as they navigated the challenges of life in the segregated South.

HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS: KK Projects

Photo: Doug MacCash/Nola.com

KK Projects is based in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans in six previously abandoned structures: a former bakery (in which founder Kirsha Kaechele lives), a storefront, and four 1800s houses. The properties sit in a one block area of the derelict neighborhood on North Villere between Music and Arts streets.

Photo: Charlsie/Flickr

Each structure houses a site-specific installation for a three month exhibition period. Local and international artists are invited to work with the spaces as they find them, as well as with the surrounding physical and cultural environment.

Photo: AllDayBuffet.org

KK Projects is dedicated to an ongoing conversation with its neighbors. Through art projects involving the greater social ecosystem, the project exists to cultivate creativity and inspire the hearts, minds, and economy of the St Roch neighborhood and its visitors.

The mission of kkprojects is the exhibition of large scale, site-specific installation art. Particular focus lies with conceptual works which explore natural order and draw from natural phenomena such as light and algorythic pattern. Formally, kkprojects focuses on pieces which express aesthetic purity and, in early minimalist tradition, the resulting spiritualized space. However, when this purity takes form in apparent chaos, arising from a natural system, formal preference is abandoned for devotion to what is.

ART: The Mark Of Great Art exhibit opens in NYC 10/22

The Maker's Mark "Mark Of Great Art" exhibit opens in NYC tomorrow (10/22) @ the Astor Center (Gallery Room), 399 Lafayette Street (at East 4th Street) NYC 10003.

“For over 50 years, Maker’s Mark has handcrafted their product, with every bottle considered a work of art. Now we are sponsoring a different project, one that gives Kentucky artists international prominence,” said Rob Samuels, Director of Global Brand Development for Maker’s Mark and concept developer of this new program.

In March 2008, Maker's Mark put out a call to Kentucky-based artists. Over 120 applications were narrowed down to 51 participating artists by a jury of experts. Each of these artists visited the historic Maker's Mark distillery to gain inspiration for their piece(s). The total collection has now be broken up into eight mini-collections, with each going to a different city: Louisville, Lexington, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, London and Madrid, where they will remain indefinitely. The pieces will be placed in bars and restaurants throughout these cities. MM will host a one-night event in each city where people can view the collection in one place (each city will receive about 15 pieces). Click here to view the dates, locations, and times of upcoming events.

ART/BOOK: Still Here and Sanctuary capture post-Katrina New Orleans

STILL HERE - Tonight (10/2) @ PowerHouse Arena in Brooklyn: August 29, 2008 marked the third anniversary of the horror that Hurricane Katrina inflicted upon the north-central Gulf Coast. Its devastation is a wound not yet healed and its survivors are the subject of Joseph Rodriguez’s fourth powerHouse Book, Still Here: Stories After Katrina. In it, he documents the ongoing expressions of hope, perseverance, and suffering in the affected communities.On Thursday, October 2, 2008, Rodriguez will present a slide show of images from the book and will speak of his experiences while photographing and interviewing families and individuals throughout New Orleans and Texas. Like the photographers who worked with the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, Rodríguez’s work alerts readers to the ongoing pressures faced by some of the country’s most distressed and vulnerable people. His black-and-white photographs remind the viewer that despite the loss of home, community, and culture, so many continue to push forward, and are “still here.”

Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: powerHouse Arena
Street: 37 Main Street
City/Town: Brooklyn, NY
Phone: 718-666-3049

ALSO: SANCTUARY on exhibit thru October 4 @ Soho Photo:

Sanctuary features six photographers from New Orleans–Victoria Ryan, Samuel Portera, Lee Area, Eric Paul Julien, Jennifer Shaw and Michel Varisco—all brought together by the devastation and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It allowed them to reexamine their own sacred places and the refuge that is New Orleans. Sanctuary is about this seductive city of dreams and inspiration where one can muse about life and death, direction and vision. For these six photographers, sanctuary literally came in the refuge of their art and resulted in six unique visions of the city. The 30 images in the show describe life spawned by the Mississippi, its rich wetlands and fragility of the land, its historic architecture, and free spirited people. Photographer Michel Varisico’s exhibit was sponsored in part by the Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation.

Soho Photo
15 White St, NYC 10013
212-226-8571

ART: WALKER EVANS: Carbon & Silver

BOND STREET GALLERY is pleased to present Walker Evans: Carbon and Silver, curated by John T. Hill and Sven Martson. The exhibition showcases many of Evans' seminal images from his most prolific years, 1935–36.

Beginning in the 1930s, Walker Evans' work has left an indelible mark on the arts, extending well beyond the boundaries of photography. His incidental approach towards printing makes quality vintage prints extremely rare. Although he recognized the value of a carefully made print, it was more often considered a necessary step in revealing his subject — which was the signs of our universal humanity. The definitive fine art print was never an interest in of itself.

This exhibition juxtaposes gelatin silver prints with carbon pigment prints of these iconic images, made by two of Evans' associates; John T. Hill, a friend, teaching colleague, and the executor of Evans' estate and Sven Martson, a friend and printer of Evans' later work. Together Hill and Martson have interpreted Evans' work from this monumental series. Together they have made a dedicated study of Evans' own prints as well as several publications produced under his supervision. By taking advantage of current digital technology, they are producing archival images that lengthen the tonal range of traditional gelatin silver printing and allow the viewer to discover tiny details of Evans' photographs.

Throughout his career, Evans delegated printing to trusted friends and professional labs. He was intensely curious about the details of commercial printing processes, including sheet fed gravure. He used oversized prints in both of his retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1973 he eagerly exploited the latest technology of the instant Polaroid. He was the supreme pragmatist, realist, and experimenter. Evans' vision and the physical expression of that vision were his graphic denial of the fine art tradition. This exhibition is an extension of that spirit.

ABOUT WALKER EVANS: Walker Evans was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1903 and was largely a self-taught photographer. He was the first photographer to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, American Photographs, in 1938. American Photographs and the later collaboration with James Agee for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) are among Evans’s most famous bodies of work. Evans worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, where he made some of his most recognizable photographs.

ON VIEW: Wednesday, September 10 – Saturday, October 11, 2008
BOND STREET GALLERY 297 Bond Street Brooklyn, NY 11231 (Carroll Gardens)718.858.2297 DIRECTIONS: F/G to Carroll St. or R to Union St.
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday 11 am – 6 pm