After firing of museum director, artist walks out of exhibit on opening night at CSULB

University Art Museum Director Kimberli Meyer was at her desk drafting opening remarks for the launch of American MONUMENT—an installation examining police killings of black civilians by artist lauren woods that was meant to mark a shift in museum programming—when she was abruptly fired.

“I was fired. I was removed,” said Meyer, who closely collaborated with woods to bringAmerican MONUMENT to the museum at Cal State Long Beach. “And when I asked them why they said, ‘Well you’re an at-will employee so we don’t have to tell you why.’ So it’s a big question mark to me. [Departmental leadership] came in and I had to leave my office on the spot."

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Inside the White Cube Ideology of the Gallery Space

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The Guerrilla Girls critique 383 European art institutions

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Fred Wilson: Beauty & Ugliness | Art21 "Exclusive"

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Episode #197: Filmed in 2004, Fred Wilson discusses how beauty and ugliness together create meaning. For his installation "Speak of Me as I Am" at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Wilson arranged "blackamoors"—decorative sculptures common in Venice—throughout the American Pavilion. In doing so, he called attention to how these beautiful objects depict Africans in servitude. Also shown in this film is Wilson's piece "Cabinetmaking, 1820--1960" (1992)—ornate nineteenth-century chairs juxtaposed with a whipping post—installed at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2004.
Appropriating curatorial methods and strategies, Fred Wilson creates new contexts for the display of art and artifacts found in museum collections, along with wall labels, sound, lighting, and non-traditional pairings of objects. His sculptures and installations lead viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning, and thereby shape interpretations of historical truth and artistic value. Learn more about the artist at: http://www.art21.org/artists/fred-wilson

SONG DONG ON 'WASTE NOT'

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SONG DONG: WASTE NOT
From his family home in Beijing, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Waste Not is a transformative installation by one of China's pre-eminent artists, Song Dong. Conceived by the artist following the death of his father, the work represents his mother's process of mourning and remembrance. Consisting of the entire contents of her house, Waste Not reflects a journey of hardship and grief, resulting in a display of personal resilience and ultimately a celebration of life. The official opening of Waste Not was at Carriageworks, 4 -- 7pm, Sat 5 Jan 2013. "Deeply moving... a work of art that is every bit as much about loss as it is about muchness" The New York Times Coinciding with Waste Not is Song Dong's Dad and Mum, Don't Worry About Us, We are All Well, a survey of his work from the last three decades at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.

Doris Salcedo – Shibboleth | TateShots

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Colombian artist Doris Salcedo discusses why she split the turbine hall floor. Her new work Shibboleth is a long snaking fissure that ran the vast length of the Turbine Hall, as if striking to the very foundations of the museum.

Something similar might be said of the concept that underpins the piece. The word 'shibboleth' refers back to an incident in the Bible, which describes how the Ephraimites, attempting to flee across the river Jordan, were stopped by their enemies, the Gileadites. As their dialect did not include a 'sh' sound, those who could not say the word 'shibboleth' were captured and executed. A shibboleth is therefore a token of power: the power to judge, reject and kill. What might it mean to refer to such violence in a museum of modern art? For Salcedo, the crack represents a history of racism, running parallel to the history of modernity; a stand off between rich and poor, northern and southern hemispheres. She invites us to look down into it, and to confront discomforting truths about our world.

Meschac Gaba – Museum of Contemporary African Art | TateShots

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Meschac Gaba's 'Museum of Contemporary African Art' is an immersive twelve-room installation, a 'museum within a museum', which is currently sprawling through Tate Modern. It includes its own shop, library and restaurant as well as less conventional museum spaces such as a Salon, Music Room and Art and Religion Room - where you can sit down to relax, play the piano or have your tarot cards read.
Gaba began working on the Museum of Contemporary African Art in 1997 during a residency in Amsterdam because he felt there was no space in Europe or Africa for the type of work he wished to make. As the work developed over several years and at various locations, Gaba also incorporated expressions of his own biography, including a Marriage Room containing photos, gifts and his wife's wedding dress from their marriage ceremony, which was conducted inside the museum. The Library also contains an audio work in which the artist imagines what his late father might say about his son's life. The 'Museum of Contemporary African Art' is 'not a model...it's only a question', says Gaba. As much a conceptual space as a physical one, it stands as a provocation to the Western art establishment to attend to contemporary African art.