The Cosmos

It's Friday, and that means ATA is on Facebook, and I am out of here.

Weekend: The Hayden Planetarium has posted a delightful video version of the known universe on youtube, and teaching artists can download the entire Digital Universe Atlas after the jump!

Off the Wall

It's Friday. See you out in the field.

@MOMA:
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
April 11–June 28, 2010 


@Museum of Chinese in America
Living Arts:Kite Making Workshop
Sat, Apr 17 from 2pm – 3:30pm

215 Centre Street, New York, NY 10013
(b/w Howard & Grand Sts; one block north of Canal St)

@the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage
February 2, 2010–May 9, 2010
The Howard Gilman Gallery  


@MoCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts):
The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks
February 4, 2010 - May 16, 2010 


@Studio Museum in Harlem: 
Target Free Sundays  
There's something for everyone to love at Target Free Sundays at the Studio Museum. 
144 West 125th Street, New York, New York

Also: The Association of Teaching Artists is on Facebook, rain, or shine.


Plus: Sunday in the Park w/ G.  (Stephen S.)

Bold, Cautious, True

At the Katonah Museum in New York State, an interesting exhibition of work from the Civil War era takes its title from a Walt Whitman poem.

Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era will be on exhibition in the Beitzel and Righter Galleries until January 24, 2010.

The show presents paintings by Eastman Johnson, Winslow Homer and others. Patrons may preview images from the exhibition online.

The image attached to this post is by Eastman Johnson. He lived from 1851-1899 and you can read his digitized personal correspondence on the website of the Smithsonian.

Also:

As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods,
To the music of rustling leaves kick'd by my feet, (for 'twas autumn,)
I mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;
Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could
understand,)
The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose--yet this sign left,
On a tablet scrawl'd and nail'd on the tree by the grave,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering,
Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life,
Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or in the crowded street,
Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscription
rude in Virginia's woods,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.

What To Do

The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) has so many exciting programs and offerings, a person could literally hang out all day. Really, I bet they wouldn't mind. For example, the schedule for Saturday, December 12th basically invites patrons to have fun from 1pm onward.

• Walking Tour: Experience Chinatown

  Sat, Dec 12 from 1pm – 2:30pm

  Discover the history and experience the energy of one of New York City’s oldest neighborhoods!

  View More >
  
  
• Weekend Gallery Talks

  Sat, Dec 12 @ 2:30pm

  Introductory gallery talks highlighting the major themes in MOCA’s core exhibit, With a Single Step: Stories in the Making of America.

  View More >
  
  
• Where is Home? Chinese Artists and Community

  Sat, Dec 12 from 3pm – 4:30pm

  A panel discussion held in conjunction with Here & Now: Chapter 2, Crossing Boundaries.

  View More >

Also: It's Friday and there are 670 potential colleagues on the ATA Facebook page.

Clique.

Hands On

MOMA is offering free hands-on artmaking workshops in conjunction with the exhibition Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity

"Bauhaus Lab is a new interactive space that reimagines the historic Bauhaus classrooms in which students and teachers of many forms of art experimented with innovative pedagogical approaches. Led by artists, educators, and art historians, an ongoing series of hands-on art-making workshops offers participants of all ages the opportunity to engage in techniques and processes integral to the Bauhaus, such as drawing, collage, graphic design, color theory, and mechanical construction."

On Saturday, November 21st, the workshop will cover Paul Klee and Johannes Itten: Bauhaus Curricula. Students will create works on paper using the artist's theories and techniques, including automatic drawing, which is fun, as I recall.

Admission is first come first served.

Join ATA on Facebook.

Pre-Raphaelite

Happy Monday!

It's unavoidable.

In any case, I'm not really here. I'm at the at the Tate Modern Museum, visiting the painting titled Ophelia.

Also: Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Ophelia
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword,
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th' observ'd of all observers- quite, quite down! 1845
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 1850
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Her Story

Russia's most famous museum, the State Hermitage, occupies six buildings along the River Neva, right in the heart of St Petersburg.

They offer a digital collection, as well as a "Virtual Academy."

I read somewhere that the Hermitage exists because of the avarice and foresight of Catherine the Great, who reigned as Empress in the 1700s.

She was a patron of the arts. She wrote a manual of education for girls and volumes of memoirs, comedies and other dramatic literature.

The View

At the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, an exhibition presents work by five women artists with cultural connections to Islam.

Go see:

PERSPECTIVES: WOMEN, ART and ISLAM
Curated by Kimberli Gant and Lisa Binder
Co-Presented by MoCADA and the Museum for African Art, New York
On View: June 4 - September 13, 2009

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) and the Museum for African Art are proud to present Perspectives: Women, Art and Islam, an exhibition of five female artists whose major connection is their personal relationship with Islam. Perspectives, curated by Kimberli Gant and Lisa Binder, will be on view at MoCADA, 80 Hanson Place in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, from June 4 - September 13, 2009, and is presented in conjunction with Muslim Voices: Arts and Ideas, a multi-institutional celebration of the extraordinary range of artistic expression in the Muslim world.

Rush

Dear Reader, thank you for visiting ATA Blog!

You make it fun.

Hey, ATA is on Facebook!

And: It's the weekend. Let's go to Dia Beacon, or somewhere else entirely--like the Berkshires.

Also: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks

Plus: Walden by Henry David Thoreau

And, finally: Les chemins de l'amour - F. Poulenc

Love Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Museum's behind-the-scenes blog has some fascinating posts on things that never crossed your mind.

In this one, I learned that archivists use the power of the sun to bleach works on paper:

It may look like fun-in-the-sun, or an excuse just to work outside, but light-bleaching is in fact, a treatment technique that is employed often by paper conservators and has been a standardized procedure used in the profession of conservation for at least 30 years.The technique utilizes exposure to light from the sun or from an artificial light source such as fluorescent lamps to reduce discoloration in paper while it is submerged in a bath of purified and buffered water.

Americana

The New York Times reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has refurbished the American galleries. 

If you go there--and you should--expect to find “twenty generously appointed period rooms and a full-fledged sculpture garden.”

 

Suggested admission to the Met for an adult is $20.

I give whatever I can afford, and I suggest you do the same.

It's expensive to run big museums.

 

Festival

I have a postcard for Catalan Days, a multidisciplinary festival featuring artists from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.

"Produced by the Institut Ramon Llull, the festival includes dance, film, literature, classical, jazz and electronic music, plus world famous Catalan cuisine, and is held in partnership with the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jazz Standard, Lincoln Center’s Film Society, PEN American Center World Voices, Carnegie Hall, and the CUNY Graduate Center."

There will be a program of FREE events at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

FREE.

May 2 (Sat) at 8:00PM - THEATER
The Time of the Doves (La plaça del Diamant) by Mercè Rodoreda
Performed by Jessica Lange
Directed by Joan Ollé

The Time of the Doves is the most acclaimed novel by Mercè Rodoreda (1908-1983), one of Catalonia’s most beloved authors.

Reservations are required: 212-279-4200 / www.ticketcentral.com

For information about Catalan Days festival events occurring at other venues, please visit: www.llull.cat/catalandays.

Also: In this Lesson Plan (PDF) from the Salvador Dalí Museum, in Florida, students are introduced to art history terms and learn to identify examples of Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Classicism in Dalí's art. Students also learn about Surrealist games and techniques, like Exquisite Corpse and automatic writing.

Visionary

The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland exhibits "art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself."

The Museum's Educational goals are to:

1. Expand the definition of a worthwhile life.

2. Increase awareness of the wide variety of choices available in life- particularly students.

3. Engender respect for and delight in the gift of others.

4. Encourage each individual to build upon his or her own special knowledge and inner strengths.

5. Promote the use of innate intelligence, intuition, self-exploration and creative self-reliance.

6. Confirm the great hunger for finding out just what each of us can do best, in our own voice, at any age.

7. Empower the individual to choose to do that something really, really well.

I read this stuff and I wonder just what kind of world do these people think they're living in and can I come?

Folk

Did you know that the American Folk Art Museum has a program called Free Music Fridays?

Well they do, and you are invited.

Nearly every Friday, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm you can wander the museum's galleries free of charge, have a drink in the cafe, and listen to live music in the atrium.

This Friday, the event features music by Scott Peterson, an earnest folk singer and songwriter who probably comes from Seattle.

I like Seattle.

Moving Pictures

If you love movies, head over to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.

You'll have to take the subway, so if you go on the weekend make sure to read up on travel advisories or you'll never get there because the trains are always a mess.

Luckily, the museum has a slew of online educational resources that you can access right now.

For example, I found this animated explanation of movie-making to be both delightful and informative.