Object Factory: The Art of Industrial Ceramics at MAD
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6TH 2009
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We met with Frank in the evening at the Museum of Arts and Design for Object Factory: The Art Of Industrial Ceramics. Thursdays the museum has free/suggested admission, so Justin and I paid a dime each. The exhibit was gorgeous, but photography is forbidden so all you get are the second-rate street shots above. I implore you to visit the exhibition website where you can see some of the fabulous work. My favorite pieces involved techniques that I didn't know could be applied to ceramics, such as screen printing and laser cutting. The exhibition is an international survey of how more than 50 artists and industrial designers are reviving an interest in and re-imagining the possibilities of this ancient medium in the 21st century.

Project 90 By Song Dong At MOMA
FRIDAY, JULY 31ST 2009
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"Beijing-based artist Song Dong (b. 1966) explores notions of transience and impermanence with installations that combine aspects of performance, video, photography, and sculpture. Projects 90, his first solo U.S. museum show, presents his recent work Waste Not. A collaboration first conceived of with the artist's mother, the installation consists of the complete contents of her home, amassed over fifty years during which the Chinese concept of wu jin qi yong, or "waste not," was a prerequisite for survival. The assembled materials, ranging from pots and basins to blankets, oil flasks, and legless dolls, form a miniature cityscape that viewers can navigate around and through."

Click the first photo for a larger panoramic view.

A Free Concert At The Whitney Museum
FRIDAY, JULY 24TH 2009
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This afternoon I headed over to the Whitney Museum of American Art for artistic and musical reasons. I had read that there was a free concert for Yellow Fever and Woods at the museum in the evening, but not knowing just how popular these bands were I decided to come early, pay admission into the museum and poke around until the show.

I explored the exhibits of Dan Graham: Beyond and Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen: The Music Room, but I wasn't really in the right mood so most of it just pissed me off. Art can be like that.

Luckily, once the bands went on stage my bad mood was lifted and I could appreciate the warm evening air and the pleasant indie music. The Whitney seemed to be the perfect venue; the tiered entrance and large outdoor patio allowed for visitors to listen from the second story outside, the ticket line, the patio or the basement level with the museum shop. It was a positive collective experience.

Does anyone know what the guy on the floor with the blanket is doing? He seemed to be mixing cassette tapes, but he also hooked up his headphones so that they actually acted like a microphone and he kept them around his neck and sang into them as needed.

The New York City Aquarium
FRIDAY, JULY 17TH 2009
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This is the worst aquarium I've ever visited. The New York Aquarium smells like child vomit - not unlike a Chuck E Cheese - and hosts a sparse collection of aquatic animals. The environments are uninteresting and seem to offer very little in the way of animal enrichment. Fridays are free after 3pm, but it is hardly worth the long subway ride, the horrendous "lines" - in quotes because it more like a shoving marathon with parents pushing strollers into strangers' calves with the hopes of plowing through the crowd to get into the aquarium first - the screaming children or the depressing exhibits.

Free Fridays at MOMA
FRIDAY, JUNE 12TH 2009
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Every Friday from 4pm to 8pm, Target hosts "Free Friday Nights" at MOMA. This means two things: you save $20 per admission, and you will not be able to see most of the artwork due to the massive crowds. I am finding this to be a rather unfortunate trend at most free or discounted event in NYC.

Justin met me at the museum after work and we elbowed our way through the thick crowd of fellow cheapskates. I photographed selective works, but it was only after I came home and uploaded the images that I noticed a pattern in my interests: lines. Straight lines, organic lines, colorful lines, thin lines, thick lines, structural lines, informational lines, emotional lines.

Artists, shown above: Composition in White, Black, and Red by Piet Mondrian, Happy III by Jim Hodges (detail), Framework Houses by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Routes II by Mona Hatoum, Untited by Robert Ryman and One: Number 31, 1950 by Jackson Pollock (detail)