from the editor
And I am sunburnt. On Tuesday I spent four long, sticky hours in UT Austin’s football stadium as a volunteer for artist Pablo Vargas Lugo’s Eclipses for Austin, the next WorkSpace project at the Blanton. About one hundred and fifty of us—less than half the number of volunteers the Blanton had hoped to recruit—staged four eclipses that day. Vargas Lugo had hoped to film all 10 solar eclipses that will occur here over the next 340 years. But with enough volunteers to create only half of the sun in any one sitting, he had to scale back at the eleventh hour. Left with the physical reminder of my sunburn, I keep wondering: apart from an unpleasant itchiness and a lingering woozy feeling, what are we to take away from this event?
Vargas Lugo’s plan was ambitious: Three hundred and fifty art-lovers converge on the mecca of Longhorn football and dramatize the next three hundred and forty years of history through the motif of the solar eclipse. Each of us received a huge double sided card, black on one side, yellow on the other. We were seated together in the stands so that when we all held up the yellow side of our cards at once, we would create a giant yellow sun. (Since only half the necessary volunteers arrived, we could only create half the sun in any one sitting. Thus, every eclipse had to be filmed in two parts, top half and bottom half.) For each eclipse, on our particular cue, we would flip our cards to the dark side to create the effect of a shadow crossing the sun, and then back to the yellow side as the shadow passed. Corralling 150 people to flip their cards on cue was quite a feat.
On film, I anticipate that Eclipses for Austin will be striking. The whole thing was shot from the field below on the other side of the stadium. Once they’ve been spliced and edited, I’m sure the films will be dramatic. Imagine a long shot of the stadium, with 350 people perched high above the camera enacting a solar eclipse in beautiful accord. Conceptually, I see the appeal. Many individual acts align to create one beautiful collective moment, a meditation on the vastness of history and the universe, inspiring awe and wonder.
On the ground, the experience was quite different. Wind and an inadequate sound system made it quite difficult to hear directions. Volunteers kept yelling out questions. “Do we flip the cards toward or away from ourselves?” “We’re too close together, can we spread out?” Organizers had to keep moving us around to adjust for the shortfall in warm bodies. “Row A, come fill in row J.” “There’s an empty spot in E8. Is there anyone who doesn’t have a seat?” We struggled against the natural entropy of a crowd to create order.
For me, the struggle was the most interesting part. The ROTC or the marching band probably could have done what we did in half the time, with more precision. But our motley crew of grad students, professors, docents and artists were the ones doing it, and we stuck it out. Between official takes, a few photographers and videographers with team Blanton were sporadically documenting the crowd. These are the videos to which I’m most looking forward. In fact, I’d like to see them side by side with the films of the eclipses. Together, these videos might capture the way we assembled our disarray for a few brief moments of synchrony. The meat of the project is here, in the space between conceptualization and actualization. The artist’s vision was big, team Blanton was determined and enterprising and everyone was by turns eager, excited, frustrated and tired. How we got it done, what we didn’t get done, what else we were saying and doing while we were getting it done, and how it all coalesced into something—there’s the rub.
P.S. Our next issue will include reviews of Erin Curtis, which opened last night at Women and Their Work in Austin, and the current works on paper show at Lawrence Markey in San Antonio.
P.P.S. I was really disappointed with the National Summit on Arts Journalism. I wanted more specifics, more questions and answers, and less slick presentations. In an effort to remedy that lack of substance, in the next issue, I'm printing conversations with folks at 3 Minute Egg, Big Red & Shiny and maybe some others.
Claire Ruud is Associate Director of Fluent~Collaborative.
interview
Eve Sussman
By Noah Simblist
Eve Sussman, Stills from Episode 01 of White on White: A Country Road. A Tree. Evening, 2009. Courtesy the artist.
Eve Sussman was recently in Austin for a screening of her film The Rape of the Sabine Women (2007) sponsored by Arthouse. Noah Simblist sat down with her to talk about this film, her production company The Rufus Corporation and her ongoing work-in-progress White on White.
…might be good [mbg]: What’s the Rufus Corporation?
Eve Sussman [ES]: Partly, it’s a way of referring to work that’s made by a lot of people working together. I’m the director, but as with any sort of feature film, you’ve got a lot of people working on it. I think it’s important to refer to that group of people as a company. But there’s a conceit to the Rufus Corporation as well; in this country, you’re much more powerful as a company than as an individual. Whether you’re ordering two-by-fours or computers or filming materials, the first thing the sales rep asks is “what company do you come from?” It immediately empowers you on a different level as soon as you are a company. So of course I’m a company. Why wouldn’t everyone just be a company?
The concept behind the Rufus Corporation came out of that mid-century American idea of the evil think-tank, too. I remember being completely intrigued as a kid by entities like the Rand Corporation, these organizations that were basically pushing the Vietnam War. So I thought, well, I can create an evil think tank, too. I can harness that power.
mbg: I noticed that in the section on your website that describes what the Rufus Corporation is, it discusses the relative merits of being a nonprofit or for profit entity.
ES: We’re a for profit company. We’ve considered becoming a nonprofit, and there are a lot of reasons to do it, and a lot of reasons not to do it. In reality, Rufus Corporation will remain a for-profit company. (Not that we’re profitable at the moment; I don’t know whether anyone is. But we have been profitable, and maybe one day we will be again.) Of course, we’ve worked with nonprofits, because other nonprofits are my umbrella organizations. I can’t apply to the New York State Council as an individual, and I can’t apply as a company. As an individual artist, I have to go to XYZ nonprofit and they’re my umbrella organization. But there are people who turn their practice over to a nonprofit—choreographers who run dance companies, for example. So I’ve thought that maybe we should form a nonprofit in addition to our for-profit, a nonprofit that could be responsible for some of the creation of this work, and maybe not just Rufus Corporation work but other people’s work also. The nonprofit thing is tricky because of issues about rights and ownership. If the nonprofit is the creator of the work, you (the artist) don’t actually own the work anymore. If the nonprofit commissions you as an individual you do—it’s just legally tricky… Right now it’s simpler to be a business and an artist with a studio. Rufus Corporation is my business and it employs me.
mbg: So an example of a nonprofit that acted as an umbrella for you would be Creative Time for Rape of the Sabine Women?
ES: In that case, Creative Time was the presenter of the work for its premier in New York. They weren’t the producers. My main non-profit umbrella is Smackmellon, a really great Brooklyn based organization. I was the main producer of the Rape of the Sabine Women and there were a number of collectors that came in early on (a couple who pre-bought the work), and there was a big grant from Germany and smaller grants in New York and Athens. We never had all the money at once. When we needed some money, I’d sell some work or get a grant or more often than not reach for the credit cards and hope it would all work out. It was a constant shuffle to try to keep going.
mbg: So what did Creative Time do for US premiere in NYC?
ES: Creative Time made it possible to premier the film at the IFC for a week and present the first two shows with the score played live by the musicians – that was a big and expensive undertaking. Jonathan Belper, the composer, took a lot of the score out of the mix and the musicians did the coughing choir, the bouzoukis and the knife performance live. The musicians were in the audience with these huge butcher knives. It was wild. They walked out wearing aprons brandishing the knives. Two of our actresses came from Athens and did some of the vocalizing and singing in the aisles, which shocked the audience as well, since they were seated in the audience and got up mid-film and started yelling.
mbg: That effect was recreated with the surround sound system in the theater in Austin. Yesterday, when I saw the piece again, I was thinking about the moment in the meat market when the women are abducted. Were you thinking of the meat market as an allegory for the whole film, women having a certain role in relationship to war?
ES: No, I wasn’t thinking about it that literally...It was much more important to me to look at mid-century media, the Life magazines, the news reels, the television. On the one hand, you could say the meat market is such an obvious choice for the abduction of women, what a ridiculous metaphor. But on the other hand, the space felt so earthy, almost medieval—it didn’t feel mid-century at all.
My initial vision for the film was that the entire thing would take place in a market, from the abduction to the fight, which would have been cool too. I’m really into markets. I grew up partly in India and Turkey, places where you have a market culture. The idea of that third world market is so real, it has such a sense of humanity and earthiness—a humanity and earthiness that we’ve cleansed out of American culture. It wasn’t really the meat as a stand in for women that interested me. It was more the way the market gets down to basic things about life and the way people behave. We shot one day with the market open and one day with the market closed. Days when the market is open, it’s packed. And it’s like, yeah, this shit could happen here. I’m sure someone could get abducted from this market and you wouldn’t even know it was happening.
mbg: That was what was amazing, there was the sharpening of the knives and the cutting of the meat and you didn’t really have to show any violence what so ever. It was done with very simple gestures.
ES: Actually, we filmed all these choreographies around the abductions, and then in the editing process we cut out the moments when somebody actually disappears. Because you never see those moments, it creates a tension.
mbg: That sense of the earthiness reflected in both the realness and falseness of the market seems to come up again as a strategy when we see behind the scenes where the cameras are visible, for instance.
ES: We had a lot more of those shots breaking down the theatricality of the film in the first cut. I really liked it, but a lot of people said those shots were killing the viewer’s ability to stay with the fantasticness of the myth. So finally I just had to say, I guess they’re right and I guess I’m wrong.
I’m really interested in the way, when you walk into a typical feature film, you suspend disbelief and decide to get sucked into the film. I was interested in seeing whether I could create a psychological shift in the audience, a shift from believing the characters, to believing the theatricality of it and then back to believing the documentary aspect of making a movie. So initially, I wanted to switch back and forth between reality and fantasy more. I recently watched Truffaut’s Day For Night (1973), and he goes back and forth between the creation of the movie and the movie a lot, and I thought yeah, this doesn’t work very well. So maybe it’s better not to play that trick too often.
mbg: In some sense having the actors and musicians in the audience, as you did for the New York premier, makes it both more real and less real.
ES: There is that part in the very beginning of the film when you see the people getting ready. We’re in the Herodium Theater dressing rooms across from the Acropolis. It says, “this is a piece of theater.” I felt like yeah I’m going to remind you this is a piece of theater. But very quickly we’re so geared to believe that the thing on the screen is real. But in reality, the only real thing is the metaphor, the idea, that’s where the reality actually is.
mbg: What were you thinking about when you chose the setting for the film to be the 60s?
ES: Originally, we thought the film might run through time. But when we actually started working in Greece, we realized that everybody goes to Greece for the ancient stuff. That’s what’s so famous there, right? But what was so astounding to us was the classic modernism. The architecture from the nineteen thirties to the sixties. The main building from this period that we used in the film was the Valsamakis House, which was our metaphor for the heyday of Rome. Once we started getting into all that amazing modernist architecture in Athens, as well as all the magazines and films from the period, it seemed perfect. It was such a mythical time—the way the gender gap manifested itself, the ideas about how to behave and present oneself. The myths about men and women meant so much, and that’s what this film is about: these forces of desire and longing and power and how this gender gap behaves in relationship to them.
mbg: I saw the Rape at The Henry Art Gallery immediately after the recent student protests in Athens, and I couldn’t help thinking about that 60s moment of protest in the US and Europe.
ES: The late 60s brought that upheaval, and we couched the film in the early sixties, but when you look at the final fight scene, it could have been a really big love fest, one of my actresses said, "are we doing a big orgy at the end?" No, but if you want to think about it that way, fine.
It’s supposed to look like those friezes on the Pergamon that you see in the beginning of the film; is it war or is it lust? It’s all about power. Everything falls away, the dresses, the hairdos, the architecture all those accoutrements that give meaning to this idea of the perfect life are destroyed. Of course everything goes back to dust, there’s no happy ending. There’s just an ending, not happy or sad.
mbg: To do this in 2005, as America was in the middle of a huge amount of upheaval in relationship to the Iraq war. Did you think about this depiction of war as influenced by that in any way?
ES: I didn’t think of the piece as an overtly political piece. People apply a lot of politics and feminism to it, and on a certain level, that’s fair, but I don’t consider myself a didactic-political artist. The new piece we’re making is most political thing we’ve ever done. I’m really more interested in filming psychological conditions—loneliness, desire, ubiquitous and cunning aspects of the human condition. I’m interested in those things that defy time, no matter how much the world is changing. Our psychological set of feelings as human beings actually doesn’t advance. Love, hate, guilt, jealousy, we haven’t invented any new words to define how we’re feeling, because there are no new emotions. Emotion defies time. Therefore, I’m interested in group dynamics and how they change the way people act at different times in history, but the way we are as individuals, I don’t think it changes. I don’t think we’re any more complicated that we were 2000 years ago. I could be eternally interested in just putting a bunch of people in a room and seeing what happens, that’s always really exciting.
mbg: You said your new piece might be more political?
ES: It’s about a fantasy city, I’m filming in central Asia, and what’s striking to me there is the collision of communism and capitalism. We were taught these two regimes should be diametrically opposed to each other and now they’re married, and the way they’re married in these post-soviet countries is so ironic. It’s about power. How do you subvert that power for yourself, what people do to grab power, if I’m socialist one minute and capitalist the next, that’s all about having your chameleon moment to grab power. That conflation of communism and capitalism into one monster is really interesting, and I’m not trying to make some moralizing political statement about it, I’m just really intrigued by the transformation. It’s so rich if you want to do a high-kitsch film noir, which is what I’m trying to do. So we’ve gone four times in the last two years and we have about 100 hours of footage and we’re probably going to shoot a little bit more, but now it’s a lot to do with figuring out the edit. We’re working with one English speaking actor and Russian speaking actors, so we had simultaneous translation and improv with people who didn’t speak the same language. Now we’re doing a lot with overdub and voiceover and making up the dialogue in retrospect, in both Russian and English.
One of the ways we’re releasing White on White is in installments. The first installment is in an edition of 100, and it comes on an Archos screen. You get the device with the edition. It’s $450 so it’s affordable for people who aren’t big collectors. It’s also internet capable, so as we make new episodes we can stream them to the player. I like the idea, we’ll see if it works. It’s also about making the piece much more accessible for a much wider audience. Coming up with a different model, I make my living in the art world, not the film world, and the beauty of the art world is that you don’t need 100,000 people to like your work, which means you can be much more experimental…
mbg: It’s so intimate to be holding the screen that you’re watching the film on.
ES: I’m impressed how well it works. It also works as a way of letting people be part of the production. It’s a way of getting 100 people to come in as co-producers on a lower level, rather than a just three people at a high level.
mbg: How did White on White develop?
ES: The idea for White on White came out of sort of a joke actually. Jeff Wood, a long time Rufus Corporation collaborator and actor/writer, kept saying, as part of his character, “I’m going to space”. I was like, “yeah, right”, and he said “I’m serious.” And I was like, “well, I don’t really care about going to space, but I’m really into watching you try.” At the same time another friend of mine asked, “well, Eve, what’s the third painting?” It’s a trilogy, you’ve gotta make a third painting. And I’m kind of sarcastic, so I say, “White on White” that’s my image, you know, it was a little bit of a “fuck you.” Then it dawned on us that a film about his desire for space and my desire to film white on white worked perfectly together...from there we tried to get to Baikonur. You can read about it on our website.
Noah Simblist is an artist, writer and Assistant Professor of Art at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. His work explores the political role of the artist, the history of abstraction and the ideas of home, borders and exile in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
reviews
Contemporary Culture
Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin
Through October 31
By Dan Boehl
Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry, 337 Students Boycotted. February 27, 1959 (after unknown photographer; New York World-Telegraph & Sun Collection, Library of Congress), 2007, Oil on canvas and toner on silk, 16 x 20-1/4 inches. Courtesy Lora Reynolds Gallery.
2009 has been a big year. The United States swore in the first black president, was plunged into the depths of the Great Recession, and the Beatles reissued their entire catalog with nearly each album getting a 10 from Pitchfork. If that isn’t highwater enough for you, there were the Bailouts, Maddoff, the co-opted townhall meetings, and Obama depicted as the Joker. Also as Hitler. I could detail the crash of the art market and numerous art org failures, but the Woodstock boxset and the Beatles Guitar Hero are more important to the masses than the problems plaguing the Rose Art Museum.
You know all this. But you may not know how it adds up: the United States has fundamentally changed. In order to mirror these changes Lora Reynolds offers Contemporary Culture, a survey of artists who tackle the zeitgeist. But the show comes up short, pointing to change without internalizing it.
The best example of this is the Time is Money, Money is Time series of drawings by Mads Lynnerup. Ink on colored paper, each drawing offers an everyday image paired with a time/money advertising slogan: “Money to Think” on the back of a man’s t-shirt, “no money to worry” on a lightpole banner. The pattern follows thusly; find a money or time slogan, switch out the word money for the word time and vice versa. The move is pretty clever, but in that ironic Ad Busters/preaching to the choir kind of way. It takes a swat at the over-consumption indicative of the aughts, but doesn’t acknowledge that over-consumption as we knew it is dead. Subprime home loans killed it. In this respect the drawings become quaint, a Yale sophomore’s Marxism, disembodied from experience. Jim Torok’s paintings fall into the same trap. Simple slogans slapped on wood tell us to “Keep Focused,” “Stay Calm” and “Relax.” The irony is that it’s impossible to relax with near 10% unemployment and a culture war brewing. But without dialing up some kind of meaningful emotional context, it’s a limp irony.
The collaborations of Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry have the opposite problem. Black and white photo reproductions are painted in oil. The same image is ghosted over by printing and stretching it on silk, lending them a Gerhard Richter quality. Each image depicts an important moment in the Civil Rights movement, and each evokes funereal solemnity. There is, however, a 60-year leap between 337 Students Boycotted. February 27, 1959 (2007) and contemporary images of President Obama wielding a lightsaber on the White House lawn. The work informs the contemporary moment, but in the post-race debate, it’s far removed from the contemporary dialogue.
Colby Bird, This is This, 2009.
Of course, actively addressing political and social issues is a trap. The best art comes to politics sideways, as a tangent rather than a point. Colby Bird takes this tack in his sculpture This is This (2009), infusing middle-class frustration and gun-toting to the menacing effect that startled congressmen at town hall meetings this summer. This is This is risky and provocative. Against the backdrop of its concealed weapon, the rest of the show seems earnest, safe, or clever.
I like much of the work in the show, but it seems disingenuous to say that the artists here are informing contemporary issues. They almost inform them. I don’t want to invoke Bush, but any artist trying to make work that addresses uncertain times needs to acknowledge that one of the US’s greatest triumphs came on the heels of one of its most shameful moments. Corporate greed and political incompetence nearly destroyed the United States. But for a few moments of insight, Contemporary Culture is much too conservative to really shed light on the considerable changes wrought by the last two aughts.
Dan Boehl is a poet. His chapbook Les MISERES ET LES MAL-HEURS DE LA GUERRE will be available from Greying Ghost this fall.
Beili Liu
D Berman Gallery, Austin
Through October 24
By Lauren Adams
Beili Liu, Tie. Untie., 2008, String & video projection, 165 x 80 x 15 inches. Courtesy the artist and D Berman Gallery.
Many stories have been conceived to explain the life-long bond between two people. Plato, for instance, felt that we were at one time two people combined into one, separated by the gods for our hubris, now destined to spend our lives searching for our other half. There is also a Chinese legend about the red thread of destiny. This invisible thread is said to connect a person to their soul mate from the moment they are born. This red thread of destiny is the tie that binds together artist Beili Liu’s most recent work at D Berman Gallery.
Beili Liu, Bound #2, 2009.
Liu, an artist born in China who now lives and works in Austin, has created a visual map of this legend and its different stages. The exhibition centers around one massive piece, Bound #2 (2009), the heart of the exhibition, both literally and figuratively. Two roughly human-sized pillars of rough, unfinished wood are lodged firmly in the center of the space. Both of the coarse columns are pierced a thousand times over with needles and bound together with red gossamer thread. Although the pillars are solidly anchored into place, the delicate connection formed by the thread between them visually pulls the structures together.
Bound #2 represents the central idea of the myth: two people destined to find each other over the duration of their lives, and the rest of the exhibition fleshes out the story. The pieces that surround Bound #2 create a sense of time and also of progression. The myth begins with Tie. Untie. (2009), a video installation tucked in the back corner of the gallery. Spilling onto the floor are yards of white, spaghetti like yarn onto which is projected a circular scene of anonymous hands sorting through the mythical red thread. The scene appears to have been shot under water, and the effect leaves the red yarn swirling and floating between the hands that pull it from one side to another. The scene alludes to the moment before birth, when the hands of God reach down and begin to catalog one’s fate.
If Tie. Untie. is the beginning, then Miasma (2009) must surely be the end of the story. With this installation, Liu has swapped the blood red yarn for black, and hung the tangled pieces from the ceiling in kelp like stalks. Although the skeins of yarn are light, they hang frozen and unaffected by their surroundings. They are dark, stagnant, and reminiscent of death, the unfortunate end of every love story.
If the exhibition has a weakness, it is the panel pieces that line opposing walls of the gallery. Although interesting in their construction—singed vellum and rice paper burnt with incense—they lack the striking presence of the installation works.
True love, soul mates, star-crossed lovers, this bond between two people has mesmerized humanity throughout history. Liu’s work offers a contemporary rendition of our age-old fascination with life, death, love and the passing of time. Formally, the majority of the pieces are captivating enough in texture, color and material to stand on their own. Standing before them, one can’t help but imagine Liu’s painstaking, time-consuming creative process. However, the exceptional thing about Liu’s exhibition is that each piece creates one layer of a story which spans from birth to death—a storyline familiar enough to tie the entire show together, yet vague enough to entice each of us to create our own narrative.
Lauren Adams is an intern at Fluent~Collaborative.
Announcements: exhibitions
Austin Openings
Tell me everything, as you remember it.
Creative Research Laboratory
Opening October 17, 6-9pm
If Bas Jan Ader's story is any indication, (in 1975 the artist set out in the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic; later his boat turned up, but he never did,) this exhibition will be full of the melancholy of loneliness, disappearance and displacement. In addition to Bas Jan Ader, the show includes work by Myranda Bair, Susan Chen, Kate Gilmore, Justin Goldwater, David Horvitz, John William Keedy, Jason Bailer Losh, John Mata, Stephanie McMahon. A screening of Here Is Always Somewhere Else, a documentary about the life and work of Ader, will take place on Thursday October 29 from 7 to 9 pm.
Austin on View
Erin Curtis
Women and Their Work
Through November 14
Recently returned from a Fulbright in India, Erin Curtis shows new paintings at W&TW. The show opened last night after this issue "went to press," so we'll withhold comment until the next issue.
Contemporary Culture
Lora Reynolds Gallery
Through October 31
See the review by Dan Boehl in this issue, then check out this cartoon from Big Red and Shiny. Lora Reynolds brings together work by Conrad Bakker, Colby Bird, Graham Dolphin, Mads Lynnerup and Kehinde Wiley, among others.
Devin Flynn
Okay Mountain
Through October 31
Devin Flynn's show at Okay Mountain appears to be an experiment in translating his work from the commercial world (his cartoon "Y'all So Stupid" is on adultswim) into the visual art world. If his buddy Gary Panter, with whom he plays in the band Devin and Gary, can do it, why can't he?
Austin Closings
Sterling Allen
Jessica Halonen
Art Palace Gallery
Closing October 24
Art Palace has extended these shows through October 24! In the main gallery, Sterling Allen's photos mess with your head. In the project room, Jessica Halonen's delicate branch sculptures please the eye. Artist talk on Saturday, October 10 at 2pm.
Beili Liu
D Berman Gallery
Closing October 24
See the review by Lauren Adams in this issue. More than once, I've overheard someone say this is the most striking show they've seen at D Berman in a long time. So don't miss it.
San Antonio on View
Jeffrey Wisniewski
Artpace
Through January 3, 2010
Battle of the Budda?! In Wisniewski's anamation, a good and evil Budda duke it out. Sounds like Urban Outfitters might be interested in adapting this into a t-shirt. The exhibition also includes four satirical tableaux of iconic American imagery.
Self-Revolution
Unit B Gallery
Through November 7
Self-Revolution brings together the work of black artists, both academic and self-taught. Aspects of African and African American ritual are applied unapologetically by each artist to investigate the conceptual nature of operating in and outside of colonial structures, while addressing the broad and complex culture of those of African descent. (excerpted from the press release)
San Antonio Closings
Jo Baer, James Bishop and Suzan Frecon
Lawrence Markey
Closing October 16
Get out and see this show before it closes. Review forthcoming in our next issue of ...might be good.
Mark Hogensen
Sala Diaz
Through October 25
Mark Hogensen's charcoal compositions find connections between the near and the distant as well as the rational and the unreasonable while remaining complimentary and in opposition simultaneously. (excerpted from the press release)
Announcements: opportunities
Seminar
NYFA Resource Seminar
Austin Museum of Art
October 14, 7pm
The seminar will cover New York Foundation for the Arts' programs and services relevant to Austin-based filmmakers and artists across disciplines. Attendees will also receive helpful tips for applying to grants, residencies and other opportunities.
Employment
Director
School of Art at Texas Christian University
Review of Applications begins October 23
The College of Fine Arts at TCU in Fort Worth invites applications and nominations for the new position of Director of the School of Art. Candidates must have demonstrated excellence in creative or scholarly accomplishments in art education, art history, graphic design, or studio art, and administrative and teaching experience with credentials that would merit appointment at the rank of Full or Associate Professor. For more information, visit the webpage for TCU's HR Department and search for employment posting #0330.
Call for Entries
Call for Artist Books
Regency Arts Press Ltd.
Saturday, October 17 @ X Initiative, or online
In January 2010 Regency Arts Press Ltd. will launch Open Book, an online searchable catalog of artists' books by artists or independent publishers who lack distribution for their books. They are currently holding an open call for possible inclusion in this project. An open submission will be held at Artbook @ X Initiative on Saturday, October 17 from noon to 3pm, but if you can't make it, the project promises to put up guidelines for electronic submission soon.
Employment
Chief Curator
Amon Carter Museum
Deadline: November 15
The Amon Carter Museum seeks a chief curator. The successful candidate will possess a Ph.D. in American art history, demonstrated ability to employ history in relation to art, proven ability to conduct original research, and minimum of five years museum and management experience. For full position listing, visit www.cartermuseum.org.
Chief Preparator
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Deadline: October 30, 2009
The MFAH seeks a chief preparator with minimum five years of progressively responsible experience in the preparation, construction, and installation of exhibit displays and two years of supervisory and management experience. E-mail your resume and a cover letter indicating the title and job code of the position for which you are applying to jobs@mfah.org.
Executive Director
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
Deadline: October 30, 2009
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is currently seeking an Executive Director who can lead the organization in the next phases of its growth. Desirable qualifications and skills include experience working with artists to establish an opportunity to borrow and exhibit their art, curation of exhibits of art, developing and managing a budget for a not for profit organization, fundraising for a not-for-profit organization, delivery of art education, management of six or more full time and part time staff, working with a governing board, public relations and marketing. A minimum of a Master's Degree and two years of relevant experience is desired but not required.
No telephone calls please. Applications (including resumes and supporting materials) will be accepted via US Mail, addressed to Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 Thirteenth Street, Boulder, CO 80302, Attn: Chairman, Search Committee, or via email addressed torichardstucker@comcast.net.
