Looking Around

When I was up at MASS MoCA a few weeks ago to see their new installation of 105 Sol LeWitt wall drawings, I had a talk with MASS MoCA’s director Joe Thompson about how the project took shape. Thompson and his museum were brought into it by Jock Reynolds, the director of the Yale University Art Gallery. It was Reynolds who first …

In the run up to the opening this Sunday of the big 25-year installation Sol LeWitt wall drawings at MASS MoCA, I’ve been thinking about what made those drawings fascinating. LeWitt was one of the earliest Conceptual artists, a pioneer of the idea that the idea behind a work of art was more important than the execution. As an artist …

Two weeks ago I headed up to MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. to get an early look at their absolutely terrific new installation of 105 Sol LeWitt wall drawings, a career-spanning retrospective that opens on Sunday. This is no ordinary show. It’s going to stay on the walls at MASS MoCA for at least 25 years, so in effect it’s a mini …

Let’s finish up that conversation with the photographer William Eggleston, who’s retrospective opens Friday at the Whitney Museum in New York.

LACAYO: There are certain pictures of your’s that I think of as your Nan Goldin pictures.

EGGLESTON: Nan and I are very close. I adore her. We talk back and forth all the time.

LACAYO: For …

Two weeks ago I headed up to MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. to get an early look at their absolutely terrific new installation of 105 Sol LeWitt wall drawings, a career-spanning retrospective that opens on Sunday. This is no ordinary show. It’s going to stay on the walls at MASS MoCA for at least 25 years, so in effect it’s a mini …

Redux — it means reborn. On Friday I headed up to New Haven for the two-day festivities to celebrate the rededication of Paul Rudolph Hall, the new name for the great, vexed, endlessly abused and now beautifully restored building that was completed in 1963 to house Yale’s art and architecture programs. in the picture above that’s …

Again. Back Monday.

The St. Louis Art Museum has just announced that it’s putting its expansion plans on hold.  It was just last fall that SLAM unveiled a design for an addition to the museum’s original Beaux Art building by Cass Gilbert, architect of the

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Chinese officials are unhappy about two very famous Chinese antiquities that are coming on the market. They’ll be part of Christie’s huge auction of the estate of Yves Saint Laurent, scheduled to take place in February at the Grand Palais in Paris. In 1860, the last year of the Second Opium War, French and British forces looted and …

Let’s finish up that conversation with the photographer William Eggleston. His retrospective opens Friday at the Whitney Museum in New York.

LACAYO: There are certain pictures of your’s that I think of as your Nan Goldin pictures.

EGGLESTON: Nan and I are very close. I adore her. We talk back and forth all the time.

LACAYO: For …

No, I’m not talking about Campaign ’08, though it will be a relief to put that behind us too. What I mean is that the hyperactive art market is finally, indisputably, no-two-ways-about-it, drawing to a close. Despite a few record sales — for Malevich and Degas — last night’s Sotheby’s New York auction of Impressionist and modern …

Let’s continue that talk with the photographer William Eggleston.

LACAYO: Let me ask you about a particular picture of yours that was one of the first I ever saw — a glowing red pick-up truck in a farm field. How did you get that luminous effect?

EGGLESTON: That originated as a slide, and I liked it enough to immediately have it …

His museum debut, in 1976, was a doozy. The New York Times called it “the most hated show of the year.” Now he’s got old master status. And he should. In the 60s, Eggleston was one of that small number of photographers — Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus — who reinvented the whole idea of what a picture was supposed …