"Through the Garden Gate" Art show opening this week at Museo Gallery in Langley

"Museo Gallery on First Street in Langley this Saturday night, April 2nd, from 5-7 pm for the opening party of this spring's not-to-be-missed art show for gardeners. Owner Sandra Jarvis has assembled a collection of art pieces both practical and ..." [Read Full Article]
Published By: Valerie Easton, Plant Talk
On: 03/30/11
Website: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/

 

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Charles Fazzino, Pop Artist: Official FTL Centennial Artist and Unofficial Visual Historian

By Leslie Minora,

The city of Fort Lauderdale and 3-D pop artist Charles Fazzino have a mutual love for each other that began with his post-college art-peddling and partying days in the '80s and has ballooned into his role as the city's Official Centennial Artist and Official Artist of the Winterfest Boat Parade. But Fazzino, whose work is well-known globally, is significant to the city in more than name alone. He was commissioned to create Fort Lauderdale's official centennial poster in his signature bold, playful, 3-D style. It serves as a visual documentation of the city's culture with a nod and wink at its past and present (think: Indians and Elbo Room). Fazzino also created the official 3-D poster for Winterfest 2010 (think: glittery Santa with a blonde, bikini-clad "Miss Clause" around his arm).

Fazzino's work is fun. There's really no better way to describe it. In addition to his posters for Winterfest and Fort Lauderdale's 100th, he will open his exhibit, "Faces of Fort Lauderdale," showcasing invented characters representative of historical SoFla types in his largest exhibit ever at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art. His 100th anniversary poster and museum exhibit will both be unveiled on Thursday. The Juice caught up with Fazzino, who is known for his collage-style commemorative pop-art works, to learn more about his vibrant Fort Lauderdale art extravaganza.

Click here for more information on his museum exhibit.
...and here to see more of Fazzino's work

Your work is consistent and very distinctive. How did you find this niche within the art world?

On Broward Boulevard, there used to be an arts and crafts store. I don't know if it's still around, this was in the '80s. I was doing the same artwork, but flat. I went into this arts and crafts store, and there was this large table set up, and it said "Class in Paper Toiling Today," and you had all of these little old ladies, and they were cutting with scissors, and they were taking wrapping paper of Raggedy Ann and Andy, Mickey Mouse. They were stacking them in 3D with glue, and they were layering each one. I said, "This is so interesting, this 3-D thing."

So, I took the class for $10, bought one of their little kits, and I made it. I took one of my paintings and I took it to a local printer -- color copies. I cut them out. I made them 3D and had an outdoor art show in New York...I had sold all 20 of them. You think back that you'd be doing this 30 years later, and what it did for my career because I was the first one to do something different.

How do you make the 3-D posters?

First it starts as an original painting, and from the original painting, we make handmade prints. I have a staff of artists that work with me in my studio in New York. We cut them out with an Exacto knife, layer them with gobs of silicone glue and hot glue, and then build it up into layers.

The big ones I do -- they're one of a kind and they're also done the same way but they have a different sculptural look. Some are on canvas, some are on paper, and then part of the museum exhibit are vision-o-graphs.

These are actually plexiglass boxes, each one is lit up with either special lighting or other embellishments like fiberoptics. If you notice, all of the eyes are gone, and so you look through the eyes, and inside are layers of plexiglass and on each layer tells a story of the person who lived in that decade in Florida.

Each one is a portrait that you can look through their eyes to their soul...This one [Shane McDonald] is really cool. This one has a disco ball inside moving with strobe lights hitting it, so when you look into it, you see a hot party going on and it shows you layers of plexi glass inside and all the research I did on the club scene here in the '80s, which I knew some about because I used to come down here in the '80s. Fort Lauderdale has been about partying. 1980s was a big time.

How did you choose characters for this exhibit?

Each one is made up. They're based on historical events that happened in one of those decades, but they're made up stories for each person.

Where does your work fall in the spectrum between commercial art and fine art?

I think for anybody who does anything commercial like I do, there's always a fine line that you're walking. But I think I've managed to do it well. I try to keep everything that I do -- the three-dimensional ones -- limited edition and make them really beautiful looking and hand made. I don't use anything that is stamped or commercially done.

How is Fort Lauderdale different than other places you've been commissioned to depict in your work?

Fort Lauderdale was perfect that I was commissioned to do it because I used to come down here. I went to the School of Visual Arts in New York, and I drove down here [right after college] in my van, filled with my art work, and I used to display my work at the Las Olas Art Show, the Coconut Grove art show in the early 1980s.  So it's kind of nice that I've spent all this time here...I actually watched them building the [museum]. I remember saying to myself, "God I wish I'd have a show there someday." That's what's so nice about it -- 25 years came full circle.

This article is from: http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2010/12/charles_fazzino_fort_lauderdale.php

Museums Dip Their Digital Toes

Time to lose control

Museums have made great strides in adapting to the digital age but they need to go much further

By András Szántó



Numbers scroll on a screen. Ethereal music fills the air. Cityscapes flash by. New York. Hong Kong. Venice. San Francisco. Streets and skylines are dipped in golden sunlight. But something is different. From the heart of each metropolis arises the same futuristic skyscraper. Its three shimmering towers are locked in a helical embrace. Its milky, undulating forms sprang from the imagination of Italian architect Filippo Innocenti, a Zaha Hadid associate.

Welcome to the Adobe Museum of Digital Media (AMDM). Located nowhere and everywhere, it opened in October on the web (adobemuseum.com). It has a curator, Tom Eccles, and an inaugural exhibition by Tony Oursler. It even has a “personal viewing pod”, a one-eyed fish in a soap bubble that flaps about like a Pixar character. “For the artist’s biography, click the museum directory,” she says, in a vaguely French accent that invokes Simon de Pury’s mellifluous auction chant.

Is this the digital future of the museum? Don’t count on it. The AMDM is a mesmerising virtual ride but it bears little resemblance to how museums are using digital tools, or to what lies ahead once they fully embrace new media.

1.0.

With few exceptions, museums came late to the digital party. Until quite recently, most have used their websites as extended online brochures, limited to practical information and collection highlights. Digitising and sharing the breadth of a museum’s collection is a costly, time-consuming and complicated endeavour (especially for contemporary art, where copyright restrictions are in effect). As for videos, apps, social media and all things wiki—such bells and whistles have only just started popping up on museum sites.

But in fairness, museums are further along on their new-media projects than other kinds of fine-art institutions. And they are more digitally dexterous than most commercial galleries. “The art world is constitutionally reluctant to commit to a real digital presence, whatever the platform,” says Kevin Conley, a former New Yorker writer who created The Exhibitionist mobile app for gallery-goers, “because so much of the value in the art business is based on the control of information.” Meagre budgets and a vogue for minimalist design contribute to a dull uniformity in the promotion of art online.

There are glimpses of promising innovation around the art world, of course. Lehmann Maupin Gallery’s website features elegant videos showcasing artists and exhibitions (lehmannmaupin.com). Jen Bekman’s 20x200 project (20x200.com) has shown that online gallery sales can be successful. Pace Gallery, in addition to its content-rich website and archive, is publishing digital catalogues raisonnés through its Artifex Press (artifexpress.com). Intrepid dealers like Ed Winkleman are well known as bloggers (edwardwinkleman.com). Auction houses are uploading catalogues, videos and viewing tools that help clients examine and bid—some are even tweeting their sales. Art Basel’s 3D smartphone app, launched last June, has solved the vexing problem of finding a gallery booth or a midday sandwich (artbasel.com/go/id/lre). There’s even an online art fair (vipartfair.com), coming in January to a device near you.

Museums are watching these developments closely. They know that they too must conquer new media and respond to the changing habits of their audiences, or risk losing their relevancy. But art museums are, by design, conservative. They are understandably anxious about investing in technology that could become obsolete. And they don’t want to be seen jumping on bandwagons. Mastering the digital future takes time, resources and a willingness to test comfort zones, even for the most open-minded institutions.

2.0.

Despite these obstacles, the most widely recognised museum innovators—MoMA, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Brooklyn Museum, Tate, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to name a few—have been steadily expanding their digital footprints. Dramatic changes have happened in the past 18 months. Major upgrades are in the works at the Metropolitan Museum and other bellwether institutions. Progress is accelerating.

First, technology is changing the relationship between objects, curators and visitors. The linchpin is collection searching, which has improved by an order of magnitude in recent years. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s jam-packed site (collections.vam.ac.uk), which can search a million objects with the help of an intuitive user interface, is a prime example. (Advances in so-called semantic data, which analyse the kind of complex queries that arise in humanities research, mean that even more sophisticated searches may be around the corner.) Digital tools are letting visitors experience objects in new ways. On the Louvre’s site, visitors can zoom in on masterpieces and tour virtual galleries (louvre.fr). Some museums, including MoMA, now invite visitors to curate their own art selections with an “add to my collection” button. As for that time-honoured delivery mechanism for curatorial research, the catalogue, experts predict a wholesale shift to electronic publishing within five years.

Second, much of this innovation is being spurred by an explosion in usage of mobile media. Museums are developing mobile versions of their websites for smartphones and tablets. They are migrating from Acoustigides to cheaper, more flexible cellphone technology, which they can customise in clever ways. At the Brooklyn Museum visitors can play “gallery tag”, finding works with certain attributes and entering their accession numbers via cellphone to earn points and prizes (brooklynmuseum.org). Not a week passes, of course, without a fanfare about a newly launched museum app. These are still a work in progress. Some have less information than wall labels. But progress and economics are on their side.

Third, museums are venturing beyond traditional curatorial material. Their homepages are beginning to look like magazine sites, with channels for news, streaming content and audience dialogue. Blogs, written by staffers or professionals, routinely attract the most traffic on museum websites. Some institutions are experimenting with user-generated content. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum is collecting pictures and videos from witnesses and victims’ family members (makehistory. national911memorial.org). The V&A is asking for public input on how to crop 140,000 digitised photographs (collections.vam.ac.uk/ crowdsourcing). New distribution platforms, such as ArtBabble, a kind of YouTube for art videos from a consortium of institutions (artbabble.org), are putting museums in the communications business.

Fourth, technology is revitalising museum education. Digital media open up new pathways for exchange between experts and visitors, and are making it possible for members of the public to learn from each other. Digital initiatives can make learning fun. The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s multimedia scavenger hunt, “Ghost of a Chance”, in which players used text messages, email and the web to find hidden objects in the museum, drew 3,000 participants. A few museums are even dipping their toes into online education. MoMA’s education portal lists 20 courses aimed at the general audience, starting at $220, with titles like “The 1960s: Art and Life” (www.moma.org/learn/courses/courses).

Fifth, the web is, of course, a marketing tool par excellence. Social media initiatives are blending education and marketing. An international web event last September called “Ask a Curator” made available experts from 340 museums for online questions (askacurator.com). It generated a lot of new visitors. The Guggenheim Museum’s creative video biennial, “YouTube Play”, a collaboration with YouTube, HP and Intel, attracted a staggering 23,000 submissions this autumn (youtube.com/play). From the Prado’s Google Earth tool, which zooms in from space on the collection’s most iconic paintings (google.com/intl/en/landing/prado), to Jeffrey Deitch’s personal tour of his Los Feliz home (moca.org/audio/blog/?p=988), museums are discovering ingenious ways to build audiences.

Last but not least, technology is transforming professional museum practice. The Museum Dashboard, developed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, takes transparency to a new level by providing real-time information on everything from the size of the endowment to objects slated for deaccessioning (dashboard.imamuseum.org). Some of the least sexy but most significant improvements are happening behind the scenes, where digital tools are helping museums gather data about visitors, manage collections, and keep a handle on budgets and human resources.

3.0.

As they feel their way toward a digital future, museums need to think deeply about what they stand for: what are they willing to sacrifice for the sake of evolution, and where will they draw the line against technological disruption? There are crunchy practical dilemmas to solve: can museums recover the costs of their digital operations? How will they deal with copyright restrictions? What to do about privacy protections or unwanted commercial intrusion?

And there are the intangibles: what is the ideal balance between physical objects and virtual experience? Is the function of technology to turn the museum into more of a community space, or to facilitate encounters of a deeply personal kind? Should museum websites aspire to the frenzied hyper-realism of video games, or should they leave that kind of thing to purveyors of popular entertainment?

Privately, some directors and curators are anxious about unintended consequences. Many older visitors like their museums just as they are. There is something to be said, after all, about the museum as a gadget-free zone—a last bulwark against computerisation. A smartphone is a cool and quick way to find the great blue whale or The Garden of Earthly Delights, but what’s wrong with getting lost in a museum?

In any event, technological change hasn’t seeped yet all the way into museums’ innermost structures and attitudes. When it does, museums will look very different. Digital innovation doesn’t just enable institutions to do old things in new ways. It forces fundamental and often painful realignments. Just look at the news.

For art institutions of all stripes, embracing new media will mean “not just a lot of whiz-bang technology, but a rethinking of the relationship with the audience,” says Artsjournal.com founder Douglas McLennan. It means adopting a new approach to information across all departments. A decade ago, a museum’s IT department was a backwater. Today, it belongs next to the director’s office. The notion that technology is less of a tool and more of mindset doesn’t come naturally to experts steeped in object-oriented practice.

The hardest part may be letting go.

Museums have a long history of exercising total command over their content. That’s over. “Museums in the future will still be reliable sources of information, and a curator will continue to be the authority on a particular work of art,” says Rob Stein, chief information officer of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. “But we won’t control the information channels.”

 

This article is from: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Time+to+lose+control/22092

UC Berkeley to Go Ahead With New Museum Despite Budget Woes

UC Berkeley vows to build museum despite finances

Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross

Even as financially strapped UC Berkeley is preparing to raise tuition 8 percent next fall, it has pledged to spend as much as $20 million in campus funds to help build a $96 million art museum.

Just where $20 million will come from, however, remains unclear - with campus spokesman Dan Mogulof saying only that it will depend on what pot of money is available when the time comes.

Mogulof insisted, however, that there will be "no tuition, no student registration fees and no state-allocated funds used."

It's been more than a decade since the 40-year-old, bunker-like UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive on Bancroft Way was declared seismically unsound.

In 2001, the university dismissed the idea of a $70 million retrofit as being more costly than it was worth.

Instead, officials decided to build a replacement museum on a university-owned site in downtown Berkeley, and four years ago picked hot-shot Japanese architect Toyo Ito in hopes of attracting major donors.

However, as the economy tanked, so did the museum's fortunes.

When the museum found itself $100 million short of its fundraising goal, planners said goodbye to the $11.8 million they'd already spent - and opted for a more modest makeover of the old UC printing plant on Oxford Street.

The problem is, the university has pledges for only about half the $96 million needed to build and furnish the new museum.

And while UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary insists the university has a robust fundraising effort in place, last spring he told the UC regents that the school was prepared to kick in as much as $20 million if donations came up short.

Campus officials cite a range of possible funding sources - everything from investment and endowment income to various campus programs that generate revenue.

"Ideally, money for such an activity would be primarily from private philanthropic sources," Academic Senate Chair Fiona Doyle said when asked about the university's $20 million pledge.

But then Doyle, who is an engineer, added, "I don't feel it's my place to tell (art department) colleagues ... that their own intellectual areas aren't as valued as others. ... I would need a lot more information to comment."

Meanwhile: The San Francisco Asian Art Museum is vowing to keep its doors open, despite the absence of a deal to end a financial crisis that has threatened to send the Civic Center institution into bankruptcy.

A letter of credit from lender JPMorgan Chase backing the museum's $120 million loan is set to expire Dec. 21. If that happens, the Asian Art's loan payments could skyrocket beyond the museum's ability to pay and its insurer could be hit with tens of millions in losses.

City officials plan to meet with all the parties this week to try to break the impasse.

"We are working to get this resolved," Mark McLoughlin, the Asian Art's chief finance and operating officer, said Friday. "The museum is not contemplating anything other than staying open for business and a vibrant future."

Let's hope so.

This article is from: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/21/BA4N1GETOH.DTL#ixzz16gQNqtgc

San Francisco's Asian Art Museum Fights For Financial Survival

Money Woes Threaten Museum

San Francisco's Asian Art Showcase Is Latest Institution Stressed by Soft Economy

Brian Frank for The Wall Street JournalSan Francisco's Museum of Asian Art is facing a severe financial crisis as a result of the weak economy and rising loan payments. 

SAN FRANCISCO—The Asian Art Museum here is facing a financial crisis, the latest—and one of the largest—in a string of museums to suffer from problems amid the weak economy.

Officials of the Asian Art Museum, which showcases more than 17,000 artworks from Asia and has an annual operating budget of about $17 million, are currently negotiating with J.P. Morgan & Co. to keep loan payments from increasing, said the museum's chief financial officer, Mark McLoughlin. The difficulties date back to a 2005 refinancing of more than $100 million of debt that eventually drove loan payments sharply higher.

Mr. McLoughlin said the museum has hired a bankruptcy lawyer to negotiate with creditors, though he added that the institution doesn't plan to declare bankruptcy.

A lawyer for J.P. Morgan declined to comment on the matter.

The Asian Art Museum's troubles come as many museums face financial hardship because of the weak economy. The Magnes Museum in Berkeley, Calif., said earlier this year that it couldn't afford to stay open, and would donate its collection to the University of California. In New York, the Chelsea Art Museum may fold after its founders' company declared bankruptcy and the museum's collection was put up as collateral for a loan. Other museums are cutting staff and operating hours.

A survey earlier this year by the American Association of Museums found that in 2009, more than 30% of large museums like the Asian Art Museum reported "severe or very severe stress," due to problems like declining contributions and withering stock-market investments.

The Asian Art Museum is one of the more prominent institutions to be hurt. The museum is regarded as a premier Asian art institution and was built largely around a collection donated by Chicago businessman Avery Brundage. In 2000, the museum sold $107 million of bonds to help it move to its current building, near San Francisco's City Hall. Italian architect Gae Aulenti updated San Francisco's old public library to house the collection, which includes one of the oldest known Chinese Buddha sculptures.

For the Asian Art Museum, donations and income from visitors have remained healthy, Mr. McLoughlin said. But after refinancing the fixed-rate debt in 2005 to a variable-rate loan, the bond's insurer, MBIA Inc., had its credit rating downgraded in 2008 during the financial crisis.

That caused the museum's loan interest to skyrocket, at one point hitting 9%, Mr. McLoughlin said. The museum temporarily fixed the situation by getting a letter of credit from J.P. Morgan assuring that the bonds were a safe investment. That letter is set to expire on Dec. 21, Mr. McLoughlin said, raising the prospect that the museum's payments could rise.

If it does, the museum's debt payments could rise.

"The Museum's current financial predicament far eclipses any downgrade of MBIA's rating," said a spokesman for MBIA in an email. He said the insurer is "optimistic that the City and the Museum will be able to successfully address the multitude of problems facing this great institution."

In the spring, Mr. McLoughlin said, the museum hired Los Angeles bankruptcy litigator Bruce Bennett to negotiate with large creditors. Mr. Bennett didn't respond to a request for comment.

Even in a worst-case scenario, Mr. McLoughlin said, the collection and the building itself would be safe from creditors. That is because both are owned by the City and County of San Francisco, so in the event of a bankruptcy filing, creditors could only go after about $70 million of endowment money and minor assets owned by the museum's foundation, Mr. McLoughlin said.

Write to Justin Scheck at justin.scheck@wsj.com

This article is from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703374304575622951057940936.html?mod=WSJ_ArtsEnt_LifestyleArtEnt_4