A Sky filled with Shooting Stars

Given my rather critical account of my experiences in Ukraine last month, I thought it only fair to add this update. I’m afraid there is little good news, however. On June 14 (which is to say, three weeks after the scheduled opening) I received an email announcement that “the Kiev Biennale is now fully open”. [...]

A few weeks before the dawn of time the very first interview I ever did back at ARTINFO was with Mary Ellen Mark. The occasion was Steidl’s republication of her 1981 “Falkland Road” book of photographs of Bombay prostitutes. Now the Getty Museum has just published Ms Mark’s “Prom”, the result of a four-year project [...]

First, let’s just say that something rather wonderful has happened on Pier 92. In its brief lifespan the “Modern” section of The Armory Show has gone from uncertain beginnings through enthusiastic acceptance. Now though, with the almost total relaxation of distinctions between “Modern” and “Contemporary”, and with the attentions of the cruder elements of the [...]

One of the most enjoyable artist interviews I ever did back in my old ARTINFO days was a piece I did with Fred Tomaselli in 2006. It’s as short as any of those ARTINFO articles, and deals in most detail with technical matters, but in re-reading it, it occurs to me that it provides a [...]

This is the busiest – and many people would say the most important – week in the New York City art calendar. The Armory Show itself, on the west side’s Piers 92 and 94, is one of the world’s most significant art fairs. Every year it attracts well over 50,000 visitors. But in addition to the [...]

Many readers of A Sky filled with Shooting Stars will know that Kiki Smith is an artist for whom I have enormous regard. Back in 2006 I named her Whitney retrospective “A Gathering” as ARTINFO’s joint-best New York museum show of the year (tying it with Sean Scully at the Met) and a few months [...]

When I predicted the top museum shows of 2009 for ARTINFO back in January, I remember being particularly excited about this one, Alias Man Ray: The Art of ReInvention that opens at the Jewish Museum on Sunday (and runs through next March). Now that I have had a chance to preview the show, I am [...]

I’ve known Yigal Ozeri for something like four years now, and written about his work for ARTINFO on several occasions. He is a genuinely larger than life character, and one of the most voluble, most likeable characters on the New York art scene. Born in Israel in 1958, Mr Ozeri has been working here for [...]

      I know it’s beyond a joke now, but having experienced “Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective” at the Met yesterday I now formally reinstate it as New York’s museum show of 2009. I admit I was thrilled by the Guggenheim’s “The Third Mind”, and because I enjoyed such a breadth of the work [...]

  For a long time I have had a real enthusiasm for April Gornik’s painting, and not only because she was the subject of the very first interview that Barbara MacAdam asked me to do for ARTINFO in 2005. There is an unwritten rule over at ARTINFO that artists don’t get interviewed more than once, [...]