View of Holding Pattern installation in MoMA PS1 courtyard. Summer 2011. Photo by Interboro Partners

We thought it might be a good time to check in on Holding Pattern, our project for the 2011 Young Architects Program. Holding Pattern was deinstalled from the MoMA PS1 courtyard four months ago, but the deinstallation didn’t mark the end of the project—just the start of its second phase. Read more

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade winds through New York City with B.

This past Thanksgiving I had the privilege of taking part in a time-honored New York City tradition, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Read more

Recently I had the honor of meeting Justice Albie Sachs, one of the first judges appointed to South Africa’s new Constitutional Court by Nelson Mandela in 1994, and taking him through the exhibition Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now at MoMA. Read more

I was born in 1949 in the small coastal town of East London in South Africa. Other than two years of formal art training at high school, I am for the most part self-taught. I live at the Hartbeespoort Dam, which is about one hour’s drive northwest of Johannesburg. During the 1980s I spent time in Los Angeles and New York, and I held an exhibition at Area-X gallery in the East Village in 1986. Besides printmaking I also work in various other media, including painting, sculpture, mixed media, and bronze. Read more

Ernestine White. Outlet. 2010. Photocopy with lithographic ink on five sheets. Publisher: unpublished. Printer: the artist at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. Edition: 2 unique variants (in 2005 and 2010). General Print Fund, 2010. © 2011 Ernestine White

Within my practical body of work I attempt to present the viewer with a glimpse into my personal memories and experiences living in South Africa at various stages of my life. Read more

Installation view at MoMA of Kwakuhlekisa. 2007. Stencil, dimensions variable. Publisher: the artist, Shaka’s Rock, South Africa. Edition: 3. The Museum of Modern Art. General Print Fund. © 2011 Cameron Platter. Photo by Thomas Greisel

I’m delighted to have my work included in the exhibition Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now at The Museum of Modern Art, and in MoMA’s collection. And I’m a real fan of what’s been done, and highlighted, in this show. Read more

Installation view of Holding Pattern by interboro Partners, winner of the 2011 Young Architects Program, 2011. Digital rendering courtesy of Interboro Partners

Each year, MoMA renews its commitment to experimental architecture and architectural display with a full-scale installation of a project chosen from a competition among virtually untried architects. In the galleries of the Museum, architecture collection masterworks and temporary exhibitions of computer- and hand-drawn architectural renderings, models, photographs, and films are regularly shown. But each year the outdoor spaces of MoMA PS1 provide a unique temporary outdoor gallery where emerging talents can turn projects and drawings into spaces and palpable experiences. Read more

Beatriz González. Acuerdo bancario (Bank Agreement). 1980

While preparing the exhibition I Am Still Alive: Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing, Christian Rattemeyer and I had a conversation with our colleagues Luis Pérez-Oramas and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães about the premise of the exhibition. They immediately suggested that we look at the work of Beatriz González, a leading figure among Latin American Pop artists and currently one the most influential living artists in Colombia, whose work explores sociopolitical subject matter specific to her country’s history and vernacular culture.

Beatriz González. Turbay condecorado (Turbay honored). 1980

Like many of the works in the exhibition, including Marine Hugonnier’s series Art for Modern Architecture (Homage to Ellsworth Kelly), Robert Morris’s untitled gouache paintings on newsprint, and On Kawara’s storage boxes for his date paintings lined with local newspaper clippings, there is a direct link between González’s work and the newspaper and print culture. When Julio César Turbay Ayala became president of Colombia in 1979, González turned her sketchbook into a visual diary of sorts, producing a simple, stylized drawing each day based on the daily media coverage of his presidency. Her stated intent was to become a type of “court painter,” and to critically document the spectacle of leadership. Made between 1979 and 1981, these drawings—fragmentary depictions of Turbay attending sessions of Congress, meeting with church, government, and military personnel, and engaging in leisure activities—provide an intimate look at the disparate public aspects of power. These works are prime examples of the artist’s straightforward use of drawing in her artistic production, and mark a significant and more politically charged change in her work towards a more explicit reflection on the growing violence and turmoil that engulfed Colombia throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Beatriz González. Turbay esquiando (Turbay Skiing). 1980

Picasso's studio at 242 Boulevard Raspail, Paris, December 1912. Private collection. © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The artists who first glimpsed Picasso’s cardboard Guitar around 1912 marveled—and sometimes scoffed—at its fragility and seeming impermanence, but almost 100 years later its continued survival, while miraculous, is not its only notable quality. What do artists, in 2011, standing in front of the cardboard Guitar and its sheet-metal counterpart have to say? With this question in mind, curator Anne Umland and I asked a diverse group to visit Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914 and share their impressions. Read more

Boris Mikhailov. Untitled, from the series Case History. 1997–98. Chromogenic color print. Courtesy the artist, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin. © 2011 Boris Mikhailov

Boris Mikhailov is one of the leading photographers from the countries that formerly constituted the Soviet Union, and his work is currently on view in the exhibition Boris Mikhailov: Case History at the Museum (through September 5). Read more