Alya Albert and Ryan McNamara holding hands as part of her performance
Alya Albert, 19, is an alumnus of our In the Making teen arts program and a second-year Cross-Museum Collective member. On Sunday May 19, she and the other CMC teens, under the guidance of artist Ryan McNamara, created a series of in-gallery performances and provocations at MoMA PS1.
Cover of What is Contemporary Art? A Guide for Kids by Jacky Klein and Suzy Klein, published by The Museum of Modern Art
MoMA’s current exhibition, Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store, celebrates the early years of artist Claes Oldenburg’s extraordinary career, when he experimented with painting and sculpture by reworking the stuff of every day into larger than life objects made with unexpected materials.
Susan Kaprov talking with families
Photo: Michael Nagle
Sound and space are closely linked. Our ears help define our surroundings by picking up on spatial clues in reflected sound waves. This innate ability to situate ourselves in our soundscape was probably more overtly useful in the days before electricity, when we had to rely on our ears to alert us to danger our eyes could not detect. There is, however, a movement in the visually impaired community to cultivate this ability
In the Making alumnus and artist Sean Vegezzi interviewed at MoMA
In teen programming these days, it’s becoming pretty common for groups of museum-based teens to sit down with a big-name artist and conduct an interview with them about their work. And the reason that this is becoming a common technique is simple—these interviews almost always turn out to be pretty great. They give artists a chance to talk about their work in a new way with a new audience, and it allows the teens conducting the interview to gain first-hand knowledge about what it actually means to create art for a living. (You can check out our two-part MoMA Teens interview with Laurel Nakadate here and here.) The teen/artist interviews are more casual than most, more honest in some ways, and they tend to broach subjects that a curator or a critic might never raise in a more formal type of environment.
For the two videos below, we decided to flip things around a bit: Rather than bringing a group of our MoMA teens in to interview an older, more established artist, we brought in ex-MoMA teen (and 22-year-old artist), Sean Vegezzi, and interviewed him about his work. We wanted to shine some light onto the artistic projects that our In the Making alumni are working on these days, and to create a platform that increases the visibility of vibrant, gutsy, emerging artists like Sean. As you can see from the video, the philosophies surrounding his work and his artistic process are just as complex and well thought out as those of his older, more established peers and his recent book of photography, I Don’t Warna Grow Up, holds its own against anything else that’s being released these days.
In Part 1 of the video, we talk to Sean about his experiences growing up in NYC and his time spent exploring the city’s underbelly with the group of young men whose nocturnal (and mostly illegal) adventures make up the artistic core of his work. He discusses his experiences growing up, the strange situations that creative adolescents can find themselves in, and the factors that led him to take his first MoMA In the Making workshop while attending public high school. Throughout it all, sprinkled between images of his art, Sean speaks candidly about the transgressive nature of his work, and how his multifaceted relationship with New York City has led him to create the art that he does in the ways that he does. (More info on Sean and his work can be found in a previous Inside/Out blog post here.)
In Part 2, Sean walks us through a selection of images from his book—sharing the stories behind the pictures, and filling us in on the adventures that characterize his practice and the characters who populate his world. It’s a fascinating look at a broad cross-section of New York City youth, all of whom come off as both completely normal and yet absolutely unique—perfect examples of the type of self-motivated, artistic teens who find their way to MoMA’s free arts programming year after year.
Check out these videos and let us know what you think, and please find a way to support emerging young artists in any way that you can.
A special party for In the Making + MoMA Teens alumni will be taking place in the Louis B. & Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Center the night of Friday, December 14, with food, drink, raffle prizes, interactive art by Babycastles, a live musical performance by SUPERCUTE!, and a special screening of John Favreau’s Elf. For more information, e-mail [email protected]. Spring 2013 In the Making course applications are available now.
Special thanks to Sean Vegezzi for sitting down with us and talking about his life, Fourteen-Nineteen, and Ratking for supplying the music.
Teens assisting with Dean Moss’s Voluntaries performance at MoMA
Recently, a group of our In the Making and Cross-Museum Collective teen alumni were given the opportunity to assist choreographer Dean Moss as he finished his preparations for Voluntaries (created in collaboration with visual artist Laylah Ali), for MoMA’s recent dance performance series Some sweet day.
Visitors to MoMA Studio: Common Senses in the days after Hurricane Sandy. Photo by Jackie Armstrong
When I received notice that MoMA would be reopening to the public and its employees on Wednesday, October 31, after being closed for two days due to Hurricane Sandy, I have to admit that I wondered if it was too soon.
Cross-Museum Collective teens on the set of The Teenager’s Guide to the Galleries!
Here it is, the fourth and final installment of The Teenager’s Guide to the Galleries! So far, the Cross-Museum Collective has led you through the process of entering the museum, interpreting the art, and exploring the galleries.
Cross-Museum Collective teens on the set of The Teenager’s Guide to the Galleries!
Everyone knows that The Godfather Part III is the worst film in the trilogy, and that Rocky III and Jaws 3 aren’t anywhere near as good as the famous blockbusters that they followed. But what about The Teenager’s Guide to the Galleries! Part 3?
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