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Friday, May 16, 2008

Eye Candy Friday: Mastering your domain

Here are a couple of morsels for the weekend:

Via MAN, comes Jumping in Art Museums. This is sweet. I imagine that tomorrow's benefit gala at Dia:Beacon might be one of the few opportunities where some form of photography in the museum would be allowed as it is otherwise normally interdit. Given the festive nature of the occasion and presence of libations, I'd love to see some anniversary jumping captured and submitted. Identities of jovial offenders could certainly be kept secret.
I'm not condoning any unauthorized behavior, but if you really love a piece of work, by God, take possession of your art viewing experience and jump, baby, JUMP. Just don't attempt to jump OVER anything. I've heard tell that it has been done, it's just simply not advisable. Then again perhaps "Jumping the shark" might one day be replaced by "Jumping the Heizer" to denote a desparate attempt at garnering attention and relevance. Also, not advisable and certainly not condone or encouraged by this blogger.
Now that I'm thinking of it, could such a thing possibly not be the within the realm of some institutions' sometimes inappropriate (I'll look for examples) pursuit to sex up their appeal and compete with other forms of "entertainment?" Imagine the addition of programs that could prove perilous to both collection and visitor upping the thrill factor of engaging with art. I can see gladitorial matches between works in a museum's collection to gauge the supremacy of one artist over another. Friday Night MuseoFights. The Discovery Channel or TLC had some show once that created scenarios that pitted animals against one another, like a lion vs. a shark to see which was more badass. I couldn't find reference to that show, but I found a similar dramatic and shockingly realistic demonstration. You can choose which creature you want to represent Heizer and Smithson.
Fortunately, Dia is not given to such desparate acts, and even if they were, they'd have a long way to go up the chain of pandering strategies. The first one being to increase the size of their street signs to 11"x14".
Next up, via C-Monster, a new Firefox add on by Steve Lambert that replaces online ads with artwork images. There will be an official unveiling at the New Museum next week.

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