Monday, July 14, 2008

New SFMOMA Blog: Open Space


Bruce Conner
Burning Bright
1996, Collection SFMOMA

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has a new art blog: Open Space.
The current posts on the recently deceased Bruce Conner are thought provoking. I am intrigued by the account of Conner's fervent disagreement over a proposed retrospective with then director Henry Hopkins:

"Conner’s relationship with SFMOMA was notoriously troubled. As Conner recounted in 1979 (in an interview published in Damage and reprinted in Stiles and Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art), Henry Hopkins, then the museum’s director, had proposed doing a retrospective of the artist’s work to date. But they couldn’t agree on certain things. Conner wanted to take part in curating his own history, and demanded a role in the conservation of assemblages that he’d originally intended to change over time. He also wanted his show to be free – the museum wanted to charge $2 admission fee – or at least to share in a percentage of the earnings from an increased admission."

More at:
Open Space
Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art

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