OPEN SPACE

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from SFMOMA, regarding an incident in the museum last Friday. Thanks for your patience; internet time and institution time run on slightly different scales of speed. The response is here.

Posted by Suzanne under News | Tags: Simon Blint

Music, dance, performance, crafts projects, art exhibitions, poetry readings, last Saturday’s Kahlo-themed MAPP free-for-all evening started with René Yañez’s: Pasión por Frida Frida Kahlo lookalike contest at Galería De la Raza, which meant the rest of the night you were running into Fridas all over the place. I admit I liked the boy-drag-Frida(s) best:

But of course there were many beautiful others:

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Megan Brian described the audition: “At 5:30pm the doors of the Galeria opened and Fridas came streaming in. The diversity of Fridas was clear: all ages, races and genders seem to identify with her. Applicants ranged from a child welfare worker to artists. One applicant who came in drag said the motivation to dress up as Frida is that she is “fierce and ruling!” Others noted her as role model: a strong woman who embodied a passion for life mixed with pain, love and a sense of urgency. One applicant wrote that she was here “because we are all Frida”; another simply signed her application form with a kiss. René Yañez said he was not looking for person who looks just like Frida, but rather a Frida that emanates a feeling and captures peoples’ hearts.

After about an hour of portrait-taking and auditionee interviews, Nidhi Singh took the stage. Singh (with self-described inner “techno-global-India Frida that needs to be expressed,” performed first as traditional Frida, in iconic garb, delivering witticisms to the crowd. Then she removed her flowing skirt and added a blazer, proceeding to cut off her long black hair by the fistful, all the while staring straight at the audience with a challenging look in her eyes.” (Flickr sequence of the whole performance here.)

And, wow. Violeta Luna’s Embedded Frida? Aimee Friberg (who took all the photos you see here) adjectivized her best: a tantalizing, suffering/pleasuring Frida, embedded and processional through the streets of the Mission. Four performance stops, each more fantastic than the last:

The crowds? Everywhere along the way, it was like this:

And then there was the whole Tony-Labat-in-the-back-of-the-Rolls situation:

(he was handing out ‘want ads’ for his upcoming SFMOMA I WANT YOU project)

Congratulations, and thanks, to the MAPP, Violeta, Rene, Tony, Frank, the Red Poppy Art House, and all the many Fridas and artists and onlookers along the way.

(all photos: Aimee Nicole Friberg. Her superb MAPP Flickr set here.)

Posted by Suzanne under News | Tags: Frida Kahlo, Live Art, MAPP, Rene Yanez, Tony Labat, Violeta Luna, why wasn't I riding in the Rolls

The Frida Kahlo was here/SFMOMA MAPP HAPPENING happened Saturday night in the Mission and was AWESOME, Frank Smigiel Public Programs Curator Person taking it to the streets we adore you. I’ll have a mini report-back and some pics up tomorrow; meanwhile some great pictures of Rene Yanez’s Kahlo lookalike audition, Violeta Luna’s performance, & other MAPP pics are cropping up on FLICKR.

In other morning news, it’s FREE TUESDAY today at the museum, notable not just because, er, Free, but because it’s a FREE TUESDAY in AUGUST during the run of the FRIDA KAHLO exhibition. Which means it’s going to be worth a run down to the museum just to see the crowds. (You still have to pay to see Frida. But it’s only $5. Instead of, um, uh…17.50.) Last Free Tuesday we broke attendance records with EIGHT THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE visitors. Today we’re expecting—let me say this as accurately & professionally as possible—WAY more than that. I’ll see if we can get some pictures or videos of the crowds.

On the subject of crowds: I’m agoraphobic in pretty much every other situation, but when it comes to museum galleries stuffed with people, weirdly, I’m exhilarated. I admit this isn’t always about the viewing of individual objects, which, it is true, can feel somewhat compromised when you have to elbow past or through. But ALL THOSE PEOPLE, looking at art. Together. In big air-conditioned rooms. It makes me feel giddy, and happy; freakishly, I love it. You can too. See you there.

Posted by Suzanne under Miscellany, News | Tags: anxiety, crowds, Free Tuesday, Frida Kahlo, MAPP Happening, Rene Yanez, Violeta Luna

This Saturday night, August 2nd, SFMOMA is joining The Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP) in a street-level, neighborhood arts extravaganza celebrating the work and life of Frida Kahlo.

During the early years of the SFMOMA, and the reign of founding director Grace McCann Morley, museum forays into the city were the rule rather than the exception; I have to say I’m very excited this is happening again now. If you’re not already familiar with the MAPP, it’s a lively bimonthly neighborhood arts and cultural event that transforms garages, backyards, studios, gardens, and local businesses into make-shift arts and performance spaces, “where daily life meets artistic innovation and expression.” An international collaboration of over 60 artists, MAPP events take place the first Saturday of every month in the Mission, beginning with family art activities (painting, circus, storytelling, music) during the day, followed by a full evening of exhibitions and performances.

This weekend’s MAPP has a special Frida Kahlo focus & an SFMOMA collaborative aspect: the museum is presenting two artist projects as part of the night’s events:

Violeta Luna, Embedded Frida: Procession and performance through the MAPP circuit; musical accompaniment by David Molina with John Ingle. Building on a long-standing performance piece, Violeta Luna’s Embedded Frida moves the now-archetypal Kahlo figure through the streets of the Mission. At various stations, Frida will leave her sickbed/palenque to enact the conflicting histories-of gender, nationality, modernity, and Mexicanidad-that she has come to represent. The procession will start at the Brava Theater at 9 p.m., with performance stops at New Door Ventures and the Red Poppy Art House along the way.

ALSO!!
René Yañez’s Pasión por Frida: Frida Kahlo Lookalike Model Search
Galería de la Raza, 2851 24th Street, 5:30 p.m.

Rene Yanez and his Frida Look-alikes c. 1992

In the spirit of the tableaux he created for the Mexican Museum’s 1992 exhibition Pasión por Frida Yañez will enlist four to five models over the age of 18 to enact Frida Kahlo paintings or moments in the artist’s life. These living scenes will be presented at SFMOMA on Sunday, September 28, the closing day of the museum’s Frida Kahlo exhibition. Auditions at Galería de la Raza will be conducted in the order of arrival, starting at 5:30p.m. Please come dressed as Frida Kahlo, already costumed and with makeup.

For more information about all the events scheduled on August 2, visit the MAPP site, or stop by the Red Poppy Art House (2698 Folsom Street at 23rd) on the day of the event to pick up a map of event locations.

Free! and open to the public
Family Mapp: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
MAPP special project “Frida Was Here”: 7 p.m. to midnight

Posted by Suzanne under News | Tags: Frida Kahlo, Frida Lookalikes, Live Art, Rene Yanez

Last Friday here at the SFMOMA, we celebrated the opening of one of the most highly anticipated exhibitions of the year: the SFMOMA Staff Art Exhibition. In a city where every cab driver is a filmmaker and every filmmaker is a musician is a writer is an artist is an installation crew member, it should come as no surprise that the SFMOMA staff has more than its share of serious artists of all kinds of media and practice. Now in its thirteenth iteration, this year’s exhibition includes 103 artists—twenty-five percent of the staff of the museum. The show takes up four floors of our administrative offices: two in the main building and two in the annex across the street. There’s a lot of great work and it’s fun to get to see what people make and do in their off-hours. Not to play favorites, but who in a cubicle doesn’t covet 1rst Private Office Cube? More pictures, of the opening party, and some installation shots, here. Don’t miss the Simon Blint, 76 and Counting. It’s a bit derivative I suppose, but fine work nevertheless.

Each year a different curatorial team of staff volunteers organizes the show. This year’s curators were Megan Brian, Development Assistant, Heather Holt, SECA Coordinator, and Erica Gangsei, Interpretation Associate. I caught up with Megan & Erica for a little curatorial Q&A:

Congratulations! And thank you for all your hard work putting the exhibition together. Can you give me a curatorial statement about this year’s SFMOMA staff art show? What is the exhibition called?

We really wanted a title that would refer to the role that the staff plays within the museum, but also the hours of labor that staff puts in outside the museum on their own art. We had a few ideas for titles, such as Make It Work (which we got from the TV show “Project Runway”) and My Museum (which we bogarted from the Media Arts department). Ultimately, we went with ART:WORK because it calls to mind both the “art work” one does as a museum professional and the artwork that one creates as a practicing artist.

Is it true that only SFMOMA Staff are eligible to submit work to the SFMOMA Staff Art Exhibition?

It is true, only SFMOMA staff can submit work to the SFMOMA Staff Art Exhibition. However, we define staff pretty broadly in this case. We accept work from regular staff, on-call staff, volunteers, docents, interns, and contracted employees.

Will you describe the submission and selection process?

We accepted all submissions from staff as long as their piece met installation and size requirements, so there wasn’t really a selection process. Everyone who wanted to contribute a piece submitted a form a month before the show with all the relevant details, and one week before the opening (almost) everyone dropped off their work. We then spent a few days really getting to know each piece and placing the work in the offices. The staff show takes place on four floors: two in the museum building and two in our Minna annex office building.

An interesting phenomenon occurs once the works are placed for the staff art show — people assume that they can “read” the placement of works as a value judgment. Some might think that more notable work might be placed near the Director’s and Curators’ offices and that, therefore, an artwork’s worth can be measured by how near or far it is. From the beginning we, as the curators for this show, rejected that premise. Every staff member and department plays an equally integral role in this institution. No one department is more important than another and no workspace is more prestigious than another. Simply put, there is no so-called “bad placement” for artwork in the staff art show.

How is this SFMOMA Staff Art Exhibition different than exhibitions in previous years?

We wanted to take a more green approach than in the past. Usually there are lots of posters around, announcing the show and all artwork is submitted on printed forms. This year we used email and the SFMOMA intranet to announce the show and post electronic submission forms. We were worried that we might not reach as many people through these channels, but in the end we had a whopping 103 artists submit work. This was actually the largest turnout ever in SFMOMA Staff Art Exhibition history!

What were some of the challenges and rewards of organizing the SFMOMA Staff Art Exhibition? What was the most surprising? The most enjoyable?

This year was the 13th annual staff art exhibition, and we’ve been joking that it was the cursed year. The night before artwork drop off, one curator got into a bike accident and dislocated her finger, making it difficult to handle art. Another curator had to have an emergency appendectomy the week of installation. The third remaining curator is still intact, but is doing her best to avoid all potentially hazardous situations for the duration of the exhibition.

But “Curse of the 13th Staff Art Show” aside, organizing this year’s exhibition has been truly rewarding. It was a lot of work on our side, especially when you consider that we were doing our regular full-time jobs in addition to the responsibility of curating the show. But it really was a huge team effort. Between Human Resources who planned the opening reception, the Installation crew who hung the whole show, and the 103 artists who spent countless hours actually creating all the spectacular artwork, this exhibition is truly a endeavor that is brought together by the SFMOMA staff as a whole. In the end, the biggest reward for us is to see the community that is created by this opportunity to share in the exceptional range of talent here at SFMOMA.

Posted by Suzanne under News, Profiles + Interviews