Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

Today let us bow to the Mail Queen, aka Patricia Tavenner,and her long reign as a contributor to and curator within the global network of mail art and artists’ stamps. The Oakland-based artist adopted this nom de plume around the time that she began teaching courses on the “hidden” history of women artists. In 1972 she cofounded the Northern California Women’s Caucu... More

Location & Practice: A Roundtable Discussion

In this brief excerpt from the exhibition catalogue for Six Lines of Flight: Shifting Geographies in Contemporary Art, Amy Franceschini of Futurefarmers, in conversation with SFMOMA curators Dominic Willsdon and Apsara DiQuinzio, talks about what it has meant for Futurefarmers to have made a commitm... More

Sunday, October 28, 2012

I had no idea it was going to be a Bay Area art reunion when photographer Mariah Robertson convinced me to help make costumes at MOMA/PS1′s First Annual Artist’s Halloween Carnival and Parade. I also had no idea — until the last minute — that Courtney Love was the official judge for the costume contest.

I ... More

In 2013 SFMOMA will close for an ambitious expansion planned to last nearly three years. Reflecting on the closure, grupa o.k. asked several friends and colleagues to imagine their own proposals for a museum in San Francisco. Today’s proposal is by Zarouhie Abdalian.

The Museum of the Witnessing Object is dedicated to exhibiting objects as a... More

In Summer 2013 SFMOMA will close its doors to the public to accommodate construction for an impressive expansion, currently planned to last nearly three years. And while these months of closure will be filled with off-site programming and exhibitions at other places, it will nevertheless be felt keenly among those who care about art and its institu... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“A long time ago (or so it seems), people made films just for the fun of it. Then someone got the idea that film had to hurt. No pain, no gain. Somehow film showcases decided they were right. Today people still make films just for the fun of it. And we show them at the No Nothing Cinema.” — Dean Snider, 1983, co-founder, No Nothing Cinema (1982-1997, now New Nothing Cinema)

T... More

Show Me the Money is an earnest attempt to get people to talk about money in the visual arts.

This is Part 2 of an interview with Archana Horsting of Kala Art Institute. Go here to see Part 1.

graphic developed with Lauren Venell

Do you ever start programs because you find a funding opportunity, or does it work the other way around (you develop the project and then you look for the funding), or do you develop programs in partnership with a funder?

Archana Horsting: Well, all of those happened. While we have a long history of just doing and then finding the funding as we go along. You’re better off convincing people and educating your funders about what you want to do and what you are... More

Call it the revenge of the hippies. Many people forget that back in the 1960s the hippies were just as obsessed with corporate corruption as they were with psychedelic drugs. When people talk about hippies these days they always forget about all their experiments with alternate economic systems and all the volunteering the long-haired kids did. Man... More

Show Me the Money is an earnest attempt to get people to talk about money in the visual arts.

For this installment of Show Me the Money, I will be focusing on the Kala Art Institute. Kala’s mission is to help artists sustain their creative work over time through its artists-in-residence and fellowship programs, and to increase appreciation of this work through exhibitions, custom printing, art sales, public programs, and education. Additionally, Kala offers art education to the general public and public school children through its on-site classes and workshops and its Artists-in-Schools program.

We are at an interesting point in the histories of nonprofits. In the burst of utopian exubera... More

To wrap up the “(Re)Brand USA” series, a meditation on nation-branding by guest contributor Karen Fiss. (All previous entries can be found here.)

Though thankful to be writing in the wake of an Obama victory, I’m going to take as a departure point for my reflections on the practice of nation-branding Jeremy Mende’s imagined outcome of a Republican triumph. Envisioning the need for a “sweeping public relations campaign” in 2014 after an ensuing foreign policy quagmire, Mende’s project depicts the official installation of a ... More

Our regular feature Collection Rotation. Each month a guest organizes a mini “exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome artist Jason Fulford.

Here is a proposal for a group show — one room, 13 pieces. The room should have a door, hand-painted with the title of the show: November Pictures. Headphones are avail... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“…artistic and cultural projects that take a critical and emancipatory approach and attempt to resist the new oligarchy and its cultural alliances are emptied of real political substance and neutralized through the process of commodification. At the same time, the fervent embrace of iconic architecture…and the inflexible replication of the conventions of Western artistic modernism… have a devastating tendency to undermine the most inventive and original aspects of local cultural and creative energy.” Hou Hanru

Three more spaces from our Art Microhubs Tumblr resource project, collecting information about the smaller-scale art and culture spaces you organize, frequent, or love. We’re highlighting a few on Open Space each week, and planning a broadcast conversation among contributors later this year. Participate!

What’s it called and where is it? ... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“The event resulted in a collaborative network that exceeded the boundaries of a single institution and its authority.” —Lew Thomas on 8 x 10, 1975

In case you haven’t heard yet, a new Barry McGee mural was just completed in Brooklyn. It was commissioned by Vanity Fair and kicks some serious ass. The mural adorns a 100-foot wall on the Mark Morris Dance Center in Fort Greene. It is refreshing because it does not pretend to be a site-specific community mural, as so many murals are these d... More

Over the four weeks leading up to the presidential election, four separate designers/design firms have tackled the not-so-small problem of rebranding the United States. More detailed posts on this project series can be read here and here. Three weeks ago was Jeremy Mende/MendeDesign. Two weeks ago, MGMT. design. Last week, Playlab, Inc. This we... More

Our regular feature Collection Rotation. Each month someone special organizes a mini “exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome SFMOMA’s Anne Bast Davis.

Orphans in the Museum

Once, in my past position as intellectual property associate at SFMOMA, I received a request from a writer who wanted to reproduce a work by Tina Modotti, the Italian-born photographer-turned-communist-revolutionary who worked closely with Edward Weston (and whose photographs of Mexico were featured in a recent SFMOMA exhibition... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“Several intentions were announced in early press releases, but one of the most important functions of the gallery was to serve as a (store)front for my ‘guerilla art’ activities, for which the imprimatur of the gallery structure confers legitimacy and lays down a smokescreen … A basic philosophy of the Samore Gallery has always been subversion, sabotage, and upheaval.”

�... More

“The medium of performance, with its economical nature and inherent element of surprise … has proved most appropriate to the precari­ous, unstable context of life in Cali..” — Michèle Faguet

Over the four weeks leading up to the presidential election, four separate designers/design firms will tackle the not-so-small problem of rebranding the United States. More detailed posts on this project series can be read here and here. Two weeks ago was Jeremy Mende / MendeDesign. Last week, MGMT. design. This week: Playlab, Inc.

The San ... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

The name A.R.E. was open to interpretation, encouraged in fact by a chalkboard at the stairs. This was apt for a space that was interested in the present moment, resistant to being fixed and going on the path toward institutionalization taken by the first wave of alternative spaces in the 1970s. Artists for Revolution in the Eighties is how A.R.E. was best known and listed on the group cal... More

In July of 1976, I was fresh off my Kindergarten graduation from Hadley Elementary, eager to join the older kids who went to school for a whole day. No more of this going home at noon nonsense. In order to enjoy this privilege, though, one last obligation loomed: Marching in the Bicentennial parade. In Revolutionary War-era garb.

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“Bay Area artists’ communities rub up against (and are occasionally funded by) the power centers of wealthy risk-takers, disciples of innovation who possess the will to promote social transformation while remaining largely uncritical of (or actively complicit in) military technology and the erosion of civil guarantees of access to resources... More

Show Me the Money is an earnest attempt to get people to talk about money in the visual arts.

graphic designed by Lauren Venell

Works Progress is currently run by artists Colin Kloecker and Shanai Matteson. Based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, it focuses on creating “collaborative projects that inspire, inform, and connect; catalyzing relationships across creative and cultural boundaries; and providing new platforms for public engagement.” Works Progress began in 2009 as a group effort with three major projects: Salon Saloon, a live-action... More

Two more spaces from our Art Microhubs Tumblr resource project, aggregating information about the important smaller-scale art and culture spaces you organize, frequent, or love. We’re highlighting a few on Open Space each week, and thinking about a broadcast conversation among contributors late fall. Participate!

What’s it called and where... More

The presidential debate wasn’t even half way over when the Facebook page for “We have women in binders” reached 80,000 likes. Just as quickly, countless silly images could be seen on Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and on blogs across the political spectrum. In case you missed it, here are a few of them.

Over the next month leading up to the presidential election, four separate designers/design firms will tackle the not-so-small problem of rebranding the United States. A more detailed post on this project series can be read here. Last week was Jeremy Mende / MendeDesign. This week: MGMT. design from Brooklyn, NY.

Is there anything more American tha... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

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