In Museums
Modern-Art Museum Leads Nonprofits in Billionaire Board Members
November 20, 2010
Twelve billionaires sit on the board of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the most of any nonprofit institution examined in a survey by Forbes magazine.
The Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit investment fund, came in second with nine billionaires, and New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center came third, with eight.
Four billionaires sit on three of the 10 boards the magazine examined: the financier Henry Kravis, the money manager Leon Black, the energy magnate David Koch, and the oil heir David Rockefeller Sr.
Maggie Neilson, an adviser at Global Philanthropy Group’s Los Angeles office, said organizations seek super-rich board members not just for their money but also for their connections with other potential donors and with professionals who can provide institutions with marketing, legal, and technology services.
The Unmonumental Lean : Progression in Contemporary Art
September 2, 2010
By HIBA ALI
In contemporary art the theme of a casual, ephemeral, and undifferentiated approach in regards to art making is reaching its most potent form. Aptly exemplified in a three-part exhibition at the New Museum in New York City, this pivotal theme is focused on the idea of the unmonumental, where utilitarian objects are taken to a corrosive and corrupted verge. An important aspect in these exhibitions is exploring the nonexistence of once hegemonic symbols by subjecting the daily environment to a cyclic negotiation of questioning. The interrogation of practical materials that consumers surrounded themselves with lies in the evaluation of importance, relevance, and unquestionable reliance on these materials. The first show addressed this subject through sculptural images, the second through audio, and the third through digital media.
The image based show at New Museum debuted on December 1st 2007 entitled Unmontumental: The Object in 21st Century. It is a cumulative exploration of assemblage of diaphoretic cultural images. These images were at times depicted in a sculpture form, as is the case with Johnathan Hernadez’s Mural. Commercial images evoke a recognizable relevancy while a minimal geometric design subsumed the view of this piece. Widespread in commercials, this collection of relational images molted together not like a garbled melting pot but a volcano of ephemeral trash in complete disregard of icons.
The experience of living in an unmonumental world was championed in the second exhibition at New Museum. This show entitled The Sound of Things: Unmonumental Audio opened on February 13th, 2008 and was encased by inaudible whispers, lyric melodies, piercing noises, and industrial clatter. Various modes were utilized to create works for the show.
On February 15th, 2008, Montage: Unmonumental Online was the final addition to describe umonumental ideals. The output of this work was depicted through various media platforms on the Internet. A collection of images were conglomerated as a mural on rhizome.org. Similar to Hernandez’s sculptural images in Mural, the work depicted a collage of visual material particular to the time the artist created this work through a Technicolor schema, hyper rainbows, and psychedelic patterns. The work for the exhibition carries a sensory overload of images that, by their sheer numerous quantity, become overbearing.
A recent exhibition informed by the causal nature of Unmonumnetal opened at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York on March 12th of this year. The exhibit titled (Lean) had an antithetical response in its reification of monumentality. Contrary to one’s expectation, the exhibit stressed that through leaning objects do not appear casual, but are heightened in their legitimacy.
The theme of fragmentation of pragmatic entities is thus depicted through various mediums in contemporary art showing a new trend in the genre.
