howcouldiknow » MCA

On my way and looking forward to it

Jessica Pierotti — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:36:05 +0000

Finals at RIT have finished and tomorrow night I am hopping on the train for eleven hours to go spend my week off in Chicago. I am excited to get away as well as run around the city and see some art and meet some people. I have been taking a class for the last eleven weeks called Museums and Collecting in which we discussed in-depth aspects of museums from public education, curation, funding, and the future of these institutions. We also made many field trips to the small museums of Rochester. It was exciting when Chicago museums came up in class and I felt familiar with the discussions because I went to many of them this summer. This class got me really excited about looking at these public structures in a different light and possibly be more appreciative of the underlying complexities.

Things of interest to me

Art Insititute of Chicago – Irving Penn: A Tribute, Konstantin Grcic: Decisive Design, On the Scene: Jason Lazarus, Wolfgang Plöger, Zoe Strauss, and more of course including spending more time in the Modern Wing.

Museum of Contemporary Photography – Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Culture

Chicago MCA – Liam Gillick: Three perspectives and a short scenario as well as Artists in Depth: Liam Gillick, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt that puts Liam Gillick’s work into a historical context of contemporaneous artists as well as preceding works. AND! Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution 1968–2008

I am particularly excited about stopping by Zolla/Lieberman to see Garrett Durant’s Weighting Days. I met Garrett when I was living in Chicago and I really enjoy his work and am excited to see him getting a show at a gallery like Zolla/Lieberman.

Check him out.

(P.S. This is one of my favorites)

I would be glad to hear any other suggestions of shows going on while I am in town Monday through Sunday.

MCA

Jessica Pierotti — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:44:30 +0000

I am interning at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago two days a week this summer. I am helping in the photography archives and assisting the staff photographer. Currently the Take your time: Olafur Eliasson exhibition is here and we spent some time photographing his installations. I first saw Olafur’s work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in December of 2007. I have learned that the SFMOMA organized this exhibition which explains why it fit with their space better than it does here. From my understanding, as the organizers, the SFMOMA funded and sponsored this exhibition and it was tailored for their space. When Take your time: Olafur Eliasson travels the SFMOMA is credited as the organizing institution. I enjoyed wandering around when no one was in our Museum on Monday, one of my favorites being the Room for one color, 1997. A hallway is lit with yellow mono-frequency lights, when inside vision is reduced to shades of yellow where details and texture are enhanced. So we photographed a little bit around the museum then I spent the rest of Monday meeting new people and attempting to remember names. I am looking forward to the 13th of June for the opening of Elements of Photography. They are currently taking down William Kentridge (which had been on display for a little more than a year) to put up a photography exhibition featuring Hiroshi Sugimoto, Luisa Lambri, Walead Beshty, Adam Ekberg and others.

Moving

Jessica Pierotti — Tue, 26 May 2009 05:13:00 +0000

I am leaving my apartment of one year for a summer away in Chicago. I am sitting on my floor in an empty apartment, marveling at the change the last year has brought to me. A year ago I was so very frightened by the concept of moving up here; all alone it was completely terrifying. The first two weeks I slept fully clothed somehow as a buffer to the discomfort and fear. It was a lonely place for a while, partially because I had boxes stacked up and a blank canvas of an apartment. Yet now here I am again, and the bare walls and empty floors now seem comfortable. This is an empty space but one that I have conquered and survived; not just an apartment, my first time living alone. Which is not just about being responsible to remember bills, turning off lights and cleaning up after yourself. It was about keeping myself alive and happy without someone to come home to. It was a difficult and necessary year, painful but worth it. So now off to Chicago for three months to live with Ian and intern at the MCA. I’m ready to move on, get me out of here.