A look at the Detroit Institute of the Arts bid to separate itself from city ownership.

Check out this interview with Carolee Schneemann in the Guardian... Women and their position in the visual arts is turning out to be THE topic of 2014 (especially since the last 12 months have been so dude oriented at an institutional level.

Tyler Green on the restoration of Pollock's Guggenheim Mural. I don't put a lot of cred into the before and after GIF though. I saw the painting in Des Moines before being shipped off to the Getty and it certainly wasn't as dull as the "before" image indicates. The yellows were very apparent but still I'm sure it needed some of the TLC that the Getty was equipped to give it.

Pictures of Paris before gentrification...

I've updated the Whitney Biennial links several times and its interesting how the Portland2014 Biennial seems to pantomime it. There is a lot of monkey see monkey do when most curators do survey shows, which is why having a kind of thesis like the Hammer's Thing or the Tacoma Art Museum's last NW Biennial focus on interdisciplinary art make sense. Otherwise you see the same show (better and worse versions) over and over again. I still believe these shows are important social events but unless they take a stance and make a point of really highlighting strong new developments in art (with enough space/focus to do so) these things are just anonymous vehicles designed mostly to benefit the presenting institution. An art historical thread like Robert Storr's focus on the grotesque in 2004 at Site Santa Fe meant something... Kara Walker even debuted her first video piece there. The 1999 Oregon Biennial redefined art in Oregon and introduced 4-5 new stars to the scene. That is the sort of discovery that makes a survey memorable. Presenting artists or art that looks just like hundreds of other recent shows just doesn't differentiate the exercise of a survey enough.