I've been very busy guest curating the State of Wonder radio program for Saturday on OPB but here are some links:

Nanobots are going to reinvent kinetic sculpture and installation, among other things.

Three views of art criticism in Europe.

Of course clay is hot these days... it has been for the past 6-7 years as the careers of Ken Price and Jessica Jackson Hutchins made plain long ago. The news is the bandwagoning that has started because of the latest Whitney Biennial. There is an art market to feed you know. The other interesting bit is how little resistance there really ever was to it... in craft circles they made it seem like the medium were persona non grata but its always been the message not the medium in contemporary art. The message has always been boutique, with limited production = value and it is tied to a larger discussion over design. It isn't craft (which is technique) that is crucial but "design" because it encompasses craft and gives it an outlet. Contemporary Art works in parallel and pantomime to the Design World, which is the bleeding edge of production. Think of Contemporary Art as the court jester to the court of culture and Design is the army.

Franco a credibility problem for the art world? Basically, it is all too easy and anybody who gets too wrapped up as "for or against" is wasting their time on an easy mark. For the first time ever I'm linking without reading the article. Click at your own risk.

Yes MoMA is jumping the shark and it sounds just like Deitch did during the MOCA debacle. Lowery's claim of being radical doesn't hold water... they are very thin gestures at new media and genres and doesn't really address the bigger problems MoMA already has since it has started diminishing the scholarship... the kind that was a step above academics. By always meeting in the middle ground Lowery is going down as the man who ruined MoMA. His days are numbered (but probably not this year) but the question is will MoMA ever recover?