Where Are The Women?
Posted on May 13, 2008
Filed Under Arts/Culture, Women | Comments Off on Where Are The Women?
The collective Guerrilla Girls was founded in 1985 with a mission to bring attention to issues of gender and race within the art world. Through posters and public actions, hard facts and a bit of humor they have confronted inequality in major museums and Hollywood.
In 1985 they picketed the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At that time MoMa was running a show that purported to be the definitive survey of contemporary painting and sculpture, and only 13 of the 169 artists featured were women. Nobody really paid any attention to the Guerilla Girls so, why they put on their masks – and they haven’t taken them off since.
The Guerrilla Girls have publicized that only 3% of artworks exhibited in the Met’s Modern Art galleries are made by women. Conversely, 90% of the Met’s solo exhibitions consisted of work by white male artists. The Brooklyn Museum weighs in at 23%, which is less than the Whitney’s 30% but more than both the Tate Modern and the L.A. County Museum at 2% each.
New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz laments that as recent as 2005, only 16 out of 410 works on display (that’s less than 0.04%) at the 4th and 5th floors of MoMA were made by women artists. Furthermore, only 17% of the artists shown in New York galleries, according to Saltz’s count, are women. The perception that things have gotten better for women artists is false. It’s even worse for non-white artists. The numbers in some cases have actually gotten worse since the ’70s.
Women make up more than 50% of the population in the U.S. and 60% of students in art schools are now women. So, it’s logical that 50-60% of the artists showing in galleries, art magazines, and museums ought to be women. Museums and institutions are supported by our tax dollars. We deserve to be fairly represented!
David Lynch on Mobile Movies
Posted on May 7, 2008
Filed Under Film/Video, Multimedia, Technology | Comments Off on David Lynch on Mobile Movies
Tech and telecom companies around the world have been betting big on the next frontier: mobile. Earlier this week, the NYTimes reported that mobile TV is spreading in the U.S. and Europe as more and more people are watching direct broadcasts on their cellphones, and more and more companies are investing in infrastructure, devices, and programming. Japan leads the direct mobile TV audience, with 20 million cellphones equipped with TV receivers, followed by South Korea with 8.2 million.
Now wait a second. Before mobile operators do to TV or movies what the ipod did to music and video (which is shift from collective listening/viewing to individualized on-demand listening/viewing), please watch this absolute gem of a video with filmmaker David Lynch, one of the best American directors working today. (I’m not sure when this was recorded, but it’s arguably one of my most favorite finds on YouTube.)
French Kiss
Posted on May 7, 2008
Filed Under Arts/Culture, Gossip, Music | Comments Off on French Kiss
Madonna partied like a rock star at a concert Tuesday night in Paris. In between swigging champagne and strumming her guitar, the material mom managed to swap some spit with a lady mid-act, in a move reminiscent of her lip lock with Britney Spears at the MTV awards in the summer of 2003. Madonna is currently promoting her new album “Hard Candy.”
