Museum Legs: Fluxus and Friends with Art Shows: Queens College, Bontecou, Pneumatic Trash Systems

In April, two friends curated shows for the first time, and I taught Business School for Artists in Maureen Connor's "social practice" class at Queens College. First, a preview of Veronica's show:

Maureen Connor is a former Fluxus artist who has taught at Queens College for years. She also has an interesting body of current work, one project in particular called Personnel (the fifth segment of which is called Casual Friday). I met Maureen because she learned about Trade School but couldn't go, and so asked if she could barter something for me to come speak to her class. She arranged a small honorarium and offered to videotape the lecture as an exchange. When I met her for my ride out to Queens and saw the video equipment she was lugging, I realized the likelihood that a former Fluxus artist is also an ace videographer. Here's Maureen:

Here's her class:

I gave the original "what do art and business have to do with each other?" lecture that kicked off Business School for Artists, and then did a round robin to hear about their own projects. Maureen had structured the class where a social agenda or idea would become each person's artwork. Then she explained to me that this is in fact a field of artistic practice called "Social Practice." Fair enough. I was impressed by how many people had full-time work outside of school, and the age range might have been twenty to sixty, and included people unafraid to give pushback (E.g., when we collectively realized the ways in which Porter's Five Forces does not suit social work. For instance, are your competitors the other people championing your cause, that is, your peers, or the people championing your adversary's cause, that is, the pollutors or whoever else keeps you from realizing your mission?) It was really fun, and seemed both energizing to them and to me to see them get tools they might use.

In a resurgence of museum-going post-Museum Legs--now that it's not a working holiday--I went to Friday at the Met with Billy. I almost successfully jumped high enough to photo Temple of Dendur event causing it to be closed:

And then we got a better angle, and earshot of the chanting, from the Japanese big wooden table room above.

As last men standing when the museum closed, we were officially part of the "guard sweep" of the hallways, raking all remaining visitors to the front doors. I can't say they were psyched to have their picture taken.

It was an exciting week of Friends with Art Shows. In this case, friends who are curators. 1. Veronica (Roberts) curated her first show, a collection of Lee Bontecou's work at MoMA. She was chosen as both a Critic's Pick in Time Out and a best upcoming exhibitions (presumably in the world) by Artnet.com. The night before the opening, she invited a group of us to a private walk through. It was as if there is a Newton's second law of equal and opposite reactions re the guards above, as we all walked in to the empty, closed galleries, unencumbered:

Here's the assembled group in the elevator (me behind the camera):

Veronica and me in the gallery:

The installation shot of everybody just sort of taking it all in, before V gave us a guided tour:

The gentlemen overlooking the garden:

Lee Bontecou (bon'-teh-cue) was one of the only women represented by Leo Castelli Gallery, alongside the big boys of Pop and Abstract Expressionist art in the 1960s. She then became reclusive. Several years ago, a curator discovered her in her rural studio in Pennsylvania, and was shocked to learn of ethereally beautiful sculptures she had been working on, uninterruptedly, over an eighteen year span. (As Veronica put it, anticipating her audience, a curator's wet dream.) This centerpiece of the exhibition is one such work:

And check out the shadow cast on the base.

I have to think Veronica's work lighting a Calder mobile show once (the early wire coat hanger mobiles) helped here. Here's Veronica giving us a talk on the work -- the usual combination of passion and good humor and easy erudition, to say nothing of the speaking presence and charm and ability to project that makes her a popular lecturer in the octogenerian set.

I was wishing I could recall everything Veronica said.

The second show was Juliette (Spertus)'s "Fast Trash" on the pneumatic trash collection system on Roosevelt Island, where I had never been. The buildings near the F train (an astonishingly short 90-second ride from the office, which seems a world a way) are modern, but with a wall of appealing green on the Manhattan side.

Here is the inside of the gallery( Juliette in the middle, back toward the camera) watching a video Greg Whitmore made. The clear tube snaking around the wall is a pneumatic demo, more on that in a second.

In all seriousness, it's possible some of these people are very senior in the Department of Sanitation.

Here's Emma, juliette's sister with her boyfriend Mark who had named her "the motherfurker" on account of a particularly involved Tofurkey at Thanksgiving a couple of years ago. They were in from California for the occasion. Emma's an artist (and also click here for her blog).

Small children were enthralled by the pneumatic tube (think ATM teller at the drive-thru) that went around the gallery:

It was pretty great, with an uncanny, swooshing uptake noise and roller coaster trajectory. Some general installation shots:

Darby and Galen, husband and son of the curator, with Jerusha:

Gallery visitors, including a radio host and Roosevelt Island resident and friend:

Jerusha with Lindy:

I had to leave early to go to a Cowboy Junkies concert I had long promised Adrian I would see. I was stand-in since his wife Bader was traveling. (I think he unabashedly jokes, "fake wife.") How much did I appreciate the signage at the venue, the Society for Ethical Culture:

I had no idea and was cheered to learn that the Cowboy Junkies are a family band -- two brothers, one sister -- and a Canadian family band at that.

On the way there, I didn't appeciate so much, but found remarkably striking, that Whole Foods started offering plastic cutlery, wrapped in plastic.

Does that seem tone deaf re their mission? I can't tell if this is one more sign people have generally stopped noticing things. How else would it be possible at the Brooklyn Half Marathon weeks later for so many eleven-minute milers in headphones to hang out in the frontrunner lane, after a race official had cleared traffic for the front runner starting to lap people? Do you not notice you are being passed by someone running twice as fast as you? Over and over again, sometimes by groups at a time?

Noticing often repays effort, as in the Antony Gormley installation "Event Horizon" at Madison Square Park, men on buildings: