I have been living and working in Beijing’s “798” for a month now. I visited this most important arts district in China for a few exciting days in 2008. This time I feel I have lived in China and that might be why I cannot wait to get out of here. The city and art [...]
How could murderous African buffaloes have been cajoled into cow evolution? This steak shaped country where I was born even has a steer on its escudo [coat of arms]! How can I not eat beef down here? I was lost in these thoughts when dad in his habitual drunkenness announced, “No one has ever eaten [...]
Dallas Artist Chapman Kelley, who asked the Dallas Museum of Art to sell his work back to him because he didn’t like the way it was displayed, sued the Chicago Parks District in 2006 over similar concerns about the alteration of an outdoor sculpture of his. Kelley is associated with activist John Viramontes and the [...]
My second summer in one year is ending and this Uruguayan beach town has gone from sleepy to dormant. I have been waking up early though because of a fruit tree in the back of the house, a tree overloaded with sweet figs that are bringing the full spectrum of local birds. Prominent among them [...]
If lost in Istanbul, you should follow the city’s spine to find your way. That keeps you from climbing back the steep inclines when you take a wrong turn. If that fails, you may head to the water and walk around the chanting mosques, the sound of the city exhaling. By the sea, by the [...]
The Venice Film Festival is still under way as I write this article. This is not the Oscars, folks! It isn’t an award ceremony but an eleven-day long fest of movie premieres. There are a few awards at the end, but it is all about seeing and talking about cinema. Friends who had attended the [...]
It is the eve of the public opening of La Biennale di Venezia, I am making my way to San Marco from party to party through the aqua alta (high water) that is fittingly flooding this moribund city. I keep my shoes dry by jumping from lamp post to planter or stone while tourists walk [...]
Workers are managing to unload large art-type crates from barges at the Giardini in Venezia. The Biennale is still two weeks away so I am heading to the Murano Museum for an exhibit preview in the heat of day, the assumption being apparently that there are better things to do in the islands at more [...]
