Dive into the archives.

  • Saltz and the new definition of “dickish”

    I’ve resisted commentary on the more prolific Jerry Saltz drama taking place these days on the grounds that any refutation of a critic’s reasoned argument that opens by calling said critic “dickish” is not worthy of intelligent consideration - although the underlying dickishness of the hollow discourse in itself is intelligently examined here.
    Instead, I’m backtracking […]

  • Tomorrow: Art Museum Wager Resolved… oh, and Superbowl XLIV, too

    Come next week I expect to bring some meatier critical fare to the table, but in the meantime I have paid writing obligations that can’t afford to get sidelined by playing referee to excessive blog histrionics.
    So… how about that not-so-local sports team?
    Even though my play-off picks leading up to tomorrow’s Superbowl were ridiculously bad […]

  • Vital Donation Via Vital Africa

    The media invite for this morning’s launch event for the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s Vital Africa year of exhibitions was sweetened by the dangling carrot of a donation announcement that drew a substantial crowd and mild speculations that proved essentially accurate. Frequent AGH benefactors Joey and Tony Tanenbaum already have a well-known history of bequests […]

  • Top Five Hamilton Hits of 2009

    When I spontaneously decided to compile a Top Five of Hamilton art events and exhibitions last year, the job practically happened on its own - 2008 was a promising year full of unexpected things in wonderful places, from Christ’s Church Cathedral to Cootes Paradise to 270 Sherman. There was a forward momentum that I had […]

  • ‘A Field Guide to Observing Art’ at McMaster

    After a series of delays and hints over the past week or so on this blog, I’m glad to finally have a sufficient window of opportunity to say a few things about A Field Guide to Observing Art at the McMaster Museum of Art. While I’ve already commented in passing on this exhibition’s value as […]

  • Three Reasons Why Power Brokers are Bad for Art

    Having just fallen under a sudden avalanche of task-mastering, today’s post has been outsourced to the wider wisdom of the internet: yes, it’s a links post. Let’s just pretend this is an episode of Connections, and hope the whirl of to-do’s settles in time for something profound come Friday.
    From CultureGrrl - “United We Serve”: Should […]

  • Picasso prints uncovered at McMaster Museum of Art

    As announced yesterday on McMaster University’s Daily News feed, a complete set of Pablo Picasso’s SueƱo y Mentira de Franco prints in their original case were recently discovered in the Museum’s archives by Adam Belovari, a fourth-year art history student assigned to research some of the lesser-known portions of the collections as a Humanities 3W03 […]

  • Stendhaliance: From Mona Lisa to Asia Argento

    I did warn last week that August can be a slow month for art, and with many of the other art blogs I frequent running at half-capacity as a result, there have been days that seem to do little but reinforce this seasonal disorder of ennui and downright exodus. This was perhaps most tellingly demonstrated […]

  • On “Being included in revised versions of art history”

    Even after taking a lovely weekend off to mentally and physically reboot in the beer-and-barbeque laden crucible of a post-Canada Day weekend, I’ve come back to the internet to find that commentary around Jerry Saltz’s crusade to amend the scarcity of female artists in MoMA’s Painting and Sculpture collection is still going strong. Edward Winkleman […]