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Friday notePad 04.12.2013

By Peggy Roalf   Friday April 12, 2013

The mid-February fire that damaged Pratt Institute’s landmark Main Building destroyed work by 35 of the 44 senior drawing and painting students in the BFA program. For many of them, most of the work they produced during their four years of study went up in smoke, leaving them with nothing to show for their thesis exhibitions at Pratt, or for grant and graduate school applications.

The administration quickly organized temporary studios and provided art supplies so the students could get back to work. Art dealer Larry Gagosian, whose art-filled Amagansett house was badly damaged by fire in 2011, spoke to a friend and art collector, Aby Rosen, an owner of the Seagram Building, and Mr. Rosen offered the empty eighth floor for the senior thesis exhibition. The New York Times reported, “The students wanted a show in Manhattan, and this is like a dream come true,” said Thomas F. Schutte, the college’s president.

The final selections will be made by Eugenie Tsai, curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum. Bruce Newman, a Pratt trustee emeritus, contributed $50,000 for the framing, erecting of temporary display walls, lighting, hanging of the pictures and other costs of the installation. The exhibition, which students decided to call “Flameproof,” will be open to the public May 9-14. More.

 

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Above: Portia Munson | Reflecting Pool opens today at P.P.O.W. 535 West 22nd Street, NY, NY.

 

An exhibition of Richard Serra’s early work opens today at David Zwirner’s new gallery space. Dating from 1966 to 1971, the works on view, drawn from museum and private collections, represent the beginning of the artist’s innovative, process-oriented experiments with nontraditional materials, such as vulcanized rubber, neon, and lead, in addition to key early examples of his work in steel. Also featured will be a program of the artist’s films from this period.

The interplay of gravity and material that was introduced early in his career set the stage for Serra’s ongoing engagement with the spatial and temporal properties of sculpture. This exhibition aims to reconsider the groundbreaking practices and ideas that so firmly situate Serra in the history of 20th Century art. David Zwirner, 537 West 20th Street, NY, NY.

 

Seattle’s Photo Center NW has announced a workshop on how to prepare entries for a juried show, which will take place April 24-25. This workshop covers all the basics —scanning negatives, preparing our files, titling the work, finding which juried shows best match your work, editing a project and artist statement in order to make sure that what you are spending on entry fees is worth every penny. They will also review how to prepare for the Photo Center’s 18th Annual Photo Competition Exhibition. Information.

 

Finally, United Photo Industries just sent a reminder that the deadline for submissions of photographs for The Fence is Monday, April 15. The Fence in Brooklyn Bridge Park will be unveiled in June with a party in the park and will be on view all summer long leading up to Photoville in the Fall. The Fence in Boston will be unveiled in May at the beginning of the Flash Forward FestivalInformation.

 


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