OnTheCusp.org

This month at iMOCA

This month, iMOCA brings a number of things to check out.  Of special note, at least fo us at OtC, one of our favorite art bloggers, Tyler Green will be coming to town to give a talk.  I will certainly be there and I recommend you make plans to attend.  Until then, check out these exhibits iMOCA has brought us.

Opening Friday November 7th, 6 - 9 pm:  Hansel and Gretel: Never Eat a House

• iMOCA features fresh interpretations of characters from the fairytale in our galleries from The New Yorker and by well-known contemporary artists including Roz Chast, Ian Falconer, Ana Juan, Ed Koren and William Wegman from a New York show curated by the Gallery Met at the Metropolitan Opera.

• On display at the Central Library   through January 10 are re-interpretations of the story's characters by 17 Indiana visual artists whom iMOCA asked to tackle the tale. The contemporary pieces explore such themes as when it's OK to eat someone else's home without asking (Cindy Hinant) and why a mother would abandon her children in the dark woods (Hilda Andres). Scott Grow's sculpture provides a twist by depicting Hansel and Gretel as gingerbread men made from wood.

These exhibitions are part of a collaboration with the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and the Indianapolis Opera in anticipation of the Indianapolis Opera's performance of Hansel and Gretel opening November 21st.

And mark your calendars for November 13th when iMOCA brings arts blogger Tyler Green to lecture on Ten Things I Hate About Contemporary Art, at 7 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Central Library.  The Wall Street Journal calls Green's Modern Art Notes "the most influential of all visual arts blogs."

When Tyler Green lectures on Ten Things I Hate About Contemporary Art, at 7 p.m. November 13 at the Central Library's Clowes Auditorium,     expect     caustic, hilarious commentary from the writer of what The Wall Street Journal     calls "the most influential of all visual arts blogs."

Modern Art Notes (www.artsjournal.com/man) includes breaking news and provocative, no-holds-barred commentary on exhibits, artists, the organizations that feature them and the media that cover them. In a post on the design of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., for example, Green wrote: "The new monument feels as if a fascist architect had designed a food court for the Mall of America, and then accidentally shipped it to Washington." (He later found out the architect had, in fact, designed a mall food court.)

Green's chatty style belies the power the Washington, D.C.-based critic has gained in attracting a substantial following over the past six years. A New York Times art critic resigned from the board of a major cultural institution after Green spotlighted the conflict of interest. Green also broke the story of the controversial resignation of the former head of the Getty Trust in Los Angeles.

Although Green has written for The Wall Street Journal and other influential print publications ("dead-tree media," he calls them), he's not shy about biting the hands that feed him. When the Journal ran another writer's story about America's art museums being in "trouble," for instance, Green methodically picked its "weak, often speculative" examples apart and then concluded the story was "goofy, a misguided waste of space."

Green is a former art critic for Bloomberg News and Washington-based critic for Artnet Magazine. His commentary has aired on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Admission to Ten Things I Hate about Contemporary Art is free, with Q&A following the lecture.

Green's lecture is part of Hansel and Gretel collaboration, Lost in the Arts, between the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA), the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and the Indianapolis Opera.