art in public spaces

Hank Willis Thomas' work "Priceless," a photograph created in response to his cousin Songha's murder using a photograph from his funeral overlaid with text derived from the MasterCard advertising campaign of the same name, has been reproduced as a banner outside of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (http://www.ybca.org/b_ybca.html) as part of the current Bay Area Now exhibition:

Apparently, someone tried to tear it down a few weeks ago:

two african american guys..one w/a beanie on... one w/brown leather jacket...i can't recall the other
they seemed like they were 20-30 yrs old.
granted i did not actually see them do it...it was just that the cabling was undone as they were yelling out...such as, "this shit is racist...they better take this shit down..." 'mastercard bullshit m*** f***" ...stuff like that.

Now, I won't pretend for a minute that those men read this blog and might be given the context within which to view the piece, but I hope Yerba Buena is able to take the opportunity to initiate a dialogue about Thomas' work and why this piece, in its effective mimicking of advertising, is so potent for viewers on the street who don't get the back story from a gallery label (3rd and Mission is a very busy intersection with SFMOMA and Yerba Buena on that block). Similar reponses used to (maybe still do?) happen with Carrie Mae Weems' exhibitions all the time. I think it shed light on the way in which museums and galleries speak to a particular audience and not another, even when they place art on the sidewalk.

brilliant

Thanks to Myra for calling my attention to this Cliff's Notes version of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet (click above on the post title). You can watch "the entire saga" at http://www.r-kelly.com/index_main.html; they're so awful they're magnificent.
Also check out Myra's response to it: http://mystrangelife.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/

I haven't really blogged since I got home from Taos a little more than a month ago. I expected as much; here I'm not sitting around all day with my time to myself. Sigh. But hopefully I'll get back to it.