Kirk Varnedoe on Jasper Johns

“Jasper Johns: more than the slayer of Abstract Expressionist giants,” The Art Newspaper, Oct. 1, 1996 (Issue 63), pp. 16-17.

By Jason Edward Kaufman

For the past two decades we have seen bits and pieces of Johns’s career. At last, the Museum of Modern Art is presenting him whole. The result is an oeuvre far greater than the sum of its proto-Pop, Minimalist, and Conceptualist parts

Museums Move into the Digital Future, Smartphones in Hand

Museums including MoMA, the Metropolitan, the Smithsonian and the Tate, and software companies like Google, are experimenting with new apps that meet audiences in the expanding virtual world. Technological leaps are rapidly making possible remote access to images and information about art museum collections, often on ipods, Androids and other smartphone devices.

MoMA’s Quest for Relevance

MoMA’s new installation of its post-1960 collection seeks relevance in current affairs, but for the institition to advance it must look beyond the United States and Europe and extend its intellectual purview to Asia, India, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. To neglect to do so is a form of cultural trade protectionism that will leave the museum behind the great globalist trend of the 21st century.

What Should Artists and Critics Urgently Care About?

What should artists and critics urgently care about? A Whitney Museum show of early performance-related art represents curators’ interest in art about art. It’s part of the performance art vogue, but much of the art is rather minor.