Engineer's Daughter

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guess who came to dinner?

Now through the end of February Birmingham's Black British arts and culture center the Drum is hosting an exhibition called Guess Who is Coming to Dinner.  Focusing on some of that city's first mixed-race families, the show was put together by Birmingham native Tracey O'Loughlin, herself the child of a black father and a white mother.  Chris Arnot spoke to her about her memories of growing up mixed-race:

She says of her father, who died 14 years ago: "He was 6ft 4ins and 18 stone, so we didn't get too many comments when he was around." There were plenty of hostile stares, however. As her mother, Sheila, records: "We were considered trash. And you were treated like that, so you felt like that."

The show could not be more timely here at the beginning of the new age of Obama and also at a moment when mixed-race is the fastest growing ethnic group in the UK.  You can see some pictures from the exhibit, mostly taken in the '50s and '60s, in the online gallery here.

grilled cheese invitational

I'm DJing tomorrow:
9am - noon PST, Sunday, February 22
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

I arrived at Dolores Park late this afternoon just as the awards for the 2nd Annual NorCal Regional Grilled Cheese Invitational were being announced via bullhorn by a be-fezzed Cap'n Shady, so even though I could still smell the cloud of cholesterol hanging low in the air I completely missed my chance to sample all the gooey bread-and-cheese concoctions.  My heart is still sad, but my arteries are probably grateful.  I did manage to squeeze in some awesome local shopping and Mission Street Food for dinner while I was in the city, so all was by no means lost.

inequalities in liverpool

All eyes were on Liverpool in 2008 while it enjoyed its year as the European Capital of Culture and hosted everything from a massive Klimt exhibit to a giant mechanical spider.  However, a mere two years earlier a study had found Liverpool's historic ward Everton, perched on a hill that overlooks the city center, to be the poorest area in all of Britain, and it is a part of the city that faces continual closures and general abandonment.  Photographer Christian Petersen has been attempting to draw attention to Everton's plight by capturing its struggling residents and workers on film, and his images are the most melancholy kind of street photography.  They were recently on display in downtown Liverpool in what I hope was an eye-opening exhibit for residents and tourists alike.  You can see some of Peterson's Everton pictures in the gallery here or on his Web site.

austere

I like how the new Austere exhibit at SFMOMA takes its name quite literally even in the exhibition design, as the room appears almost empty except for some prints hanging on the walls and Simon Ungers's rusted-steel architectural models standing somberly on plinths.  Only three artists were selected from the permanent collection -- Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Ruff, and Unger -- and even though I know the museum owns plenty more similarly stripped-down work I appreciated the chance to meditate on these select pieces.  The Bechers' photographs of water towers never fail to make me smile, and I also liked Ruff's quartet of almost-identical images of Mies van der Rohe's reconstructed Barcelona Pavilion, three of them digitally altered and one of them not.  It was Unger's work that was a revelation to me, however, the physical weight of the buildings in his architectural renderings and models paying tribute to the passage of time in a way that I normally associate with Richard Serra.  Assistant curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher will be speaking about Unger's project Silent Architecture in March as part of SFMOMA's new One on One series of curator talks, which sound like an excellent addition to Thursday evenings at the museum.

As for tonight, if you're looking for something to do in the city I have two suggestions:

• Opening at the always-fabulous Gallery 16: Equivalents: The Work of Elliot Anderson.  I fell instantly in love with Anderson's dream-like landscapes when I first saw them in Gallery 16's old space on 16th Street, and I'm eager to see what he's included in this show.
• Reading from his new novel The Women at Books Inc.: T.C. Boyle!  Frank Lloyd Wright's relationships, as imagined and interpreted by Boyle?  Sign me up.

behind the scenes at tate triennial 2009

I have always been a behind-the-scenes kind of girl, from my time working backstage in theater to my current curiosity about how exhibitions come together.  So I loved the week-long series the Guardian ran at the beginning of February where they did some extensive coverage on "the people who make arts happen."  For example, the current Tate Triennial of new British art at Tate Britain Altermodern granted Jonathan Jones a unique chance to see how some of its crazy installations got installated:

In the end, it is as an idea that [curator Nicolas] Bourriaud's Altermodern will succeed or fail. It's hard for me, as a critic, to make any kind of judgment - I've got too close. But one thing does strike me, which won't be easy to forget next time I write a review. When you dismiss an exhibition, you're not just damning the artists and curators. Art is a world, and I don't mean in the nebulous, ugly sense of the "art world". I mean a real social process, in which people come together in complex ways to make things. It is relational, as Bourriaud and his theoretical followers would say. No one is an island, to put it another way: we're all part of the archipelago.

Altermodern is a particularly raucous and installation-heavy show, but even Adrian Searle in his review notes that "it is also the richest and most generous Tate Triennial to date. It is also the best-installed."  It took a small army of people to make that possible, each with their own important role, and if you're confused about what separates an art handler from a co-curator Jones's handy glossary about the exhibition will help you out.  Then click here for some great photos from the Triennial's installation, including a fabulous image of artist Matthew Darbyshire putting his mom to work.

chronic

If you're feeling literary, poets D.A. Powell and John Isles will be reading from their new collections at City Lights tonight.  Powell's new book Chronic gathers poems that explore the territories of love and loss, while in Inverse Sky Isles cuts a wide swath through California history.  It promises to be an excellent evening in North Beach.

Aimee and I, however, will be admiring Daniel Craig's and Liev Schreiber's fine acting skills (and fuzzy hats) in Defiance at the Parkway tonight.  East Bay peeps, come out!

inspiration input iv

It might be a short work week this week, but if you're like me you're still dragging a bit here in the middle of it.  So leave a comment on this post with something fun or that is currently inspiring you, and then we'll all share the awesomeness.

I'll get things started:

• I'm rooting for Herzog this Sunday
• Local band Scissors for Lefty
• John Vanderslice talks shop

January's items:

• Korean artist Osang Gwon
• Kim Joon's NSFW painted bodies
• Typography blog Type Off
• Brooklyn Diorama Club
• Erika Moen's 2008 wrap-up
• Fair-trade shopping at Pacha World
• Best weirdest owl ever
• Shadow puppets in the video for Little Dragon's "Twice"

everything must go: the yves saint laurent and pierre bergé art auction

It's the most glamorous kind of fairy tale.  Boy meets boy, they fall in love and then together they spend the next 50 years amassing one hell of an amazing art collection.  When Yves Saint Laurent died last June his longtime companion Pierre Bergé decided fairly quickly that he would put most of their art up for auction and split the proceeds between the Saint Laurent foundation and AIDS research.  Christie's will be conducting the sale in Paris next week, and Anthony Haden-Guest cataloged just a few of the highlights in his article for the Observer:

These will include paintings by Géricault, David and Ingres - but not the Goya of the boy in the red sash, which Bergé has donated to the Louvre. There are also works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Munch, Brancusi, Mondrian, Giacometti, Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Vuillard, Léger, Gris and Paul Klee, and terrific pieces of art deco by Jean Dunand, Eileen Gray and Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann. Then there are the Greek vases, the Qing dynasty bronzes, the icons, the Renaissance bronzes, the mirrors - without which Saint Laurent said a room was "dead" - and rock crystal pieces of a quality which he said was becoming hard to find because they were being used for rocketry.

No wonder the collection is expected to fetch a cool €300m even in these dire economic times.  You can see some of the pieces that will be featured in the auction here, including an obscenely desirable perfume bottle by Marcel Duchamp.

sword of damocles

Iraida Icaza: Positive/Negative (Cicada), 2005 (Panama).  I love how the cicada appears to glow bright against the darkness of the outstretched hand, its wings delicately translucent.  Icaza's photographs often examine the contrast between light and dark, and here she uses it to emphasize the fragility of life itself.  You can see a few other pieces by her here.