~Yale Arts Library Blog~

“University officials said there is ‘no merit’ to the allegations made in a lawsuit filed two weeks ago by former School of Art student Annabel Osberg ART ’09, who claims she was unfairly expelled from the Master of Fine Arts program in painting and printmaking.”

Yale: Former art student’s allegations of improper expulsion have ‘no merit’ Harrison Korn Yale Daily News July 23, 2008

Posted by Tanya

Image Courtesy of English Heritage, Kenwood House, London

Sometimes a single picture can make all your prejudices fall in a heap. If you occasionally succumb to the idea, for instance, that English painting has little to offer before the ascendancy of Constable and Turner, or that the 18th century - give or take a few Frenchies like Watteau and Chardin - was a frivolous and formulaic period, put such thoughts on hold as you take a trip here to see “Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool,” a superb exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art.

Tricks of the light at Yale Sebastian Smee Boston Globe 6/19/08

Posted by Chris

A camera obscura is the age-old principle behind that physics-class favorite, the pinhole camera. Let light from a small opening enter a dark space, and an inverted image of what’s on the other side of the opening will be projected within.

Camera obscura pictures make up half of the 36 images in “Behind the Seen: The Photographs of Abelardo Morell,” which runs at the Yale University Art Gallery through Aug. 10. The exhibition is in the way of a homecoming. Morell, who teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, has a master of fine arts degree from Yale. He’ll be artist in residence there this academic year.

Morell’s photos balance austerity and playfullness Mark Feeney Boston Globe 6/20/08

Posted by Chris

Monet? Gauguin? Using art to make better doctors: new courses improve powers of observation Liz Kowalczyk Boston Globe 7/20/08

Katz’s class is one of a growing number of art courses offered to medical students nationwide and aimed at improving their observation and diagnostic skills at a time when doctors are increasingly relying on CT scans, Maris, biopsies, and other technology to do their work, even though it is far more expensive - and sometimes unnecessary to pinpoint illnesses.

Educators at other medical schools that offer art classes have similar goals. Weill Medical College of Cornell University has offered a noncredit art course in collaboration with the Frick Collection in New York City for eight years, while Yale Medical School runs an art observation course for medical students that is now a required class.

Posted by Chris

Light-emitting wallpaper set to wow Audley Jarvis TechRadar 4/14/08

An enterprising young designer from the Netherlands has invented what has to be the ultimate in home illumination – light emitting wallpaper.

“The back layer is a silver-based solution that conducts electricity, while the layer above this contains phosphorous pigments that light up. On top of this is a flexible, transparent ITO conductor layer, with regular wallpaper placed on top to act as the final, outwardly visual layer,” he explained.

The result, when it’s switched on, is a visually stunning wall-of-light that can be turned off and on, just like a regular light.

Visit the artists website here.

Posted by Chris

Sweeping Panoramas, Courtesy of a Robot Anne Eisenberg NYT 6/20/08

The GigaPan provides a low-cost alternative to sophisticated motorized camera mounts on the market used to take panoramic photos, said Greg Downing, co-founder of the xRez Studio in Santa Monica, Calif., which specializes in gigapixel photography. The motorized mounts can cost thousands of dollars, he said, and typically require a high-end camera.

“We hope it will cost in the low hundreds of dollars — well below $500,” he said. The GigaPan will attach to any ordinary point-and-shoot digital camera.

Posted by Chris

Prodigygate Part III: In Which Osberg Actually Files a Lawsuit Mike Bechek, July 16, 2008, Ivy Gate

Ivy Gate has posted a link to a copy of Osberg’s lawsuit (in PDF) and asks “Any Yale MFAs still reading IvyGate these days? Send us the full version of this story.”

Quote from the lawsuit:

“On or about July 7, 2008, the defendant locked the plaintiff out of the studio she was renting from the defendant and thereafter locked her out of the residence she was renting from the defendant … As a result, the plaintiff has suffered ascertainable economic losses and emotional distress.”

Posted by: Tanya

The Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog has an entry (July 11) on the Annabel Osberg controversy. It’s mainly just a re-cap, but the debate in the comment section underneath is worth a glance.

There are also some amusing comments at Ivygate too. So far they’re more about punctuation than art, however.

Edit: More commentary here.

Posted by: Tanya

The real world: Jerome Liebling’s works celebrate the strength of the everyday Mark Feeney Boston Globe July 13, 2008

“The occasion of the Yale University Art Gallery’s ‘Everyday Monuments: The Photographs of Jerome Liebling’ (not a bad title either) is Yale’s recent purchase of more than 40 Liebling prints. So let’s hear it for pride of ownership.

“Liebling is 84. Looking at the dozen vintage prints at Smith from the late ’40s, one can see how far he’s come as an artist. He was good then - Liebling shot what may be his most famous image, ‘Butterfly Boy,’ in 1949 (it’s in the Yale show) - but his work is so much richer and more variegated now. Getting older is not the same thing as getting wiser. It has been for Liebling, though.”

Posted by: Tanya

The San Antonio Current has run the best critique of the Shvarts affair I have yet to see.

Some artists and theorists would point out that defending the social value of transgressive art is begging the question. They would defend the autonomy of the artist regardless of social benefit. After all, to talk about the utility of a form of art is to place its importance beneath that of other social values — to say that art is a means to an end. This is precisely the kind of thinking that Shvarts critiques. Her uterus does not exist for the purpose of fulfilling anyone’s definition of social value, and neither does her art.

However, there’s another side to that coin, and to the extent that an artist places the creation of art above personal and social safety, the broader community is bound to question the validity of that work. At a certain point, transgressive artwork is not breaking down barriers but creating new ones with a single-minded focus on autonomy as the primary concern of the artist. Pro-choice activists are certainly correct in pointing out that Shvarts’s piece will create fresh problems for a movement that is trying to defend women’s rights while also ensuring that women are responsible in exercising those rights. But it sure would be nice if we could explore the meaning of the work before condemning it.

The morning after Ben Judson The San Antonio Current 7/2/08

Posted by Chris

Yale art prodigy expelled
By News Channel 8’s Erin Cox, July 09, 2008

“An art prodigy is crying foul after being expelled from Yale University.

“News Channel 8 met Osberg on a park bench to talk to the painting prodigy about her expulsion from Yale University.

“She was expelled after a year of paintings and paying full tuition. ‘Cost a lot of money and a lot of heartache,’ Osberg said. ‘And, a lot of hopes that have been shattered.’”

Posted by: Tanya
_____________________________________________________________
7.14 (just found this)
Watch the video on Ivygate.

“Viewing at the Royal Academy,” Thomas Rowlandson

Article on “Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art:”

When Watercolor Came Into Its Own BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO New York Times July 6, 2008

“You can see more than 80 watercolors by English artists from the 18th through 19th centuries in a beautiful new show at the Yale Center for British Art, home to one of the world’s greatest collections of British drawings and watercolors. The collection was largely assembled over 15 years, beginning in the early 1960s, by Paul Mellon, the center’s founder and chief benefactor. It now numbers more than 50,000 drawings, watercolors and other works on paper….The works are arranged more or less chronologically to show the evolution of British watercolor painting from mid-18th-century topographical landscapes to a more widespread application and growing sophistication in the 19th century.”

Posted by: Tanya

“In September, Jock Reynolds marks his 10th anniversary as Henry J. Heinz II director of the Yale University Art Gallery. During that time, the collection has more than doubled, to some 190,000 objects. The gallery’s Louis Kahn-designed building reopened in 2006 after a three-year, $44 million renovation. That was part of a 12-year expansion and renovation of the gallery’s overall facilities expected to finish in 2011…..Last week, he spoke with Globe staffer Mark Feeney about the challenges facing Yale and university and college art museums generally. What follows is an edited version of their conversation.”

A Yale museum looks beyond university walls: Director Reynolds revels in all phases of job Boston Globe Mark Feeney July 6, 2008

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Teen prodigy booted from Yale grad school Mary E. O’Leary New Haven Register 07/08/2008

Annabel Osberg “was the youngest ever accepted into the school, one of 22 studying painting and printmaking out of 600 applicants, all of whom were chosen based on personal interviews and critiques of their work by several people.

“But late this spring, Osberg, who was home-schooled until she began commuting to college at age 14, said she was dismissed from Yale by officials who, she says, told her she wasn’t mature enough to benefit from the program.”

Posted by: Tanya

Bright Ideas: The verdict is in on Arts & Ideas 2008. New Haven Advocate Christopher Arnott 7.1.08

Posted by: Tanya