The Highlights from Feminism & Co.

Every spring, Feminism & Co. brings together artists, writers and all manner of scholars to discuss issues around women and gender. This is not your mother’s feminist lecture series. The topics discussed this year included rocket fuel ingredients in breast milk, the resurgence of roller derby in

Drawing Drawing

Interview with Artist Maya Gurantz

Co-Directors of Feminism & Co.: Art, Sex, Politics, Elissa Auther and Gillian Silverman, sat down with artist Maya Gurantz to talk about her MCA Denver installation The Whore’s Dialogue, on view at MCA Denver in the Whole Room from April 11 – June 23, 2013. Maya will be speaking at MCA Denver on Thursday, April 11 as part of MCA Denver's series Feminism & Co.: Art, Sex, Politics.

Fem & Co.: Maya, tell us about the history of the “whore’s dialogue.”

Maya Gurantz: The whore’s dialogue is an extinct genre of literary pornography, in which an older libertine schools a young protégé about sex and seduction as well as society (a lot of time is spent dissecting human nature, local politics, manners, survival tips). The main portion of the text of a whore’s dialogue involves the Mother’s advice to her Daughter; it often includes a Daughter’s response, in which she describes her own experience after her wedding night, her first lover, or after having turned her first trick.

Teen Council's W3FI Opening

This blog features MCA Denver Teen Council Member Polly Adams guest blogging about the recent Teen Council (TeCo) opening. 

On Saturday, February 23, the Teen Council (TeCo) members held an opening for our latest efforts, the W3FI Project that we completed with the help of artists Laleh Mehran and Chris Coleman.

Drawing Drawing

At the Patti Hallock/William Lamson/Ladies Fancywork Society opening last month, we hosted a self-portrait contest (a "drawing drawing"), and the winner we selected is above. As promised, the winner received a critique by museum curator Nora Burnett Abrams (as well as a dual/family membership to the museum).

Eric Zboya's Poetic Star Stuff

MCA Denver invited artist Derek Beaulieu to guest blog during the duration of the exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art, in which excerpts from Beaulieu's 124-painting sequence the Newspaper are featured. Beaulieu is the author of 9 books of poetry and conceptual fiction. He teaches at the Alberta College of Art + Design and can be found online at:  www.derekbeaulieu.wordpress.com. This is the third of four blogs for MCA Denver.

If poetry could close it eyes and dream what shape would those dreams take? Postscript: Writing after Conceptual Art’s contributor Eric Zboya explores poetry of delicate multi-dimensional dreamscapes—unearthly shapes hovering between dreams and wakefulness. When we close our eyes, unanchored floating shapes skitter and crawl across the blackness like alien mitochondria in a petri dish.

The Fabric of Jen Bervin’s Work

MCA Denver invited artist Derek Beaulieu to guest blog during the duration of the exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art, in which excerpts from Beaulieu's 124-painting sequence the Newspaper are featured. Beaulieu is the author of 9 books of poetry and conceptual fiction. He teaches at the Alberta College of Art + Design and can be found online at:  www.derekbeaulieu.wordpress.com. This is the second of four blogs for MCA Denver.

 

In this blog, Derek Beaulieu focuses on the work of Jen Bervin, one of 102 artists whose work appears in the current MCA Denver exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art. Her works, The Composite Marks of  Fascicle 28 and The Composite Marks of Fascicle 40, remove the words from Emily Dickinson's published poetry and retain only the editorial marks, insertions, and amendments found in her original handwritten manuscripts.

My first exposure to Jen Bervin’s work was though her Nets (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004) in which she erases sections of Shakespeare’s sonnets in order to create fragile poems of beautiful telegraph-like brevity. Shakespeare’s sonnet 2 (“When forty winters shall besiege thy brow”) is, for example, condensed and transformed into “a weed of small worth / asked / to be new made.” The “weed of small worth / asked / to be new made” is an ongoing concern in Bervin’s work, as she harvests poetic gestures emerging from the poetic ground of other poets’ work. Her work has a melancholic tone as she focuses on creation through absence: a writing of the holes in literature.

Mixed Taste Madness

First week on the job at MCA Denver is no immunity from pie gags 

 

 

 

 

Crazy things happen during Mixed Taste intermission.

Fiona Banner’s 1066

Fiona Banner at Postscript's vernissage

MCA Denver invited artist Derek Beaulieu to guest blog during the duration of the exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art, in which excerpts from Beaulieu's 124-painting sequence the Newspaper are featured. Beaulieu is the author of 9 books of poetry and conceptual fiction. He teaches at the Alberta College of Art + Design and can be found online at: www.derekbeaulieu.wordpress.com. This is the first of four blogs for MCA Denver. 

On Friday, October 11, I had a chance to hear Fiona Banner discuss her work in the Postscript exhibition. Banner (aided by several assistants) was still constructing her epic 1066 and took a moment away from the exhausting process on the eve of the exhibition opening. 

When Golden Girls Fleeced Black Sheep Fridays

Even though this season's series of Black Sheep Fridays has just begun, we thought we'd wax nostalgic on a moment from last year's "Art Basel Miami Denver" event. Black Sheep Fridays put out an open call for Golden Girls-inspired art by MCA Denver staff and volunteers, and museum visitors were given a coloring book of the best submissions. Here's a sample of some of our favorite results. We've also provided two blank sheets for your coloring pleasure. See you this Friday for Sommelier Pirates. 

David J Visits MCA Denver

by Joshua Novak

Adam Lerner & David J at MCA Denver

As I teenager, I must have listened to my Sweet F.A. cassette tape by Love & Rockets five hundred times while attempting to finish homework in my room. The truth was, I was less interested in math and science then I was in music and spent that time wishing I was hanging out on stage in a band, working along side collaborators like David J.

Last weekend, the music legend payed a visit to the Mile High City and to the MCA where he give a lecture about his life and work in the early UK punk scene, and in bringing about pioneering bands Bauhaus and Love & Rockets. He gave the packed room insight to his teenage relationships with Kevin Haskins, Daniel Ash and Peter Murphy while the wall behind him flashed slide show images of his unique art work over the years. These days, David has been exploring other avenues of his creative expression with play and screen writing, producing and still manages to tour Europe and America with his own musical project which simply bears his Nom De Rock.

Take Peyton Manning With You

by: MCA Denver

If you are looking for some fun things to do with Peyton Manning this spring, invite him to MCA Denver March 30.

Top 5 Moments of Mixed Taste on Ice 2012

by: Joshua Novak

MCA Denver's noted tag team lecture series, Mixed Taste, is never shy of arresting moments, so choosing the top 5 is as difficult as being forced to pick your favorite Michael Jackson song – trust me, I've done it.

Every Friday, museum guests were witness to an intellectual tête-à-tête on a variety of topics from puppies & Nietzsche to Space Weather & Koolickles (that's right, I said Koolickles). And although the programs were put together with immense care, sometimes things didn't go as planned. That alone was worth the ticket price.

More American Photographs Opening

by: Rachel Ralph

More American Photographs opened this past Thursday at MCA Denver. The visitors, and the works, filled every corner of the first floor galleries, including the wall opening onto 15th Street, Denver.