Displaying items by tag: john cage

For a scrappy, short-lived little college founded at a Christian summer camp by an outcast professor, Black Mountain College had a mighty impact on American cultural life. Among the artists who taught and studied there: Josef and Anni Albers, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham.

“Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957” opens at the Institute of Contemporary Art on Oct. 10.

Jasper Johns is behind a new venue in New York’s Meatpacking District dedicated exclusively to artist-curated exhibitions. Last year, Johns suggested that the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the non-profit he founded with the composer John Cage, convert a 496-square-foot room next to its offices into a project space. (It was previously used for the occasional meeting.) The board agreed. With that, the Other Room—the foundation’s first foray into public programming—was born.

The Merce Cunningham Trust, which was founded to preserve the artistic legacy of choreographer Merce Cunningham, has announced it will bestow major gifts to two art organizations, reports Art Forum.

One gift of $375,000 will be given to the Foundation for Contemporary Arts to establish a Merce Cunningham award. The FCA, which was founded by John Cage and Jasper Johns, aims to support, sponsor, and promote innovative work in the arts by individuals, groups, or organizations. The Merce Cunningham award at the FCA will be biannual, and its purpose is to give recognition of outstanding achievement that reflects the spirit and creativity of Cunningham.

Scratch an art dealer, and you’ll often find a curator. That’s the case with Craig Starr, who seems to operate in the secondary art market mainly to support his persistent curatorial itch. For nearly a decade, he has been mounting sharp-focus shows of historical works by prominent American postwar artists in his jewel-box gallery on the Upper East Side.

Mr. Starr’s latest effort — one of his best — is “Robert Rauschenberg: The Fulton Street Studio, 1953-54.” With 15 works borrowed from private collections, this exhibition delves into a formative period in the development of Rauschenberg (1925-2008), when he was in his late 20s and moving fast. It presents his sensibility in a nutshell, his broad aesthetic range, omnivorous curiosity, playfulness and intuitive elegance.