Sample: Pro Gun Control Letter to US Representative

Earlier this week I tried searching the web for sample letters to send to representatives urging for gun control. All I could find was pro-NRA and anti-gun control letters, so I decided to draft my own and send it out into the internet world.

Please use my example to contact your representatives and make your opinions known! I hate to sound like an oblivious optimist but... we can do this!

--

Dear President/Senator/Governer/Congressman,

I am writing to urge your support and action for stricter Federal gun control laws. In one year on average, almost 100,000 people in America are shot or killed with a gun. It is appalling that guns can be sold in the United States without a background check to screen out criminals or the mentally ill.

Sensible changes in our nation’s guns laws are long overdue. Please work to reinstate a federal assault weapons ban in the United States and further regulate gun sales.

Thank you for your dedication and your invaluable service to our country.

Best wishes,

Your Name

Petition for Gun Control

Enough is enough. There is absolutely no reason to have assault/automatic weapons sold in this country.

Change.org|Start an Online Petition

Meta-Monumental Garage Sale @ MoMA

I want to go so bad:



Martha Rosler

Meta-Monumental Garage Sale November 17–30, 2012
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
MoMA.org/garagesale

"New York-based artist Martha Rosler presents her Meta-Monumental Garage Sale, a large-scale version of the classic American garage sale, at The Museum of Modern Art. Museum visitors will be able to browse and buy second-hand goods organized, displayed, and sold by the artist.

Meta-Monumental Garage Sale transforms the Museum's Marron Atrium into an informal cash economy—a space for the exchange of goods, narratives, and ideas—as it implicates visitors in face-to-face transactions. Rosler oversees the sale daily and engages with visitors. A slide show and an audio meditation on the role of commodities in everyday life, both artifacts from the work's early performances, are included in this newest installation. Some items accumulated during previous versions of the work are also for sale or on display, as traces from the project's past locales. Photographs of visitors at earlier sales are displayed alongside photographs (taken by a professional wedding photographer) of MoMA visitors posing with their new acquisitions.

The current sale brings together a large treasure trove of material from Rosler herself, but also from friends and family, local Brooklyn art communities, and MoMA staff.

Organized by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, and Ana Janevski, Associate Curator, with Jill A. Samuels, Performance Producer, Department of Media and Performance Art. The exhibition is supported in part by The Modern Women's Fund".  

(all info copied from MoMA's press release, I take no credit for the writing, just want to spread the word about this performance/project)

The Brillo-Box Scandal

While digging through the ArtNews archives on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, I found an interesting article from November 2009. "The Brillo-Box Scandal" by Eileen Kinsella investigates the fabrication of 105 Andy Warhol Brillo boxes after the artist’s death by a respected curator, the late Pontus Hulten (1924–2006) in 1990. In 2007, when the boxes were revealed to have been created three years after Warhol's death, the art world (especially Warhol collectors) were shocked. Just one of these boxes sold at Christie’s London in February 2006 for $208,695*. There is no real clue as to Hulten's motivation or ultimate goal in creating these boxes.

This scandal caused quite the conundrum for authenticators and calls attention to the problem of the term original for work whose design was appropriated from commercial sources and then produced in a "factory" setting with many studio assistants. This issue will continue to haunt contemporary authenticators and estates as more and more artists adopt and continue to promote the Warholian model.

link to the "The Brillo-Box Scandal" on ArtNews.com

*all of my information/numbers are from Kinsella's article.

Maurizio Cattelan at Centre for Contempora​ry Art Ujazdowski Castle

This upcoming exhibition in Warsaw of the artist's 'most significant works' demands a moment of reflection for the Shock King, Maurizio Cattelan. Only one silent year after announcing his retirement from the art world, Cattelan appears to be back at it. The most infamous, textbook cited example of Cattelan's work is La Nona Ora, 1999 (pictured bellow). The sculpture features a photorealist pope struck down by a meteorite, "blasphemy turned into sacrifice," surrounded by shattered glass. It is as if we are witnessing the moment after the tragedy, frozen in time.

The press release to the upcoming show exclaims, "[Cattelan] poses questions as to the contemporary understanding of death, sacrifice, forgiveness, the genesis of evil in humankind, national identity, and historical memory." Despite the constant controversy, there is no doubt that Cattelan's breed of contemporary will continue to influence new generations of sculptors and is well worth a viewing.

Maurizio Cattelan

Amen
November 16, 2012 – February 24, 2013
Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle
ul. Jazdów 2
00-467 Warsaw, Poland
www.csw.art.pl 

The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni

FIlm Trailer: The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni by Rania Stephan. Now on view in the current MoMA Exhibition Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema from the 1960s to Now, Part II. Definitely worth a visit.  
moma.org
 

Performanc​e POSTPONED until March 27th - Raphael Montañez Ortiz

"NATURE WILL ALWAYS OUT PERFORM THE PERFORMANCE ARTIST" – R.M.O.

Unfortunately Raphael Montañez Ortiz’s performance tonight at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston has been postponed until Wednesday, March 27th, as all flights and trains from the greater NY area are still out of service due to the hurricane.

Please check back on the facebook event or the mfa.org event page for any further updates and we look forward to seeing you in the spring. I am very sorry for this disappointment, but the reschedule date will be even better than the first!





MARIO TESTINO IN YOUR FACE

Opening this weekend at the MFA Boston is Mario Testino's first solo US museum exhibition, titled "IN YOUR FACE"

The exhibit promises celebrity, fashion and nudity with a mix of famous glamour shots and vogue editorials. Should be interesting, at least very different for the MFA Boston... I shall be attending the opening reception on Wednesday and am looking forward to the party!

Raphael Montañez Ortíz @ MFA Boston, POSTPONED until March 27th

Raphael Montañez Ortíz 

(following from mfa.org)

"Since the late 1950s Raphael Montañez Ortíz has directly engaged with the violent and destructive tendencies of society through found objects and action-based art. A veteran of Fluxus and the Destruction Art movement of the 1960s, Ortíz is best known for his piano destruction concerts, but his practice encompasses film, video, sculpture and subtler forms of performance art. At the MFA, Ortíz invites Boston-area performance artists, students and the audience to engage in a new performance, which will be followed by a video screening of several rarely seen works.

This is a FREE event, from 7-9PM on Halloween night. On Wednesday nights after 4 pm MFA admission is by voluntary contribution only. Arrive early to explore the galleries and visit Slippery Surfaces, a video art exhibition in the Krupp Gallery (264) that includes a mesmerizing laser scratch video by Ortíz – The Kiss, 1985".

link to event on mfa.org
facebook event for performance

EVENT POSTPONED UNTIL MARCH 27TH due to hurricane Sandy.