The Museum is closed for installation until January 22 which is Opening Night of Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History and Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Popin the Main Galleries and Xavier Cha in The Front Room. You can stay connected to the Contemporary by visiting this blog, social networking sites, and the Museum’s website. Click here for all the ways to stay connected while we are closed.

The Contemporary hosted two events this past weekend to kick of the 2009 U.S. Women’s Chess Championship. Queens of Jazz, featuring Denise Thimes and Ann Hamilton Callaway, took place at the museum on the evening of Friday, October 2. On Saturday, October 3, Anna Zatonskih played five chess games blindfolded and won…all of them at the event Playing in the Dark: A Collision of Art and Chess. There was also hulachess and a bounty blitz tournament. Click below to read articles and see images and click here to link to the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis’ website.

KSDK.com
The United States Chess Federation website
Pelopidas.com

On Saturday, October 10 at Chesterfield Arts, the Contemporary, along with other St. Louis institutions, will host booths at a free community unveiling of “The Awakening.” The event will last from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm and will include hands-on art activities, food, music, and of course, the unveiling of what is being called “the giant” in Chesterfield. The sculpture, of a man appearing to be waking up and emerging from the ground after being asleep, is 70 feet long and 17 feet tall, and was first cast by Seward Johnson in 1980 in Washington DC. There are some amazing images of the piece, as well as many articles and video clips. Visit chesterfieldarts.org. Click here to read the press release.

And one last thing: Two exhibitions held at the Contemporary were featured in the Riverfront Times annual Best of St. Louis poll. Gedi Sibony: My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms was named ”Best Museum Exhibition” and a Front Room exhibition guest curated by William Gass titled Between Beach Ball and Rubber Raft, was named “Best Installment in an Exhibition Series.” Click here to read more Best of St. Louis.

 
(Top: Gedi Sibony: My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms; Bottom: Between Beach Ball and Rubber Raft)

 We have less than a month before the opening of For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there.  The space continues to change (walls are being built and taken down) and work has started to arrive. One major change for this exhibition has to do with The Front Room; our space used along-side the Main Galleries for quickly changing exhibitions. The Front Room has been boarded up at its main entrance and will become part of the Main Galleries, as For the blind Man… will take up the entire space of the museum. Once the exhibition For the blind man… closes, The Front Room will once again house the quick and nimble shows it was intended for. Here is where you can learn more.

This weekend is your last chance to see the exhibitions Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space and Carey Young: Speech Acts in the Main Galleries; however, you can forever find information about these shows online through various channels. If you are around town this weekend, you can come on into the museum for a Last Chance Tour on Saturday, August 1 at noon.

As we prepare for the Main Galleries to close, we recently opened a new exhibition in The Front Room including work by artists Douglas Ross & Philip Vanderhyden. The work will be up now through August 16. Click here to learn more and look below to see a virtual tour of the installation.

The Front Room today opened with a new exhibition containing work by artists Sam Moyer, Lesley Vance, and Stan VanDerBeek. See the work by viewing the virtual tour below and read more about the show on the museum’s website. This exhibition will be on view until July 26, so you have plenty of time to come check it out in person as well.

Artists Christopher Orr, J. Parker Valentine, and Rezi van Lankveld are currently exhibiting work in The Front Room. From now until June 28 you can see the exhibition at the museum, and you can also see a virtual tour of their work here, in a past post. Last week, The Riverfront Times published a piece on their work:

This trio (from London, New York and Amsterdam, respectively) propose their solutions to the problems of abstraction and novelty in the painting tradition. Orr, whose small canvases possess the shadowed, sepia patina of Dutch Old Master paintings, is figural in his depictions, though utterly elusive in his content.

Click here to read further.

Every time new artists debut in The Front Room, we post a brief “virtual tour” of the installed work. This is not only a way for you to experience new work; it is also a resource for you to easily learn about new contemporary artists. If you were to read about and look at the work of each of the artists we have shown in The Front Room since it began, you would know about the work of more than 50 artists. This season The Front Room changes four times with three artists in each exhibition. From now until June 28 you can see the work of Christopher Orr, J. Parker Valentine, and Rezi van Lankveld in The Front Room (hint hint…now would be a good time to take a look at our website, the virtual tour, and maybe even do a little further research on them…and extend your contemporary artist vocabulary; and if you are able to see the work in person, come on in and read the wall text, gallery guides, and talk to staff members or other visitors). Here is the virtual tour:

Currently, in The Front Room, the Contemporary is showing works by three women artists, Olga Chernysheva, R.H. Quaytman, and Josephine Pryde and in the Main Galleries, showing work by Chantal Akerman and Carey Young, also both women artists. So from now until May, 31 you can take a stroll through the museum and see the work of five contemporary, women artists…that is pretty great. Here is a video tour of the work in The Front Room:

Cezary Bodzianowski will be on view in The Front Room from now until Sunday, May 3. Click here for information on his work and watch the virtual tour of his exhibition below. Also, see the snapshots of the many TVs that can be found lying in piles around the museum. Why so many TVs? Our upcoming show Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space is a video exhibition. I am excited to see what the installation looks like in the end!

Tom Johnson is an American artist who produces sculptures, video monologues, and live performances, and for his Front Room exhibition he produced a new series of drawings. Johnson was at the museum for the installation of his exhibition and completed some of his work here. In the first video you can see him making his final additions to a piece, and in the second video you can see the final installation. Visit the Contemporary’s website for the gallery guide.