Views of “Not New Work: Vincent Fecteau Selects from the Collection,” 2009. Left (from left to right): Eric Rudd, Night Fairy, 1974; Max Ernst, Bauta, 1964; Ron Nagle, Untitled, 1982; Peter Young, Untitled, 1968; Wayne Thiebaud, Untitled (Two Ice Cream Scoops on Plate), ca. 1985. Right: Robert Overby, Hall painting, first floor; H. C. Westermann, Secrets, 1964; Charles Howard, Banner, 1934; Christopher Wilmarth, New, 1968; Ralph Humphrey, Untitled, 1972. (Photos: Ian Reeves)

Vincent Fecteau was perhaps an ideal choice for an “artist selects” exhibition: His own sculptures are potent, peculiarly honed works that take months to produce, and the twenty-three objects he culled from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s storage facilities reveal as much about the quirks of a collection as they do about the vision of an artist set free within it. Pieces by the likes of Judy Chicago, Ron Nagle, and Tom of Finland will be on view through November 8 at the museum under the fitting title ... Read more »

Left: Mary Ellen Carroll moderating "NOZONE: Houston’s Mayoral Forum on Land Use" at prototype180—the table, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, July 9, 2009. Right: Mary Ellen Carroll and KHOU-TV reporter David Fehling at prototype180, Sharpstown, Houston. (Photos: Kenny Trice)

Mary Ellen Carroll is a Houston- and New York–based conceptual artist who teaches in the architecture program at Rice University. Here, she discusses prototype 180, a work she is creating in collaboration with the Rice University Building Institute, and a recent mayoral forum on land use in Houston at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston that she organized and moderated. Her forthcoming monograph is being published by SteidlMACK and will be available this fall.

HOUSTON IS THE ONLY METROPOLITAN AREA in the United States without a formal land-use zoning code. The no-zoning policy creates conditions, both physical and atmospheric, for extending free enterprise over the city, the energy capital of the world. ... Read more »

Left: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Velvet Hand, 2009, chair, vase, velvet pants, 33 x 21 x 20". Right: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Denim Vase, 2009, ceramic, denim, 9 x 7 x 5".

This summer, the Portland, Oregon– and New York–based sculptor Jessica Jackson Hutchins is participating in several group exhibitions, including “Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay,” which originated at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and is at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis until November 29, and “Bent,” a three-person show at the Oregon College of Art and Craft on view until August 23. Here, Hutchins talks about her practice.

I’VE BEEN MAKING A LOT OF WORK FROM MY FURNITURE LATELY, just pulling it out of my house. Two sculptures in “Bent” are created from chairs that were in my kitchen. They were worn out, and their indentations readily invited the weight of ceramic. For Velvet Hand, I sewed some old velvet pants together to hold a pot that hovers over the indentation of the seat ... Read more »

Left: Cindy Workman, No. 42, 2000, Lambda print, Plexiglas, mounting hardware, 60 3/4 x 48 1/2". Right: Cindy Workman, Large Woman 17, 2006, digital print, Plexiglas, frame, 56 3/4 x 41 3/4".

For the past two decades, multimedia artist Cindy Workman has created collage-based art, incorporating images from such incongruous sources as children’s drawings, vintage pornography, and mathematical diagrams. Her first United States retrospective is on view through August 14 at Lennon, Weinberg in New York.

THE RETROSPECTIVE WAS CURATED to highlight the central theme of my work: women. From early on, I’ve had a keen interest in "woman as object." Although I wouldn’t say that this has disappeared in the newer pieces, my last show included individual portraits of women who weren’t seen totally as objects. Narrative has also crept into the work––not storytelling per se, but rather a linear situation in which I interrogate gender, specifically themes such as what it means to be a woman, the ... Read more »

Left: Aki Sasamoto and Momus, Love is the End of Art, 2009. Performance view. Zach Feuer Gallery, New York. Right: Aki Sasamoto, Secrets of my Mother’s Child, 2009. Performance view. Living Room Festival, Auckland. (Photo: Rob Garrett.)

Aki Sasamoto is a New York–based Japanese artist who often draws on performance, sculpture, and dance for her works. Here she describes her sense of dislocation after performing and also talks about her role as a founder of Culture Push, the collaborative artists’ group. She recently performed at Zach Feuer Gallery (with Momus) and in the 2008 Yokohama Triennial.

THROUGHOUT JUNE, I experienced a sense of the unreal and constant self-doubt. A friend pointed out that I always take my time to return to real life after a performance and that I had spent the previous two months performing almost every day in four different shows. I thought I had bored her with my disorientation stories. (Is it like having an easily dislocated shoulder: no longer surp ... Read more »

Left: Cover of Michael Sorkin’s Twenty Minutes in Manhattan (2009). Right: A view of Broadway in Times Square, New York. (Photo: Lisa Davidson)

Michael Sorkin is a New York–based architect, urban planner, educator, and the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Variations on a Theme Park (1991), Exquisite Corpse (1994), and After the World Trade Center (2002). His latest book, which examines the history and changing face of New York through the lens of his morning commute, is Twenty Minutes in Manhattan.

THE IDEA FOR THE BOOK CAME ABOUT FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. Walks are contemplative times and spaces, and going over the same territory day after day gave me the opportunity to see things over the relatively longue durée: construction projects, seasonal activities, changes in commercial life, in culture, in the population. After dilating internally on the happy accidents produced by the city and on the quality of my immediate environment, I thought I’d begin to write ab ... Read more »

Rocco Landesman, the head of Broadway’s Jujamcyn Theaters, has been approved by the Senate to assume the top position at the National Endowment for the Arts, reports David Ng for the Los Angeles Times. The Senate also unanimously confirmed Jim Leach to head the National Endowment for the Humanities. An imposing figure on the New York theater scene, Landesman was seen by many as an unusual but welcome choice by the Obama administration to head the troubled NEA, which has been reeling from years of budget cuts and accusations of irrelevancy. On Broadway, the sixty-two-year-old Landesman has had a hand in producing such high-profile shows as Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Mel Brooks’ The Producers. His nomination to the NEA post was announced in May.

Landesman, who is expected to begin his new job shortly, will take over from Patrice Walker Powell, who has served as interim chairwoman since February. Dana Gioia, a poet, stepped down as NEA chief at the beginning of the year. In ... Read more »

Artist Bruce Nauman, fresh off his Golden Lion win at this year’s Venice Biennale, has lined up his next local project, reports David Ng for the Los Angeles Times. On September 12, between 11:30 AM and 12:30 PM, Nauman will transform the skies over Pasadena, California in a project titled Untitled (Leave the Land Alone), 1969/2009. Viewers can expect to see the words LEAVE THE LAND ALONE written in the sky, with the best viewing spots at La Loma Bridge, Colorado Street Bridge, and Brookside Park, according to organizers.

Nauman had apparently planned a similar project in 1969 but shelved it for unknown reasons. Now resurrected forty years later, the project is being held in conjunction with “Installations Inside/Out” at Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts, running from September 20 to December 31. It will mark Nauman’s first solo institutional project in the L.A. area since 1994, according to the Armory. No words yet on whether Nauman will be in the plane that will perform the sk ... Read more »

The house where the artist Otto Dix spent his final years is to be renovated and become part of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, in southern Germany, reports Clemens Bomsdorf and Rita Pokorny for the Art Newspaper. “We are now in the final stage of the process to establish the Stiftung Otto Dix Haus (Otto Dix House Foundation), which will take over the building from the Dix heirs. The plan is to reopen it as a museum in 2010,” said Daniel Spanke, curator at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.

The house, designed for Dix by the architect Arno Schlecher, is situated in the village of Gaienhofen-Hemmenhofen on the Höri peninsula at Lake Constance, south of Stuttgart. The artist, who is best known for his portraits of notable figures in pre-war Germany, and who was regarded as a “degenerate artist” by the Nazis, moved to Hemmenhofen in 1936, where he lived until his death in 1969. Dix had mixed feelings about the idyllic location, once stating that it was “so beautiful that you have to vomit.” In the 199 ... Read more »

The Museum of Modern Art announced two separate photography acquisitions this week: thirty-nine images by Richard Avedon and a trove of nearly sixty nineteenth-century photographs, reports Carol Vogel for the New York Times.

The Avedon photographs––a part purchase and part gift from the photographer’s foundation, which was in place well before his death in 2004––spans nearly his entire career. There are well-known portraits of personalities like Marilyn Monroe and Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Twiggy. There are also nine photographs, first shown at MoMA in 1974 and taken from 1969 to 1973, that chronicled Avedon’s father, Jacob Israel Avedon, in declining health. “We’ve had it on our list for a long time to improve our Avedon photographs,” said Peter Galassi, chief curator of photography at the museum.

The second acquisition is a bequest from Suzanne Winsberg, a collector who lived in New York and Paris and who died last year. During the 1970s, as the market for photography b ... Read more »