Hammer Blog

When I was living in New York, I had a lot of fantasies about what moving to L.A. would be: the flowers, the succulent plants, the beach, the lizards, the sunsets...all of that exists, but it is butted up against the streets of homeless people in wheel chairs missing limbs, and people jumping from the roofs of welfare hotels, I see it as a city of contradiction. For me I wanted to disappear in a way...sometimes the gaps between things are an invisible magic.

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When is an object art and when is it artifact?
How can a permanent collection be both comprehensive and flexible?
How does the cultural territory around a museum impact its mission and purpose?
How can museums be both culturally specific and expansive at the same time?

When I was at Central St Martins in London I heard about CalArts through Afterall Magazine. This was back in 2004, the magazine was co edited by Tom Lawson at CalArts. I thought the school looked so amazing.

INCLUDED, a nonprofit organization formerly known as Compassion for Migrant Children, recently opened an outdoor exhibition in Sanlitun, an upscale prime shopping center area in Beijing. Stephen Gleadow, a U.S. artist and friend, and the creative director for the INCLUDED exhibition, invited me to come see this very beautiful and moving show right before I left for the U.S.