This announcement landed in my inbox this week and I thought I’d pass it along. It sounds like a fantastic opportunity for aspiring curators who are still in school (and in fact, it’s aimed at student curators only). The Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC), as part of their “Around Town” program and in partnership with Merchandise Mart and Art Chicago, is launching its Merchandise Mart/CAC Pop Up Gallery, a new six-month exhibition opportunity for student curators and student artists (undergraduate or graduate students are eligible). THE DEADLINE FOR THIS IS MARCH 12TH, so if you are interested, apply soon! Details follow:

“CAC Around Town creates alternative exhibition opportunities for CAC Artist Members including pop up galleries, restaurants, office lobbies, cafes and more. By joining CAC, artists are eligible to participate in Around Town where they can attract new and diverse audiences.

Beginning in March, 2010, CAC will manage a new gallery space in the Merchandise Mart, a location that welcomes more than three million visitors each year. With 150 showrooms and over 4,000 professional designers, Merchandise Mart offers an unparalleled opportunity for artists to be discovered and commissioned.

Curators select the artists for their proposed exhibition. Both selected curators and artists must be currently enrolled students.
EXHIBITION INFORMATION:
• Three curators will be selected to develop shows that will be up for approximately 6 weeks
• The gallery measures 1900 square feet, with 4,200 square feet of possible exhibition space
• Shows will be promoted city wide to over 60,000 Chicago residents
• CAC will host a reception for each show
APPLICATION GUIDELINES:
Email to pepper@caconline.org by 5:00pm, March 12.
Application must include:
• Curatorial Statement (200 words or less describing their vision for the show)
• Resume
• Two References

Curators must be CAC members to apply.
There is no application fee.
Curators may only exhibit student artist work.
Selected exhibiting artists must also be CAC members.
The cost of a student one-year membership is $45

(for more information on CAC membership benefits, visit www.caconline.org/services). Following the application, runners-up will be interviewed in the gallery space.

Administrative Contact is Pepper Coates;
Email application to pepper@caconline.org by 5:00pm, March 12.

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This week, another in the series of interviews Duncan and Christian did at the Banff Centre while they were on art vacation, Jonathan Watkins!

Jonathan Watkins (born 1957) is an English curator, and is currently Director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. Watkins emigrated to Australia with his family in 1969 and studied Philosophy and History of Art at the University of Sydney, where he later taught. He was curator of the Chisenhale Gallery in London during which period this relatively small local gallery became an internationally known centre of excellence – many of the Artists shown at that time later going on to major acclaim including a number of Turner Prize winners, Watkins later moved to the Serpentine Gallery from 1995 to 1997 and worked in a freelance capacity as curator of the Biennale of Sydney in 1998. Watkins now lives in Birmingham, England. He currently directs the Ikon Gallery, and recently unveiled plans for a new museum of modern art in Birmingham. [Read more]

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This week Duncan sneaks into The School of the Art Institute of
Chicago to interview Mary Jane Jacob, Professor and Executive Director of Exhibitions. Mary Jane Jacob’s name is synonymous with the phrase “art as social practice” or the field of art that is now more widely known as “Relational Aesthetics.” Jacob was at the center of the nineties debate about what was and could be considered an art object/experience and was putting on festivals, exhibitions, and public art programming that expanded our art consciousness long before Bourriaud “sexy-ed” up the field with his now seminal book.

Aside from being a former Chief Curator at the MCA Chicago and LA MoCA, Jacob was also the person behind “Culture in Action,” Chicago’s progressive, but widely debated 90’s public arts program. She is the author/co-author of several books including, “Learning Mind: Experience into Art,” “Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art,” “Culture in Action: A Public Art Program of Sculpture Chicago,” “Conversations at The Castle: Changing Audiences and Contemporary Art,” and “On the Being of Being an Artist.” She is the recipient of many grants, awards, fellowships and residencies, amongst the most notable are the Peter Norton Family Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Study Center Residency, and the Getty Residency Program. [Read more]

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This week Patricia and Brian sit down again with Lawrence Rinder. In the last interview, they discussed his role as the director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and it new building campaign. In this conversation they focus on his curatorial career, and his most recent exhibition Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye. Previously he was the Dean at California College of the Arts, curated for the Whitney Museum of American Art, and founded the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art at CCA. [Read more]

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This week (the) Amanda Browder and Tom talk with curator Manon Slome about the “No Longer Empty” series of exhibitions. Manon is one of the curators of this year long series of shows, each of which inhabits an abandoned New York City store front for one month. Along the way the three talk about the dismal state of affairs in Ol’ New York and how we can make lemonade out of these lemons.

Manon Slome (PhD) is an independent curator working in New York City. From 2002 to June 2008 she was the Chief Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum in New York since its inception in 2002. During that time, she has curated and overseen a program of some forty exhibitions, symposia and museum publications as well as monographs and scholarly essays. Ms. Slome became highly involved with the Israeli art scene during her research for the exhibition, Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on”, (2005) and has followed and researched the Israeli scene for the last 3 years. Prior to the CAM, Ms. Slome worked as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum for 7 years and was a holder of a Helena Rubestein curatorial fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study program. She is currently working on a book, The Aesthetics of Terror. [Read more]

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