Way to go, Detroit!
(above, facade of Mocad, or Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; thanks to the NY Times).
A great-looking new museum of contemporary art in Detroit, jiving with its locale, rather than playing against it...and an awesome exterior graffiti piece by Barry McGee (seen at Space 1026, et al) to boot:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/arts/design/30urba.html?th&emc=th
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Tim, I was at the gala opening of MOCADetroit... Our department head is from worked at the Detroit art museum. We slept at Cranbrook and saw a drawing show you would have liked of '60s minimalists. I liked it a lot.
I actually found the Barry McGee piece to be sorta boring... I saw much better grafitti elsewhere in Detroit. I'm kinda tired of skater/loser art. The most interesting part was the motorized grafitti figure hanging off the building at the top, near the far end (barely visible in the picture).
I did meet Barry McGee at the opening, which was cool, I guess. My favorite piece by far was a Kara Walker video piece.
Hey Dayton...the minimalist drawing show sounds great. The thing I like about the McGee graffiti, actually, is that is "boring"; or what I sort of alluded to in my text, that it seems like it could have been there when the space was an abandoned factory, or whatever it was, and that it is analogous in color to the building...almost like camouflage. I only have the photo, though.
It was a car dealership.
I find the piece to be great in many respects, not only because I happen to dig Barry's work a lot but also because it is graffiti in the way it has always been. I think that this different than the "skater/loser" art. This is on graffiti's beginning turfs, done simply, loud in its quietude of lacking primary candy colors, big and yet humble. By the way it appears, it seems to be almost not graffiti because of the way he deals with it, humbly. The piece deals with the shape of the building, it's not over the top filled with colors, it's clever and not rude, brings the outside in a not so rebel graffiti type of way.
Day, I don't know what you mean by "skater/loser" art, but to me this resonates more mature than not. Thanks for the post, Tim.Day, you are missed homeboy!
Dayton, have you ever checked the wooster collective site. Check it out: woostercollective.com