Are you free from 5-7pm tonight in San Diego? Because both branches of the Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla and downtown are– read more about the monthly MCASD open house on the MCASD website.

What's Happening in January at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego: PROGRAMS Members’ Celebration: Tara Donovan →Thursday, 1/14/10 > 7-9 PM > Downtown MCASD Members are invited to celebrate the Tara Donovan exhibition with a special Members-only reception. Members will get an insider’s look at the exhibition and have the opportunity to discuss the works on view with MCASD Curators. More . . . Open House: Free Third Thursday Evening →Thursday, 1/21/10 > 5-7 PM > La Jolla and Downtown On the third Thursday of every month from 5 to 7 pm, visitors receive FREE admission to the Museum, plus free themed Gallery Guide-led tours beginning at 5 and 6 pm. Teen Workshop: Electrifying Sound Collage with Beatrix*JAR →Saturday, 1/23/10 > 11 AM-1 PM > Downtown Brought to you by MCASD’s Teen Art Council, join Minneapolis-based conceptual electronic duo Beatrix*JAR as they spread the good word of electronic recycling through a hands-on circuit bending workshop. More . . . Artist Talk: Nancy Rubins →Sunday, 1/24/10 > 2 PM > La Jolla In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Contemporary Collectors donor group, and in advance of the opening of the exhibition Pleasure Point: Celebrating 25 Years of Contemporary Collectors, artist Nancy Rubins will give a public lecture discussing her work, including the astounding installation she created for MCASD in 2006. More . . . EXHIBITIONS →FINAL WEEKS! On view through 1/31/10 at MCASD La Jolla Automatic Cities: The Architectural Imaginary in Contemporary Art Featuring an international roster of both established artists and emerging talents, this imaginative new exhibition weaves architectural imagery within contemporary visual art. Museums in Miniature Works by Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell explore the use of collage, assemblage, and staged tableaux as plays on the notion of an exhibition space. →On view through 2/28/10 at MCASD Downtown, Jacobs Building Tara Donovan See the number one exhibition of 2009, according to Union-Tribune art critic Robert Pincus. Tara Donovan’s sculptures and installations transform everyday materials — such as drinking straws and plastic cups — to dazzling effect. STAY IN THE LOOP. Follow us on Twitter @mcasd Become a fan on Facebook @ facebook.com/mcasd

The report from ArtDaily.org

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Following a worldwide search, the Board of Trustees of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), announced today it has voted unanimously to appoint Jeffrey Deitch as the museum’s new director, effective June 1. Deitch [DIEtsch], 57, is one of New York’s leading gallerists, specializing in modern and contemporary art, and he has a 30-year career as an independent curator who has produced innovative exhibitions at museums and galleries around the world. As an art advisor to some of the world’s leading institutional and private collectors, he has helped build a number of major international contemporary art collections……

Read the complete original:
MOCA Board of Trustees Names New York Gallerist Jeffrey Deitch as Museum Director

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Thank you again, Los Angeles Times Culture Monsters:

L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art is poised to name its new director Monday morning, and one of the names circulating through the art world is Jeffrey Deitch, a high-flying New York art dealer who, if chosen, would be a radical break from the usual museum-world pattern.

MOCA’s key financial backer, Eli Broad, will present the new director along with the museum’s co-chairs, Maria Bell and David Johnson, and city Councilwoman Jan Perry, the museum announced today.

American museum directors typically come from within the curatorial, academic or other nonprofit ranks. No major art museum in the United States is directed by a former owner of a commercial art gallery…..

Read the complete article at the Los Angeles Times Culture Monsters blog.

MCASD warmly invites you to join us for a winter Members’ Celebration in honor of the exhibition, Tara Donovan. Thursday, January 14 > 7-9 PM MCASD Downtown, Jacobs Building This exclusive, Members-only event will allow viewers an intimate look at this popular exhibition. Explore the galleries and see the works that San Diego Union-Tribune art critic Robert Pincus hailed as “mystifying and wonderful.” Enjoy a drink, live music, and the opportunity to discuss the works on view with MCASD curators. Gallery space is limited; RSVP required. RSVP by Tuesday, January 12 to 858 454 3541 x120 or members@mcasd.org.

Earlier this month, one of my favorite artists featured recently at MCASD, Richard Wright, was awarded the Turner Prize, Great Britain’s best-known art award.
 
Known for painting “intricate, large-scale patterns” directly on walls and ceilings, Wright is a meticulous craftsman who uses very traditional methods to create very modern abstract images.
 

To make his untitled wall painting for the Turner prize exhibition, Wright employed the painstaking techniques of Renaissance fresco-makers – drawing a cartoon on paper and then transferring it to the wall in what he called “an incredibly medieval way” by pouncing – piercing the cartoon with holes and rubbing chalk through it to create “the ghost of a work” on the wall. The image was then painted with size (adhesive) and covered with gold leaf.

 
Because I use many of the same methods in my not-anywhere-as-innovative mural work, this appeals to me ina kindred spirits kind of way, as well as his insistence on working at such large scale.
 

Turner Prize winner Richard Wright

 
Another aspect of Wright’s work that resonates with me is his “insistence that his work be destroyed after the exhibitions end.”
 
Working as I have in theater and film and performing in public chalk painting festivals, many of the things I have painted and laboured over have been immediately destroyed after their designed user experience ends. Similarly, many of my private commissioned murals and custom finishes will never be seen by the greater public, nor would they make much sense outside the context of the home the were designed for.
 
When questioned about this, particularly at chalk festivals, people ask me if I am bothered by the “loss” of the work, to which I usually reply that it makes sense to me as most of my work is “lost” to me upon completion.
 

Wright said he sometimes felt a sense of loss at the destruction of his work.

“It is sad but it’s also a relief,” he said. “Other people make things that don’t survive. If you are a dustman or a reporter you do something that is consumed and passes.”

 
I find this point of view as refreshing as Wright’s work (featured in San Diego most recently in 2007), putting in perspective the “precious-ness” that many artists feel about their work.
 

“I am interested in the fragility of the moment of engagement – in heightening that moment,” he said. To see a work knowing that it will not last, he said, “emphasizes that moment of its existence”.

 
Since this is very close to how I answer the question “Why are you an artist?”, I feel even more affinity for Wright and his work upon reading about his award. Congratulations from San Diego, Richard Wright!
 
As usual I am indebted to ArtDaily.org for some of the details in this article. You can read their original post about Wright here, written by AP reporter Jill Lawless.
 
My other source for quotes and the image above is the always outstanding Guardian UK.Thir article on Wright was written by Charlotte Higgins, and features some great video as well as an excellent photo slideshow on Wright you can see here.

I’ve noted before that the San Diego News Network has developed a solid art & culture reporting practice for San Diego. This week’s review of the “Automatic Cities” show at MCASD La Jolla establishes them further as a thoughtful critical voice on what’s happening in San Diego art.

SDNN contributor Larry Herzog is a Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in City Planning at San Diego State University and brings a provocative twist to the “art” review by probing at the deeper issues raised in the show from a broader-tham-the-art-world perspective. Nice editorial choice and great article, check it out:

“Automatic Cities: The Architectural Imaginary in Contemporary Art” is a dazzling display of fantastic urban scenes and forms culled from deep in the psyches of 13 invited artists and one artist collective. On view through January 31 in La Jolla at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the exhibition indirectly forces us to face up to the reality of our failed American urban environment.

At a time when city building has screeched to a halt in the midst of a raging recession, visitors to MCA may pause to consider the visual condition of southern California.

Bleak images come to mind: monotonous American suburbs, spread across the great bulldozed flatlands, curving subdivisions neatly lined with bloated McMansions, pastel shaded, stucco condominium complexes dotted with “for sale” signs, and strip malls anchored by mega stores and chain outlets. Endless and repetitive blots of mind-numbing sameness bounding from region to region, like an infectious disease….

Read it all: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-12-10/things-to-do/automatic-cities-at-mcasd-prompts-question-is-the-american-cityscape-insane#ixzz0ZOWpbvn3

So you are planning a vacation with your teens and want to be sure they do more than lay on the beach and text their friends back home.
Consider an arts and culture tour of San Diego designed with teens in mind.
 
Most all San Diego arts organizations have special programs designed for ages 11-17. To make it more fun, hop on the Old Town Trolley and make the tour itself an adventure. When the ride is as fun as the destination, your teens are sure to stop tweeting and start exploring.
 
Kid-friendly arts and culture venues throughout Balboa Park and Downtown are accessible by the Trolley. Get started in front of ARTS TIX at Horton Plaza and check out that evening’s half-price Theater, Music and Dance tickets.
 

Arts & Culture Venues for Teens Visiting San Diego

Reuben H. Fleet Science Center/IMAX Theater- features more than 100 interactive science exhibits in five galleries, as well as major traveling exhibitions.

• San Diego Model Railroad Museum – featuring the largest indoor model railroad display in the world.
• San Diego Natural History Museum – exhibits for the naturalist or environmentalist in your family. Learn about the diversity of Southern California and Baja California
• Read more great art stuff for teens in San Diego here.

 
Also, several museums have specialized programs designed for that hard to please age. The San Diego Museum of Art has the Teen Art Café, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego teen programs are designed by teens themselves and the New Children’s Museum Teen Studio is only open to ages 11 and older.

A nighttime option is to invite your teens to “see themselves” on stage by attending performances by the ultra-talented youth from the San Diego Youth Symphony, Eveoke Dance Theater, J*Company, or San Diego Junior Theater.
 
Check the full article at SanDiego.org for links to addresses, phone numbers, opening hours, and of course, links to the websites of these (and more) San Diego arts & culture destinations.

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