Review Hive: round two

The next Review Hive assignment will focus on the public art project Event Horizon by Antony Gormley, at Madison Square Park. For those nearby who haven’t already heard about the piece, I suggest going to check it out before reading about it. Some hints: the first part is clearly visible on the corner of 5th Avenue and 26th Street. Watch for the reactions of tourists and passersby. Be sure to keep an eye on nearby rooftops too.

If you want to read about Event Horizon beforehand, a description of the piece is available at this site, and a review from the New York Times T Magazine can be found here.

This time around, Review Hive participants will be checking out the piece and tweeting on their own time, so we expect the RSS feed to take off gradually and grow slowly over the next week or two. I’ll chime in with my own responses later, once everyone else has had a chance to write something.

The feed can be compiled by searching for the tag #vcs2 on Twitter, or reading the new RSS feed on the column to the right.

See you in the park.

A look back at round one

During this Wednesday’s essay seminar class, the students and I discussed last week’s trip to MoMA. We wanted to think about what worked well and what didn’t, and figure out where to take the Review Hive next.

MoMA is a big place known for sprawling exhibitions, but I think none of us expected the Kentridge show to be so massive. In my case, I think that past exposure to his works in more modest surroundings led me to expect a much less imposing presentation. The scale of the show meant that by the time we had seen it all and were ready to write, we were already completely overwhelmed and exhausted. Scheduling our visit during class time also made things feel a little cramped.

However, I was really pleased with the writing that everyone contributed. The tweets that made it into the feed span a pretty wide range of views about the works we saw, and I liked the insights and emotions that each student brought in. I was also happy that the feed slowly but organically moved along to other things (including the Marina Abramovic show).

Our experience with the first set of tweets hasn’t changed the original plan for round two, but it did influence the decision on what to view next. This time, we’ll look at something a little more modest and focused (in concept, at least), though still open-ended enough to allow for a wide range of comments. Students will be going to look at the next artwork on their own time, offering them a chance to linger at the site and let the work sink in before they have to commit anything to writing. I’ll be announcing the next assignment on this site and the VCS blog soon.

Our first review begins tomorrow

As stated in the last post, our first set of Tweets will come from MoMA, starting just after noon tomorrow, Wednesday the 24th. There are three ways to follow our tweets. You can search for the tag #vcs1 on Twitter’s home page, click on this link, or follow along on the RSS feed at the bottom of the column to the right.

27 hours and counting.

Welcome to The Review Hive

The Review Hive project is about to launch. Our first Twitter-based art review will begin just after 12:00 noon on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 (five days from today). We will be coming to you live from The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, where we plan to do a group review of the William Kentridge exhibition (though we may change our minds at the last minute if something else catches our collective eye, such as the Marina Abramovic retrospective).

In the meantime, feel free to look around this blog and get familiar with the project. There is a lot of information about what we’re up to on the pages tabbed above. Additional updates and comments will be added to this blog as the project moves forward.

I will post information on how to find our twitter posts just before we go live. Feel free to follow along as we write about art without a net.