"The Wandering Lake" is a personal, associative, narrative meditation on mourning, caregiving, and landscape. The exhibition of this project at the Queens Museum will be designed to mirror Chang's larger artistic approach; a singular complex narrative will be presented through an installation that attempts to replicate the complex way stories develop through geography, history, cultural mythology, fiction, and personal experience. While Chang's multi-year project was in part inspired by turn-of-the-century colonial explorer Sven Hedin's book 'Wandering Lake' (1938) which tells the story of a migrating body of water in the Chinese desert, the project also chronicles the loss of Chang's father as well as her pregnancy and the birth of her son. Exhibition: Queens Museum, New York, United States, September 17, 2017-February 2, 1018.

Ron Athey is one of the most important, prolific, and influential performance artists of the past four decades. A singular example of lived creativity, his radical performances are odds with the art worlds and art marketplaces that have increasingly dominated contemporary art and performance art over the period of his career. Queer Communion, an exploration of Athey's career, refuses the linear narratives of art discourse and instead pays homage to the intensities of each mode of Athey's performative practice and each community he engages. Emphasizing the ephemeral and largely uncollectible nature of his work, the book places Athey's own writing at its center, turning to memoir, memory recall, and other modes of retrieval and narration to archive his performances. In addition to documenting Athey's art, ephemera, notes, and drawings, the volume features commissioned essays, concise "object lessons" on individual objects in the Athey archive, and short testimonials by friends and collaborators by contributors including Dominic Johnson, Amber Musser, Julie Tolentino, Ming Ma, David Getsy, Alpesh Patel, and Zackary Drucker, among others. Together they form Queer Communion, a counter history of contemporary art.

In the 1960s, a group of Los Angeles artists fashioned a body of work that has come to be known as the “LA Look” or West Coast Minimalism. Its distinct aesthetic is characterized by clean lines, simple shapes, and pristine reflective or translucent surfaces, and often by the use of bright, seductive colors. While the role of materials and processes in the advent of these truly indigenous Los Angeles art forms has often been commented on, it has never been studied in depth — until now. Made in Los Angeles focuses on four pioneers of West Coast Minimalism — Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, and John McCracken — whose working methods, often borrowed from other industries, featured the use of synthetic paints and resins as well as industrial processes to create objects that are both painting and sculpture. Bell, for example, coated plate glass with films of material that alter the way the light is absorbed, reflected, and transmitted, while Kauffman employed a process usually reserved for commercial signs for his work. McCracken coated plywood with fiberglass then spray painted it with countless layers of automotive paints, and Irwin spray-painted discs of hammered aluminum or vacuum-formed plastics. The detailed study of each artist’s work is presented in the context of the emergence of modern art in Los Angeles, the burgeoning mid-twentieth-century gallery scene, and the light-infused LA cityscape. Initially undertaken as part of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A.1945–1980 initiative, this volume combines technical art history and scientific analysis to investigate conservation issues associated with the work of these artists, which are often emblematic of issues in the conservation of contemporary art in general.

A leading activist museum director explains why museums are at the center of a political storm In an age of protest, cultural institutions have come under fire. Protestors have mobilized against sources of museum funding, as happened at the Metropolitan Museum, and against board appointments, forcing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders to resign at the Whitney. That is to say nothing of demonstrations against exhibitions and artworks. Protests have roiled institutions across the world, from the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim to the Akron Art Museum. A popular expectation has grown that galleries and museums should work for social change. As Director of the Queens Museum, Laura Raicovich helped turn that New York muni- cipal institution into a public commons for art and activism, organizing high-powered exhibitions that doubled as political protests. Then in January 2018, she resigned, after a dispute with the Queens Museum board and city officials. This public controversy followed the museum’s responses to Donald Trump’s election, including her objections to the Israeli government using the museum for an event featuring Vice President Mike Pence. In this lucid and accessible book, Raicovich examines some of the key museum flashpoints and provides historical context for the current controversies. She shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding conservative, capitalist values. And she suggests ways museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Reports for 1980-19 also include the Annual report of the National Council on the Arts.