Ok I'll be out of the country but if you are in Portland definitely catch Dan Cameron, Senior Curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York at the Portland Art Museum, for a lecture entitled “Gone Global.” He is schedualed to discuss the differences and similarities in Asian and American Contemporary Art, based on his own global art experiences. Ask him about the Huang Yong Ping retrospective up at the Vancouver Art Gallery. We haven't seen much of the new contemporary Chinese art in Portland beyond the Cao Fei video I curated into this show in 2005. Still in many ways Portland is much closer to Asian cities than New York.

The museum text says, "The Intersection of Words and Experience will explore the fundamental changes in art-making concepts, theories and practices after 1960. With the speakers representing influential theorists, critics, curators, authors and professors, audiences will be introduced to diverse perspectives on the shape and direction of contemporary art today. Topics will center on how conceptual art and art making practices have changed the physical reality of the object and in turn our viewing experience."

To these eyes it seems like there is a more of an active engagement with history, now that the whole idea about the death of history has become even more silly than the death of painting. One trick with historicised Asian art is that most Americans have so little historical knowledge about their own country, let alone Chinese or Indonesian history. Then there is the whole bit about how Asian cities make even New York seem like a slow paced pokey place.

April 15th

2:00 @ Portland Art Museum Whitsell Auditorium, $5 members - $10 nonmembers (These were better attended when the PAM lectures were free)

The Mercury also had a very short interview with Cameron