Exhibition Information | Reports from The Generational: Younger Than Jesus

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Visitor suggestions for the Live Archive timeline, part two

May 7, 2009 | YTJ

The Live Archive. Photo by Benoit Palley.

The Live Archive is a resource center presented on the fifth floor of the New Museum in conjunction with “Younger Than Jesus.” One of its features is a selective historical timeline—the multicolored grid seen in the photo at right—that lists historical and cultural events from 1976 to 2009. The participating artists selected some of these for the importance the events had in their own lives. The timeline also includes a suggestion box in which visitors can write in events or cultural creations of importance to them. Here is a sampling of the suggestions submitted since April 23.

August 19, 1987 – In Hungerford, England, a twenty-seven-year-old unemployed man, Michael Robert Ryan, shoots and kills sixteen people (including his mother), wounds fifteen others, then takes his own life. The massacre led to the Firearms (Amendment) Act of 1988, which banned the ownership of semi-automatic rifles and restricted the use of shotguns with a magazine capacity of more than two rounds.

July 2001 – During the 27th Summit Meeting of the Group of Eight countries, thousands of antiglobalization protesters turn the city of Genoa, Italy, into a virtual theater of war as they battle 19,000 police troops. One protester, twenty-three-year-old Carlo Giuliani, is killed. The reported number of persons injured in the mayhem amounted to more than 200, and about 280 arrests were made.

Summer 2001 – The first Lollapalooza festival, conceived and created by Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell as a farewell tour for his band, debuts. The music festival features alternative rock, hip hop, and punk rock bands, performances, and craft booths. It would run annually until 1997, and then be revived in 2003.

March 8, 1993 – The animated television series Beavis and Butt-Head premieres on the MTV network. The show centers on a pair of teenagers who live in the fictional town of Highland, Texas, and spend their time making sarcastic conversation and fantasizing about sex. During each episode, Beavis and Butt-Head make fun of several music videos.

March 2009–present – The first major outbreak of swine flu—also known as A(H1N1)—in thirty years begins in March in Mexico City. By the end of April, more than 2,000 cases of an influenza-like illness had been reported throughout Mexico. On April 25, Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, declares the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. On April 29, the New York Times reports the first death in the United States related to the A(H1N1) virus.

December 6, 2008 – Athens police fatally shoot a fifteen-year-old boy, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, leading to weeks of protests throughout Greece that, by December 17, were reported to have caused $1.3 billion in damage.

February 13, 2008 – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offers a comprehensive apology to the country’s indigenous peoples for past wrongs and calls for bipartisan action to improve the lives of Australia’s Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders.

April 30, 2009 – Six people are killed and a dozen wounded when a thirty-eight-year-old Dutchman drives his car into a crowd in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, in an attempt to crash into an open-topped bus carrying Queen Beatrix and members of her family. Shortly afterwards, the man, who has not been identified by name, admitted that he had aimed the car at the royal family. He died the next evening.

Be sure to stop by the fifth-floor Live Archive to see if the events of great importance in your own life are on our timeline. If not, please place them in the suggestion box and check back here.

Visitor suggestions for the “Live Archive” timeline

April 23, 2009 | YTJ

The Live Archive. Photo by Benoit Palley.

December 15, 1989 – Manuel Noriega was given the title chief executive officer of the Panamanian government, and he declared a state of war with the United States. Two days later, US President George Bush ordered troops to Panama. Noriega took refuge in the Vatican nunciature (embassy) in Panama, until he surrendered on January 3, 1990, and was transpored to Miami, where he was arraigned on criminal charges.

January 22, 2008 – Australian actor Heath Ledger is found dead in his apartment in New York; it was later declared that he died from an accidental overdose of a mixture of prescription drugs.

July 12, 1998 – France defeats Brazil 3-0 in the final at Saint-Denis, near Paris, to win the 16th World Cup.

January 17, 1995 – A large-scale earthquake, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, hits the southern part of Hyogo prefecture in Japan. It causes an estimated 6,400 deaths, injured approximately 40,000 people, displaced 300,000 people from their homes. The city that suffers the worst damage is nearby Kobe.

November 5, 1982 – Jacques Tati, a French filmmaker and actor who gained renown for his comic films, several of which he starred in as Monsieur Hulot, dies.

April 30, 1997 – Actress Ellen DeGeneres reveals she is gay on the television show Oprah. On the same day, ABC airs “The Puppy Episode” of her television show Ellen, in which the main character Ellen Morgan realizes she is gay and comes out.

July 4, 1976 – The United States celebrates its bicentennial with festivities across the country.

September 20, 1985 – EMI releases singer Kate Bush’s album Hounds of Love in the United Kingdom. It is Bush’s fifth studio album and the second to reach No. 1 on the charts.

Be sure to stop by the fifth-floor Live Archive to see if the events of great importance in your own life are on our timeline. If not, please place them in the suggestion box and check back here.

“Younger Than Jesus”: Let the Feedback Begin

April 8, 2009 | YTJ

Photo of works by Chu Yun (foreground) and Cory Arcangel (background) in "Younger Than Jesus." From Flickr user clementine gallot.

Yesterday morning members of the press arrived at the New Museum to survey “Younger Than Jesus.” Last night crowds packed into the galleries for the exhibition’s opening reception. Today the exhibition opens to the public. Let the feedback begin! The exhibition’s curators, the participating artists, and the museum staff have been working on the show for a long time; we’re eager to know what the public thinks. We’ll try to collect some of this commentary here on the “YTJ” blog, and we’ll look across multiple media. To that end:

Jonathan T.D. Neil, who works at the Drawing Center and is a contributing editor at Art Review, tweeted his progress through the show yesterday morning, wondering aloud what it means to find “mature” work in a show of young artists. (He also likes Tauba Auerbach’s contribution.) Artnet reports that BLT Gallery, across the street from the museum, is hosting an exhibition, titled “Wiser Than God,” that features artists 83 and older. A woman who goes by the name Dream Sequins photo-blogged her way through the galleries yesterday. And, of course, the first batch of photos from exhibition visitors have hit Flickr.

Photos from Liz Glynn’s “Building Rome in a Day”

April 7, 2009 | YTJ

Los Angeles–based artist Liz Glynn and her army of volunteers are in the midst of building Rome in a day–using salvaged building material and cardboard. The ancient capitol is being re-created in the New Museum’s lobby gallery right now. Here are a few photographs taken last night.

Glynn and volunteers at work

A view from the lobby

New York-based artist Darren Bader, foreground, helps construct Liz Glynn's version of Rome

A volunteer, foreground, helps construct Liz Glynn's version of Rome

For more photos, visit the New Museum’s Facebook page by clicking here.

“The Generational: Younger Than Jesus”

March 17, 2009 | YTJ

For “Younger Than Jesus,” the first edition of “The Generational,” the New Museum’s new signature triennial, fifty artists from twenty-five countries will be presented. The only exhibition of its kind in the United States, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” will offer a rich, intricate, multidisciplinary exploration of the work being produced by a new generation of artists born after 1976. Known to demographers, marketers, sociologists, and pundits variously as the Millennials, Generation Y, iGeneration, and Generation Me, this age group has yet to be described in any way beyond their habits of consumption. “Younger Than Jesus” will begin to examine the visual culture this generation has created to date.

Inspired by the fact that some of the most influential and enduring gestures in art and history have been made by young people in the early stages of their lives, “Younger Than Jesus” will fill the entire New Museum’s building on the Bowery with approximately 145 works by artists all of whom are under the age of thirty-three years old. Hailing from countries including Algeria, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Lebanon, Poland, Turkey, and Venezuela, many are showing in a museum for the first time. The exhibition will span mediums and encompass painting, drawing, photography, film, animation, performance, installation, dance, Internet-based works, and video games. Major support for the exhibition has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation.

Consistent with the New Museum’s thirty-year mission to present new art and new ideas, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” will be the first major international museum exhibition devoted exclusively to the generation born around 1980, tapping into the different perspectives, shared preoccupations, and experiences of a constituency that is shaping the contemporary art discourse and prescribing the future of global culture. In the United States, this demographic group is the largest generation to emerge since the Baby Boomers, while in India half the population is less than twenty-five years old; the sheer size of this generation ensures its worldwide influence. By bringing together a wide variety of artists and contextualizing their different approaches, “Younger Than Jesus” will capture the signals of an imminent change, identify stylistic trends that are emerging among a diverse group of creators, and provide the general public with a first in-depth look at how the next generation conceives of our world. Revealing new languages and attitudes, the exhibition will comprise a portrait of the agents of change at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The exhibition is organized by Lauren Cornell, Director of Rhizome and New Museum Adjunct Curator; Massimiliano Gioni, Director of Special Exhibitions; and Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator.

“The New Museum has always been a platform for the new,” comments Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director. “We have given important early exposure to artists at the beginning of their careers, from Keith Haring to Adrian Piper, and Ana Mendieta to Jeff Koons—artists who subsequently changed the course of art. ‘Younger Than Jesus’ continues the New Museum’s tradition and mission of showing the art of tomorrow today.”

“The artists in ‘Younger Than Jesus’ reflect a preoccupation with our future, but also with history and tradition: Rather than foreswearing their parents, they seem interested in imagining new communities and alternative families,” says Massimiliano Gioni. “Their tactics range from role-playing to recycling, from identity tourism to technological archeology, from an hysterical form of realism to an intimate, micro-emotional art.”

According to Lauren Cornell, “The exhibition presents glimpses of a generation that is incredibly diverse, with artists moving seamlessly across mediums. Instead of radically breaking from the past, these artists draw from a myriad of influences across historical movements and geographies to highlight the intergenerational dynamics that drive contemporary art.”

“During World War II, both Pablo Picasso and Giorgio Morandi were both painting still lifes,” explains Laura Hoptman. “Two artists, belonging to the same generation, were imagining two absolutely different realities emerging from a chaos that encompassed the entire world. We hope that ‘Younger Than Jesus’ will offer a look at our world as reflected through the work of many artists belonging to the same time and yet representing entirely different perspectives on its problems and its beauties.”

Informants Worldwide
Artists were selected for “Younger Than Jesus” through an open curatorial model that is participatory, and inspired by the networking proclivities of the generation represented in the show. Initial research for the exhibition was conducted through an international network of correspondents and an information-sharing group of more than 150 curators, writers, teachers, artists, critics, and bloggers worldwide, who were asked to recommend artists for the exhibition. This methodology was intended to expand the curatorial process and challenge the traditional “single-source” method of creating an exhibition. Through this process, more than 500 artists were recommended and researched.

Publications
Biographical information and images from the over 500 artists who were submitted for consideration for the exhibition by the global network of informants will be included in the publication Younger Than Jesus: The Artist Directory, co-published by the New Museum and Phaidon. The publication will serve as an informal census of the artists from this generation, and will expand the exhibition by adding an additional platform.

The exhibition catalogue, co-published by the New Museum and Steidl, will include reproductions of the work of the fifty artists chosen for the exhibition, as well as original essays by the exhibition curators and an anthology of articles by a diverse group of writers including philosophers, sociologists, journalists, activists, and marketing and technology experts. It is intended to compose a complex picture of the art and preoccupations that animate the work of this emerging generation.

Live Archive
The New Museum’s fifth-floor Museum as Hub space will serve as the live archive of “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.” Organized by freelance critic Brian Sholis and the New Museum’s Rya Conrad-Bradshaw, the space will serve as a research platform, discussion venue, and repository of international periodicals, films, and music created by or documenting this generation. Materials will be gathered from diverse sources: Sholis’s conversations and interviews with the exhibition’s artists; contemporary publications and zines selected by international correspondents; and texts by philosophers, sociologists, journalists, marketing, and technology experts about this generation. Regular lunchtime presentations will address the idea of generational shifts and the specific nature of this generation and its influences.