Helen Molesworth’s true-crime sensation marginalizes the artist’s life and legacy.
Helen Molesworth
The Art of Making It Is a Film for Those Who Haven’t Been Paying Attention
The documentary has impressive access to contemporary art world figures, but comes up with no good solutions for the many problems it discusses.
A Podcast on Radical Women Unearths Rare Interviews With Alice Neel, Betye Saar, and More
This season of the Recording Artists podcast, hosted by Helen Molesworth, explores what it has meant to be a woman and artist through the lives of six iconic artists.
Meet LA’s Art Community: Helen Molesworth Still Buys Postcards and Loves Seeing Art Alone
A new interview series spotlighting some of the great work coming out of Los Angeles. Hear directly from artists, curators, and art workers about their current projects and personal quirks.
A Student of Manny Farber Organizes a Film Series in His Honor
Blame the Audience presents cinematic works that resonate with Farber’s teachings.
Helen Molesworth’s Last MOCA Exhibition Is an Act of Love
One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art makes a compelling case for why we should be looking at the art of the everyday and why it is remarkable.
Curator Helen Molesworth Welcomes the “Death Rattle of Our Colonial Past” in Commencement Address
Molesworth gave a passionate commencement address at the University of California, Los Angeles, in which she railed against white supremacy and “outmoded forms of thought.”
Los Angeles Art Community Reacts to Firing of MOCA Chief Curator Helen Molesworth
The announcement of Molesworth’s departure shocked and dismayed many in the Los Angeles art world. But some MOCA insiders have also said she contributed to a toxic work environment.
Resituating Kerry James Marshall in a Black Radical Tradition
Curators have extensively referenced the white, male, Western canon of painting, but mostly ignore the ways in which Marshall’s work fits into and extends black visual culture.
We Were Not Making Art, We Were at War
At some point, nearly two hours in, Marlene McCarty, one of the members of the AIDS activist group Gran Fury, an affinity group that was part of ACT-UP, reminded those gathered: “We were not making art.” The event was a panel discussion that took place at Columbia University on November 15, organized by Columbia’s School of the Arts, and was intended to draw on some of the themes present in the exhibition that just opened at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s. The panel was comprised of ICA Boston curator Helen Molesworth and four members of the eleven-member collective that was Gran Fury: Avram Finkelstein, Tom Kalin, Marlene McCarty, and Robert Vazquez-Pacheco.
The question that prompted McCarty’s response was one of a handful that arose during the Q&A that followed the presentations by the panel. There was a similar tone to many of the questions that came up, the majority of which were something along the lines of: “How can we do what you did?” In addition to reminding those present that Gran Fury’s intention was never to make art, per se, McCarty added, “We were very brash about the fact that we were making propaganda.”