Video Reviews

Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art
Lowbrow art-art that nobody else knows how to characterize. It is a reaction to high brow culture-no color fields or urinals in galleries
Originally associated with hot rods and naked women
Some people call it lowbrow surrealism
Reaches out to masses and people relate to the imagery
Grew from World War II planes and hot rods with the pin-up style naked women
Inspired by suburbia, nuclear family, Malibu beach/surf scene, comic books and B level movies
Psychedelic rock posters-not accepted in galleries because associated with hippies and drugs
Lowbrow always has a narrative, a lot of things happening or about to happen
Tiki culture: men coming from the Pacific in World War II and came to love that decor-tiki idols
Culture open to women artists
Internet has opened a lot of doors to exposure to all kinds of art and made people more aware. People can can discover and seek out what they like.
People became exposed to the art through album covers and flyers
Vancouver experienced a similar underground art culture to California
Value of paintings is growing

George Eastman House: The Perfect House
George Eastman born1854 in the new age of photography, founder Eastman Kodak and popular photography
created first affordable, portable camera
George Eastman House holds 400,000 photographs, 25,000 films, 62,000 personal artifacts and 16,000 pieces of photographic technology
able to document history
First Kodak camera cost $25 for 100 exposures
Eastman understood marketing: "you press the camera, we do the rest"
Eastman worked with Edison to create a 35 MM motion picture camera
Restoration and preservation of film is a relatively new career and is growing
Eastman House has a large online collection
Eastman committed suicide in 1932 because he had a terminal illness and wanted to be in control of his life

Displaying Modern Art: the Tate Approach
Tate Modern: 4 million viewers in the first year
MOMA-pioneered display technique of chronological sequence of works. White walls with lighting on works. Separate rooms dedicated to different movements. Makes it seem like an evolution and that one piece built from a older piece.
Tate: 4 sections in themes-landscape, still life, history, nude-allows for many possibilities

Bones of Contention: Native American Archeology
Native American bones have been collected and studied at will
Discrimination-white people bones are reburied in a cemetery, while bodies of native American buried in the same area are taken for study.
1976-first law passed to protect Indian burial grounds
Colonists and settlers were fascinated by Native Americans
Dug up burial mounds and later discovered Native Americans had indeed built the mounds
Smithsonian held the remains of 18,000 Native American remains
Anthropologists want to study origins of Native Americans. Similar bone defects suggest shared genes origins. Many tribes do not believe the theory of migration. They believe in Creation.
Takes time to repatriate bones to correct tribes
Computer analysis may help determine what bones belong to a tribe
Native Americans have an oral tradition of their history
Study today's health problems by looking at remains
Omaha tribe work with University of Nebraska to understand their past culture and health. Studying their bones has provided a lot of significant information.
Repatriation has been accomplished

The videos relate to the art curation project because they showed different ways to exhibit art and show possible themes. The video on Native American bones showed the importance of respecting artifacts of a culture and if it is moral to remove objects to display them. It is an ongoing issue and certainly something to consider.

The videos definitely helped me because they explained different artistic movements and gave me ideas about how to present my Art Curation project.