K R

@kringelberg

they/them, Art Historian I care a lot (too much?) Not repping any institution

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K R@kringelberg· Jul 5

I forgot this one yesterday: John Gerrard, _Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas)_ (2017)

A still photo of what is usually displayed as a seemingly live feed of a flag post planted in the middle of a southeastern Texas oilfield, the flag portion made up of oil coming out of pipe holes on the post. In this photo, the top 4/5 of the image is a hazy light blue sky with some clouds near the horizon, the bottom 1/5 is a field of what looks like corn toward the horizon and tan-brown desert dirt for most of the foreground to middleground zone. The flag is centered in the top third of the image, with the pole to the left of the flag. The flag oil is being blown to the right by the wind (I presume--it's possible it is being forced out of the pole in that direction and there is no opposing wind). It maintains the rough proportions of a regular rectangular flag, but composed of puffy black oil clouds streaming out in stripes that mash together about three inches or so from the flagpole. I'm glad it's only a computer-generated simulation, but having been in the oil fields of Texas means I can't help but think of the pollution and climate devastation that is very real there (and everywhere).

From Gerrard's website: "Depicts the site of the 'Lucas Gusher' - the world's first major oil find - in Spindletop, Texas in 1901, now barren and exhausted. The site is recreated as a digital simulation and placed at its centre a flagpole bearing a flag of perpetually-renewing pressurised black smoke.

The computer generated Spindletop runs in exact parallel with the real site in Texas throughout the year: the sun rising at the appropriate times and the days getting longer and shorter according to the seasons. The simulation is non-durational (having no beginning or end) and is run live by software that is calculating each frame of the animation in real time as it is needed."

K R@kringelberg· Jul 4

Dread Scott, _What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?_ (1988; silver gelatin print, US flag, book, pen, shelf, audience)

installation photograph of the work described in the post
From dreadscott.net: "The installation is comprised of: a photomontage (the montage consists of pictures of South Korean students burning US flags holding signs saying ‘Yankee go home son of bitch’ and flag draped coffins in a troop transport; text printed on the photomontage reads “What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?”), books (originally with blank pages) on a shelf, ink pens, a 3’x5′ American flag on the ground and an active audience. The audience was encouraged to write responses to the question “What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?” As they did so, they had the opportunity to stand on the flag as they wrote their response. When this work has been displayed, thousands of people filled hundreds of pages with responses. Many many of those stood on the flag as they added their comments to the work. Below is a brief sampling of comments from these pages."

K R@kringelberg· Jul 2

I'm not a fútbol watcher so I missed this bit about the Belgian kit: #Magritte #TheTreacheryOfFútbol

K R@kringelberg· Jun 27

One of the parts that most resonated with me:

Text from the article in the link:
Who owns the A.I. dividend? Technology firms see the university as a gigantic data farm; they are not invested in our students or the learning process, only in harvesting the attention of an entire generation of users, who will be addicted to their product for the rest of their adult lives.

Even worse, these students will be subjected to brutal calculations—based on the data stolen from them in college—to determine their worthiness for job interviews, the validity of insurance claims, or eligibility for parole.

Why, after all, has a consensus so quickly emerged that we have a crisis in teaching? Is this not more rightly described as a crisis in learning? Or, more aptly, as an attack on learning?

K R@kringelberg· Jun 27

Let's call this what it is--censorship!

Crop from a previously posted Junya Watanabe (spring 2027) runway photo, showing the head of a model in front of some windows with som blurry trees visible beyond the panes. The model is a chestnut-haired young white person with cheekbones that could cut through butter and plump glossed lips, their dark eyes staring intently ahead and down. they are wearing a Carolina blue baseball cap, but all the other details of the cap are obscured by a black bar with six grey dots that, where one is white, shows the viewer on which slide of the carousel the image is placed. There is clearly some decoration of the cap, but in carousel mode I cannot see it.

K R@kringelberg· Apr 11

Wikipedia: “The Life Line is a late 19th-century painting by American artist Winslow Homer. Done in oil on canvas, the painting depicts the rescue of a passenger from a stricken ship. The work…is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.”

K R@kringelberg· Mar 15

A photo of Ben Whishaw from the neck up, wearing dark sunglasses to protect himself from Scandinavian skin glare. He has a good bit of facial hair in this one (but closely trimmed) and is looking left of the lens. The shirt or jacket you can just barely see is a fine-grained black and white houndstooth print, I think?

K R@kringelberg· Feb 25

Yes! here's the initial letter to the Chronicle!

black and white photo of a clipping from the Duke University newspaper on April 21, 1986, with a letter to the editor entitled "Racism uglier than shanties" and signed Susan Cook, Trinity '88, overlaid on the right side by a yearbook photo of Susan, looking fly (our word at the time) in a shag cut, turtleneck, and polo-necked sweater with a string of pearls dangling down past the bottom margin. It was the 80s, and if you met Susan, you'd know she was the coolest so just imagine away the preppy sound of all of this--she was not a preppy!

K R@kringelberg· Jan 24

Also feeling this (Käthe Kollwitz, _Solidarity_ (1931-2), from the Käthe Kollwitz museum www.kollwitz.de)

Lithograph of four human figures linked by crossed arms forming a wall of worker solidarity (you can see figures on either side suggesting a longer line). They are determined to hold the line. The work, like a lot of Kollwitz's, appears like charcoal marks on an off-white or dark tan paper. You can see the texture of the marks and the paper. Kollwitz's hand is decisive and focused, with the most detail on the faces, arms, and hands while the legs just fade into the paper.
(The work has a complex origin and context--see the museum for that. I post it here in solidarity with all trying to hold the line right now, putting their bodies together against those who would kill us.)

K R@kringelberg· Nov 21

The co-author from Duke, Farr Curlin, is a specialist in Geriatric and Palliative Care as well as Medicine and Faith, and here's his list of external relationships (note who is at the top)--luckily the part of the page on mentoring says he really doesn't have time to do it!

A screenshot from the website listing Farr Curlin's research and his "external relationships"
The five bulleted underneath that heading are:
Alliance Defending Freedom
Campbell Miller Payne, PLLC
Hippocratic Society
Thomistic Institute
"various church organizations and institutions of higher ed"

K R@kringelberg· Oct 23

I think about this work of Prince's whenever I see Lindsey Halligan.

Richard Prince's photographic triptych _Untitled (three women looking in the same direction_ (1980 Ektacolor photograph, 27 1/2 x 74 1/2 inches, 69.9 x 189.2 cm)
Prince has appropriated three photographs from commercial advertisements of the late 70s and placed them side by side to emphasize their profound aesthetic similarity. In each photo, a woman with shoulder-length hair is looking to the viewer's left. The make-up, hairstyles, and fashions are also aesthetically similar to the appearance of Trump bootlicker Lindsey Halligan.

K R@kringelberg· Sep 27

Truly this is the look I want going in to fall (if we ever do).

youngish adult white model with brown hair walking the runway in a sumptuous burgundy shirt-pants-leather(?) sweatshirt ensemble with a striped burgundy tie/ascot and a loose woven envelope bag in their right hand (viewer's left); military-style black shoes but not docs. The runway is white and my eyes are green!

K R@kringelberg· Sep 24

I took a picture of this graffiti (graffito? sgraffito? jk) in Italy in 2009, and yet I find myself thinking about it for a second time this week.

A yellowy terracotta wall with a stenciled dark greenish black text-and-image graffito (?) with the words "La normalitá é la prigione di tutti" above a pictured bench with a person feeding a bird on it, underneath which is the text "psichiatria assassine"

K R@kringelberg· Sep 23

Jazzed to hear this series of podcasts from my VSR-into-real-life friend Erica Moiah James roll out! Good idea, The Clark. www.clarkart.edu/Research-Aca...

Unknown, Portrait of a Young Woman, late 18th century. Saint Louis Art Museum, 186:1951.
An 18th-century pastel half length portrait of a young feminine figure with brown skin, a crystal necklace, white headwrap, small gold hoop earring, and peachy-champagne dress with a mid-level decolletage. She turns her head toward the viewer while keeping her body largely facing the viewer's right. Her eyes are lively and her lips slightly parted, as if caught in mid speech or in the process of smiling. There is a pale blue, white, and light green background, as if the figure were posed against the sky or a backdrop intended to represent the sky with clouds. A shadow to the figure's left suggests the latter. To learn more, hear the podcasts!

K R@kringelberg· Sep 12

UC Berkeley really just throwing out their value as an institution (and it appears their spokesperson got a certificate in neoliberal hypocrispeak while failing any ethics courses she didn't take, probably).

"Butler said they were told that the university’s normal procedures for handling complaints had been suspended, which has seemingly stripped faculty of their rights to respond to claims or get basic information about the inquiries: “That means allegations sent to the administration, even anonymous ones, were simply forwarded without having been adjudicated … We don’t know whether we ourselves have been accused of antisemitism or whether our name is simply associated with an allegation.”

UC Berkeley’s counsel declined to share with Butler the contents of the files sent to the Trump administration, they said. With the materials now in the hands of the federal government, the disclosures raised concerns about violations of sixth amendment rights for people to know charges against them, they added."

Janet Gilmore, a UC Berkeley spokesperson, said in an email that “numerous documents” were provided to the federal government “over recent months”, including individuals’ names, and it was following guidance from the academic senate to inform people when their information is given to the federal government.

“We are committed to transparency and supporting our campus community while complying with federal investigations,” she said.

K R@kringelberg· Aug 17

e.g., page 109:

A photograph of a single page from a book: page 109, "How to Proceed: Emerging Wisdom from the Women", with three paragraphs of text below, from Larry Mitchell's classic 1977 text, a link to which is provided in the skeet quoted for this one--the link takes you to the archive.org copy you can listen to (and it has a multitude of interface options for downloading). Do it! Life-giving!

K R@kringelberg· Jul 19

*me and my book project

a still shot from a scene in _I Saw the TV Glow_; Owen is in Maddy's house and they are sitting on the couch with the fishtank glowing behind them and their faces and chests lit by the eponymous TV glow. Owen is on the left, wearing a white t-shirt with an orange and red sun with a face on it and dark corduroys, looking over at Maddy with an expression that mixes doubt, fear, suspicion, amazement, and curiosity. Maddy has eyes firmly on the TV and seems to either be taking a breath, caught in absorption, or telling Owen something about what is on screen. They are wearing a dark blue sort of tie-dyed, poly top and a silver chain necklace. The shot is a tight one, so the two figures seem pressed between middle and foreground, bodies cropped at the bottom and sides of the shot, and the fishtank glows bright green in the background, with open space between it and the red striped couch cushions amplifying the pressed-to-the-foreground feeling of the bodies on the couch. The dread that Owen has on their face while watching Maddy, and the obsessed, entranced look on Maddy's face, in combination, are a pretty good metaphor for how I feel about my book project. Am I Owen? Maddy? or both? Which is the book project?

K R@kringelberg· Jul 19

I was blathering about this in January but til I need to blather a bit more. Both zoom and your company likely have this first radio button set to "on"--which means when you host a zoom meeting w/a student or use it to hang w/your friends, it is recording and transcribing *everything*. Turn it off.

K R@kringelberg· Jul 18

The @dshtriangle.bsky.social folks, including of course the resplendent @stormiedaie.bsky.social pictured below, led us in a drag story hour at the NC Leg today, with @equalitync.bsky.social, Raleigh LGBT Center, Durham's own Poetry Fox (www.poetryfox.com) & @mosskidsbooks.bsky.social. #NoBookBans

K R@kringelberg· Jul 16

#BasseporteWas1st #LemaireWas2nd (in the history of the Jardin de Roi/Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle)

A signed watercolor of a single stem of lavender-blue hydrangea with two green opposite leaves about halfway down the stem. The heavy head of bracts nods to the left, with the leaves waving gently like arms above and below the stem that curves across the page. The signature of the artist, Madeleine Lemaire, is prominent on the lower right just under where the stem fades into empty space. As usual, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France has stamped the original image right on part of the handpainted painted leaf with no regard for the work itself, but also distractingly out into the open space underneath that leaf so that you cannot ignore it. The whole image is placed in the lower two thirds of the cream-colored page, which itself comes from a special copy of Marcel Proust's _Les Plaisirs et les Jours_ (1896), a book of poems and short stories, illustrated by Lemaire with original music composed by Proust's lover-then-friend Reynaldo Hahn. This particular hand-autographed copy was on display in Madrid recently at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, the website for which is where this reproduction was sourced.

K R@kringelberg· Jul 9

Only grocery stores, health care, and pharmacies can continue operations, and the town is looking into distributing bottled water.

The restrictions could remain in place for multiple days until the Water Treatment Plant is producing potable drinking water; all industries, businesses, offices, and non-residential units should cease operations. The exceptions are for grocery stores, health care facilities, and drug stores.
The Water Shortage Response Plan requires residents and businesses not to use any water other than limited drinking purposes when bottled water is not available, limited restroom usage (not including showers), and required medical usage. We urge everyone to use bottled water or other alternative sources. City personnel and local law enforcement will enforce the Water Shortage Plan. All regulations will continue until the Graham-Mebane Water Treatment plant is back in operation, and we have no estimated date at this time.
The City is receiving bottled water and identifying distribution sites. We will share more information as soon as possible.
As a reminder, the City of Mebane, Alamance County, and Orange County remain under a State of Emergency.

K R@kringelberg· Jul 7

added some alt text (which includes my own editorializing)

an image of the satellite map of the lake that feeds the Mebane water treatment plant; the lake is labeled "our water source", to it's left is a huge brown area labeled "New Development with erosion and sedimentation concerns" and under both is the small water treatment plant, labeled as such, which sits next to a junkyard full of cars, labeled "used autoparts yard". It seems clear from the image that the water source and the treatment plant would be directly affected by toxic runoff from the junkyard and the development construction site, which definitely happened yesterday when we had record rains and flooding as well as a tornado. The OP is pointing out that there are really minimal restrictions on land use in the county, which has been a source of enthusiasm for developers and factories as well as our town council, but a source of diminishing water quality and pollution standards for our citizens

K R@kringelberg· Jun 29

If you wonder why I just deleted my Academia account (and no, it's not clear they created the podcast, but certainly they made this process more likely, and anyway I should have quit before):

A screenshot of a notification I received from the Academia website, with their banner at the top and then "An AI created a podcast of your paper" underneath which is a box that says "Private to you" and underneat that is the title of my co-authored paper, "Prismatic views: a look at the growing field of transgender art and visual culture studies". This made my blood boil! WTF!?!

K R@kringelberg· Apr 27

Almost forgot to post these bangers from Martin Berger's talk. The Lubins as he always pictures them, in all their early 80s glory. <3 (the end)

Two photographs on a screen--to the left, one of David Lubin wearing a dark khakhi jacket over a dark v-neck sweater and light blue button-down shirt, open at the neck. He's centered in the shot, waist up, spreading his elbows and smiling toward the camera. He has a laurel crown of dark brown hair! And he's posing in front of a landscape of rolling green hills and trees. The right image is of David, Libby, and their kids (as babies!), posing in front of a tree with some greenery blurred out behind them on the sides. David is on the left with even more hair! wearing a tan striped polo, Libby has a big old Dorothy Hamill-type haircut and is wearing a cerise red polo/sweater combo with long sleeves. The kids are wearing blue kids clothes. Libby and David look like they just started or stopped laughing, and they are so cute and way more 80s than I would have ever guessed with Libby, who is now a fashion ICON.

K R@kringelberg· Apr 27

And Alex Nemerov's clever elimination of three key human figures from three different paintings (in this case, Winslow Homer's _Veteran in a New Field_ (1865), shown here with the Veteran erased) to signify and generate his ruminations around what happens when someone leaves the field. (5)

Alex Nemerov, wearing glasses, speaks into a mic, while an altered digital image of Winslow Homer's _Veteran in a New Field_ 1865) shows on the screen behind him. The podium at which he stands says "Reynolda" across the front and has a beautiful bouquet of red, yellow, and purple flowers in front of it. Beneath the screen, to Nemerov's right/image left are the screen above and four empty chairs below, underneath which we see cans of sparkling water set out for the future occupants.

K R@kringelberg· Apr 27

all the talks were great, & the lively back-and-forth among the speakers & David at the end was a great way to show what folks had been telling all day. Two highlights for me: Jennifer Roberts (Harvard), "The Pastel from Mars" (I won't publish her slides from that so this is her with a Lubin cover):

Jennifer Roberts at a podium that says "Reynolda" across the front, talking into a microphone about David Lubin's book _Shooting Kennedy_, the cover of which is on the screen behind her. There's a beautiful bouquet of red, yellow, and purple flowers in front of the podium and three empty chairs with sparkling water cans under them, just to her right, image left, under the screen.

K R@kringelberg· Apr 26

Here's a taste of that sense of humor in print, my favorite footnote in academia (and I have many), from David's _Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America_.

"Before telling these stories, I wish to point out that this chapter will be less marked than the others by the deliberately intrusive presence of the story-teller. This is intentional; whether or not it pleases you is another matter. Because I am writing about art that, as we shall see, was predicated upon the suppression of authorial presence--art that seemed to appear on the wall full-blown without any human touch--I have chosen to experiment with suppressing not so much my own touch as the conspicuous signs of that touch: the direct address, the jokes, the puns, the perorations, all the self-reflexive and idiosyncratic stuff that heretofore has been strewn throughout the book. [footnote 1 is here] In other words, I have tried (rather inconsistently, I must admit) to write impersonally about impersonal art, coolly about art that is cool, dispassionately about passionlessness. I have tried, this is to say, to write in the bland and neutral style preferred in the academy today."

From the endnotes at the back of the book:
In bold, "Chapter 6: The Trompe l'Oeil Paintings of William Michael Harnett".
1. For an example of self-reflexive scholarly writing, see David M. Lubin, _Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America_(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), esp. chap. 6. n. 1.

K R@kringelberg· Mar 15

From a WaPo article called "What to pack to avoid getting sick during spring travel" (irony--the intro section talks about re-upping masks and vaccines, but the list of things to pack does not, and does have "Vitamin C & Zinc" which the article *itself* says probably aren't that helpful--oh well)

Excerpted text of article: "It doesn’t help that we’ve “relaxed a little bit” when it comes to illness awareness, Barlow said. Many of us are no longer hypervigilant when it comes to hand-washing, mask-wearing, crowd distancing or staying up-to-date on vaccines.
If you’d like to avoid a mid-trip bout of illness, you’ll want to refocus all of those efforts. (Yes, the masking, too, even if it does feel very 2020 to some.)
“Wearing a face mask in high-traffic areas like TSA checkpoints, boarding and deplaning is another simple yet effective step,” said Mark Gendreau, a physician and the chief medical officer for several hospitals in the Beth Israel Lahey Health system in Massachusetts."
Sidebar with list of things to pack: "Hand sanitizer, Vitamin C and zinc, a water bottle, nasal sprays, sleep essentials"

K R@kringelberg· Mar 10

Also relevant (from Autry's essay in Mallory, Seidenstein, Burke, Jackson, Kéla, eds. _Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Atlantic Slave Trade : Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures._ (Boston: BRILL, 2025)). (And @arunadsouza.bsky.social you came up in the Q&A, natch.)

In short, I have found that the denial of reality upheld through a brash
lack of criticality makes hegemonic museums, to use Umberto Eco’s expression, “closed texts.” As such, they become limited, self-contained worlds that legitimize their own narratives. The ability to ignore histories of conquest and parasitism sustains the ruling class that profits from that violence. Erasing and concealing reality forecloses widespread critique and potential political action against past and current extraction. The myth of neutrality, which permeates other industries, such as journalism and science, mediates how people understand not just hegemonic museums but, more importantly, the world at large. Through distracting and deluding, it contributes to a network of obscuring forces that prevent people from understanding how power operates.

K R@kringelberg· Dec 13

The time is now, and the kids know it. What are you doing?