About AMW

About this Blog:

The goal of this blog is to help understand, through writing and images, the art world as it exists today.  Under the heading art world, I naturally include the exceedingly wide variety of forms and media, including architecture, that we (might) consider to be an artwork.  Unavoidably, this will often be about where and how it is seen – the galleries, museums, and studios that, for good or bad, give it context.  And, though always of secondary import to the art itself, the writing and conversations that shape our evolving dialogue.

This will necessarily be a work in progress.  My intention at this point is to post short and long reviews, notes, studio visits, very brief interviews, and writing by guest contributors.  This may all change over time.

About me:

I grew up in Chicago, where I graduated with a degree in Painting from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.  Over the next decade in Chicago I was an exhibiting artist, a curator at the Chicago Cultural Center for six years, Director of CompassRose Modern and Contemporary for five years, Chair of Exhibitions for Randolph Street Gallery, and a regular reviewer for the New Art Examiner.  During this time I was also an independent curator, eventually organizing exhibitions for every not-for-profit gallery in Chicago at that time, including Non-Naive and The Big Pitcher: The Abstracted Figure in Chicago Art at the Hyde Park Art Center, and Chicago Head 1984 at Randolph Street Gallery.

In 1991 I moved to Brooklyn.  I was the director of Stiebel Modern, a gallery specializing in representational art, on 57th Street from 1992 until 1996, when I left to open my own gallery, Deven Golden Fine Art.  The gallery opened on Mercer Street in Soho, and then moved to 20th Street in Chelsea, and I was fortunate to have James Timberlake, of KeiranTimberlake, design both spaces.  Over the five years of its existence, I was proud to represent and give shows to Jean Blackburn, Roland Flexner, David Hartt, Fred Holland, David Humphrey, Mark Lombardi, Marilla Palmer, Ruth Pastine, Beth Reisman, Dan Reynbolds, Sylvia Sleigh, and Anthony Viti.  I did many group exhibitions as well, including my first show, “Thing”, and my last show, “Touchy Feely”.  I closed the gallery in 2000, spent a year as Director of Advertising at Art in America, and then left there to work at Artsystems (www.artsystems.com) which specializes in creating the leading art database management solution globally for galleries, collections, artists, and art professionals of every kind.

I have written about art regularly since the early 1980s, for the last ten years being a regular contributor to www.artcritical.com, and very occasionally the ever excellent Bomb Magazine.  I have written catalogue essays as well, including for Martin Puryear: Public and Personal; Gladys Nilsson: Greatest Hits from Chicago; Edward Flood: A Retrospective, 1967 – 1985; and Gary Justis: Hyperfunctional Icons.  In the past three years, I have written Flatlands: New Paintings by Don Voisine; Riptide: New Paintings by Judith Linhares; Victor Pesce: Time Regained; Liz Mitty: In Bejeweled Grids; and Holly Miller: Twist, Bend, and Rise.

Deven Golden
February 2014