Richard Serra at MoMA

This is a very exciting exhibit that opened at MoMA the beginning of June and runs through September 10. I plan to get up to NY to see it and you should as well. The exhibit is a retrospective of 40 years of his work. It also includes 3 sculptures made in 2006. You can read an interview with Serra on the website above as well as listen to him discussing his art in a video that shows his work. You can also listen to an interview from All Things Considered of April 24, 2007 that describes getting ready for the exhibit.

So here is the scoop on Serra. He was born in 1939 in San Francisco. He attended Yale University's School of Art and Architecture and graduated in 1964. He was actually trained as a painter. He then moved to New York Remember that during the sixties New York artists were experimenting with all kinds of things. He began to experiment with nontraditional materials such as rubber, neon and lead. Other sculptors used these materials. For example, Dan Flavin made extensive use of neon. Chakia Booker uses rubber extensively.

Nathan Austin in his blog gives you his own take on the exhibit. I had forgotten that there was a fatal accident in 1970 involving one of his works. Apparently another accident happened in 1988. Now I have not been able to verify these accounts, so I hope they are not just an urban legend.

When I return from looking at the Serra, I will comment further.