Artful Conversation

The Last Three Feet Between Us

6/27/2021

U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping of the People’s Republic of China on Jan. 29, 1979 in Washington, D.C., greet American schoolchildren who performed in Chinese the protest song that Deng Xiaoping sang three years earlier as he was being taunted by Chairman Mao’s cultural revolutionaries while being paraded through Tiananmen Square. (Photo: National Archives)

Andy Wulf

One of my favorite episodes of cultural diplomacy occurred in 1979 when Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping of the People’s Republic of China visited the United States to see President Jimmy Carter. This first state visit by a Chinese leader followed the normalization of formal diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China.

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Against the corrosive influence of forgetting

5/14/2021

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A stela at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., is a reminder of two lynchings that occurred in Dougherty County. Thomas Royal was murdered in 1906, and Curley McKelvey in 1920. (Photo: Andrew J. Wulf/Albany Museum of Art)

Andy Wulf

The title for this article is inspired by President Joe Biden’s statement on April 24, 2021, Armenian Remembrance Day, in which the United States officially recognized the Armenian Genocide of 1915. This moment of recognition reminds me there is a vast difference between involuntary forgetting and intentional banishment from memory.

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Hey, where’s the AMA going?

4/26/2021

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Students from Albany State University tour the "Butch Anthony: Art, Nature, and Interwangleism" exhibition on view now in the Haley Gallery at the Albany Museum of Art. The AMA has five exhibition galleries open and a full slate of programs underway. (Photo: Albany Museum of Art/Jim Hendricks)

Andy Wulf

Things will be great when you're downtown
No finer place for sure downtown
Everything's waiting for you.

-- Petula Clark

Over the last ten years or so, scuttlebutt has it that the Albany Museum of Art will move downtown. Rumors as to when, where, why, and how it’s happening have swerved from fiction to truth to the absurd, like the telephone game children play.

Folks, here’s the skinny.

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To see a world of DIY wonder

3/22/2021

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Butch Anthony, “Adam and Eve,” 2018, cow bones, wire, canvas, paint, found objects

Andy Wulf

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
nd Eternity in an hour

— From “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake

The new Butch Anthony exhibition at the Albany Museum of Art, Art, Nature, and Intertwangleism, may at first glance appear a panorama of animal life, removed from its original disposition, reconstituted, and made into art.

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Confusion makes its masterpiece

2/23/2021

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Andy Wulf

I was asked in a recent interview how artists have made sense of the pandemic.

German playwright Bertolt Brecht said,

“In the dark times
Will there be singing?
There will be singing
Of the dark times.”

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Keep heart and carry on

1/19/2021

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Singer/songwriter John Prine was one of the thousands of Americans who have died from COVID-19.

Andy Wulf

I remember vividly the first time I witnessed the direct effects of a pandemic on human beings. It was 1989 when, as a freshman at the University of Southern California, I accompanied a photography student who was shooting portraits of terminal AIDS patients at a hospice not far from campus. I carried her lights and cables, and served as her tech support.

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Happy Holidays from the Albany Museum of Art

12/21/2020

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Experiencing art is unforgettable

12/21/2020

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Andrew J. Wulf, Ph.D.

I came to Albany, Ga., and the Albany Museum of Art circuitously, by way of years of detours that led to yet other detours. All these led me to the right place—not necessarily at the right time, but they led me nevertheless.

I trust in detours. As the legendary Steve Jobs once stated, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

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The Last Three Feet Between Us

Against the corrosive influence of forgetting

Hey, where’s the AMA going?

To see a world of DIY wonder

Confusion makes its masterpiece

Keep heart and carry on

Happy Holidays from the Albany Museum of Art

Experiencing art is unforgettable

Andrew J. "Andy" Wulf, Ph.D.

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