Weblogic

Reports have emerged this month about the suicide of Ted Gardiner in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. He was the federal informant in the case that has accused 20 Mormons of trafficking in archeology artifacts.

Denver Biennial is in good hands according to Kyle McMillan at the Denver Post. Those hands belong to Paola Santoscoy, a 35- year old curator and writer from Mexico.

The curators argue that O'Keeffe's experimentation was a life-long mission. The evidence starts early in her career but comes also in late pictures like Untitled (Red Wave with Circle) from 1979, in which O'Keeffe could counter-pose a hook or crescent with a thick dot of red to evoke one of Joan Miro's motifs. Georgia O'Keeffe, Abstraction, 1926, oil on canvas. Whitney Museum of American Art.

Sometime around 1970 Robert Smithson drew a sketch of a tug towing a barge planted with trees.

In conjunction with Smithson's 2005 retrospective at The Whitney, Nancy Holt and Minetta Brook undertook to interpret the drawing in real life, outfitting a vessel to carry the miniature park and finding a tugboat at the scale of Smithson's drawing. The archipelago navigated the Hudson River and East River to the amusement and amazement of New Yorkers and Conrad Skinner four years ago this fall.

Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction opened at the Whitney Museum in New York on September 17th. Barbara Haskell of the Whitney, along with Barbara Buhler Lynes, curator of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, co-curated. Also involved in curating the show were Elizabeth Hutton Turner, provost of University of Virginia, and Bruce Robertson of UCSB. Audio correction: I got Edith Halpert's name wrong. Halpert  was the director of The Downtown Gallery, where O'Keeffe had exhibits of her abstract works in 1952 and 1958.

Denver artist Edie Winograde exhibited Place and Time: Re-enactment Pageant Photographs at Robischon Gallery this summer. I interviewed her about the popular American pastime of historial reenactment, and what it's like to be on the ground among flying men and horses. Audio -- plus a slideshow.

Michael Jackson's personal painter is David Nordahl, a Santa Fe artist specializing in (B) Western scenes of Apaches, when not depicting Michael in happy camp.

Lightning Field's "setting," near Quemado, New Mexico, gets called a cliché in The Washington Post. Tyler Green repeats it. Leanne argues for experience over the words of the chattering classes.

Herbert Bayer was a Bauhaus graphic designer & Aspen architect. Also of note was Peter Halley at Baldwin Gallery.

Art, urban planning, "software," are some of the terms artists Christo and JeanneClaude apply to their short-term land art projects, which take a considerably long time to build public approval.

From cartoon clouds to Charles Sheeler-like landscapes, Colorado painters put up color and a good fight over abstraction and hyperrealism. Right: video in Aspen.

Bruce Nauman won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in June.

An exhibition of master prints made at a legendary Lyons, Colorado shop, frolics at MCA Denver through June 28.

With a little help from friends at Green Mountain Energy and Big Texas Sun Club, Ballroom Marfa contributes solutions.