Notes from the field

Afterimage, May-June, 2003 by Betsy Phillips, Genevieve Waller

Internationally recognized media artist Dorothea Braemer has been named Executive Director of Squeaky Wheel/Buffalo Media Resources. A member of the Philadelphia-based Termite TV Collective and the former Media Center Manager and Program Director at Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, Braemer has produced numerous half-hour television programs, and has won top awards at many prestigious festivals. She has exhibited her personal media work at MoMA, the Museum of Television and Radio, and a variety of international festivals. Braemer has been the recipient of grants and awards from the Sprague Foundation, the Bread and Roses Community Fund, the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, as well as many other foundations, and has taught film analysis and video production at Villanova University. Squeaky Wheel Board Member and University of Buffalo Professor of Media Study Tony Conrad declared "We are thrilled to be able to attract this outstanding media educator and artist to Buffalo." Braemer began her Executive Directorship of Squeaky Wheel on March 17. For more information, visit www.squeaky.org

Bruce Springsteen benefit concerts for Doubletake rescue the magazine from financial turmoil. When Robert Coles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, child psychiatrist, and Harvard professor, needed to raise money to save Doubletake, the quarterly magazine he founded in 1995 and continues to edit, he contacted Bruce Springsteen. Cole and Springsteen have been friends for the past seven years and share an enthusiasm for American literature. At the time Cole approached the musician, Doubletake could no longer afford to publish its fall 2002 issue, primarily due to the growing slump in the advertising market, and had not been able to pay certain writers for months. After Springsteen's two acoustic performances in February, nearly $1 million was raised for the magazine. Doubletake will be publishing its belated fall issue in late spring. For more information, visit www.double-takemagazine.org

The Pittsburgh Foundation has awarded media artist and educator T. Foley a $10,000 grant. Foley has exhibited her work at various venues throughout the U.S. and is currently the Director of the K-12 Media Literacy Arts Education program at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. Her focus as an educator is on creating opportunities for students, parents, and teachers to better understand the language of photographic media. She has presented workshops such as "Race in Animated Media, from Peter Pan to the PJs" that underscore her interest in the representations of race and gender in animated media. Foley has also served as a consultant to the Pennsylvania State Department of Education, to the Chautauqua County Arts Council in New York, and she teaches and lectures at various institutions and venues. The Pittsburgh Foundation grant was awarded to Foley in recognition of her outstanding achievement as an artist living and working in Pittsburgh. For more information, visit www.pghfilmmakers.org

The Dieu Donne Papermill Workspace Program has announced its selected artist participants for 2003. Nina Bovasso of New York City, Beth Campbell of Brooklyn, and Elise Ferguson of Brooklyn were chosen by a panel of artists and curators to receive a $700 honorarium and seven days in the Dieu Donne studio with full assistance and materials. The Workspace Program gives emerging New York State artists the opportunity to produce new projects in handmade paper, allowing artists from all disciplines to explore the applications of paper as a viable method of art-making. A total of 82 applicants were reviewed by the selection panel this year, and in addition to the three artists selected from this pool, alternates Karlos Carcamo of Richmond Hill and Sarah Oppenheimer of New York City were also chosen. Visit www.papermaking.org for more information

The Fotostiftung Schweiz and the Fotomuseum Winterthur will be joining forces to create the new Center of Photography in Winterthur, Switzerland. Both institutions will operate on the same building site being constructed in Gruzenstrasse in Winterthur, but each will continue to produce its own exhibition program. The Fotostiftung Schweiz will still focus on the development, conservation, and presentation of Switzerland's photographic heritage, while the Fotomuseum Winterthur will host an array of changing international exhibitions and will remain committed to showing international photography. Occasionally, both institutions plan to organize large-scale, overlapping exhibitions and to collaborate on accompanying events, yet each will primarily be run separately. The goal of pairing the two art establishments is to promote the medium of photography more comprehensively, in order to showcase not only so-called "art photography" but also socio-cultural and historical photography of all kinds. The Center of Photography in Winterthur will open officially on November 14, 2003. For more information, visit www.fotostiftung.ch or www.fotomuseum.ch

The Dia Art Foundation has announced the completion of Dia:Beacon. Located in Beacon, NY, 60 miles north of Manhattan on the bank of the Hudson River, the former printing plant has been renovated to house Dia's collection of contemporary art. Dia:Beacon includes 240,000 square feet of gallery space located in three connected buildings that are linked with an additional train shed. Dia's rehabilitation of the site took approximately two years to complete, and was carried out in collaboration with the artist Robert Irwin and the architecture firm OpenOffice. Works dating from the early 1960s to the present will be featured in the new museum, with each gallery space dedicated to the work of a single artist and designed to fulfill the particular needs of the art it contains. Art installation at Dia:Beacon will be completed in May 2003, and the museum opens to the public on May 18. For more information, visit www.diaart.org