Bower Blue Year In Review, 2021
Greetings from The Birdbath! This monthly newsletter from Bower Blue takes a look at digital tips & trends impacting the visual arts & design communities. For this month, a very special Birdbath, looking back at some of our highlights from 2021. Any questions? Let us know!
WAYNE THIEBAUD, 1920–2021
At the close of the year, we were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of the great, utterly iconic painter, Wayne Thiebaud. In 2019, we were honored to produce this video of Thiebaud for the exhibition Wayne Thiebaud: Mountains 1965–2019 at Acquavella Galleries. Creating this tribute to such a talented, generous and witty soul was one of the highlights of the last several years for us and we are proud that it lives on in memoriam.
VISUAL AIDS VISUAL VANGUARD AWARDS
In 2021, another project we were honored to be entrusted with was on the occasion of the annual Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards, or, as it’s known to its many fans: VAVA VOOM. Like so many organizations, Visual AIDS was forced to cancel its largest annual fundraiser, so they turned to Bower Blue to produce a multi-faceted virtual fundraising video. The 23-minute video was a big undertaking, featuring honorees Catherine Gund and Dr. Daniel S. Berger, a conversation with artist Nayland Blake and Pamela Sneed about honoree Frederick Weston, plus countless friends in the Visual AIDS community. Normally, VAVA VOOM is an in-person celebration of artists and activists; we like to think our video was a loving replacement.
Please join us in supporting Visual AIDS.
SEAN KELLY GALLERY
New client alert! We are pleased to be working with Sean Kelly for the entirety of their 2021–2022 exhibition calendar, and what a way to start it off. We produced this video of MacArthur Foundation “Genius,” photographer Dawoud Bey, for his inaugural exhibition at the gallery, In This Here Place.
RICHARD DIEBENKORN FOUNDATION
New client alert! 2021 saw the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation launch a new initiative that highlights their efforts to share an unprecedentedly comprehensive view into Diebenkorn’s life and work. For a new website as part of this initiative, Bower Blue produced this video exploring previously less well known aspects of Diebenkorn’s early career, in conjunction with an exhibition at Van Doren Waxter in New York.
BARBARA LONDON CALLING SEASON 2
Barbara London Calling Season 2! We conceived, produced and launched Barbara London Calling at the height of the lockdown in 2020. So we were thrilled to produce Season 2 in the fall of 2021. Shifting her focus from groundbreaking video artists (expanding on the topic of her hit 2020 book, Video/Art: The First 50 Years), in Season 2, London goes in-depth with a dozen of today’s most cutting-edge media artists.
PICASSO AT ACQUAVELLA
Even being as lucky as we are at Bower Blue to have such a storied client as Acquavella Galleries, this was an extraordinary opportunity. Pablo Picasso: Seven Decades of Drawings was an incredibly rare, museum-calibre exhibition in a commercial gallery. In addition to a fully-illustrated catalog from Rizolli with two new essays by the curator Olivier Berggruen and historian Christine Poggi, Acquavella Galleries commissioned Bower Blue to create this video walkthrough and discussion with Berggruen and Poggi to capture the exhibition.
Bower Blue produces digital content & strategies for galleries, museums & cultural nonprofits. (Take a look at some of our clients.)
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