PBS_TheArtAssignment

In which we explore sunny Los Angeles and take in its enormous range of art offerings, from the eclectic campus at LACMA to an incredible exhibit at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel. It's all worth the drive.

This week we meet with Hope Ginsburg, an artist who often works outside of a traditional studio. Her assignment asks you to conjure your own studio and imagine your ideal space for learning, thinking, and making.

This week Mike Rugnetta joins us to share five of his favorite works of art. Thanks, Mike!

This week we gathered some friends and challenged ourselves to an art assignment marathon - how many assignments can we complete in a day?

This week we answer your questions from our art hotline* and talk about the legitimacy of celebrity artists, the embarrassment of being called an "artist", why we laugh at art, and more. Keep the calls coming - leave us a message at 901-602-ARTY!

Today we talk to textile artist Sonya Clark, who applies the techniques of textile work to represent her personal and cultural history. Her assignment draws on her insightful approach to histories and asks you to represent yours.

In which we explore the great city of Richmond, Virginia, and think about its history as well as its present.

This week we meet Pablo Helguera, an artist, museum educator, and writer, at the Indianapolis stop of his Spanish language bookstore Librería Donceles. His assignment challenges you to give old books new lives through combinatory play. Here's what he means:

This week we channel Drake and answer your questions from our art hotline. Keep them coming - call us at 901-602-ARTY!

Dubious of performance art? Break into a cold sweat when you realize it’s about to begin? There’s a reason. Here we present you with a brief history of performance art and attempt to sway you to its potential charms. Let us know if you buy it.

This week we let your responses speak for themselves and present some of the excellent submissions to The Muster. What are you fighting for?

We interview the remarkable Vanessa Hill, creator of BrainCraft, a production of PBS Digital Studios, which explores psychology, neuroscience & why we act the way we do. And we challenge Vanessa to respond to our recent art assignment Conjure a Studio offered by Hope Ginsburg:

What is public art? Who funds it, owns it, and shapes it? Who does it serve? And why is it important? We try to answer some of these questions by looking at an example of public art that never came to be - Fred Wilson’s E Pluribus Unum.

This week we meet D.C. based artist Molly Springfield. Molly's graphite drawings transform texts into images, and her assignment for you asks you to consider how repeating a process can turn a copy into an original.

In which we explore Washington, DC's vast and diverse collection of landmarks, museums, and galleries - ranging from institutions like the Hirshhorn to the art-worthy metro system. Let's take a trip through Washington, DC.

David Rathman’s paintings pair atmospheric landscapes with carefully selected phrases, playing with the relationship between text and image. This week, he created a painting for you to caption.

This week we come to you from Rosarito, Mexico AND Chicago, IL to bring you an assignment from Hugo Crosthwaite. Hugo asks you to create a collaborative drawing by playing the Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse.

Kanye West was given an honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May of 2015, and more than a couple of people questioned it. But why? Why shouldn't Kanye be taken seriously in the world of art? Here's our case for Kanye as an artist.

This week’s assignment comes from artist Paula McCartney, whose work explores the boundaries between the natural and unnatural. Her assignment asks you to reexamine what those terms even mean by constructing an image of the so-called natural world.

This week we share some of your excellent responses to two assignments -- Geof Oppenheimer's Embarrassing Object and Diana Shpungin's Object Empathy.

In which we explore a few of Minnesota's many fantastic art offerings. Let's take a trip through the Twin Cities!

This week we're talking about a group of supremely awesome and unapologetic artists who take risks, question art world practices, and also happen to be women. These are truly inspirational artists who make a wide range of work, and today we're going to single out and celebrate five of them.

We accepted J. Morgan Puett's art assignment and gathered some friends together to host our own Scramble Scrabble Dinner.

We spent a week in Grand Rapids absorbing everything that was ArtPrize 2015, the world’s largest art competition. Here’s a taste of what we found.

Today we meet with artist and musician Nathaniel Russell. Nat's work plays with the divide between real and imagined, making posters and flyers for events that may or may not exist. His assignment asks you to make a fake flyer and share it with the world too.