press & books

2008     Oakland Press: ‘Windy City Trade: Detroit artists send work to Chicago’ by Liz Voss, February 24.

Detroit News: ‘Berlin and Detroit swap artists’ by Michael H. Hodges, Thursday, July 3.

2008    Oakland Press: ‘Artwork from Europe to be displayed in area’ by Joe Szczesny, August 6, p. C-1

2008     Berliner Zeitung: “Melancholische Grüße aus Detroit”  by Ingeborg Ruthe, December 5.

2007     Real Detroit Weekly: ‘On The Wall’ by Robert del Valle, January 3, p. 42.

2007     Six New Things (Dallas): ‘Inspiring images ... just stand away from the
guy in the gallery wearing the trench coat’ by staff, February.

2007     Artdaily (Mexico City): ‘Changing Cities: Chicago at MONA’ by Ignacio Villarreal Jr., April 5. 

2007     Metro Times Detroit: ‘Lake Effect (Changing Cities with Chicago)’ by Natalie Haddad, May 23, p. 48.

2007     Il Giornale Dell’Arte:  ‘MONA d’Invenzione’ by Lucio Pozzi, May, p. 57.

2007     Metro Times Detroit: ‘Summer Fling’ by Vince Carducci, June 13, p. 69.

2007     Detroit News: ‘Bad boy back’ by Michael H. Hodges, September 9.

2007    ‘Shocking the bourgeoisie – it’s nice work if you can get it’ by Cheryl Miller, Reason Magazine, January, p.74-75 (with image: “Picasso’s Last Shit”).

The idea that art should shock is by no means new. But the stakes have been raised so high that it’s now almost impossible to do anything shocking. It’s no longer enough just to plop a pile of feces on the museum floor. To shock the bourgeoisie these days, you have to combine the crap with racial slurs, as Jef Bourgeau did with Detroit Institute of Arts exhibit “Van Gogh’s Ear”. It included both a heap of feces and a Brazil nut titled “Nigger Toe”. And that was in 1999, God knows what would be necessary now.

2006    ‘Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies In American Culture’ by Michael Kammen, Knopf, 2006, p.299.

So intimidation and caution were very much in the air at the turn of the millennium. In November 1999 the new director of the Detroit Institute of Arts postponed indefinitely an exhibit that had been two years in the planning because it included potentially offensive pieces, such as a vial of urine from Serrano’s highly publicized “Piss Christ” and a work called “Bathtub Jesus’ featuring a doll wearing a condom. Also cause for concern: a pile of human excrement and a brazil nut labeled with a racial epithet. The very first installation, called “Van Gogh’s Ear,” actually contained specific reference to previous art world controversies. The principal artist affected, Jef Bourgeau, exclaimed to the Detroit News that “the 90’s is about shock.” Hadn’t the world heard?

2006    ‘The return of the minute man’ by Rebecca Mazzei, Metro Times, December 13-20.

Douglas Gordon says "24 Hour Psycho” showed you can't always appropriate ... It's not going to be great art simply by association," but sometimes an appropriation is more appropriate. This is a point he proves with his new piece.

“One-Minute Psycho” is Cliffs Notes for a terribly long and shitty Gus Van Sant indulgence, a shot-by-shot remake that won the "worst movie" Razzie in 1998. Even though the original thriller was shot in black and white after color film had been invented, Van Sant thought it best to brighten up the story. As a result, the pivotal close-up of bloody water spinning down the drain looked more like a turbulent yet tasty bowl of fruit punch. Gordon's condensed revision, like so many of history's revisions, is welcome. Who on earth would want to watch more than a minute of Vince Vaughn and Heche on the big screen anyway? And Gordon's new movie proves Freud was on to something — almost all images of death, artistic or awful, inspire anxiety about our own mortality, even if they flash onscreen for a second. Powerful pictures stand the test of time.

2006    ‘Questioning Identity’ by Nolan Simon, Metro Times, October 12.

A friend spoke up recently, confident he had the Museum of New Art figured out. “It’s all him, isn’t it?” he said, in revelation and doubt. But that’s what’s interesting.

Museum of New Art director Jef Bourgeau has a reputation that sometimes overshadows the impact of his exhibitions. Bourgeau’s art excursions both charm and annoy the public. But no matter where you fall, it’s easy to see that Bourgeau is trying to use the museum as a venue for institutional critique. His shows question the curator’s role, the validity of artistic “integrity” and the relevance of museums in the information age. These are lofty goals, and Bourgeau tackles them with varying degrees of success.

2006    ‘The Obsession Phenomenon’ by Danny Scheffer, Brooklyn Days, June 11.

I met this guy, Jef Bourgeau, in Detroit. He's been an incredible innovator of alternative spaces for artists. He had The Museum of New Art put together, pretty much single-handedly, and is on his feet ALL THE TIME.
He talked  about what if each person was regarded as a museum instead of a building with a bunch of individual pieces. What I ended up taking from that over a period of time....is that I am the central ingredient in all the art I produce. Any individual piece is just a miniscule fragment of this museum called "me".

2006    ‘Mastermind behind MONA shrewdly takes on Picasso: Taking a playful jab at the 20th-century artist’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, February 10.

Jef Bourgeau's exhibit stands out. With "Picasso's Camera," Bourgeau demonstrates once more why his one-man museum is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and is likely to go for 20. It's a Detroit treasure. I always somehow mistrust the word “genius” but I think if I were going to use it for an artist in this place and time, it would be for Bourgeau. I think his ideas and his philosophy need time to reach people, to seep through the armor that walls off our brains. I’ve been in turn annoyed, angry, dazzled, amused, nonplussed, outraged, intimidated, bewildered and a host of other emotions that his work calls up. All I can say to him at this point is…KEEP IT UP. The Picasso show is a wonder.

2006   ‘Earthshaking’ by Robert del Valle, Real Detroit Weekly, January 18-24.

Two momentous events occurred in 1906 – San Francisco was ripped apart by an earthquake and Pablo Picasso “discovered” photography.  The former event, of course, has entered the history books; the latter, however, has been treated hitherto as a mere footnote to a great painter’s development as an iconic artist.  No more.  A box camera that once belonged to Picasso has been unearthed with a roll of undeveloped film still inside.  The resulting photographs – intriguing images made jagged and more forceful by the accidental marring of the lends by the camera’s previous owner – now lend a sharper clarity to that period when Picasso was still coming to terms with the then revolutionary discipline of cubism.  The Museum of New Art is greeting the New Year with an entire show devoted to Picasso’s Camera and I’ll be hard put to think of any forthcoming exhibit that will be able to top it. 

2006    ‘The Invisible Artist’ by Jacob Hale Russell, The Wall Street Journal (p.3), Sunday January 1.

Some artists have come under fire for using pseudonyms. When Norwegian photographer Stig Eklund was revealed to be Jef Bourgeau, director of the Museum of New Art (MONA) in Detroit this year, dealers complained in the local paper about his misleading multiple identities. Mr. Bourgeau, also works as a Japanese abstractionist, Taki Murakishi, as well as under many other pseudonyms.

2005   ‘Art damage: A night of creative destruction’ by Jef Bourgeau, Metro Times, October 19.

During its three years in Detroit, the Museum of New Art mounted a show titled titled kaBOOM! in March 2002. It was post-9/11, so the climate was ripe for a show about iconoclam.

2005    ‘Swinging naked, slinging pie and multiphonic monks: On 25 years of art in Detroit’ by Rebecca Mazzei, Metro Times, October 19.

One scandal that got national attention in 2000 was Van Gogh’s Ear, which was supposed to be the first installment of a 12-week show at the DIA, curated by Jef Bourgeau. (He had recently received attention for opening the Museum of New Art, initially a faux contemporary art museum). At the DIA, the artist presented controversial art, as par for the course in the ’90s, referencing the Sensation show in Brooklyn, as well as his own works. Newly appointed director Graham Beal thought community members might find the show offensive.

In 2003, graffiti artist Turtl came to town. Here’s the account of what happened, according to former DAM director Timlin: Turtl tagged the James Stoia sculpture outside DAM and there was an ensuing media debate. I offered a $1000 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. The Wayne County prosecutor used our reward to begin the investigation and make a public announcement. In protest of my actions, Museum of New Art director Jef Bourgeau along with NY graffiti artist Crash offered a counter-reward of $1000 to throw a vegan cream pie in my face.

2005    ‘Going Dutch: New Photography from the Netherlands’ by Nick Sousanis, The Detroiter, May.

What we can say with some degree of certainty is that museum director Jef Bourgeau has created an unsettling, unique installation with the help of dozens of Dutch artists.

2005   ‘Dutch-processed for smoother taste’ Isobel Harbison, Six New Things, May, #3.

"Going Dutch", the photographic exhibition at the Detroit Museum of New Art, features art by Gon Buurman, Carla van de Puttelaar, and Inez van Lamsweerde. Or not. Maybe. But... it could all just be a tongue-in-cheek ruse by the museum's maestro, Jef Bourgeau.

2005  ‘Going Dutch: a Dutch treat’ by Eve Doster, The Metro Times, April 13, p43.

2005  ‘Exhibit captures demise of Detroit, terrorism and war’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, March 25.

The Museum of New Art (MONA) is known for creative exhibits and a director who likes to tweak the public's sensibilities. The place lives up to its reputation on both counts with the current offerings.

2005  ‘Man-made at the Museum of New Art’ by Keri Guten Cohen, The Detroit Free Press, March 20.

The artist brings emotion, power and a painterly quality into the equation by using tonal filters to create images of singular colors. Seen together against sunlight from the gallery windows, they look almost like stained glass windows.

2005  ‘Norwegian’s first American solo show’ Ignacio Villarreal, Artdaily, March 12.

Eklund's photography seems to be pure documentary. His camera lingers on darkened but captivating urban details, transforming citizens and architecture into murky denizens while heightening their ethereal demeanors.

2005  ‘Artistic License’ by Frank Provenzano, The Detroit Free Press, March 11.

"Contemporary art is a reaction to what's happening in the world," Bourgeau says. "It exists briefly in our cultural moment, in reaction to it. The audience, the viewer completes it. Only after this realization can it move from the contemporary space to the more traditional museum. The art being created in Detroit doesn't have such opportunities, to be understood or even viewed - not until we create the former such museum."

2004  ‘None of the Above’ by Ignacio Villarreal, Artdaily, November 30.

Each work in the exhibition will be extremely immaterial and will not be installed over the full space of the MONA and in non-existent spots: visibly absent in such a way that this exhibition device, its strategy, will play a substantially covert part of the event, clearing the exhibition rooms to an empty look.

2004  ‘The Next Big Thing’ by Keri Guten Cohen, The Detroit Free Press, November 21.

The Museum of New Art's (MONA) new show reveals more than meets the eye. Head to the museum's Pontiac complex to see "The Next Big Thing", featuring new work by  young artists to watch, working in all disciplines. 

2004  ‘’Before the right one’ by Natalie Haddad, Real Detroit Weekly, July 21-27, p. 11.

The photographs for MONA’s most recent show “From this Day Forward…” extend throughout the museum’s labyrinthine space, and director Jef Bourgeau reduced the show to avoid a salon-style exhibition. (Works not on the walls are represented in a photomontage on various video screens.)

Probably for as long as it’s been around, but particularly since its return to Pontiac in April, MONA has encountered its share of criticism, due primarily to its simulative practices. Still, a non-profit organization, MONA remains the area’s foremost barometer of current art. And as art merges increasingly with theory, principles are easily made obsolete.

2004  ‘Inventing the Pixel: Abstraction in the 21^st Century’ by Katherine Honzu, Art Times, August 25, p40.

2004  ‘Museum promotes new art’ by Karolyn Glowe, The Oakland Press, July 15.

Future artists in our history books will be born of this era's creators of fresh, new art. That being said, any of metro Detroit's aspiring artists currently exhibiting at MONA could be a potential Picasso or van Gogh.

2004  ‘When the audience becomes the art: Biennale 2004’ by Christina Hill, The Detroiter, May 28.

Run (don’t walk) to Pontiac’s recently relocated Museum of New Art (MONA) to catch the work of internationally renowned photographer, Jan de Groot. And behind every great man, there is . . . another great man, in this case museum founder, Jef Bourgeau.  Bourgeau is the indefatigable force behind this venue dedicated to exhibiting cutting-edge art from around the world. He is also an intelligent conceptual artist who has devised the conceit that underlies this show: nothing is what it seems; beware the cult of art stars; original art is a thing of the past; embrace modern technology; the viewer is as important as the art object; question authority; embrace expedience.

2004  ‘Building Excitement: Biennale 2004’ by Natalie Haddad, The Real Detroit, May 12-18, cover story.

Perception in general has been problematic regarding contemporary art in Detroit. Without sufficient forums, the orientation of art here remains wedged largely between the historical and the regional. For Bourgeau, the museum is an evolving abstraction; the building is its vehicle. That's the paradox, though: It's an idea that takes some experience with contemporary art theory to absorb, which is precisely what MONA has used its locations to propagate.

2004  ‘Le Poseur in Wolf’s Clothing’ by Anita Schmaltz, The Metro Times, May 26, p 20-22.

Pontiac’s Museum of New Art is really is something to celebrate. All of its galleries allow necessary opportunities for metro Detroit artists (and more) to share their visionary voices with the public and encourage ongoing dialogue. However, when it comes to MONA, I say let’s meet this open challenge here and now, and fill this magnificent new space with our long-neglected encouragement and support for fresh ideas and approaches to the presentation of contemporary art in Detroit.

2004  ‘New Home for MONA’ by Simona Vendrame, Tema Celeste, May/June, Issue 103.

The Museum of New Art (MONA) reopens its doors in a new space at 7 North Saginaw Street, Pontiac. From May 15 through June 26 the museum is hosting a biennial exhibition with works by Mathew Barney, Monica Bonvicini, Sophie Calle, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tracey Emin, Anna Gaskell, Andreas Gursky, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, Shirin Neshat, Olaf Nicolai, Elizabeth Peyton, Sigmar Polke, Chris Ofili, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Gavin Turk, Hellen van Meene, Cosima von Bonin, Kara Walker, and others.

2004  ‘Pontiac Pull’ by Christina Kallery, The Metro Times, April 7.

The vision Bourgeau paints for the new MONA is certainly an admirable and exciting one — a place for young, edgy artists to cut their chops and for artists, collectors and the general public to see what’s happening on the contemporary scene.

2004  ‘Renewed interest in reviving downtown Pontiac art scene’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News.

Jef Bourgeau’s Museum of New Art is returning to Pontiac after nearly three years in Detroit. In February, when the Oakland Arts Building was nearly empty, Bourgeau was approached by Amir Daiza, a real estate and entertainment entrepreneur and one of the center’s owners. “I told him about my ArtCore project in Detroit, an experiment in converting empty storefronts into temporary art galleries,” Bourgeau says. “Amir convinced the other partners this would be good for the building.”

2003  ‘Saving MONA’ Tema Celeste, December, p20.

2003  ‘Saving MONA’ Artforum, Summer, p143.

2003  ‘Pie in the eye’ by Lisa Collins, Metro Times, April 30-May 6.

Jef Bourgeau, founding director of the Museum of New Art, has announced a bounty on the head of Aaron Timlin, director of the Detroit Artists Market.

Bourgeau and New York graffiti artist Crash are each offering to pay $500 to the first person to throw a vegan pie at Timlin and record the launch on tape.

Bourgeau and Crash are miffed that Timlin raised a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the graffiti artist(s) running around town tagging just about everything in sight with the outline of a turtle, including a sculpture outside Detroit Artists Market.

“The art world should not police itself,” says Bourgeau. “It’s hard enough for an artist to be an artist, a gallery to be a gallery.  It’s getting close to the art police.”

2003  ‘Shocking MONA’ Jeremy Harvey, Real Detroit, February 12, p18.

This will move you. It not only touches the soul, it reaches on an emotional level.

2003  ‘An Artcore moment’ Natalie Haddad, Real Detroit, Jan 29.

For anyone who either made it there or has since discussed it with a constituent of metro Detroit’s art community, the beginnings of the Museum of New Art are now somewhat fabled.  The museum, now about six years old, began when founder and director Jef Bourgeau rented out a walk-in closet space in downtown Pontiac.  Driven, intellectually, by a steamroller of conceptual thought, the location seems appropriate – a DIY extension of established Dada logic; if a urinal can become art by placing it in an art gallery then certainly a closet can become an art gallery by placing art in it.  Like most conceptual art, it work in theory as a cerebral endeavor; and like most art in any genre, in practice it has its flaws.  And under less vigilant direction, the flaws could easily have been fatal.  Instead, MoNA is in a new location – its third – and, as Bourgeau had planned from the outset, it’s made it from Oakland to Wayne County and from the suburbs to the city.  More unbelievably, though, at least within the cloistered art community of Detroit, is his success beyond the second-floor Book Building loft that accommodates MoNA.  Through

Bourgeau’s fledgling Artcore project – which utilizes Detroit’s empty storefronts as temporary galleries – MoNA is just one of around five art spaces in the Book Building, and if enough resistance (from the city’s government, landlords, etc.) can be worn down, there should be more throughout Detroit.

2003  ‘Museum celebrates video as art form’ Keri Guten Cohen, The Detroit Free Press, January 12.

This year's entries come from Canada, China, Costa Rica, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. More than 250 videos from 32 countries -- 100 more entries than last year -- are included in this look at what's new in video.

2003  ‘Detroit Video Fest’ Tema Celeste, January-February, p 116.

MONA is hosting the second edition of the Detroit Video Festival.  An invitation section, as well as one that is open to general subscription, comprise the event, while a special segment is dedicated to the best videos fro the preceding edition.  Among the participating artists in the “Best of Show 2002” are Maike Freess (Germany), Sabrina Muzi (Italy), Takagi (Japan), and Franz Wassermann (Austria). 

2002  ‘Sculptures assume organic forms’ Keri Guten Cohen, Detroit Free Press, December 1.

The Museum of New Art has a full house this month with two shows that share an emphasis on structure… Inside the cone, a circular screen on the floor shows a continuously running video of the 1967 Detroit riots. The interior of the cone is filled with an intense hum, a human heartbeat and the sounds of the riots -- helicopters, sirens, yelling -- making you feel part of the violence that still marks our city. The wall ends at a panel containing factual information about the riots and a mirror -- for self-reflection. 

2002  ‘Art exhibits paint a better image for downtown storefronts’ Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, September 14.

Imagine this scene in downtown Detroit. Vacant storefronts are transformed into art galleries. Once-empty streets are alive with foot traffic. Here and there you see somebody carrying an artwork they just purchased…

2002  ‘Ground Zero: signs of a more critical mood among US artists’ David Walsh, for WSWS, July 29.

An exhibition of art works created in response to the September 11 terrorist attack in New York City and to the events that followed it is currently on display at the Museum of New Art (MONA) in Detroit. Nearly sixty artists from a number of countries are represented by 300 paintings, photographs, digitally altered images and sculptures.

2002  ‘Ground Zero engulfs the senses’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, July 27.

"Ground Zero" is a big, sprawling, messy affair with some terrific works and some inept stuff. But together this mass of material -- containing everything from body bags to elk antlers -- comes together to pack an emotional wallop.

2002  ‘Images of Ground Zero’ Frank Provenzano, The Detroit Free Press, July 10.

Ground Zero is not only the name of the crater in the Manhattan financial district. It's the point-blank title of an emotionally charged art exhibit organized by Daniel Scheffer and fellow New York artists Frank Shifreen and Julius Vitali.

2002  ‘Shoot! At Museum of New Art’ Natalie Haddad, Real Detroit, May 15, p15.

The point is that, although anything apparently goes in contemporary art, it’s only with reason that it becomes art, even if the reason is nonsense.  Take that away and you no longer have art; it’s the one constant of a contrary world.  When Jef Bourgeau brought the Museum of New Art to Detroit last year, it offered a bastion for the unorthodox, the irrelevant and the one-fingered salute rarely seen in a formal downtown art venue.  Since then, the museum’s shows have transformed the notion of the exhibition into its own art, manipulating titles into free-for-alls for the imagination.  What’s consistently been absent is rebellion against art.  Unusual, edgy or plain avant-garde, it’s all been backed by reason.

MoNA’s latest exhibition, SHOOT!, begins with nothing.  No work and moreover, no explanations.  Rather, the space is armed with a league of photographers.  And therein lies the art.  Assembling a group of over a dozen local and national artists, Bourgeau’s (deliberately loose) interpretation of the title merges the principles of theater with that of the art show.  Art is in the present, and it’s realized because of the audience.  The nothing is replaced by images of those who come to view it.  How the photographers interpret these guidelines is up to them, but we’re the art, and we’re the reason.  And it’s not nonsense at all.

2002  ‘MONA auction clears way for innovative art’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, May 3.

2002  ‘kaBOOM! At Museum of New Art’ Amy Bevevino, Real Detroit, April 10, p45.

Patrons were encouraged to slash, stomp, crush, throw and drop artwork. How can we not pay our respects to the MONA for having taken on this exhibit and maintaining an in-the-spirit-of-art attitude through it all.

2002  ‘Eve of destruction’ by Glen Mannisto, Metro Times, March 13-19, p. 34.

The room was filled with noxious smoky dust. The crowd was gathered around a guy pounding the hell out of a cello with a big hammer – the instrument wasn’t anything but shards of wood now – and it was hard to tell if the audience was enjoying the performance or if they were uncertain about it. Only two hours into the exhibition, the whole space was filled with dust and rubble.

Earlier in the day, various stations with art objects in them were poised and ready for destruction. There were familiar replicas or copies of famous Dada works of art, such as  Duchamp’s “readymade” works. There was his “Fountain,” a porcelain urinal, signed by “R. Mutt,” or his mustached reproduction of the Mona Lisa. A copy of Man Ray’s famous metronome, “An Object To Be Destroyed” (1923), with the picture of an eyeball attached to the pendulum, sat on a pedestal with a hammer and Ray’s original directions as to how to be smashed.

Now these standard 20^th century cultural icons, that were themselves iconoclastic creations meant to topple traditional notions about what art was, stood ready for their own demise. Man Ray’s famous “Cadeau,” composed of a clothing iron with carpet tacks attached to its face, had sat on an ironing board earlier in the day, but now it lay humbled with tacks torn off and strewn around and the dress that was to be ironed torn and shredded. The porcelain urinal was broken into bits and pissed on. The metronome sat smashed per instructions, with internal machinery hanging out like guts from a road kill. Instead of a moustache, Mona Lisa had a penis and testicle for a nose.

There’s no question that the audience was eager to destroy or watch objects be destroyed and in that sense the exhibition was a success. The most significant element of “kaBOOM!” was the construction of a spectacle, not a revelation about creativity or a “deconstruction” of the process of making art or the making of cultural icons.

2002  ‘Video exhibit touches on terrorism’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, January 30.

After her husband Yair, 31, was killed in a terrorist attack, a grieving Mariam Mendelsohn was worried about her Arab friends and neighbors. Don't come to his funeral, she warned, fearing for their safety if they mourned with a Jewish family in the West Bank community of Dolev.

2002  ‘Panel discusses role of art museum in twenty-first century’ David Walsh, for WSWS, January 10.

The seven-member panel, moderated by Dick Goody, director of Oakland University’s Meadow Brook Art Gallery, discussed the current state of art and art museums, as well as the specific future of MONA. The forum grew out of MONA’s ongoing efforts to provide a counterforce to what many see as the trend toward crass commercialism by the official artistic establishment.

2002  ‘Lucio Pozzi at Detroit’s Museum of New Art’ Lynn Crawford, Tema Celeste, January-February.

2001   ‘Oh, MONA: the Museum of New Art shoulders the challenge’ Glen Mannisto, Metro Times, December 19-25, p22.

Bourgeau has been fighting the battle since 1997, when he opened his conceptual Museum of Contemporary Art in Pontiac as “an artist’s project,” but failed to gain the full attention of the art community, in part because of the space’s distant location and in part because of Bourgeau’s defensive and naïve iconoclastic appeal.  But that’s a thing of the past and Bourgeau has worked hard to bring us a viable institution.  When asked about the role of contemporary art museum, Greg Wittkopp, the director of Cranbrook Art Museum, says, “At its best, contemporary art is an agent for change, whether social or political, to open its audience to new ideas and to new perceptions of our world, and the role of the contemporary museum is to pursue that imaginatively.”

2001   ‘Documenta USA unveiled at Detroit Museum’ Simona Vendrame, Tema Celeste, November/December, p 105.

2001   ‘New York Artist is a one-man show: Lucio Pozzi’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, November 11.

MONA is showing 94 works, several done expressly for this showing. It includes small paintings and murals, video and altered photographs, drawings and constructions and an installation emblazoned with Pozzi's favorite colors -- red, blue, yellow and green. The artist even did a performance piece on Sunday for MONA's members.

2001   ‘Best of 2001’ compiled by staff, Detroit Free Press, September.

Best place to start a healthy controversy about art:  This month, the even-changing Museum of New Art is supposed to relocate from Pontiac to downtown Detroit’s Book Building.  Confined by space, but with an abundance of ambition, MoNA is the place where most discussions begin, “You call that art?!” Getting visitors to ask that question is a step toward a broader appreciation of self-expression.

2001   ‘Museum of New Art Opens Downtown’ by Gerald Scott, Renaissance Times, October.

This was going to be the library offices for the Detroit College of Law but they moved to Lansing. Now for something completely different. How about a new art museum in Detroit – and not just any such museum, but actually a Museum of New Art (MONA).  MONA just opened up its doors in the Book Building downtown.

MONA’s goal is to fulfill the region’s need for a lively and intimate space in which to experience contemporary art.

2001   ‘Drawing in people: new Detroit museum makes viewers part of its exhibit’ Susan Howes, Hour Detroit, October 21, p99.

Documenta USA, attempts to incorporate the audience as an integral part of contemporary art.  The viewer is invited to explore the materials used in deciding how to assemble an exhibition --- to assume the role of curator and examine the slides, biographies, catalogues and critical reviews.  At the same time, the museum will record and photograph visitors to Documenta USA and include these images in the exhibition.

2001   ‘Documenta USA’ by Staff, Flash Art, October.

In a press release that ranks as the most entertaining ever received by the Flash Art news office – part spirited manifesto and part PT Barnum-esque ballyhoo – the Museum of New Art in Detroit (MONA) announced that it would unleash “Documenta USA” September 15 – October 27, boasting the participation of over 2,000 artists in “the largest art exposition in the world.”  As part of the museum’s mission, MONA proposes “to void all previous museums and to prove them invalid.”  “Documenta USA” creates an archive of all the materials used to decide an exhibition – slides, postcards, reviews, catalogues – in an attempt to eliminate the curator as the middle-man and deliver art to the public straight-with-no-chaser.  The exhibition reads like a wish list promising deliverance from the museum as mausoleum, including an exhibition that completely renews itself every 100 minutes; a gallery filled with art that visitors can touch, with work by Christo, Vito Acconci and over 100 others; and a 48-hour open invitation to artists to hang one work on the museum wall until it is displaced by the work of another artist. 

2001   ‘Showtime at MONA’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, September 17.

Another new board member is Bahiyyih Chaffers, an attorney, who recently moved to the Detroit area from Toronto. "I started meeting people in the art community, and they gave me Jef's name," she says. "When I saw MONA, I was convinced it is right for the community."
Bourgeau, for his part, isn't put off by his detractors. "MONA is criticized because it doesn't fit the pattern," he says. "Maybe that's a good thing. Priorities change and museums are redefining themselves. We belong to the 21st century."    

2001  ‘The latest evidence’ by Glen Mannisto, Metro Times, September.

“Documenta USA” uses the peripheral support materials of contemporary art as a survey of what’s happening, on an international level, in contemporary art.  Catalogs, revolving slide and video exhibitions – including Spencer Tunick’s delightful “Naked Series” and Nina Glaser’s caked nudes – reviews, postcard announcements in research boxes, as well as antique Opticons beckon visitors to be their own researchers, to examine the world of new art and thus in a sense be the creators of it.  In addition, the response to Bourgeau’s ingenious idea (to create an active archive collection by sending an open invitation to all artists to submit a work that fits inside a standard archive box) has been strong, with leading artists from around the world (including Jenny Holzer, Vito Acconci, Arman and Christo) creating works that MONA has used to construct a most inviting installation piece.  Asked what “contemporary art” is, Bourgeau responds, “Any art that hasn’t accumulated a history, that is thus fresh and challenging to status-quo visions of art.” 

2001  ‘New museum tests barriers’ Frank Provenzano, The Detroit Free Press, September 9.

MONA opens its doors in a new home downtown Saturday with an exhibit called Documenta U.S.A., featuring 2,000 works by artists from 45 countries. Every 100 minutes, the art on exhibit -- slides, catalogs and postcards of original works -- will change.

2001  ‘Honk if you love the Crashmobile’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, August 7.

Bourgeau hopes the Crashmobile will be the first of a fleet of art cars decorated by artists connected to MONA. "Other cities have been showing fiberglass cows, sheep, pigs or polar bears that artists have transformed," he says. "It seems fitting that Detroit should have cars."

2001  ‘Drowning MONA’ Casey Coston, the Metro Times, May 22.

The MONA is a contemporary art space. The DIA has been giving that relatively short shrift for some time, and it would no doubt behoove Beale and company to link up with Bourgeau, while in the process helping to rejuvenate the downtown “necklace” district of Detroit. Given the slightly unfinished edgy feeling, and the capacious loftlike setting, one could almost picture this as an art-snoid filled SoHo gallery show.  Except when you look out the window at the abandoned buildings nearby and the rather nonexistent activity on the street below, and you remember, “oh, right Detroit.” 

2001  ‘Museum of New Art Downtown’ Laura Berman, The Detroit News. May 17.

No Taubman. No Manoogian. No Gilbert Silverman, eminent local collector of contemporary art. Detroit's art establishment -- the zillionaire patrons, the snootiest gallery owners -- are notably absent from the board of the Museum of New Art.
   This museum is neither Palladian palace nor temple to contemporary architecture. Its location in a Washington Boulevard skyscraper was fashionable 60 years ago. Is this place, in fact, a museum? Will it ever become one? Any art patron or admirer might ask these questions while touring the raw and rough 10,000 square feet of space in the Book Building where Jef Bourgeau -- artist, provocateur and self-styled curator -- and a cadre of supporters are launching a museum to house the art of now.

2001  ‘Detroit gains popularity among fine artists’ Rhonda Bates-Rudd, The Detroit News, April 18.

"Detroit has become a major hub for fine artists and many of us have or have had a notion that we have to escape Detroit to gain success when, in fact, it is a place that has the potential to engender and help its own artists," Bourgeau said.

2001  ‘Iain Baxter at Museum of New Art’ Mysoon Rizk, New Art Examiner, May-June, p98.

Had he lived in quattrocento Florence rather than in Canada at the turn of the second millennium, Iain Baxter probably would have belonged to the guild of physicians and pharmacists, which is to say the guild of painters, under patron Saint Luke.  Yet to suggest that Baxter is a painter may seem mistaken at first, given an outstanding body of work that has long made use of pre-fabricated, pre-packaged, and plastic commercial goods in addition to countless non-material and performative forms. 

2001  ‘Best reason to see Iain Baxter’s STUFF’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, January 5.

Canadian artist Iain Baxter, who hails from Windsor, pours distilled water over stuffed animals and seals them in canning jars. He heaps tin cans stripped of their labels in grocery carts. He arranges commercial products on shelves and claims his brand of still life was inspired by the wonderful paintings of Giorgio Morandi.

2000    ‘Banned’ by Mike Murphy, Oakland Post, October 18.

Dick Goody, director of Meadow Brook Art Gallery at Oakland University, also believes the MoNA is a place to be visited. “This puts us on the map in terms of contemporary art.  It’s just the place for experimental art in Detroit.  Jef Bourgeau is committed to art on the cutting edge,” said Goody. He believes people can expect great things out of MoNA and Bourgeau if the money holds out.

“It’s going to cost thousands of dollars to keep (the MoNA) going, but if Bourgeau’s got the money, he’s going to put on several exciting shows,” said Goody.

2000    ‘New Space Opening’ by Keri Guten Cohen, Detroit Free Press, October 1.

Bourgeau sees MONA as a constantly evolving space dedicated to the practice of contemporary art through film, video, lecture, symposium and exhibitions, with a mandate of increasing the understanding and development of new art.          

2000   ‘Museum of New Art uses the term loosely’ by Frank Provenzano, Detroit Free Press, October 15.

Yet, in Bourgeau’s logic, notions of art and museums are part of a slippery game of semantics.Whereas in 1971 Marcel Duchamp pushed the idea that in a given context even a urinal could be considered as art, Bourgeau has set out to redefine an art museum.  He espouses the idea that art should be considered “of the moment,” not just a historical artifact.

2000   ‘A contemporary museum for Detroit’ by Craig Pearson, Windsor Star, September.

The upstart museum erupts in color and style without any obviously offensive creations.  But who knows for the future?

“It takes a little daring in the face of relative apathy in this town, and in the face of the very entrenched and powerful position of the Detroit Institute of Arts,” says Jan van der Marck, a MoNA board member who has curated at major galleries across the United States including the DIA.  “The DIA has a respectable (contemporary) collection, but once you get institutionalized, you become less nimble than we can be.  The only place that you can compare to what’s happening here is the Art Gallery of Windsor, where they’re really on top of things.”

2000   ‘Museum opens with collectors’ pieces, e-mailed art’ Keri Guten Cohen, The Detroit Free Press, October 15.

But don’t be too disappointed.  Venture into the smaller gallery  for a look at “E-MoNA.”  Here’s edgy; here’s current.  Tacked frameless on the four walls are examples of fresh art sent by email from all over the world.

Bourgeau came up with a simple idea based on the instant technology of the Internet: He put out a call for artwork to be e-mailed to the museum and got more than 1,000 responses.  The show features 50 young artists from 24 countries.  Their work was blown up and printed on state-of-the art digital printers.

2000  ‘New Museum fills Detroit’s need to showcase adventurous art’ Joy Hakanson Colby, The Detroit News, October 13.

With its opening exhibit of images e-mailed from 25 countries and enlarged by digital printers, MONA has achieved an exciting merger of art and technology. It’s a good beginning and a hopeful sign for the future.

2000  ‘An Interview with Jef Bourgeau’ Ken Paulson, Speaking Freely for NYC Public Station 13, recorded September 12, 2000.

Detroit has had a hard time putting together a contemporary museum. Various individuals and groups have tried for 30 years to do it. And it never quite panned out. So what I did as an artist was to continue an artist's project I'd been working on, called the Museum of Contemporary Art, and just did it — rendered a small space, a closet, a cloakroom in a gallery and then installed contemporary art in it — without any budget. A dollar a year rent and images torn from art magazines.

2000   ‘Art for the Moment’ by Natalie Haddad, Real Detroit Weekly, September.

Bourgeau feels that of late the key players in the art exhibit – audience and artist – have been surpassed by a behind the scenes, often disconnected, group of decision makers.  As a result, he’s chosen the concept of documentation to inaugurate the museum.  ‘The idea came from Germany.  Every year they have a big show that examines art in the world.  The show uses all of the materials from before and after an exhibit.  Submitted slides, postcards, interviews.  Who’s to say what gets accepted to the show and what doesn’t?  We wanted the audience to be involved.”  Thus the show, Documenta USA, billed as “the largest art exposition in the world,” is a massive analysis of the puzzle pieces that make an exhibition.  Slides and pictures are displayed with no discrimination, as the audience is invited to, in effect, make their own show.  As an extension of MoNA’s viewer-friendly attitude, no piece is untouchable or, certainly, unapproachable and every 100 minutes pieces are changed, taking the phrase “of the moment” to a whole new level.  The show also includes a video component, Fifteen, that features artists talking about their work, as well as a mural from the New York based Head Clausnitzer and The Burnt Show from California based Sacha Eckes.  Still, the museum hasn’t traded big names for new names.  Among the exhibited works are pieces of Arman, Jenny Holzer, Sol Lewitt, Christo and sorely underrated Fluxus queen Yoko Ono, along with many others.

2000   ‘Cultural War Rages’ by Joel Kurth, Detroit News, September.

Nothing short of a way of life is at stake, both sides say.  The fights will define the meaning of family, community standards and freedom of expression.

There are also deep-pocketed arts patrons seeking a greater say in how their dollars are used, an arts community resentful of the restrictions and a rich population with the luxury of debating societal – not survival – issues, said Jef Bourgeau.

“There’s an identity crisis because the ruling class is being challenged by groups on the outposts,” said Bourgeau, whose Fear No Art exhibit was shut down last year in Pontiac and at the Detroit Institute of Arts. 

2000   ‘ACLU will put Pontiac’s feet to fire’ Oakland Press, June.

The exhibit was designed to prompt discussions on censorship and was compiled as part of a symposium on censorship organized by several area gallery owners.  Bourgeau displayed the same exhibit at the DIA in November.  It was shut down by DIA officials in three days. 

After a janitor in the gallery building called the police to complain about the exhibit, Bourgeau installed curtains to block the view from Saginaw Street. Inside the gallery building, he papered over the front walls to block a view from the hallway.  He added a warning label outside to keep minors out. The morning the exhibit was to open police

raided the gallery and issued Bourgeau a citation. A conviction on the misdemeanor offense carries a $500 fine and 90 days in jail.  John C. Claya, acting Pontiac city attorney, did not return repeated calls to his office seeking comment on the case.  Pontiac Mayor Walter Moore’s office declined to comment “while the case is pending.”  The U.S. Supreme Court has struggled over the years to define obscenity, which is not protected by the First Amendment. 

2000    ‘National News’ by staff, Art News Magazine, April issue.

The Detroit Institute of Arts paid artist Jef Bourgeau $12,500 compensation for canceling an exhibition of his work at the museum shortly after it opened (“The Two-Day Show,” January 2000). The museum took issue with the installation, which dealt explicitly with race, religion, and sexuality. Meanwhile, a related sow at Bourgeau’s Museum of Contemporary Art in Pontiac, Michigan, was raided by police for violating obscenity laws. The artist vowed to continue the show behind covered windows.

2000    ‘Art sometimes challenges culture’ by Jillian Bogater, Oakland Press, March 23.

Starting at the wall Bourgeau dubbed “The Male Gaze” – a collage of various female body parts – he mentioned that all the images were culled and cut from art magazines and books found in regular bookstores and at the DIA. Bourgeau pointed out the purposeful juxtaposition of a 1924 piece by Man Ray called “Le Violon d’Ingres’ next to Kathy Grove’s 1990 version called “(The Other Series) After Man Ray.” Both showed nude women from behind with violin markings etched on their back – implying women are objects to be played. While 66 years separated the two pieces, it was chilling to see how one was considered art from almost a century ago, while the modern-day version remains hidden behind covered windows in Pontiac.

2000   ‘Michigan Artist Censored’ by Vince Carducci, New Art Examiner, March issue, p. 64.

Coming on the heels of the flap over the Brooklyn Museum’s “Sensation: Young British Artists,” was the controversy surrounding the first of a series of multimedia installations at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) by Michigan artist Jef Bourgeau. This incident has been hyped in the local, national, and even international media as another skirmish in the culture wars, which pit free-speech fundamentalists against the arbiters of “good taste.”

The Bourgeau affair is generally seen as evidence of the “chilling effect” rippling through our culture in the wake of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s use of the issue of public funding for the arts as a means of increasing political capital in his bid for the Senate.

Among the problematic pieces were “Bathtub Jesus,” a doll in a small basin displaying a finger-protector in place of a penis – attributed to Andres Serrano – and “Nigger Toe,” an unshelled Brazil nut held in place with clamps to be viewed through a magnifying glass – attributed to Jean-Michel Basquiat. The attributions were ironic components to Bourgeau’s spoofs. Other works in the installation made reference to the sometimes explicit or otherwise inflammatory content of much recent art.

DIA director, Graham Beale, had yet to complete a review of his own curators’ activities even though he had been on the job for months. He appears to have been caught flat-footed, moving somewhat clumsily to pre-empt potential objections from both his conservative suburban patrons and his primarily African-American urban constituents.

When viewed through the all-pervasive lens of “show-me-the-money,” the Bourgeau

incident and “Sensation” do have a common thread. In both, the fault line that divides economic interests augured the range of possible outcomes. At the DIA, Beale had no reason to jeopardize the revenue stream of the cash-strapped museum over a relatively unknown artist. On the other hand, Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman knew that the financial might of the art world was arrayed behind him and the mayor’s threat worthless. The lesson: As with any other commodity in this great country of ours, you get as much free speech as you can buy.

2000   ‘Police Raid Museum’ by staff, Art Newsroom, March 17.

A museum symposium on censorship and its complementary exhibition were disrupted by a police raid on March 4. After police had forced their way into the locked gallery, Deputy Chief Thompson pointed out several artworks and declared them “obscene.”

Courbet’s “Origin of the World” of 1866 was singled out first. Works by Rodin, Warhol and Hans Bellmer followed.

The Museum of Contemporary Art and its director Jef Bourgeau were cited for displaying “obscene images.” Bourgeau has yet to receive a pretrial date. This incident represents only the second time in U.S. history that an art institution has been prosecuted on obscenity laws.

2000   ‘Museums Gird for New Salvos in the Culture Wars’ by Judith Dobrzynski, New York Times, March 15.

After a breather in the mid-1990’s, the culture wars that began in the late 1980’s seem to be resuming, and museum officials worry their institutions, not the halls of Congress, are increasingly becoming the battlefields. As they see it, the contemporary art they show – as provocative as it often is – is only one ingredient of the trend. More troubling is what they say is the growing tendency of Americans, in this no-holds-barred talk-show culture, to try to suppress ideas they do not like.

Joan E. Bertin, executive director of the Nationa Coalition Against Censorship, says she sees something even more disturbing in this climate of intolerance. “To me it’s not the numbers that tell the story,” she said. Rather, she went on, the impulse to suppress difficult art and ideas is now coming from the left – from feminists , civil rights advocates, gay activists – as well as from the right. “When people who say they believe in free thinking draw lines and say, ‘Not here,’ it’s most troubling,” she explained. “And when it comes from both sides of the political spectrum, there’s a legitimacy provided.”

[And when it comes to such recent works as Jef Bourgeau’s “Nigger Toe”] many “are using the ‘Words wound’ theory,” Ms Bertin said. “The idea that racist speech is tantamount to a racist act.”

2000   ‘Tradition, repression and censorship targeted’ by Keri Guten Cohen, Detroit Free Press, March 12, p. 2F.

Jef Bourgeau’s latest exhibition was created to complement a panel discussion titled “Fear No Art: The Politics of Correctness.” As panelists discussed censorship upstairs, police cited Bourgeau for showing obscene images in the downstairs gallery. He awaits a pre-trial court date after pleading not guilty to charges he displayed obscene material. Amid the more than 100 artists represented are the expected Mapplethorpe penises, but also nudes by such respected artists as Goya, Velasquez, Magritte, Edward Weston, Cartier-Bresson and Rodin.

Bourgeau’s point is that what was once acceptable now is being squelched by the government and corporations holding museum purse strings. Ironically, much that is considered explicit here is frequent fare on cable, and in music and movies, he says, but at the same time there have been “constraints on museums to be more puritanical.”

“Fear No Art” is difficult to view. It soon becomes difficult to sort out art from offensive images. Lumped together, the nudes lose their individual beauty and take on a collective surreal ugliness. But maybe that’s his point.

2000   ‘Bourgeau’s Fear No Art’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, March 10.

For the past four years, Bourgeau has been examining censorship and gender issues in art under the umbrella of his Museum of Contemporary Art. For this exhibit, titled “Fear No Art,” he cuts pictures out of art magazines or constructs images from found objects, making references to other artists’ approaches to race, sex, religion, or any topic that has touched off an incident or a culture war during the 20^th century.

2000   ‘A rough ride’ by George Bullard, Detroit News, March 6.

Graham Beal, the new director at the Detroit Institute of Arts, sat down to share his views:

“We’ve had a century in which the artists have taken the position, ‘We are the ones who decide what art is.’ I can hardly bring myself to talk about it. But many artists are trying to address social issues, enraged by the fact that they believe there is so much social injustice going on. I believe Courbet was the first person to actually articulate that his purpose was to enrage the bourgeoisie. That has been an important factor of revolutionary art. Well, the revolution is over. [With Jef Bourgeau], it really came down to who really had the final say. In the end, there was no room for negotiation.”

2000   ‘Van Gogh: The Face of Genius’ by the editor, Detroit News, March 7.

Part of Van Gogh’s enduring appeal is based upon the drama of his life story. He has become the paradigm of the struggling artist whose work was mocked in his own lifetime but triumphed over time.

There is a temptation to use the history of Van Gogh’s art as a broader parable. Some will find a distinct irony in the fact that one week before the show opened at the DIA, artist Jef Bourgeau, whose work was rejected as unsuitable by the same institution, was cited for obscenity by Pontiac police for a display in his gallery window.

It is true that the critics who jeer at and attempt to suppress unfamiliar and unsettling works of art often earn the ridicule of posterity.

2000   ‘Ruling on whether this art is obscene must wait’ by John Wisely, Oakland Press, March 7.

Jef Bourgeau will have to wait to find out if his art exhibit is obscene. The artist, who was ticketed Saturday for displaying obscene images, went to 50^th District Court Monday, only to find that the court wasn’t ready for him. A court clerk said they didn’t have all the paperwork.

2000   ‘Artist shifts from Detroit to Pontiac result is the same – trouble’ by Doug Henze, Oakland Press, March 6.

The owner of a downtown Pontiac museum – cited by police Saturday for an art exhibit they call obscene – is scheduled to appear in court today. Bourgeau’s show is a compilation of art that has been considered controversial beginning in the 1860s and dating to the present. Bourgeau said, “I was asked to curate it. And it’s not an easy show. (But) it’s not stuff out of Playboy by a long shot. These are famous artists. It goes from Rembrandt through Picasso and Modigliani to modern artists such as Sally Mann and Francesca Woodman.”

Police were called in after a building janitor found the exhibit offensive.

2000   ‘Artist charged with obscenity for exhibit’ by staff, Detroit Free Press, March 6.

Police have charged an artist with obscenity for exhibits in a display on censorship and art. Police cited Jef Bourgeau on Saturday, accusing him of allowing a public display of obscenity. The city ordinance carries a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and a $500 fine. Deputy Chief Conway Thompson said authorities objected to the fact that the images were visible to passersby. He said the city had nothing against art displays “as long as it’s professional art.”

2000   ‘Artist gets ticketed as panel discusses censorship’ by Erica Blake, Oakland Press, March 5.

The giant glass windows of the street front gallery were more like a shield than a portal. Covered from the ground to ceiling with brown butcher’s paper, the windows were wrapped by order of the Pontiac Police Department. Jef Bourgeau was cited for showing obscene images, the day his exhibit “Fear No Art” opened. Ironically, about 100 people gathered upstairs in the auditorium to debate controversial art and censorship.

2000   ‘Arts Under Fire’ by Tracy Ward, Oakland Press, March 2.

In the 10 years since he was indicted on obscenity charges over the Robert Mapplethorpe art exhibit, former museum director Dennis Barrie says censorship has become an even bigger problem.” It should scare people,” says Barrie, who will be the keynote speaker Saturday at a forum on controversial art and censorship, “Fear No Art: The Politics of Correctness” at Jef Bourgeau’s Museum of Contemporary Art in Pontiac.

“We just want to talk about what’s been happening to the art world; it’s becoming more and more conservative and we want to talk about why…and broader issues of discrimination,” Bourgeau says.  “I don’t think there are any solutions.  We just want to talk about it.”

As for the Bourgeau controversy, Dennis Barrie says he is concerned that museums are more cautious about what they will exhibit for fear of the consequences. “You see more on cable, but because museums are public, or quasi-public places, people think they have some right, because they are citizens or because it’s their tax dollars, to say what should be shown there,” Barrie says.  “There is a censorship issue here and that part is very disturbing.”

2000   ‘When Works of Art Strike Discord Does Industry Win or Lose?’ by Garry Boulard, Art Business News, February.

Once the show was closed and given media attention, Catholics complained about the former work, African-Americans the latter. “We had a lot of phone calls,” Leah Wilson in public relations office of the Detroit museum.  “The response was pretty much immediate.  And the director just felt that this had been the right thing to do.”

And popular too, if the results of a Detroit News feedback survey are any indication – some 57 percent of the respondents agreed with Beal’s decision to cancel the Bourgeau exhibit.  “My first thought was why did they want to host that exhibit in the first place,” one local respondent remarked.

2000   ‘Controversial artist, DIA reach deal’ by Dave Groves, Oakland Press, February 18.

As a result of his experience and a flurry of local and national media coverage, Bourgeau said he has come to see it as a disturbing example of a trend in modern American society. “There’s been a switch. The art world has become more conservative while television and the media have opened up in terms of what we’re allowed to see. It used to be art that challenged people’s perceptions and beliefs,” he said.  “Now we rely on the media to feed us an overdose of images – all that target the consumer’s pocket not his mind.”

The artist intends to use his compensation check to lease space to open the Museum of New Art.

2000    ‘DIA to pay artist over banned exhibit’ by David Lyman, Detroit Free Press, February 17.

The flap between artist Jef Bourgeau and the Detroit Institute of Arts is over.

2000   ‘DIA pays cancelled artist’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, February 17.

Although the artist Jef Bourgeau had no written contract with the DIA and no lawsuit had been filed, director Graham Beal decided Bourgeau should be compensated.

“In no way does the museum consider this a settlement,” Annmarie Erickson, DIA spokeswoman, said Wednesday. “It is a payment.”

“My initial reaction was to burn the check as some sort of protest,” Bourgeau said. “On second thought, I decided to put the money to real use by establishing a contemporary museum for Metro Detroit.”

2000    ‘Van Gogh’s Ear’ a dialogue with Giancarlo Politi, Flash Art, February, p.55.

If current art is truly controversial, the DIA’s new director’s action to cut short controversy only provoked a much graver scandal within the art world itself.  Museums everywhere are essential to a more complete understanding of contemporary art.  To have one act so irresponsibly at this critical juncture, deliberately narrows the enormous variety possibly to art as we move into the next century.  Such a forced closing not only narrows the gate, but, more direly, sets a dangerous precedent: where museums directors not only decide art but censor it to suit the presumed tastes of “important parts” of the community.

2000   ‘Will controversy follow Bourgeau’s new exhibit’ by Frank Provenzano, Detroit Free Press, January.

Jef Bourgeau has become something of an enigma, whereby his fame has overshadowed his work.  Most of his work, quite frankly, is filled with biting humor and satire often missing in the all-too-serious art world.  Thankfully, he is not only earnest, but, at times, capable of laughing at himself. Ultimately, he’s a provocateur and satirist who believes the absolute worse response to his work in indifference.

“Significant ‘shock art’ engages you.  It forces you to deal with it,” said Bourgeau.  “Aesthetic is a superficial engagement.”

David Popa, whose gallery features work with a pop-art sensibility, is one of Bourgeau’s biggest supporters. He along with several other gallery owners circulated a letter to the media in opposition to the DIA’s closing of Bourgeau’s exhibit. “Jef is good at eliciting a response, negative or positive,” said Popa.  “He gets people impassioned about art.”

2000   ‘Art dwells at 7 N. Saginaw in Pontiac’ by Keri Guten Cohen, Detroit Free Press, January 16.

Jef Bourgeau has set up shop in Galerie Blu. There are no pieces from his show deemed controversial and closed in mid-November by the Detroit Institute of Arts, but he’s giving exposure to work that would have been shown in the remaining one-week installments there.

Nothing’s controversial here. The work, however, is typical of Bourgeau’s ability to puzzle, humor, stimulate discussion, focus on everyday objects as art and comment on art and artists who stand out in history.

A tiny space in the gallery serves as Bourgeau’s Museum of Contemporary Art. On exhibit are 100 boxes in his Documenta USA project containing work by such famous artists as Christo and Jenny Holzer, and a small house made of plastic blocks with a picture window that features a video playing Bourgeau’s very short version of the history of art.

2000   ‘When did the media start hating artists?’ by Robert Atkins (Media Channel Arts Editor and a Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon's STUDIO for Creative Inquiry), January.

One was the premature closing of a long-planned show at the of assemblages by artist Jef J. Bourgeau, one of which coupled a toy Jesus and a condom. Director Graham J. Beal just two months at his job insisted that "the museum is always selecting works of art, and selection is not censorship." (The ACLU, which is representing Bourgeau in his case against the museum, disagrees.)

2000    “Art Until Now” No More: ‘DIA CENSORS ITS OWN EXHIBITONS’ by Jeanette Wenig Drake, Dialogue, January/February issue.

Pulling the plug on this recent exhibition in the eleventh hour seems ironic given the prior availability of the work, which had previously been on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art (operated by Bourgeau) twenty minutes North of Detroit.

            What is most disturbing to Bourgeau is the way people who have never seen the exhibition are taking sides. He also says it’s remiss for the museum to refuse whole categories of art, such as the Young Brits, into its galleries.

            “It’s strange at this time and with all that’s going on with this art in the press, the art of the 90s is being refused exposure in Detroit,” Bourgeau says. “Much of the public still has a problem with Cubism. Without cultural exposure, they are left happy with pretty pictures.”

            He admits that today’s art is charged. “It’s always been that way. It’s intertwined and inseparable from the culture and so it’s going to elicit strong responses. It is Pop Art with content – art that provokes questions, makes us think and helps us understand the times we’re living in.”

2000    ‘Liz-n-Val, Feted-n-Validated’ by Staff, Flash Art, January/February, p. 48-49.

As documented on video, Woof was petted, praised and derised by passers-by as Liz-n-Val dragged it around New York.  Most embarrassingly for the art world, Woof elicited vapid comments from hipsters at gallery openings who looked past the artists for anyone else to talk to. The brief career of Woof will be on view in February at the Museums of Contemporary Art in Pontiac, Michigan, which describes itself as the smallest museum in the world.

2000    ‘Part of controversial art exhibit to be shown in Pontiac’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, January 4.

A controversial art exhibit that was shut down by the Detroit Institute of Arts will open Friday in Pontiac. But it won’t have the works that caused all the commotion. Instead, the Galerie Blu will show Bourgeau’s black and white paintings and a video that traces the course of 20^th century art in a small house made of Legos. The artist says both bodies of work would have been shown later at the DIA in his series of 12 one-week installations which were scheduled to run through Feb. 13.

2000    ‘We wish: Headlines Michiganders would like to see this year’ compiled by staff, Detroit Free Press, January 2.

“That a contemporary art museum breaks ground in Detroit,” Jef Bourgeau, visual artist, whose controversial exhibit was pulled from the Detroit Institute of Arts.

2000    ‘The Three Day Show’ in Artnews, January issue, p. 50.

“My art isn’t the biggest victim here,” Bourgeau counters. “Contemporary art is.”  The artist  distinguishes the handling of his show from the recent controversy over “Sensation” at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, saying that “such a forced closing not only narrows the gate, but, more directly, sets a dangerous precedent. This time it was the art world acting as its own censor, and cowardly - after the fact as well.”

1999  ‘Visual arts move, inform, offend’ by Keri Guten Cohen, Detroit Free Press, December 23.

Graham Beal deemed the DIA exhibit, ironically a reference to art world controversies, too controversial for display at the museum. Few had actually seen the work at the DIA before it was officially closed after two-and-a-half days.

1999  ‘Does Detroit News have conflicting standards of decency?’ by Jay McNally, Credo, December 20.

A media frenzy erupted Nov. 17 after DIA director Graham Beal shut down the exhibit by artist Jef Bourgeau because Beal deemed two of the pieces in the exhibit, “Bathtub Jesus” and “Nigger Toe,” too offensive for the community.

The Detroit News published photographs of both art works and described each in an accompanying article. It describes the banned art thus: “The controversy centered around two images – one of a doll purported to be Jesus, wearing a condom; and one of a Brazil nut with a racial slur in the label.”

News Art Editor Joan Behrmann defended the paper’s decision not to publish the offensive word out of sensitivity to racial concerns, while simultaneously publishing the “Jesus” photo, which most believers would consider intrinsically blasphemous.

Meanwhile, over in the Faith section of the News, Religion writer George Bullard wrote a column about the doll. In all the coverage of the exhibit, it was only Bullard who noted that the infant Jesus was not wearing a condom at all: the appendage was really one of those “little latex finger protectors, the things bank tellers wear on a forefinger to help count money.”

1999  ‘A portrait of influence’ by Frank Provenzano, On Line, December issue.

The irony is that while blockbuster exhibits at the DIA may bring record crowds, the highly promoted shows may have minimal effect in broadening the appreciation of contemporary art. In some ways, major exhibits of works by Monet, van Gogh, and other historically significant artists may further entrench mainstream attitudes about what is “good art.” Last fall’s strident public reaction to the “Sensation” exhibit at the Brookln Museum that included a dung-laden portrait of the Madonna, and the controversy at the DIA over the closing of artist Jef Bourgeau’s “shock art” exhibit demonstrates the public’s ambivalence over contempory art.

In the last three years, Bourgeau has had a singular mission: To prod, provoke, and persuade public opinion that a contemporary arts museum could stir a debate about how art can reflect the changing nature of society. His project, entitled the Museum of Contemporary Arts, is a closet-sized exhibit space inside a commercial gallery, Galerie Blu, and located in gritty downtown Pontiac.

1999  ‘Art show that never was, but is’ by Laura Berman, Detroit News, December 16.

In its three day run, no one really saw Jef Bourgeau’s installation at the Detroit Institute of Arts. But everybody has talked about it since. Radio talk shows. Newspaper columnists. Artists and art journalists around the nation and around the world.

“One TV station polled viewers and found that 94% of their audience agreed that the artist must be a ‘racist and a sexual pervert.’ I was at the grocery store, buying milk, and thinking that 94 out of the 100 people in Kroger’s think I’m a racist pervert,” says Bourgeau. “And all over an exhibit that none of them had ever seen.”

1999  ‘Shocked - Christianity and modern art’ by Martin E. Marty, The Christian Century,

December 15.

If the '90s is the shock decade, let artists startle us with efforts to treat the human body, the human story, with a measure of dignity. Let them transcend the boundaries of what confronts us every day in rest rooms and emergency rooms. Let them refuse to allow the cry "censorship" to inspire or define them.

1999   ‘In Detroit, an act not of censorship but stewardship’ by Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune, December 8.

What is new in Detroit is that the museum director, Graham Beal, closed “Van Gogh’s Ear” two days after it opened. Graham Beal is hardly Rudy Giuliani or Jesse Helms, the sort of “benighted, meddlesome” public official that many in the art world love to hate. On the contrary, he is one of the art world’s own.

Today, contemporary art does not lead the popular culture, but limps along behind it. Why climb in the car to see “Van Gogh’s Ear” when we can achieve the same sort of experience by flipping the channel to TV’s raunchy “South Park”? Ultimately, shows like “Van Gogh’s Ear” intended to send shivers down our spine – provoke only yawns. If it’s shock we want, we’d do better to rent “Friday the Thirteenth.” Who needs art museums?

1999   ‘Bathtub Jesus: Only the title has any religious import in DIA flap’ by George Bullard, Detroit News, December 3.

Let’s see if we can parse the religious import of Bathtub Jesus. The episode begins when a man is hired to create art that comments on other art. The artist, Jef Bourgeau, apparently had no Tinker Toys or even a decent set of Legos. So he improvised. He took a doll and put it in a small tub. On this doll he put one of those little latex finger protectors, the things bank tellers wear on a forefinger to help count money. So far, we’re talking sassy. But sassy is not automatic controversy and, well, Bourgeau thrives on the artistic edge. So he called the finger-protector a condom. Now we’re cooking! And the whole thing Bathtub Jesus.

Bourgeau’s gambit exceeded the wildest expectations of any artist marooned in Detroit. And in Detroit, DIA director Graham Beal was forced to do what had to be done: Stop the madness, pull the exhibit.

1999   ‘A responsibility to the public’ by Jerry Falwell, Listen America, December 2.

Recently, the Detroit Institute of Arts was preparing to show an exhibit that included a work titled “Bathtub Jesus,” featuring a doll wearing a condom. When the public ire reached the ears fo Graham Beal, the museum’s director, he immediately stepped in and shut down the exhibit. A spokesperson for the Institute told the Detroit News that the museum “has a responsibility to the artist and an even greater responsibility to the public.” Sometimes it seems as if government responsibility is a thing of the past. It is refreshing to see someone in the arts community who understands the basic truth of accountability. Radical artists and their patrons fail to understand that hard-working Americans have a right to assume their government will not insult and persecute them with the very tax dollars they are required to hand over to that same government. I hope other arts leaders finally get the message.

1999   ‘Museum sets wise selection policy by denying public forum for bigotry’ by Gary Glenn, Detroit News, December 1.

Detroit’s large population of Christians – including the predominant African-American population who need no lectures from others on tolerance or respect for diversity – would be most offended by these sacrilegious portrayals of the Jewish rabbi they believe was unjustly accused, arrested, tortured and eventually executed so they and their families “should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The offense here is not limited only to Christians. The devout of other faiths, while not worshipping Christ as divine, revere him nonetheless as a great teacher worthy of respect. And while Christians are the only group of Americans our popular culture considers it politically correct to attack and ridicule, can devout believers of other faiths who also adhere to traditional standards of morality – Muslims, Jews and others – be far behind?

1999   ‘Insulting? You decide’ by Joy Colby, Tim Kiska and Susan Whitall, Detroit News, December 1.

Reaction to the Brazil nut image focused exclusively on its label, which contained a racial slur. David Driskell, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and a longtime curator to entertainer Bill Cosby, said that even though he objected to the Brazil nut label, he was “ambivilant about the museum closing the show. Once you have entered a contract with the artist, there is a commitment to honor it.”

Reaction to the “Bathtub Jesus” installation, of a doll wearing a bank teller’s rubber finger-protector for a penis, ranged from strongly in favor to emphatically opposed. After viewing the “Bathtub Jesus” photograph, Ron Barrier of the New Jersey-based American Atheists said: “To many a crucifix with a bloody beaten murdered human being is offensive. Art isn’t art unless it stimulates reactions.”

Two nationally known art critics disagreed with each other over Graham Beal’s action, though neither viewed the photos online. Hilton Kramer, former chief art critic for the New York Times, said he backed Beal. “I wish the director of the Brooklyn Museum would have shown the same kind of wisdom and responsibility.”

Christopher Knight, art critic for the Los Angeles Times, said, “It’s presumptuous to assume that a work of art is going to offend particular individuals. There are other ways (than closing the show) in which to prepare an audience to see works of art that might prove difficult. Preventing the audience from having the opportunity to see it is not one of those actions.”

James Bridenstine, director of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, which included Bourgeau in a show in 1998, said of the closed exhibit’s labels: “Sure, those titles could be offensive to some people, even if the images are bland. I have great respect for the DIA curators and great respect for Bourgeau as an artist. What’s unfortunate about this show is the timing, closing it after it opened to the public.”

1999    ‘Art Until Now Cancelled at Detroit Institute of Arts; Director Cites Hot-Button Issues’ by staff, Arts Wire, December 1.

Art Until Now is the work of artist Jef Bourgeau, and was produced in his conceptual role as the "Acting" Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Pontiac, MI. "Van Gogh's Ear", the first installation of the series, was installed by the artist and opened on November 17, but was closed by the museum on November 19.

Beal, who was formerly the Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of art (LACMA) and has also been Chief Curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, told Arts Wire that he was concerned about the art and the museum's ability to justify as art several pieces in the exhibition that addressed "hot button" issues.

But Bourgeau emphasized that a dangerous precedent is being set because, unlike other recent controversies, such as the one over the SENSATION show in New York, his installation was shut down internally without public outcry.

"The closed museum door is Jeff's show now," the Detroit News quotes installation artist Deanna Sperka as saying.  

1999    ‘Controversy is good business’ by Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press, December.

This is not anything I would normally run out to see during the holiday season, but now that the DIA has elected to protect me from it, I feel all but duty-bound.  When the normal desire to see what all the fuss is about gets attached to issues of personal liberty, well, that’s the stuff hits are made of.  If the DIA ultimately decides not to mount Bourgeau’s show, its artistic merit becomes instantly secondary to its controversy quotient.  And that should ensure its success somewhere, if not the DIA.

1999   ‘Sensation lite: DIA flap is not the event of our dreams’ by George Tysh, Metro Times, December 1.

Grandstanding commentators complaining about Beal’s condescension to museum-goers miss the point entirely. The real condescension is in the act of provocation itself that basically assumes that only the most blatant shocks will be understood by the "general public," that only shit flung in well-placed exhibitions will be effective.

1999   ‘DIA should not censor art exhibit’ by staff, Michigan Daily, November 30.

Maya Angelou, J.D. Salinger, Elvis Presley and the Beatles – what do these people have in common? Besides being legendary artists in their respective fields, they are bound by a more dubious connection. All of these artists have been the object of censorship at some point in their careers. Censorship is a persitent threat to the artistic community, and it recently hit home when the Detroit Institute of Arts decided to close down the showing of Jef Bourgeau’s “Art Until Now.” In postponing Bourgeau’s show, the DIA does not mean to promote censorship, but that is the result.

1999   ‘Bourgeau says spotlight of controversy may hurt his career’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, November 30.

Until this month, Jef Bourgeau was known to art world insiders as an innovator. But since an exhibit of his was deemed offensive and closed by the Detoit Institute of Arts on Nov. 19, suddenly his name is known across the country as one of the central figures in a censorship battle pitting the right to freedom of speech against the desire to protect the public from “offensive” art.

1999   ‘Should DIA have cancelled exhibit?’ by Greg Thrasher, Detroit News, November 29.

The DIA and its patrons deserve an art curator, not caretaker. Graham Beal was touted as a person who would connect the DIA with a larger, more diverse audience. It appears he is only concerned about the petty desires of the elite and not the artistic hunger of the larger viewing public. The censorship being practiced by the DIA under this umbrella of racial and religious political correctness is not only obscene but, as a person of color, it is also insulting. I alone reserve the right to define what is offensive and appropriate. Political correctness to appease supposed interests should be a ticket for a quick exit, even for an alleged highly esteemed caretaker.

1999   ‘Controversy may bring museum, art community closer’ by Joy Hakanson Colby. Detroit News, November 26.

“Bourgeau has provoked debate and controversy and that’s all healthy,” say painter Carl Demeulenaere. “The closing of the show has become a conceptual art work in itself.”

Installation artist Deanna Sperka agrees. “The closed museum door is Jef’s show now,” she says.

1999    ‘Artist is upset, but DIA’s director stands firm’ by David Lyman, Detroit Free Press, November 25.

Several people have suggested comparisons between this closing and the situation at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani threatened to cut off funding to the museum because of a show he said was offensive to religion.

Julius Combs, a member of the Detroit arts commission and the search committee that hired Beal, declined to discuss the specifics of the show, saying it would be wrong without first seeing the art itself. He said he wasn’t happy with the idea of closing a show, but that since Beal is so new that the conservative approach was probably the best one.

1999   ‘Detroit museum defends shutting down exhibit’ The Boston Globe, November 24.

1999   ‘Un directeur de musee americain reporte une exposition par crainte de la polemique’ by staff, Le Monde, November 24.

L’exposition de Detroit, “L’Art jusqu’a maintenant”, programmee sur deux ans, aurait du ouvrir ses portes mercredi dernier, avec le premiere d’une serie d’expositions Durant chcune 12 semaines, et don’t l’ensemble devait representer toutes les facettes de l’art du XXe siecle.

1999   ‘Scandalo a Detroit’ by staff, Il Mattino, November 24.

Il Museo d’arte di Detroit ha chiuso in 48 ore una mostra di arte contemporanea in cui uno dei pezzi forti era un Gesu giocattolo con indosso un profilattico.

“Ci siamo preoccupati di non offendere la comunita”, ha dichiarato il neo-direttore dell’istituzione Graham Beal, mentre Jef Bourgeau, l’artista che aveva montato l’esposizione, ha accusato il museo di censura…

1999   ‘Detroiters don’t need the likes of DIA directors to protect them’ by Tom Long, Detroit News, November 24.

We wouldn’t want art to upset anybody, would we? We wouldn’t want art to challenge or engage or startle. We wouldn’t want it to depict extremes, to balance the ugly with the beautiful, to both slug us in the stomach and lift us lightly off the ground.

Heck no. We want safe art. Art for the masses. Art for the busloads. Art that brings smiles.

The cancellation of the controversial ART UNTIL NOW exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts this past week was a slap in the face of all Detroiters, a clumsy and needless political move that stains the reputation of one of the finest art museums in the country and, more so, deflates this city’s ongoing effort at revitalization.

How stupid is this entire incident? Let us count the ways.

First off, the DIA knew it was getting an exhibit that looked at “current art fashion.” Gee, guess the curators there forgot to read such high-falutin’ magazines as Time and Newsweek. Any ding-dong knows that sensationalism is going to be part of “current art fashion.”

More importantly, though, why close the exhibit? Because it contains disturbing images and a racial epithet? Give me a break. Since when does art exclude disturbing images? And a racial epithet! Has anyone rented a video lately, been to a movie theater or walked past a basketball game? Racial epithets are as common to the American experience as bubble gum. They may be wrong, they may be offensive, they may show how twisted and divided society is, but they are all over the place.

And if a piece of art shows how twisted and divided society is, it shouldn’t be show? Bullpucky. There’s nothing wrong with art that’s in your face.

The DIA is one of the best art museums in America. If it does not offer patrons art in all its expanse, in all its wide variety, if it does not offer art that stimulates and questions and every once in a while smacks you upside the head, then what will it offer?

Paintings of puppies? Elvis on velvet? Now that would be offensive.

1999   ‘Art controversy focuses national spotlight on Detroit’ by Joy Colby, Susan Whitall and Tim Kiska, Detroit News, November 24.

Museum director Graham Beal’s decision to shut down a controversial exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts on Friday continues to have repercussions, both nationally and locally. Bourgeau has been interviewed by Canada’s CBC and cable giant CNN. CBS invited him to speak with Bryant Gumbel on Early Edition and the story has been covered in the New York Times.

Robert Bielat, a Ferndale sculptor, said because he didn’t see the show, he couldn’t judge its artistic merit. He resents not having that opportunity. “If I don’t like it I can walk out. But don’t tell me what art is. It’s not little flowers and ducks – that is not art. Art has a tendency to motivate you or disgust you. Everybody wants cute crap in this town.”

Sculptor Jim Pallas believes the museum did the right thing in closing the show. “The museum is a public institution and I don’t think the material shown should inflame people.”

“Any kind of censorship should have come in prior to its opening,” said Gere Baskin, arts administrator for the Michigan Legacy Art Park.

DIA volunteer Evelyn Wishnetsky, one of the few people to actually see Bourgeau’s show, says she was impressed by it. “I’m appalled that the museum canceled it. The work makes people think. I’m in my late 70s and I loved it.”

Art isn’t a play-it-safe genre, and the DIA has some excellent examples of controversy, from the Rivera murals to Whistler’s “Falling Rocket.” All that is a concept worth defending.

1999    ‘Tempest at the DIA’ by editor, Detroit News, November 24.

The DIA approached Jef Bourgeau, a well regarded artist, two years ago to develop an exhibition tracing the major themes in 20^th century art. Mr Bourgeau, who financed the project through his own personal funds, was scheduled to open the first of his 12 installments last Wednesday in a small area of the museum. But Mr Beal closed the event on Friday. The DIA’s decision is inevitably generating comparisons with the recent action of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who threatened to cut off city funding to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for running the British exhibition, “Sensations.”

Yet the two cases are quite different: Mr Beal acted of his own accord.

1999    ‘Art, or Not? Playing it safe isn’t always the artistic thing to do’ by editor, Detroit Free Press, November 24.

A tempest in a teapot, or more precisely a brouhaha about “Bathtub Jesus,” is playing out at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The points of controversy were “Bathtub Jesus,” which was a doll with a bank teller’s rubber finger-protector for a penis, and a racial slur in another title card. Other potentially offensive elements were a vial of urine and a menstruation video.

The display apparently evoked artwork that has become part of the de rigueur shock list cited by critics of public arts funding. That the exhibit was designed in part as comment on earlier controversies makes it an intriguing proposition.

1999    ‘Museum downs iffy art’ by staff, The Holland Sentinel, November 23.

The Detroit Institute of Arts’ new director pulled an exhibit two days after it opened because he feared it would offend blacks and Christians.

1999    ‘It’s unfortunate DIA exhibit debate focuses on art we aren’t able to see’ by Laura Berman, Detroit News, November 23.

How long has it been since the DIA mounted any show that provoked more comment than the Gucci gowns at the latest DIA society ball? Unfortunately for those who like to debate what is and is not art, the show that’s stirred up so much discussion is closed, or, as Beal belatedly announced at a news conference on Monday, “postponed.”

It’s ironic that an exhibition dedicated to the extremes of 20^th century art must be “postponed” until the century is over. It’s disappointing that we aren’t in the midst of a debate about art that we can view with our own eyes.

In a newspaper interview, Beal recently said he became enamored with art after being baffled by an abstract sculpture in a museum: “Somehow, there it was in the museum. That notion of what gives art value – and who it gives value to – that has been the question I’ve pondered ever since.”

That experience – of confronting art that disturbs, unsettles, annoys – opened a door and led Beal to his vocation. Now, he’s padlocked the door behind him.

1999    ‘Another Art Battle, as Detroit Museum Closes an Exhibit Early’ By Robyn Meredith, New York Times, November 23.

''Some people understand and some people don't,'' Mr. Bourgeau said. And so in a post-modern spectacle of its own, art pretending to be that of controversial artists of the past has become controversial itself.

1999    ‘Dispute goes on display at DIA’ by David Lyman, Detroit Free Press, November 23.

The strife that has consumed museums from New York to Cincinnati has come to roost on Woodward Avenue. Jef Bourgeau’s show, “Art Until Now,” was scheduled to run through Feb. 13, offering an overview – sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek – of the breadth of art in the 20^th Century. The first installment, which began last week, is on hold.

It’s not uncommon for curators and artists to make changes in exhibitions before their openings, for reasons ranging from space limitations to possible negative audience reaction. But normally such changes are made quietly, without the public privy to the decision. In July, the DIA removed a print by artist Kara Walker. Several board members and representatives of the museum’s Friends of African and African-American Art complained that the piece had offensive racial overtones.

1999    ‘Culture Clash’ by staff, USA TODAY, November 23, front page.

Officials at the Detroit Institute of Arts defended their decision to shut down an exhibition after museum officials failed to reach an agreement with the artist about changing potentially offensive pieces. The Institute closed the firt portion of a 12-week installation series, “Art Until Now,” by artist Jef Bourgeau. The series, about 20^th century art, included one piece called “Bathtub Jesus,” which was an anatomically correct doll wearing a condom.

1999    ‘Museum director pulls controversial exhibit’ by A.J. Dickerson, Associated Press, November 23.

“A couple of the pieces were surprises,” said Beal, who became museum director seven weeks ago. He first saw the exhibit Thursday and closed it Friday – and said he was postponing it.  He said he hadn’t realized the exhibit had already been opened to the public.

Bourgeau said a good portion of the art of the 90’s intends to make people think. “Part of the power of the work … is to evoke discussion,” he said. “They’re trying to avoid controversy.  They wouldn’t reason with me. They locked the doors and refused any further discussions.”

1999   ‘Artist stages protest’ by John Davison, The Independent (London),  November 23

Hot on the heels of the fuss over her unmade bed at the Tate, bad girl Tracey Emin is at the centre of a new art row, writes Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles. A Detroit museum has abruptly shut down a show that included a video of the artist in a menstruation ritual, to the consternation of patrons and organisers. Museum-goers who turned up over the weekend found the exhibition rooms padlocked.

1999    ‘Detroit thrust into spotlight by DIA exhibit’ by Tim Kiska and Susan Whitall, Detroit News, November 23.

By pulling the controversial exhibit “Art Until Now,” new Detroit Institute of Arts director Graham Beal thrust the city’s museum int a national controversy over censorship of the arts. Art experts and politicians lined up on both sides of the issue to express either anger or agreement with Beal’s actions.

Robert Sedler, professor of Constitutional law at Wayne State University, thinks the public’s First Amendment rights may have been violated. “If Beal thought the artist Jef Bourgeau’s work was junk, then he’d be within his rights.” Sedler calls that editorial discretion. “But by arguing that the art might be offensive, Beal is veering into First Amendment territory. He’s doing the same thing Rudolph Giuliani did in attempting to close a controversial exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. They’re both public officials, and what this does is violate the First Amendment rights of the public to view the work. If Beal had turned this work down before it ever hit the gallery, the First Amendment issue wouldn’t apply. But once it’s in the museum, it’s pretty hard to argue he’s closing the show for any other reason than censorship.”

Former DIA director Sam Sachs II disagrees with Beal’s assessment. He defended the sophistication of Detroit audiences. “Detroiters are a very sophisticated audience capable of handling just about anything,” said Sachs. “The arts have become a bully’s target. You may not be so interested in freedom of speech, but it affects everyone.”

State Senator David Jaye, R-Washington Township, called Beal a “breath of fresh air. It’s insulting to working men and women that they should be forced to fun sacrilegious and pornographic art,” he said, although the DIA and artist Bourgeau said he received no money for the exhibit, public or otherwise.

1999    ‘A matter of art’ (staff) Chicago Sun-Times,  November 23

"You can't ignore it," artist Jef Bourgeau told the newspaper. "The '90s and the YBA’s were about provocation and shock. What is disappointing is that there were never any complaints and they closed it down. It was neither canceled nor postponed, but shut down in its third day by the museum director."

1999   ‘Art Exhibit Shut Down in its Third Day’ by staff, Michigan Daily, November 23.

The exhibit, which also featured a vial of urine from Andres Serrano's highly publicized photograph of a crucifix surged in urine, had been accepted by a curator two years ago, when the museum had no permanent director.

"A couple of the pieces were surprises," Beal said, who became museum director seven weeks ago. He first saw the exhibit Thursday and closed it Friday - and said he was postponing it. He said he hadn't realized the exhibit had already opened to the public.

Its artist, Jef Bourgeau, said such recent art intends to make people think. "Part of the power of the work ... is to evoke discussion," he said. "They're trying to avoid controversy. They had already decided to shut it down and to use the cover that it would simply be postponed."

1999   ‘DIA director defends closing exhibit: It’s offensive to the community, he says’ by Joy Hakanson Colby and Tim Kiska, Detroit News, November 23.

At a hastily called press conference Monday, Detroit Institute of Arts director Graham Beal defended his decision to lock the public out of a controversial exhibit. Speaking for the first time on the issue, Beal targeted two works in the exhibit, one as “racial,” the other as “sacrilegious.”  Several DIA board members, as well as Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, said they supported Beal.

Former DIA director Sam Sachs II, director at the Frick Collection in New York, said Beal’s decision is troubling. “It should worry people that freedom of expression is under attack,” he said.

1999   ‘Patrons upset that DIA shut exhibit’ by Mark Puls, Detroit News, November 22.

Several visitors strolling through the galleries of the Detroit Institute of Arts on Sunday accused the museum’s director of “censoring” art by padlocking and canceling an exhibit of modern art because they felt some might view it as offensive.  “Offensive,” it seems is like beauty, and within the eye of the beholder.

Allen Sayler, 42, of Troy was disappointed at the locked doors. He criticized Graham Beal, who began as the museum’s director two months ago. Beal’s first official act was to close the exhibit, which had been in the works at the museum for two years. “I would have loved to see it,” Sayler said. “I thought we were better than that. This hurts the credibility of the DIA.”

1999   ‘Museum’s new director cancels exhibit’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, November 20.

Bourgeau’s show had been planned long before Beal’s arrival.  “We’ve been talking about it for two years,” says 20^th century art curator MaryAnn Wilkinson. “I approached Jef as an installation artist, as someone who thinks about art issues at the end of the century.”

Jan van der Marck, former chief curator at the DIA and now a museum adviser, says Bourgeau’s show “would have enlightened the public and made difficult issues something people could understand.”

1999    ‘Let’s Destroy Art to Make Art: kaBOOM!’ by Giancarlo Politi, Flash Art, November/December.

I do, however, believe that much art should be destroyed, if only to make room for new art (otherwise where are we to put it all?)  If I had my way, every ten years we would clean out and trash the art of the previous decade in a sort of exercise of mental and physical hygiene.  If we fail to do so, we will be submerged by artistic hyper-production that is as dangerous as environmental and atomic pollution.

1999    ‘kaBOOM!’ by Staff, Flash Art Magazine, November/December.

Detroit Institute of Arts will start the next millennium with a bombshell in the form of an exhibition entitled “Kaboom!.”  Based on the destruction of art in this century, on vandalism as a sincere form of artistic expression, viewers will be invited on January 2 to destroy works of art.  Man Ray’s Object to be Destroyed can be crushed with an over-sized hammer, you can spray paint a green dollar sign on a Malevich painting, piss in Duchamp’s Fountain, erase a Willem de Kooning drawing, stitch up a Fontana, or slash up a Barnett Newman. 

1999   ‘Sweet and Innocent’ Giancarlo Politi, Flash Art, May-June, p71.

1999   ‘Size hardly matters’ Frank Provenzano, Fineline: In Profile, Spring issue.

If Jef Bourgeau were to lie on the floor and stretch – really stretch – he could almost touch all four walls of his “museum,” a portable, 8-by-10 fringe institute of shock, sleight-of-hand and slippery enigmas. Bourgeau lives in an ambiguous world where art is in dire need of an infusion of authenticity, and the greatest affliction is blind acceptance of the status quo.

In Bourgeau logic, every man is not only an island, but also curator of his own museum “Most people live on the periphery,” says Bourgeau. “Art can bring them out of that and get them to face life.”

So, it seems bizarrely poetic that this fall, Bourgeau will become part of the establishment. The Detroit Institute of Arts invited him to develop his own exhibit looking back at the passing decade and ahead to the millennium. “I asked them if I could put my museum inside of their museum,” he says. “They didn’t know what to say.”

Of course, Bourgeau hadn’t quite convinced them that size hardly matters.

1999  ‘On the end of art as we know it’ Giancarlo Politi, Flash Art, March-April, p49.

1998  ‘NEWTOPIA’ Casey Coston, Metro Times, October 14.

Despite heady competition with other events, a decent-sized crowd opted for newtopia, bringing with it a rare kind of Knitting Factory vibe.

1998  ‘Goings On’, Owen Drolet, Flash Art, May-June, p50.

CORRECTION: It was reported in the March April issue of Flash Art that Richard Mann was appointed the director of the Guggenheim Johannesburg.  There is no such institution.  Apparently we fell victim to a hoax.  Boy does Owen Drolet feel stupid.

1998  ‘People, Places’, Owen Drolet, Flash Art, March-April, p66.

Christina Speaks, adjunct curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, has been named its new director.  She succeeds Richard Mann, who will officially resign in January to concentrate on his recent appointment to the directorship of the Guggenheim Johannesburg, scheduled to begin construction late next year.  Under Mann’s leadership, the MCA more than tripled its membership and tripled the size of its endowment.  At 24, Speaks is the youngest director to take the position in museum history. 

1998   ‘Mail Harassment?’ by Staff, Flash Art, March/April, p45.

The Guggenheim Museum sent a letter to Detroit’s MCA telling them they would no longer accept by post any further press-packets or museum news.  “Take us off your list immediately,” ordered Diane Dewey, of the Guggenheim, to Detroit’s mew Museum of Contemporary Art.  “Should you not comply, any further mailings will be returned unopened and will be considered a breach of our rights.”  The Guggenheim’s reason for rejecting the mail is that it is not “germane to use geographically, nor in relation to our mission or interests.”  Why the hostility towards one museum from another and why such offense over common publicity mailing? 

1998  ‘Flesh and I’ Giancarlo Politi, Flash Art, January-February, p55.

The new Millennium looms.  Art has been pronounced dead.  As with any Apocalypse, there are many false demagogues promised.  After the End of Art, which is the true One?

1997  ‘Consider the bird flipped’ Veronica Pasfield, Hour Magazine, November, p99.

Bourgeau needn’t look any farther than his own visitors for inspiration.  Last summer a group of major art patrons exited abruptly. “They left the museum and I went outside and watched them run down the road in different directions.  It was like aKeystone comedy.  But then the meter-reader lady came and stayed an hour and a half to view the same exhibit.” 

1997    ‘The ambiguous world of Jef Bourgeau’ by Frank Provenzano, The Eccentric, October 26, p.1D

Bourgeau’s museum is slightly larger than the coat room at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The ideas that bounce around here, however, are hardly restrained by the narrow walls. While the various works appear mundane and an insider’s joke, when effective, they challenge the notion of what is art. And more importantly, confront the viewers with the limitations of their own perceptions and prejudices.

“Why should it be okay for a museum to claim that anything it exhibits is art?” said Bourgeau. “An artist could exhibit feces on a stick and the museum validates it as art. If anything can be art, then there’s no power left in art.”

Ironically, that sounds more like the position of cultural conservatives than an avant-garde artist. But in Bourgeau’s hall of mirrors, only art can make people aware of its inherent ineptitudes and deceptions. The intent, he said, to provoke visitors to think about where they draw the line between art and exploitation.

“The power of art allows for dialogue,” said Bourgeau. “Whether it’s an inner dialogue or a broader societal discussion. Art is about interaction. That’s why art is never finished.”

And why art, like life, is a work in progress. Seldom clear, and inherently ambiguous.

1997   ‘Naked asks us to go beyond labels in the 90’s’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, July.

Depictions of sex, fetishism, mutilation, various perversions and such – all neatly framed and matted – make up Naked in the Nineties at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Pontiac. 

Given its contents, the exhibition ought to be a shocker.  Instead the collection on the walls raises questions about prevailing tendencies in the visual arts and how long they can be expected to continue. 

The exhibit was created by Jef Bourgeau, Metro Detroit’s most innovative video and installation artist, who has a flair for satire.  He’s also the director, chief curator and artist-in-residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

1997   ‘A museum that doesn’t collect’ John Sousanis, Oakland Press, June 20.

1997   ‘Controversial art exhibit serves noble social purpose’ by Stephen R. Jaffe, Detroit New, June 15.

I might have preferred some kind of disclosure about the nature of the contents of the exhibit [Naked in the Nineties] at the threshold of its doors so I might have made a choice whether I wished to view such material.  However, no artist intending to convey the impact of his or her message partly by shock would allow such a filter.

While the photographs in the exhibit may shock, repulse and titillate its viewers, they also unquestionably serve to trigger a public awareness and discussion of the issue of sexual abuse and pornography.  The fact I am writing this article is a testament to the truth of that idea.

1996   ‘Contemplation fuels show’ by Mary Klemic, The Eccentric, June 20, p.1B.

The “Cranbrook Auto Show” at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills presents cars in a different light. The show travels inside and outside the museum, around the upper galleries and to the lower galleries. Jef Bourgeau offers a “warning sign” painting and a brief video in the theater, “A Short History of the American Combustion Engine.”

1996   ‘Jef Bourgeau’ by Matthew Kangas, Sculpture Magazine, June.

With a record of solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, and Amsterdam, Jef Bourgeau is an artist to watch as an alternative to Hill and Viola, someone with a command over sculpture’s material heritage who still willing to let video technology participate without dominating or whelming that heritage.

1996   ‘Artist goes high tech to evoke nostalgia’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, January 11, p.6F.

“Jef has a very sensitive approach and an innovative, versatile way with such materials as videos and computers,” says Kiichi Usui, curator at Meadow Brook Art Gallery, where Bourgeau exhibited during the 1980s. “His ideas are original and he conveys them marvelously well. I especially appreciate his way of absorbing the masters into his art works.”

Agrees David Klein (of O.K. Harris Gallery): “He takes an idea and develops it to its fullest extent. He’s a great one.”

1995   ‘New icons reflect society’s divergence’ by Marsha Miro, Detroit Free Press, November.

According to the 18 area artists selected for the current Detroit Focus Gallery exhibit, just what is “An American Icon” these days? These terrific artists seem to be saying that American icons now reflect our disparate selves and our divergent concerns. The art pulls these differences together. Marilyn Monroe remains an icon in Jef Bourgeau’s sculpture, but only on the tiny video running inside an obsolete camera.

1995   ‘Provocative Issues’ by Thomas Wojtas, Sculpture Magazine, July-August, p.44.

At first, one might find the work repulsive, but it elicits a strange fascination and a desire to know more. That the work is psychologically penetrating is apparent, but it also represents the dynamics between the sexes that are formed in childhood and often problematized by abuse and early sexual experience. Bourgeau’s technically refined presentation is crucial to getting his message across.

1995   ‘Familiar works shown in a different light at DIA’ by Roger Green, Ann Arbor News, June 17, p. D2.

Several of the participating artists use electronic media to question the way art is traditionally presented at museums. Jef Bourgeau’s assemblage “Drowning by Numbers,” uses video just as inventively as others in the show, but with a different goal. The assemblage injects new life into a painting of the biblical subject by an Italian Renaissance master, Bernardino Butinone. Bourgeau’s work is first experienced as an auditory environment which moves and flows with sounds of nature and human life-whales, seagulls, children, and traffic. The piece's visual element represents a shift in scale from the expansiveness of its sound to a fishbowl. Inside, a miniature video monitor plays tiny images of babies swimming under water. Only when we become aware of this element is the piece fully experienced.

Using electronic technology, Bourgeau expresses the horror of killing children much more effectively than Butinone did or could using paint. Borrowing a term from contemporary critical theory, Bourgeau has hyper-realized the chilling theme.

1995   ‘Bernardino and Jef’ by Frank Provenzano, The Eccentric, June.

Check out Jef Bourgeau’s video assemblage “Drowning by Numbers” at the Detroit Institute of Arts through September 3. The art museum invited Bourgeau and 44 other Detroit-area artists to create a piece for a special exhibition, “Interventions,” that opened earlier this month. Amy Parrent, DIA spokeswoman, said the museum juxtaposed works by the contemporary artists with works of the masters. “It’s a new way of looking at both the museum’s permanent collection and local artists’ works.”

1995   ‘Intimate Dramas’ by George Melrod, Art & Antiques, March p. 21.

With their nuanced simplicity and air of eerie melodrama, Bourgeau’s works suggest a sort of video-age Duchampian surrealism.

1995   ‘Artists as seen through other artists’ eyes’ by Marsha Miro, Detroit Free Press, March 3, p.7D.

“Vis-à-vis,” the Detroit Focus Gallery’s current show includes 100 portraits by area artists of each other. There are maybe six conventional portraits among the lot. The rest are definitely unconventional. Jef Bourgeau saw Spencer Dormizter as a 1950’s foreign movie.

1994    ‘A Voice Choice: Jef Bourgeau’ by Sandra Levin, in the first such feature of the Village Voice, August 24.

The discrepancy between audio and video in DAY IN THE LIFE works perfectly: a dollhouse with video windows, it alone could have been the whole show. CLOSE THE DOOR, PLEASE, a mini-shed with a video mini-man in an endless tunnel, is effective too.

1994    ‘Jef Bourgeau’ in the New Yorker, July - August.

In his first New York show Bourgeau combines homey antique objects with tiny video monitors that make absurdist commentaries on the vicissitudes of life.

1994   ‘Jef Bourgeau’ by Matthew Kangas, Sculpture, June/July p. 70-71.

With a record of solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago and Amsterdam, Jef Bourgeau is an artist to watch as an alternative to Hill and Viola, someone with a command over sculpture’s material heritage who is still willing to let video technology participate without dominating or overwhelming that heritage.

1994   ‘2 x Immortal: Elvis and Marilyn’ a traveling exhibition, catalogue p. 68.

Marilyn doesn’t exist here. Whenever you think you’ve found her, she blows a kiss and fades away.

1994   ‘Jef Bourgeau’ by Kathryn Hixson, editor of New Art Examiner (catalogue essay for College of DuPage), September 16.

In effect, by sticking to the rules so adroitly, Bourgeau blasphemously mocks those rules, out-mundaning the mundane, turning everything upside down – pulling it out of focus-to reveal the liberating complexity of the real.

1994    ‘Art Hotel’ by staff, Volkshrunt, November 2.

In kamer 1611 staat een vreemd beeldje van Jef Bourgeau, een gehalveerd kinderlijfje, met afgezakt broekje.

1994    ‘Art Hotel: 60 rooms with a view’ in Amsterdam with catalogue, p. 42.

1994    ‘Bourgeau plays with presence and absence’ David McCracken, Chicago Tribune, February 4.

For Jef Bourgeau’s first show at Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, the artist has contributed works that fall into two camps: three-dimensional mixed-media pieces that utilize found objects and appeal initially to a nostalgic impulse; and two-dimensional works on paper and canvas whose reductive, minimal aesthetic makes reference to art-historical forebears.

Bourgeau is a young artist from the Detroit area. His attitude toward the art of the recent and distant past is oblique and a little puzzling, neither mocking nor reverential.

1993    ‘Two artists survive a brush with controversy: Jock Sturges and Jef Bourgeau’ by Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News, June 11, p.9C.

Bourgeau has found a venue at O.K. Harris for his painted ladies with black bars over their eyes, and has used them to lampoon some of the thinking surrounding pornography in art. The artist calls his installation “Dirty Pictures” because we manage to “estheticize everything from paint to pleasure to pornography.”

1992    ‘Bourgeau on the Bourgeoisie’ by Veronica Pasfield, Detroit Monthly, November, p20.

Bourgeau learned to question authority early in life – a theme that has lasted throughout his career in filmmaking, video, painting, writing, music and computer art. Bourgeau manages to pull all of these elements together like an artistic one-man band with a countercultural beat. But maybe the most surprising thing about this highly talented artist is that he is not better known.

1992    ‘Women, then and now’ by Marsho Miro, Detroit Free Press, November 25, p.12D.

Jef Bourgeau is attempting the difficult with his wonderful installation at the O.K. Harris Gallery. He’s out to renovate old attitudes about gender, particularly female stereotyping, by setting up a contrast between past and present. Bourgeau has a deft touch. He doesn’t bog down his aesthetics with his message. The two play intriguingly off one another.

1991    ‘Coloring 20^th-century art in an entertaining hue’ by Joy Colby, Detroit News, August 23, p.5D.  

“Art Until Now” is Jef Bourgeau’s keen, sometimes scathing look at 20^th-century art history from a gloriously biased perspective. The bulk of the show is made up of assemblages of found objects with audio and video elements. Although the individual pieces stand alone, they gain strength from each other as elements in an installation that occupies the entire front gallery at O.K. Harris.

This is one show that needs plenty of time to absorb. Each piece requires a careful “reading” because it’s easy to miss a historical peg or one of the artist’s personal interpretations. At its best the exhibit projects a cleanly honed visual intelligence.

1983    ‘New Films Showcased’ by Denis Napolitan, Oakland Post, February 14

Jef Bourgeau’s films utilize such techniques as animation, montage and images that flash by in as little as one twelfth of a second.

Bourgeau also uses no dialogue in his films, but rather an accompanying rather accompanying musical soundtracks.

One of Bourgeau’s films entitled Numbers is a collection of images of such things as Nazi Germany, mid 50’s America and violence in general.  If the film has one central theme, it is hard to pin down.  Chances are that the film will mean something different to everyone who sees it. Bourgeau tries to make films “that convey a message without really saying anything – films that evoke a response.”

Another short film by Bourgeau, called Blue Leader, is just that.  He has taken leaders from a lot of movies and spliced them together. In between the leaders he has added split-second images of women in various stages of undress, in a clever take-off of the color test girls found at the beginning of most movies

home