Jem Cohen is well known for his music videos for the likes of REM, Elliott Smith, a doc on Fugazi, but is also much revered for his experimental films and observational features. Museum Hours is also the latest collaboration between Cohen and ongoing creative partner Patti Smith, who has exec produced the film. tells the story of a Vienna museum guard who befriends an enigmatic visitor at the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum. The glorious setting of the museum becomes a mysterious crossroads that sparks explorations of their lives, the city, and the ways artworks reflect and shape the world. The film has a very understated, observational aesthetic. The lead actress is Mary Margaret O’Hara who is a cult figure in the alternative music scene (working with everyone from Morrissey to Will Oldham and Tom Waits) and the lead actor used to roadie for rock bands in the 60s, then worked as a music promoter and manager in 70s Berlin and is also in a punk band.
About Jem Cohen:New-York based, Cohen’s feature-length films include Chain, Benjamin Smoke, Instrument, and Evening’s Civil Twilight in Empires of Tin. Shorts include Lost Book Found, Amber City, Little Flags, and Anne Truitt – Working. His films are in the collections of NYC’s Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum and have been broadcast by PBS, Arte, andthe Sundance Channel. He’s had retrospectives at London’s NFT, BAFICI, Oberhausen, Gijon, and Spain’s Punto de Vista. Recent projects include the GravityHill Newsreels (about Occupy Wall Street) and We Have an Anchor, a portrait of Cape Breton.
Check out this short trailor from the film:
To get tickets via online go: HERE
Can’t make it tonight? For a full list of the screenings go: HERE
Although it is wicked that the National Gallery is showing a killer film such as ‘Museum Hours’ why not check out all that The National Gallery has to offer! Now open on Fridays until 9pm, as well as viewing a movie you can also explore the paintings, catch an exhibition and have a bite to eat at the National Café. You can also enjoy guided tours and talks plus listen to live music and relax at the bar in the Sainsbury Wing Foyer. Here is a bit of info abouttwo of the most thought provoking exhibitions which are on @ The National Gallery at the moment- Michael Landy’s Saint’s Alive and Vermeer and music: The art and love of lesiure
About Michael Landy’s Saint’s Alive:A series of large-scale kinetic sculptures bring a contemporary twist to the lives of the saints.Saints are more often associated with traditional sacred art than with contemporary work, but Michael Landy, current Rootstein Hopkins Associate Artist in residence at the National Gallery, has been inspired to revisit the subject for this exhibition.Landy’s large-scale sculptures consist of fragments of National Gallery paintings cast in three dimensions and assembled with one of his artistic hallmarks – refuse. He has scoured car boot sales and flea markets accumulating old machinery, cogs and wheels to construct the works. Visitors can crank the works into life with a foot pedal mechanism. Towering over you, the seven sculptures swivel and turn, in movements that evoke the drama of each saint’s life. Saints Apollonia, Catherine, Francis, Jerome, Thomas – and an additional sculpture that takes a number of saints as its inspiration – fill the Sunley Room alongside paper collages.
This show is FREE and on until the 24th of Novemeber-
About the Vermeer exhibition: Explore the musical pastimes of the 17th-century Netherlands through this exhibition combining the art of Vermeer and his contemporaries with rare musical instruments, songbooks and live music.For the first time the National Gallery’s two paintings by Vermeer, A Young Woman standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman seated at a Virginal are brought together with Vermeer’s Guitar Player, which is currently on exceptional loan from the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House.Music was one of the most popular themes in Dutch painting, and carried many diverse associations. In portraits, a musical instrument or songbook might suggest the education or social position of the sitter; in scenes of everyday life, it might act as a metaphor for harmony, or a symbol of transience.
And! On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays members of the Academy of Ancient Music play 17th-century music in the exhibition space. Capacity is limited in the performance area and exhibition tickets do not guarantee access. Performances by the Academy of Ancient Music can also be heard on the exhibition audio guide and seen in the short film ‘Vermeer and Music’ in the exhibition cinema
To book tickets for this exhibition go: HERE
