Manjari Sihare shares details of the forthcoming 2013 Carnegie International

Pittsburgh: The Henry Heinz II Director of Carnegie Museum of Art, Lynn Zelevansky, recently announced the artists participating in the 2013 Carnegie International, which opens on October 5, 2013 and will be on view until March 16, 2014.  The Carnegie International is the longest-running international survey of contemporary art at any museum. It was first organized at the behest of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie on November 5, 1896 in Pittsburgh. He intended the International to provide a periodic sample of contemporary art from which Carnegie Museum of Art could enrich its permanent collection.

The Carnegie Museum of Art is nationally and internationally recognized for its collection of fine and decorative art from the 19th to 21st centuries. The collection also contains important holdings of Japanese and old master prints.  For more information about Carnegie Museum of Art, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, visit its website.

The 2013 Carnegie International brings together 35 artists from 19 countries, including a series of large-scale commissions throughout the museum and beyond. Three major projects join what is, in essence, a conversation among artworks, the museum, and its visitors: an exchange of experiences and perspectives. A playground, designed in 1972, and installed outside the museum entrance, will be contextualized by a richly illustrated exhibition of postwar playground architecture. An ambitious reinstallation of Carnegie Museum of Art’s permanent collection of modern and contemporary art will explore the International‘s legacy and unique history. Finally, the 2013 Carnegie International amplifies its ongoing engagement with Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, inaugurated by the Lawrenceville Apartment Talks, which have been ongoing since 2011.

A notable inclusion in this year’s edition is that of renowned New Delhi based filmmaker, Amar Kanwar who has established a distinctive voice, having directed and produced over 40 films, and through them studying the economies and psychologies of power as they direct the evolution of health, ecology, labor, development, politics, philosophy, art and law. Recurrent themes in Kanwar’s practice include the splitting of families, sectarian violence and border conflicts, interwoven with investigations of gender and sexuality, philosophy and religion, as well as the opposition between globalisation and tribal consciousness in rural India. Kanwar’s work is currently on view at the Guggenheim New York, as part of No Country: Contemporary Art from South and South East Asia.

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