James Lee Byars

James Lee Byars (born April 10, 1932 in Detroit, Michigan – died May 23, 1997 in Cairo, Egypt) was an artist specializing in installation sculpture and in performance art. Byars' notable performance works include "The Death of James Lee Byars" and "The Perfect Smile".

Early life and education

Byars was born in Detroit in 1932, studied art and philosophy at Wayne State University and lived in Japan from 1958 to 1968, teaching English and executing his first performance works under the influence of Noh theater and Shinto rituals.

Career

When Byars was 37 years old—then half an average lifespan—he wrote his “1/2 autobiography.” Sitting in a gallery, he jotted down thoughts and questions every time a visitor approached him, and published them afterwards in a book he also titled The Big Sample of Byars. Obsessed by the idea of perfection, Byars produced a remarkable body of work that strove to give form to his search for beauty and truth. Pursuing what he called “the first totally interrogative philosophy,” he made and proposed art at scales ranging from the vastness of outer space to the microscopic level of subatomic particles, in an attempt to delineate the limits of our knowledge while enacting a desire for something more.

James Lee

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Museum of Fine Arts Bern

The Museum of Fine Arts Bern (German: Kunstmuseum Bern), established in 1879 in Bern, is the oldest art museum in Switzerland with a permanent collection.

Its holdings run from the Middle Ages to contemporary art. It houses works by Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Ferdinand Hodler, Meret Oppenheim or Ricco Wassmer. The collection consists of over 3,000 paintings and sculptures as well as 48,000 drawings, prints, photographs, videos and films.

In 2014, the museum inherited the more than 1,400 works found in the 2012 Munich artworks discovery, after it was named as the sole heir in the will of art collector Cornelius Gurlitt.

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Coordinates: 46°57′04″N 7°26′36″E / 46.9511°N 7.4434°E / 46.9511; 7.4434

Jens Hoffmann

Jens Hoffmann Mesèn is a writer and exhibition maker. He currently is Deputy Director of The Jewish Museum in New York, where he oversees exhibitions, collections, and public programs. He has curated more than 50 exhibitions internationally and written more than 200 texts on art and exhibition making.

Career

Hoffmann started his museum career as an intern at the Portikus Kunsthalle Frankfurt (1995), followed by two years as an exhibitions assistant at the Dia Art Foundation, New York (1995-1997). He worked at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as an assistant curator from 1998 to 2000. From 2001 to 2002 Hoffmann worked as a curator at the Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf. From 2003 to 2007 Hoffmann was the director of exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and from 2007 to 2012 director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. Since 2013 he has been Deputy Director of the Jewish Museum in New York.

Since 2006 Hoffmann has been a curator for the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris and San Francisco. He most recently organized Camera of Wonders, bringing together photographic works from the Kadist Art Foundation and La Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel (CIAC), Mexico City, which opened at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City in November 2015.