South Africa | Janet Goldner and The Global Africa Project
Of Note Magazine, Sunday, December 19, 2010
Although sculptor Janet Goldner has spent most of her 35 year long engagement with Africa producing sculptures inspired by Mali, it was her stunning gold necklace exploring the working conditions of gold miners in apartheid South Africa that caught Lowery Stokes Sims’ attention. Sims, the Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, hand-picked the piece for the museum’s ambitious exhibition, the Global Africa Project, which surveys the global influences on African art and vice versa, African art’s influence on the globe.
In Ms. Goldner’s creation, black and white photographs of the miners and their families are bordered in ornate gold and hung on an oversized barbed wire-esque necklace. Ms. Goldner spoke with of note about the origin of the 1992 piece, its current place in the exhibit, and its relevance in 2011.
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Africa and Its Spheres of Influence
New York Times, Judith H. Dobrzynski, November 24, 2010
As she conceived the exhibition, Ms. Sims wanted to stress the “global” far more than the “Africa.” Yes, she and her co-organizer, Leslie King-Hammond, director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, chose artists who are African or of African descent, no matter where they were born. “Africa exists wherever these people are,” Ms. Sims said.
But they also picked artists like Janet Goldner, an American sculptor of Eastern European descent who draws on her frequent travels to Africa.
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Sculpture Adorns the Urban Terrain
Roberta Smith, The NY Times, August 8, 1997
“Most of Us Are Immigrants combines language and objects to make conceptually-based public art that takes the whole city as its site.”
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Goldner’s ideas conceived in Mali, born on Warren Street
Steven Snyder, Downtown Express, November 20, 2009
Goldner’s ideas conceived in Mali, born on Warren Street: Tribeca artist’s massive steel sculptures resonate through two worlds
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Defining a Woman’s Place in the World as the Very Center of Life
Vivien Raynor, The New York Times, 1996
Janet Goldner is a sculptor with a gift for wielding the blow torch, a way with words, and the will to combine the two.
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A Tasty Malian Stew
Jessica Diamond, The Washington Post, May 15, 2003
American Janet Goldner combines influences in her imposing installation, burning English words and organic patterns borrowed from Malian textiles into her door-shaped steel plates.
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Janet Goldner ou l’humanisme par la culture
Adama Coulibaly, Les Echos, Bamako Mali, Sept 24, 2002
Art and culture ignore barriers, racial and others. With Janet Goldner, this assertion has become a reality. … Indeed the presence among us in Mali of this American artist bears witness to the universality of the artistic message and culture.
L’art et la culture ignorant les frontiers raciales et autres. Avec Janet Goldner cette assertion est devenue plus qu’une realite. Elle est l’evidence meme. En effet la presence parmi nous au Mali de cette artists americane temoigne, on ne peut meuix, de l’univeralite du message artistique et culture.
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ART; A Mixture of Messages in Three Shows
Vivien Raynor, The New York Times, Feb 26, 1995
Having asked herself what it is that she knows, Janet Goldner cuts the question out of steel sheeting and, in a companion work, lists physical and mental features that have inspired feminist discourse.
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Meet Janet Goldner
An interview published in The Griot, the newsletter of the American community in Bamako. December 2002.
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