News/Print

If print news is truly exiting the culture, it’s making a real racket on the way out. 

By now you’ve probably heard about the The Last Newspaper, the collective exhibition at the New Museum in New York City, “dedicated to deconstructing the power and possibilities of the press.” And you might have seen editions of the museum’s New City Reader, a “performance-based editorial residency,” edited by Kazys Varnelis and Joseph Grima. And now the pinkcomma gallery in Boston is exhibiting Newsstand, co-curated by Chris Grimley, Michael Kubo, Mark Pasnik and Mimi Zeiger.

I haven’t seen these exhibitions. Living on the left coast, I’m experiencing them — where else? — on the web. But certainly the discussion on the respective websites seems smart and serious. Also romantic and wistful, a twilight appreciation of the sheer physical presence of paper and ink, an acknowledgment that  “print” is no longer just a medium but also an era, and that the newspaper is now, as David Carr offhandedly refers to it today in the New York Times, “an ancient motif” in the inevitably messy process of being reinvented. 

The pinkcomma gallery hasn’t created a website for the show, but a friend has shared some images.