Ian Bourland

Washington, D.C., United States

Contributing Editor at Frieze

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Articles

Essex Hemphill and the Washington DC That Was

1 month ago | frieze.com | Ian Bourland

Frieze PublishingYes, email me reviews, offers, and opinions by artists, writers, and editors from Frieze Frieze EventsYes, email me Frieze Events Inc and Frieze Events Ltd’s global programme information including special offers and benefits Essex Hemphill visited London for the first time in 1986. At that time, the poet was already a fixture in the Washington, DC gay community.
‘Opus’: Another Eat-the-Rich Horror Film that Falls Flat

2 months ago | frieze.com | Ian Bourland

This week, I invited a movie-buff friend to see Opus (2025), which was touted as a ‘horror-musical’. He declined, stating, ‘It’s been attempted, but never pulled off.’ He was right: the film – in which rookie reporter Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri) is invited to the remote compound of an aging pop icon – was neither scary nor especially musical. In an early scene, Ecton laments the slow progress of her climb from celebrity profiler to outright celebrity.
Africanus Okokon

Oct 31, 2024 | artforum.com | Ian Bourland

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Robert Frank’s Genre-Bending Collaborations with Musicians

Sep 19, 2024 | aperture.org | Ian Bourland

Robert Frank spent the summer of 1972 crisscrossing America—not in pursuit of the lyrical social documentary for which he was already famed, but as part of the Rolling Stones’ forty-eight-date mobile bacchanal. It had been three years since the disastrous show at the Altamont Speedway, and the band was stateside again, on the heels of a recording session in the south of France that is now etched in the annals of debauched rock excess.
Can Memes of Kamala Harris Sway the US Elections?

Sep 9, 2024 | frieze.com | Ian Bourland

Back in the summer of 1992, I went to my first political rally for a youngish governor named Bill Clinton. They played Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 hit ‘Don’t Stop’ – the campaign official theme song – over the loudspeakers, and I left with a campaign button. A few months later, Clinton appeared on MTV talking about boxer shorts and playing the saxophone. He was much cooler than his Republican opponent George H.W. Bush, in a boomerish way.
Switching of the Old Guard: How Baltimore’s Museum of Art Security Team Became the Curators

Feb 15, 2024 | frieze.com | Kellen Johnson |Ian Bourland

For ‘Guarding the Art’ (on view from 27 March to 10 July), the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) invited its security officers to collaborate with museum staff to curate an exhibition of works from the permanent collection. Contributing editor Ian Bourland spoke with BMA guard and Baltimore local Kellen Johnson about his work there, and his experience with the project.
The Groundbreaking Pictures of the Black Photography Studio

Sep 28, 2023 | frieze.com | Ian Bourland

Frederick Douglass is said to be the ‘most-photographed man’ of the 19th century. The many pictures taken of him during his long life reflect the rapid development of new techniques – from the spectral daguerreotype to the cheaply circulating albumen on paper – and the abolitionist leader’s understanding that the medium was a new avenue for Black self-expression in an era with few other options.