“We learn about the big names—Michelangelo, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso. But we just don’t know the others because it’s not what we’re taught,” a friend of mine told me a few weeks ago. When he asked me if I could name five modern or contemporary artists, I eagerly rambled off some noteworthy names—Cindy Sherman, Vito Acconci, Carolee Schneemann, Patty Chang, Bill Viola—names that were famous, at least, to an art history student like me. But when I asked my friend to name a few artists he knew, he sat in silence, unable to come up with anything but the usual Art Hum suspects.
