Kristine McKenna
{{Short description|American journalist, critic and art curator}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2014}}
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| occupation = Journalist, critic, art curator
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| nationality = American
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Kristine McKenna is an American journalist, critic and art curator best known for her interviews with artists, writers, thinkers, filmmakers and musicians.{{cite web |author=Jessica Ritz |url=http://laist.com/2005/05/23/the_laist_interview_kristine_mckenna.php |title=The LAist Interview: Kristine McKenna |work=LAist |publisher=Gothamist |date=May 23, 2005 |accessdate=July 19, 2012 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140321050214/http://laist.com/2005/05/23/the_laist_interview_kristine_mckenna.php |archivedate=March 21, 2014 |df=mdy-all }}{{cite web | last = Kipen | first = David | date = August 24, 2004 | title = Art of the magazine interview may be dying, as writer laments, or maybe it just changed venues | work = SFGate | url = http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Art-of-the-magazine-interview-may-be-dying-as-2731139.php | accessdate = July 22, 2012 }} Many of these have been collected in Book of Changes (2001){{cite book | last = McKenna | first = Kristine | year = 2001 | title = The Book of Changes: A Collection of Interviews | publisher = Fantagraphics Books | isbn = 9781560974178 }} and Talk to Her (2004).{{cite book | last = McKenna | first = Kristine | year = 2004 | title = Talk to Her: Interviews | publisher = Fantagraphics Books | isbn = 9781560975700 | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/talktoher00kris }} Among the people she has interviewed and written about most often over the years are Exene Cervenka, Leonard Cohen, David Lynch, Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno and Dan Hicks.
Career
McKenna wrote for the Los Angeles Times from 1977 through 1998 and was one of the first mainstream journalists chronicling the early L.A. punk rock scene.{{cite web | url=https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/results.html?QryTxt=kristine+mckenna&type=historic | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304230619/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/results.html?QryTxt=kristine+mckenna&type=historic | url-status=dead | archive-date=March 4, 2016 |title=Los Angeles Times: Archives |publisher=Pqasb.pqarchiver.com |date=July 19, 2012 |accessdate=July 19, 2012}}{{cite news | last = George | first = Lynell | date = April 25, 1999 | title = L.A.'s Punk Eruption | work = Los Angeles Times | url = https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-apr-25-ca-30827-story.html | access-date = July 21, 2012 }} She was Music Editor for influential avant-garde arts publication Wet{{cite web|last=Mckenna |first=Kristine |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E2DD1431F935A2575BC0A96F9C8B63 |title=TALK; Water World |work=The New York Times |date=August 16, 2009 |accessdate=July 19, 2012}} and West Coast Editor of NME. Her profiles and criticism have appeared in Artforum, The New York Times, ARTnews, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and many other publications. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Administration grant (1976) and a Critics Fellowship from the National Gallery of Art (1991).{{cite web|url=http://livetalksla.org/blog/2010/09/19/an-evening-with-roger-mcguinn/ |title=An Evening with Roger McGuinn | work = Live Talks Los Angeles |year=2010 |accessdate=July 19, 2012}} She has contributed to many programs by radio artist Joe Frank.
McKenna co-curated the 1998 exhibition Forming: the Early Days of L.A. Punk, for Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica. She was co-curator of Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & his Circle, a traveling group exhibition that opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 2005.{{cite web|url=http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/semina/semina.html |title=Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle | work = Grey Art Gallery | publisher=New York University |year=2007 |accessdate=July 19, 2012}}{{cite news | last = Cotter | first = Holland | date = January 26, 2007 | title = A Return Trip to a Faraway Place Called Underground | work = The New York Times | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/arts/design/26semi.html?pagewanted=all | accessdate = July 21, 2012 }} She is producer and co-writer of The Cool School, a documentary about L.A.'s first avant-garde gallery,{{cite news | last = Dargis | first = Manohla | date = March 28, 2008 | title = The Cool School (2007) | work = The New York Times | url = https://movies.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/movies/28cool.html | accessdate = July 21, 2012 }} and her book, The Ferus Gallery: A Place to Begin, was published by Steidl in 2009.{{cite book | last = McKenna | first = Kristine | year = 2009 | title = The Ferus Gallery: A Place to Begin | publisher = Steidl | url = http://www.steidlville.com/books/718-The-Ferus-Gallery-A-Place-to-Begin.html | accessdate = July 1, 2012 | isbn = 9783865216106 }}
Her 2007 monograph on the photography of Wallace Berman, Wallace Berman Photographs, co-written with Lorraine Wild,
{{cite book |editor1=McKenna, Kristine |editor2=Wild, Lorraine | year = 2007 | title = Wallace Berman Photographs | publisher = Foggy Notion Books | url = http://foggynotionbooks.com/berman.html | accessdate = July 1, 2012 | isbn = 9781933045610 }} was selected as one of the 50 best art books of the year by the AIGA.{{cite web | title = Wallace Berman Photographs | work = AIGA Design Archives: 50 Books/50 Covers of 2007 | url = http://designarchives.aiga.org/#/entries/%2Bid%3A19591/_/detail/relevance/asc/0/7/19591/wallace-berman-photographs-/1 | accessdate = July 1, 2012 }} In 2009, she curated She: Work by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince, for the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles.{{cite web|url=http://www.artnet.com/galleries/exhibitions.asp?gid=618&cid=155741 |title=SHE: Images of Women by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince |year = 2009 |work=artnet | accessdate = July 21, 2012 }} In 2010 McKenna curated The Beautiful and the Damned, a show of photographs of L.A.'s early punk scene by Ann Summa.{{cite news | last = Gelt | first = Jessica | date = September 9, 2010 | title = Finding beauty in the punk movement | work = Los Angeles Times | url = https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-sep-09-la-et-punk-photoshow-20100909-story.html | access-date = July 21, 2012 }} Her 2011 survey exhibition of photographer Charles Brittin was accompanied by the artist's monograph, Charles Brittin: West & South.{{cite web | last1= Knight | first1= Christopher | date = May 4, 2011 | title = Culture Watch: 'Charles Brittin: West and South,' |author2= Kristine McKenna, Lorraine Wild, Roman Alonso, Lisa Eisner | work = Los Angeles Times | url = http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/05/culture-watch-charles-brittin-west-and-south-by-kristine-mckenna-lorraine-wild-roman-alonso-lisa-eis.html | accessdate = July 21, 2012 }}
In 2010 she partnered with Donna Wingate and Lorraine Wild to launch the publishing imprint Foggy Notion Books.{{cite web|url=http://foggynotionbooks.com/about.html |title=ABOUT |publisher=Foggy Notion Books |date= |accessdate=July 21, 2012}}
In October 2015 it was announced that she was co-writing filmmaker David Lynch's "quasi-memoir" titled Life & Work.{{cite magazine | last = Kreps | first = Daniel | date = October 18, 2015 | title = David Lynch to publish quasi-memoir Life & Work in 2017 | magazine = Rolling Stone|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/david-lynch-to-publish-quasi-memoir-life-work-in-2017-20151018}} The book, retitled Room to Dream, was published in June 2018.{{cite web|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545016/room-to-dream-by-david-lynch-and-kristine-mckenna/9780399589195/ |title=Room to Dream |date= |accessdate=October 16, 2017}}{{Cite web|url=https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/room-to-dream/|title=Book Marks reviews of Room to Dream by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna|website=bookmarks.reviews|language=en-US|access-date=2018-06-29}} She has participated in Lynch's "Festival of Disruption," doing onstage interviews with Lynch, Frank Gehry, Ed Ruscha, Sheryl Lee and others.{{cite web |url=https://www.festivalofdisruption.com/schedule.php |title=Schedule |work=Festival of Disruption |year=2017 |accessdate=October 16, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171017041856/https://www.festivalofdisruption.com/schedule.php |archive-date=October 17, 2017 |url-status=usurped }}
Musician Dan Hicks spent hours on the phone with McKenna every Friday for several years before his death in 2016, telling her his life story. She edited the conversations into Hicks' posthumous autobiography, I Scare Myself, published in 2017.{{cite news | last = Liberatore | first = Paul | date = April 5, 2017 | title = Dan Hicks' brutally honest posthumous memoir, 'I Scare Myself' | work = The Mercury News|url=http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/05/dan-hicks-brutally-honest-posthumous-memoir-i-scare-myself}}
Books
- Book of Changes, Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2001. {{ISBN|9781560974178}}
- Talk to Her, Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2004. {{ISBN|9781560975700}}
- Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & his Circle, written and edited with Michael Duncan, New York, New York: Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2005. {{ISBN|1933045108}}
- Wallace Berman Photographs, written and edited with Lorraine Wild, Santa Monica, CA, RoseGallery/Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2007. {{ISBN|1933045612}}
- She: Work by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince, Kohn Gallery/Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2009. {{ISBN|9781880086209}}
- The Ferus Gallery: A Place to Begin, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2009. {{ISBN|9783865216106}}
- The Beautiful & the Damned: Photographs by Ann Summa, Los Angeles, California: Foggy Notion Books, 2010. {{ISBN|9781935202271}}
- Charles Brittin: West & South, Los Angeles, California: Foggy Notion Books, 2011. {{ISBN|9783775728362}}
- Richard Prince: Collected Writings, Los Angeles, California: Foggy Notion Books, 2011. {{ISBN|9780983587002}}
- Notes From a Revolution: Com/co, the Diggers & the Haight, edited with David Hollander, Los Angeles, California: Foggy Notion Books, 2012. {{ISBN|9780983587033}}
- Room to Dream, written with David Lynch, Random House, 2018. {{ISBN|9780399589195}}
References
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Category:American women journalists
Category:American art curators
Category:Los Angeles Times people
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)