Tuesday Links: Hillary Clinton is a Person Too
by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on September 27, 2016
Jonathan Horowitz, "Hillary Clinton is a Person Too" (2008)
Jonathan Horowitz's creepy sculpture "Hillary Clinton is a Person Too" has been added to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit exhibition Art as Social Force Exhibition: It's Your Party, Cry If You Want To. That is probably the best name for a show about politics in 2016. [ARTnews]
Outraged activists are calling for the removal of works by Kelley Walker from the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. Walker (who is White) uses appropriated imagery in his work, including magazine covers featuring Black women and historical photos of Civil Rights era protests. This has offended a number of people, including museum staff, who view the work as insensitive. In response, the museum has walled-off the pieces in question and added trigger warnings. People still want the works removed. Didn't we all decide in the early 90s that museums should be spared from censorship? Even if the images in question might be offensive to some viewers (viewers who decide to read the trigger warning and walk around the wall anyway) censoring artwork is probably one of the least fruitful outcomes of a controversy. [St. Louis Post Dispatch, Artforum, Hyperallergic]
And in Moscow, activist group "Officers of Russia" succeeded in getting Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography shut down in hopes of censoring Jock Sturges, who they accuse of being a child pornographer. His exhibition, Absence of Shame, documents families living in nudist colonies. The Officers of Russia succeeded in shuttering the gallery by dousing the photographs in urine, a tactic that thusfar hasn't been employed in St. Louis. [artnet News]
Have no fear, the (beloved?) statue of Lenin that had been watching over the East Village from a Houston Street rooftop until recently will be back. Lenin is moving a few blocks away to the roof of 178 Norfolk Street, another building owned by Michael Rosen. [Curbed]
Uh oh. A real estate industry publication has declared the Bronx is the new Bushwick. According to the article, rents are rising and artists are moving in (I'd like to point out that the causality of these two phenomena isn't as clear-cut as it seems) and the Bronx Museum of Arts is broadening its profile. None of the above is without controversy. The Museum has recently been focusing on expensive-to-produce blockbuster shows to elevate its profile, which sounds like a strategy that's working—attendance is way up, and the institution is able to offer artist-centric services such as studio space for local artists. Realistically though, doesn't it seem like far more people are leaving Brooklyn and heading to LA or small towns upstate than the Bronx? [Crain's]
Speaking of real estate, the Observer is up in arms about the fact that Jimmy Van Bramer won't support a 100 percent affordable housing building in Sunny Side. They chastise him for being a hypocrite, but don't bother to explain his position. (They just call it lame.) If they had, they'd know that the residents of Sunny Side are against the building because it's a pilot program to redevelop the entire stripe from light manufacturing to residential. A lot of jobs are on the line here, which the Observer would care about if they were anything more than a propaganda arm for REBNY. [The Observer]
Sacramento, California finally has its new $8 million Jeff Koons sculpture… and it's actually pretty decent. This local news station, however, seems determined to drum up some sort of scandal surrounding the unveiling, perhaps to rival the heated debates surrounding its commissioning? No such luck. They ended up with controversies such as… a "live painter" tweeted something totally unrelated at the same time? Jeff Koons is from New York? It's a pretty funny example of fishing for a story. I do like the suggestion at the end, that the city should flip the piece for a profit. How's the secondary auction market for public art looking these days? [CBS Local Sacramento]
Wednesday Links: VAGINA Is not a Dirty Word
by Michael Anthony Farley on April 27, 2016
Moscow is filled with terrible sounding public art. Apparently there's been a Soviet-esque shift towards the kitschy and dumbed-down as the global community has withdrawn from an increasingly hostile Russia. [The New Yorker]
In other Russia news, performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky is refusing to accept a court's closure of a criminal case against him. I have no idea what that means, but Pavlensky is known for anti-government performances such as sewing his mouth shut, nailing his balls to the Red Square, and setting fire to the Russian Security Services building's door. [Artforum]
Christie's owner Francois Pinault is still really, really rich despite the auction house's recent financial woes. So rich, he just signed a 50 year, $1 billion lease on a historic Parisian grain storage building by the Louvre at Bourse de Commerce to open a museum for his own collection. [Deutsche Welle]
Oh. My. God. Allison Wint, a Michigan substitute art teacher, was just fired for using the word "vagina" while teaching a lesson about Georgia O'Keefe. Like, VAGINA is a dirty word? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with "other America"? Now I'm on a quest to find an especially "dirty" NSFW GIF of the Hump Day to dedicate to Harper Creek Middle School principal Kim Thayer. [Detroit Free Press]
The Glendale, California City Council is debating how to select residents for units in the $30 million Glendale Arts Colony affordable housing complex. Some believe priority should be given to artists already living in Glendale. As a resident of a similar development, I have to say I wish they had offered the units to neighborhood artists first. The new wave of residents ended up changing the character of the neighborhood and displacing a lot of the people who had been living here for years. [Los Angeles Times]
Photographer Steve McCurry's studio assistant, Bree DeStephano, has plead guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of artwork from her employer, including his famed "Afghan Girl" portrait. [artnet News]
"L.A. is one of the most fraught, anxious places that I've ever spent time in," Amanda Ross-Ho on how Los Angeles informs her work, gentrification, and more. [ART News]
Tuesday Links: Instagram Not Feeling the Bern
by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on March 8, 2016
Bernie Sanders by Phillip Kremer.
Video artists! Columbia University is hiring for a ton of production/editing positions. Good luck trying to use their employment portal—if you can figure it out, I'm sure you're hired. [Columbia]
Thailand's new military government sucks. But apparently that's good news for Bangkok's art scene. Dissatisfaction has energized artists to make more politically-engaged work, while a plethora of empty businesses have been converted to galleries or studio spaces. [Reuters]
Meanwhile in American cities, gentrification has gotten so bad that this horror-movie-set of a structure is what a $1 million house looks like in San Francisco. [SFist]
A collection of animals licking windows. They all look really funny and weird. Except for the monkey. It's disturbing. [Sad and Useless]
Collector, billionaire, and Seattle Art Fair founder Paul Allen reportedly crashed his luxury yacht into acres and acres of endangered coral reefs off the coast of the Cayman Islands. He denies his toy was responsible for the damage, but one of his companies is paying to help "repair" the reef. How magnanimous! [artnet News]
More than 200 units of affordable housing will be built in Flushing. Monadnock Development has received the contract from the city, and promises, amongst other things, a rooftop farm, a fitness facility and what's being described as "feng-shui-oriented" design. According to Curbed, "A chunk of the apartments will be reserved for affordable senior housing, with the rest going to families "earning between $24,200 – $72,600 annually for an individual and $34,520 – $103,560 for a family of four," per the HPD." [Curbed New York]
Instagram has disabled the account of artist Phillip Kremer, who makes creepy collages of presidential candidates. We're currently locked out of our Facebook account as a result of censorship, so we sympathize. [artnet News]
Moscow just opened its 200th subway station, modeled after the paintings of Piet Mondrian. Here's an article and slideshow about the Russian capital's metro system art. Why can't we have nice things? Oh right… (see below) [Deutsche Welle]
Michael Kimmelman concedes that the Santiago Calatrava World Trade Center Transportation Hub looks pretty good, but he never really gets past how much it cost to produce the thing. $4 Billion in public money for the 18th busiest train station in New York. By comparison, Grand Central cost $80 million in private funds (about half the cost of the Transportation Hub adjusting for inflation.) [The New York Times]
Tuesday Links: Who the Hell Needs Round-the-Clock Art News?
by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on December 2, 2014
Image courtesy of the Bass Museum
Hans Ulrich Obrist: get some sleep. You're stressing us out, and your lifestyle justifies the existence of 24/7 art news. Nobody needs 24/7 art news. [New Yorker]
But for those who want 24/7 art news, UBS is introducing the BETA version of Planet Art, an app that delivers contemporary art news. We're one of the sources, so we're part of the problem? [Art Fix Daily]
Artists in Moscow are being kicked out of their studio spaces by the government, despite promises their leases would be renewed through 2025. No reason has been given for why the leases aren't being renewed, but kudos to the Art Newspaper for being able to find a single dissenting voice. Anatoly Osmolovsky, an artist, curator and the rector of the Institute of Contemporary Art Basa says the spaces should be banned because they are a relic of Stalinism. [The Art Newspaper via: @mfortki]
Ruffles, teddy bears, and leaping should give you some cheer throughout the day. [Tanzcorps Colonia Rut Wiess]
Canada has a biennial right now at the AGO. "Biennial," however, is loosely defined here as "a selection of recent acquisitions to the National Gallery of Canada's Canadian Contemporary, Indigenous and Photography holdings." [Art Gallery of Ontario]
An East Hampton dealer accused of making fake Pollocks and de Koonings, "and using some of the money to buy a submarine," has pleaded guilty to wire fraud. [New York Times]
The culture wars drag on: Jacksonville City Council labels a photo of a nude pregnant woman "pornography", and threatens to pull funding for MoCA Jacksonville for showing the image. [@Kriston Capps]
A beachside Nazi resort, "Hitler's Hamptons," is filling up with condos after years of debate. People are buying them like crazy. [Vocativ]
Duncan Campbell, of Ireland, has won the Turner Prize for a video about African art and Marxism. [BBC]
And a Virginia boy wins every merit badge there is. Vocativ has rounded up his weirdest achievements which include fingerprinting and truck transportation. [Vocativ]
Girl Scout cookies are going up for sale online!!! But how will the Girl Scouts earn their prizes? [Brightest Young Things]
A Husky stuck under a fence. [@HereBeHuskies]
Meanwhile, here's a cute baby pitbull. [@dailypitbulls]
The St. Claire names AFC's Panda Calendar a must-have for your Christmas list. Thaaanks guyyys. [The St. Claire]
The lighting district is coming to its certain end. Another hardware store closes after rent hikes. [Bowery Boogie]
Everything you need to know about mechanical pencils. [Metafilter]
A Vogue article argues that when it comes to manipulation anything goes, because people have been manipulating photos since the medium's inception, and then changes its mind, arguing that manipulated photos immediately become illustration. The piece overlooks issues negative body image standards for women. It also liberally makes use of random formatting decisions and is full of typos, which I think is a commentary on what should be "fixed". [Vogue]
Paddy Johnson will be heading down to Art Basel today. Check back for updates.