- Finally, there’s funding for art activists. Shelly Rubin of the Rubin Museum has founded A Blade of Grass, which intends to create dialogue outside of the gallery and museum context, by providing grants to artists who think about social change. They just announced their first grant to No Longer Empty, a public art organization. Hallelujah. [WSJ]
- Finally: Palm Springs, CA has an art fair! Awards will be presented to Judy Chicago and Cheech Marin; AFC’s own Reid Singer has the scoop. Â [Artinfo]
- They’re broadcasting Whitney Houston’s funeral online. [NYT]
- Gerhard Richter’s paintings, including works from the 1990s, have sold for over $30 million at Christie’s and Sotheby’s this week, “confirming his status as the most bankable living artist.” [Bloomberg Businessweek]
- Museums continue to sell us more unsung modernist masters; this time from China. [Artinfo]
- Kraftwerk, the krautiest of all krautrock bands, will be playing eight shows at MoMA in conjunction with the museum’s upcoming retrospective. [East Village Radio]
- Economics is pushing fashion houses to hire educated models. [The Hairpin]
- Here’s some insider knowledge: museum curators aren’t usually appointed to directorships – stereotypes abound about how they’re ill-suited for business. Recently, several curators have been reversing this trend with their appointments to high-profile positions. [The Art Newspaper]
- The head of Paris’s Pompidou Centre will stay on for another three years because President Nicolas Sarkozy says so. [Art Media Agency]
- David Auerbach wrote a great history of the internet that’s based on the premise that if it weren’t for “hacker and geek circles of the 1980s and ’90s,” internet culture wouldn’t have become the sphere for social activity that it is today. [Triple Canopy]
- Officially the worst thing I’ve read all week: an advice column written from a Weimaraner’s point-of-view. [Chicago Now]
