Save Cooper Union! A large group of Cooper students and three faculty members have taken over President Jamshed Bharucha’s office, in the hopes of forcing his resignation. They report to Gothamist that they’re willing to stay as long as necessary. While Bharucha inherited massive debt, some off-the-record reports make it sound an awful lot like he’s got blood on his hands. You can follow Free Cooper Union on twitter, livestream, and facebook.
Save the library! Mira Schor reported from a small, poorly-attended protest yesterday to save the New York Public Library, and from the sounds of it, it’s not going well. The Central Library Plan involves demolishing the historic stacks and shipping 1.5 million books to a storage space in New Jersey. [A Year of Positive Thinking]
Speaking of student debt, Occupy presents Debt Fair: artist DIY booths throughout the city, with checks payable to the artist’s bank. [debtfair]
It’s official: come fall, Postmasters will open in its new home at 54 Franklin Street in Tribeca, a 4,500-square-foot ground floor space with Corinthian columns and sofas. [Postmasters]
Running for mayor seems like a game of who can apologize the most. In a public forum held this week, New York mayoral candidate Joe Lhota apologized for waging war with the Brooklyn Museum in the 1990s. While deputy mayor to Rudy Giuliani, the city pulled the museum’s funding; in turn, the museum sued. Lhota then went on to put his foot in his mouth during the same conference, referring to the Port Authority police force as “mall cops”. [New York Daily News]
There’s some secret art to be found at Chelsea’s Waterside Park Playground. From 4-8 PM on Friday, the park will be home to Jasper Spicero’s “Open Shape”, an undercover exhibition of 3-D printed objects. Here’s what “Open Shape” looked like in Wichita, Kansas. [Jasper Spicero]
The Guggenheim’s “Gutai: Splendid Playground” closed yesterday, but Ben Davis summed up the entire exhibition quite nicely. Gutai fizzled out in the early 1970s due to a split among factions: those who didn’t mind making tech-inspired work for government-sponsored exhibitions, and those who thought that conflicted with their progressive ideals. Today, Davis writes, Western artists are only beginning to understand Gutai’s lesson: “the price paid when critical art becomes repurposed as high-tech entertainment.” [ARTINFO]
The National Design Awards have been announced. [cooperhewitt]
From Alex Bag & Patterson Beckwith's "Unicorns & Rainbows"
“Long may the monkey king ride the seas of commerce on his dolphin, and long may Gagosian attend him.” Jonathan Jones on why Jeff Koons is a better artist than Damien Hirst. [The Guardian]
There is at least one performance artist in the world who is bankrolling it, and now she has bought a $2.65 million apartment in SoHo. Dayum, Marina. [Curbed NY]
Postmasters has moved across the street from Kansas in Tribeca. They’ve got a 4500 square foot space. [Postmasters]
The saga that never ends: Eugenia and Nicholas Taubman are suing the Knoedler Gallery, Michael Hammer, Ann Freedman, Glafira Rosales and Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz alleging they were sold a fake Clyfford Still for $4.3 million. This is one suit of many that have been lodged recently against Knoedler. [Justia Court Dockets and Filings. Via: Baer Faxt]
Alex Bag and Patterson Beckwith have released a series of clips from their late-night mid-nineties public access show “Unicorns & Rainbows.” There’s not exactly one stand-out here, but if you like the grunge over cute baby animals, then this is your program. [Sex Magazine] Also, Petland’s sign hasn’t changed in 20 years.
Sotheby’s held its Impressionist and Modern Art sale last night and Paul Cezanne took home the top-selling lot with his 1889 still-life Les Pommes. Those are some $37 million dollar apples. Also to note: LL Cool J was there. [Artnet Tumblr]
Stranger danger! If left unattended, your house painter just might steal your Picasso. [The Wall Street Journal]
The Met held its punk-themed gala last night. For those unimportant enough to attend, and for those who don’t really care about Miley Cyrus, there was Twitter. [#metgala, photo courtesy of Kotaku]
Thanks, Tom McCormack for writing a history of ASCII art. Not so thankful for beginning that history with Apollinaire and introducing some dubious terms about the “connoisseur’s medium” (ha) and “the high period of ASCII art”. [Rhizome]
In case you missed it, here’s the ultimate compendium of cats Photoshopped into sushi. [Laughing Squid]
“I am an artist…I designed and built a cat.” [The New Yorker, paywall]
Shit show over at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: They’ve fired or laid off at least eight staff members. At least one of these firings appears to be related to the perception of union sympathizing. The story just gets worse. [Hyperallergic]
MOCA’s “A New Sculpturalism” is facing cancellation, but no one knows precisely why. Pavilion architects for this show are nervous. They’ve invested a lot of time and money to make this show happen. [Architect Magazine]
The Princess Diana Museum will be closing. Her family opened the museum in Althorp soon after her passing. [The Los Angeles Times]
It’s nearly impossible to operate a food truck in NYC without breaking the law thanks to numerous and sometimes conflicting regulations. [NYTimes]
Jeff Koons stands in front of his masterpiece, the BMW.
New York Mag has a colossal profile on Jeff Koons, his fame, and his lack of respect. [NY Mag]
The Parsons Festival of talks, workshops, and openings is in full swing. We’re most likely to see the MFA Design and Technology Exhibition, which opens Wednesday night. [Parsons]
William Gibson was interviewed at New York Public Library (NYPL) by Paul Holdengraber. About half of artforum’s write up is dedicated to discussing Neuromancer. My favorite part of the interview though, comes at the end, when Gibson notes that the main brach’s basement looks like a “Difference Engine”. In a different time in my life I worked in the Exhibitions Department at the NYPL, which was located in said basement. We used to call it, “The Indiana Jones Wing” of the library, as you always had the feeling a giant ball of stone was about to chase you down the corridors. – PJ [ArtForum]
Vanity Fair has a colossal piece on the details of Facebook’s purchase of Instagram, which is so long that we’re reserving for next weekend. [Vanity Fair]
When is it appropriate to drink at an art fair, according to dealers, artists, and reporters? One strange observation, by an anonymous dealer: “The first time I question whether a woman visiting our booth is a collector or a prostitute.” I guess this happens from time to time? [Artspace]
Due to the sequestration, many of Washington, DC’s museums are facing immediate budget shortfalls. For the Smithsonian, this means that several galleries will be closed entirely through September 30th. [Modern Art Notes]
Collector claims Sotheby’s sold him art that was actually Nazi loot. Oops. [The Art Newspaper]
The Art Dealers Association of America is now tweeting. So far, they’ve issued three tweets. [ADAA] [via: Elena Soboleva]
1 billion in art heading to auction next week. [WSJ, paywall]
Supreme, The company behind all those Damien Hirst and George Condo skateboards is suing Leah McSweeney for using the words “Supreme Bitch”. Both McSweeney and Supreme lift their aesthetic from conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, who, yesterday, called them “fools.” before adding, “I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.” [Complex]
Gallerist reports that MoMA will offer free admission to the first 100 visitors to stop by on Tuesdays during the month of May, which, given the foot traffic they get is a little like hoping you get the $1 fair on the Megabus. Woo-hoo. Also, Target Free Fridays are no longer. They are now UNIQLO Free Fridays. [GalleristNY]
Cool Google Glass feature: you can now take photos with a wink. A “slow, deliberate” wink. [Verge]
Michael Miller reports on the Creative Time Benefit at the sugar factory. Dick Cavett produced quite the roast for the night’s honoree, Julian Schnabel. [Gallerist]
Twitter reports that London’s Royal Academy will stage a show of Australian art, the “first major exhibition on Australian art for 50 years.” [Royal Academy]
Huh? Sotheby’s plans to maximize the revenue from its upcoming Basquiat auction with an exhibition that demonstrates good stewardship. Alex Rotter believes this will be a stage a “much more cohesive answer to Gagosian’s retrospective. “Sometimes the good record, even though it doesn’t have the great songs, is the better listening experience..” Yeah…a show about integrity. [Gallerist]
Here’s the downside of free-er copyright regulations: Hyperallergic reports that the UK’s “Instagram Act” would make it easier for corporations to co-opt images without crediting or compensating the author, so long as they can’t find the source. Artists, beware. [Hyperallergic]
We missed the screening of David Gatten’s “Extravagant Shadows” this week, so we’re reading an interview with him in lieu of it. He says he went to public school in North Carolina, and was referred to as “The Devil’s Child” because he was left handed. He also talks about the film. [Idiom]
Thanks to @carla_gannis for this “music that makes you dumb,” a list of schools, followed by their corresponding SAT scores and favorite bands, from Beethoven to Lil Wayne. [musicthatmakesyoudumb]
In resources: Here’s how to identify seats with power outlets on your flight. [SeatGuru]
Felix Salmon on the tragedy of Cooper Union. As he tells it, President Jamshed Bharucha is more concerned with global brand-building than he is Peter Cooper’s vision. It hurts to read this story. [Felix Salmon]
Public disgust and protests by the Hopi people did nothing to stop Paris’ Druout auction house from making record-breaking sales on sacred Hopi objects and artifacts. It’s one of three such recent auctions in Paris. [TAN]
AFC’s hood gets a new gallery, The Bishop, thanks to two Pratt grad students. [DNAInfo]
So, the New Museum is hosting a residency program for the NEA 4. It’s hard to pin down what, exactly, this residency will look like; from what we know so far, all four artists’ projects will be concerned with how to fund performance art. Sadly, Karen Finley’s project shows how to do that, but only by getting away from performance altogether. In “Sext Me if You Can”, Finley will ask audience members to send her sexts, which she’ll then make into paintings to sell at the New Museum. Here’s my preliminary review: Not brilliant. [New Museum]
Latvia just opened the Mark Rothko Center. Pro: This is the first time any Rothko paintings have made their way to Eastern Europe. Con: The museum only has six of them. [Financial Times]
The Saudi conceptual artist Abdulnasser Gharem plans to set up the Arab state’s first artist-run foundation in Riyadh. [The Art Newspaper]
Women: shitting at the workplace should feel empowering. It’s okay to take a dump in a stall. [New York Mag]
Richard Prince made a composite of all of Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriends. [Animal]
The planned alliance of Philadelphia’s rare-book collectors’ mecca, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, with the Free Library of Philadelphia could mean greater access to literary treasures. The editorial here suggests the merger will be less messy than the Barnes move. [Philly.com]
There’s a war brewing with literary critics, and it’s because, no surprise here, book lovers don’t always get bloggers. Literary critics are whining about The New York Times Book Review because the old school publication’s new editor Pamela Paul has “no writerly or literary credentials”. That’s not exactly true, but that doesn’t stop The Guardian’s Michael Wolff from deriding Paul for working “two years as a blogger at the Huffington Post, which, it doesn’t seem entirely churlish to point out, is not a job.” Unfortunately, that’s the best he can come up with. [The Guardian]
Canada’s National Film Board gets props from The New Yorker blog for supporting radical filmmaking. [The New Yorker]
A recent New Yorker piece on Depression journalism has an unnamed New York Times editor calling poor people losers, according to ex-Times writer Charlie LeDuff. [The New Yorker, behind the paywall]
The oil company Shell bankrolled an eight-year scientific analysis of van Gogh’s true palette. It reveals that his colors were originally more naturalistic. [The New York Times]
Transart, the Unschool Art School is promising a debt-free MFA on re-title.com. That claim is misleading though: What they actually offer is a “debt-free” payment plan. [Transart]
Statue of Liberty gets facial recognition software to detect people’s race from a distance. The company that installs this is literally called “Total Recall.” [Slate]
Weather is once again blamed for bursting Paul McCarthy’s giant inflatable dogshit sculpture, the latest in a series of shitty mishaps for this work. :/ [GalleristNY]
Creative Time gets an ad in the form of a feature on Anne Pasternak in the NYTimes Style section. It’s for their upcoming benefit this Tuesday. [NYTimes]
Who green lighted this New York Times fluff piece on the gender disparity in art collecting? Judith H. Dobrzynski surmises that, while it’s tempting to blame the high proportion of bigtime male collectors on the distribution of wealth, men make the big purchases, loudly, because of the “hunting instinct.” (As proof of women being quieter, she points to Alice Walton’s not naming the Crystal Bridges Museum after herself…unlike, say, Peggy Guggenheim? Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney?) This is anecdotal, but the flea market has no such gender lines. Men also have more money. [NYTimes]
Aimmi Phillips' "Girl in Red Dress With Cat and Dog" (1830-1835) (Screen shot courtesy of the American Folk Art Museum)
It was only a matter of time before someone called out BiennialeOnline’s lofty claim to being “the first exclusively online biennale exhibition of contemporary art.” Today, that falls to artist Oliver Laric. His “An Incomplete Timeline of Online Exhibitions and Biennales,” covers everything from THE THING to thewrong.org, and should be a primer for those who’d like to learn. The work was intended for BiennaleOnline, but has since been withdrawn for limiting format requirements, like, absurdly, not being allowed to include any outgoing URLS. Rhizome’s artbase (also on the list), now hosts the piece. Get with the times, people! [Rhizome.org; Artbase]
After a tragic shooting in Illinois on Wednesday, Rita Luark needs money to bury her daughter, two grandchildren, and their father. You can send the Luarks money here:
102 South Main, PO Box 258, White Hall, IL 62092
Online: www.bankpbt.com [Facebook]
Columbia MFA Thesis Show opens this Sunday at The Fischer Landau Center between 2-5. The show is curated by Fionn Meade. Recommended. [Fischer Landau Center for Art]
Jason Foumberg has been busting his butt over at Newcity Art, with sweeping coverage of Chicago’s scene. This week’s installment: Breakout Artists 2013. [Newcity]
Are selfies narcissistic? Brian Droitcour thinks not, reasoning that a selfie means sharing oneself; not taking selfies denotes a preciousness about your autonomy. He’d also make a good case for swinging. [culturetwo]
A seven-foot-tall Greco Roman head made of styrofoam was found by the Marist College crew team in the Hudson River. Officials are dumbfounded. [Newsday]
If you’ve following the latest chapter of Folk Art Museum’s ongoing punishment, this video should make you sad. Collector Ralph Esmerian gives Martha Stewart a tour of the Folk Art Museum, back when the 53rd street building was new, in the mid-2000s. “How does it feel to see all your things here?” Martha asks, to which Ralph replies “Fantastic…they have a fantastic home in which to shine.” MoMA now plans to demolish that building, and Esmerian’s currently serving a 6-year prison sentence for bankruptcy and wire fraud. In order to cover his debts, Sotheby’s will be auctioning off all but 53 of 263 of the works which Esmerian promised to the museum. We hope this doesn’t include “Girl in Red Dress With Cat and Dog” (1830-1835) by folk art icon Aimmi Phillips, of which Esmerian says: “This girl is just terribly, terribly special. I was able to get it after several institutions had passed her up. I thought she was vital in terms of her charm and beauty and innocence.” [Martha Stewart]
Hrag Vartanian also interviewed Esmerian back in 2002. Of “Girl in Red Dress,” Esmerian told him:
“When I was told there was an American Folk Art classic coming onto the art market, I couldn’t believe what it could be. AFAM was the third museum in line to be offered the work, but the first two turned it down because of the price. I felt we had no choice and we had to have it because it would give us an institutional sense that we’re here. We paid an enormous price but got something that is truly sensational,” Esmerian says about the painting he purchased in 1984 and immediately transferred to the custody of the Museum. [agbu.org]
