Last week, Corinna Kirsch and I awarded NADA’s New York debut with a full six-pack of whoop-ass, knowing full well it would not be as spacious or eventful as Frieze. NADA’s not trying to re-invent the fair model like the Independent, Seven, or Moving Image, and it doesn’t have talks. It’s just a fun fair, with a lot of energy, and way too many walls.
How many different people do you have to shake to get art institutions and businesses to wake up? Our actions as employers affect the quality of life of others. We know this—in general, the art community votes for socially responsible policies—and yet our own labor practices are amongst the very worst across all professions.
Boy, was I wrong about what to expect from “Expanding Museums.” The panel, one of the Frieze Talk series of roundtable discussions and lectures held in conjunction with the Frieze art fair, should have been a rare opportunity to see the heads of New York museums chatting about “the current and future roles of contemporary art institutions.” Former New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff led the panelists, which included Glenn Lowry, Director of MoMA, Adam D. Weinberg, Director of the Whitney, and Sheena Wagstaff, Chairman of the Modern and Contemporary Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum.
Let’s get one thing straight: The art shown at Pulse is not our cup of tea. The galleries at this fair tend to specialize in boutique art, cluttered salon-style wall hangings, and cheeseball process-based work, and we’re not fans of any of that stuff. That said, the fair has been showcasing this kind of work for years, so there’s clearly a market for it even if the crowds haven’t been particularly heavy this weekend.
If you’ve already seen enough of Jennifer Rubell’s vagina nutcracker at Frieze you’re in luck. We left that out of our slide show in favor of plastering the background of my twitter feed with that mannequin’s legs. We’re all class here.
As for the trends; ceramics and horses are in, photography, Warhol and uteruses are waaay out. Look forward to Will Brand’s analysis on whatever this means later this weekend. I’m guessing it’ll have something to do with cats.
Our petition in support of the locked-out art handlers at Sotheby’s just breezed past 2,000 names, and you just might recognize a few. Artists Cuco Fusco, David Shrigley, and Dana Schutz have signed on, along with a host of other concerned supporters from across the art world.
Here’s the truth about the Frieze Art Fair: It’s the best art fair this city has ever seen. It’s beautifully lit, spacious, and blue chippy as all hell. Visitors could stand easier access to bottled water and better fair navigation, but these are kinks that can be worked out. For now, there’s simply nothing else like it.
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