The GIFs of Timo Kuilder.
City hall
- A guide to New York’s affordable housing units. Nice. But remember, landing one of these units is like winning the lottery. It’s a fake program designed to make the city look like it’s doing something about the rising costs associated with living in the city when in fact it is doing nothing. [Curbed]
- Josh Baer questions the valuation of Artsy in his newsletter. An excerpt: “Artsy announced a new round of $50 million in funding – bringing investment to over $100 million – with a valuation that financial experts we talked to speculate may be as high as $2 billion. Artsy declined to answer our question about valuation but reported doubling revenue. They are staffed at 180 now. Since Sotheby’s is at a record stock price and still only a market cap of just under $3 billion – well you get our questions.” This looks like the beginning of a much more interesting article than all the other fluff pieces this week. Most of what we learned from them was in the artsy press release. [Baer Faxt]
- A good overview on the city’s cultural plan by David Freedlander. The plan advocates for all the lefty stuff you’d think it would —”translations services for arts organizations, new funding to support cultural workers with disabilities, and a professional development program aiming to help people of color ascend the ranks of leadership at the city’s museums and art spaces.” Also, it would “help arts organizations lower their carbon footprint and increase direct support to artists, particularly those working with and in historically disenfranchised communities.”
Great, though the article lands on a rather ugly statement by Cultural Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl. “We believe there are cracks,” Finkelpearl said referring to the issue of gentrification. “And if enough people are talking about how the city is too expensive to be an artist in, then there will be a breaking point.”
“But it is not happening,” he added. “Artists are still moving here.”
This is according to a study by The Center for an Urban Future, which defines artists broadly. Architects, graphic designers and advertisers—all creatives that typically make much more than visual artists can still afford to live here. But visual artists, a group that makes up on 24 percent of their calculations, make much less on average and aren’t doing well. Where are those numbers? [ARTnews]
Thursday has the absolute worst GIFs of any day of the week. (Obviously nothing can compete with Hump Day, but c’mon!) If I were Thor and this shitty day had been named after me, I would smite the whole damn internet with lightning.
Enjoy this pathetic Thursday GIF buffet:
In his fourth week in Los Angeles, Michael Anthony Farley discovers that there’s not enough to do on weekdays and way too much to do on weekends. Here’s how he spent the weekend. Everyone loves Ray and Charles Eames, and erotic art.
Catch up on Week One, Week Two (and Week Two, Part Two), and Week Three.
- Israeli student Rotem Bides has generated a major controversy after allegedly stealing items from the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site in Poland for an artwork. The university has since cancelled the exhibition, and Bides may face prosecution from Poland as well as disciplinary action from the school. [The New York Times]
- The Roddenberry Foundation is giving out 20 fellowships worth $50,000 each to activists fighting to make the world a little more like Star Trek. You can apply for projects related to civil rights, climate change and environmental justice, immigration and refugee rights, or LGBTQIA and women’s rights. Hurry, applications close on July 25th! [The Roddenberry Fellowship]
- Whoa. Keanu Reeves is partnering with artists to launch X Artists’ Books, a new publishing platform that will focus on “unconventional, interdisciplinary and collaborative” print projects. [Los Angeles Times]
- The conservative Steamboat Conference is going to feature a one day pop-up exhibition of George W. Bush’s paintings in Colorado. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about this beyond the fact that I never miss an opportunity to bring up GEORGE EFFING BUSH’S WEIRD PAINTINGS. [artnet News]
- The final U.S. iteration of Now Be Here, the photography project that documents thousands of women in the arts at the same time, will take place at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. The project is a collaboration between the NMWA, LA-based artist Kim Schoenstadt, and D.C.-based artist Linn Meyers. Female-identifying artists, curators, and gallerists in the DC/Baltimore metropolitan region are invited to participate, and can register here. [Google Forms]
- Police in Spain have recovered three out of five Francis Bacon paintings (valued at nearly $30 million) stolen in Madrid in 2015. They managed to track down the photographer who took photos of the stolen paintings when the images appeared on the market. The case is considered Spain’s largest ever contemporary art heist. [BBC]
I’ll admit that the actual GIF by Momma Tried is perfectly web safe. But it sets up documentation of a NSFW butt tattoo, that might just be the most beautiful inking I’ve ever seen. This image comes from their tumblr account, which doesn’t seem too active, but we’ll use this as an excuse to plug Momma Tried Magazine’s Instagram account, which takes glamor to a new unsettling level. In it, you’ll see a grocery store cake with eyelashes, a women wearing pearlescent teeth, and passed out dog in mardi gras garb. It’s really just about the best thing out there.
Okay, who is buying “I “spot” Damien Hirst” t-shirts for their kids and why???
- This seems pretty big for creatives in Sacramento: $500,000 has been allocated to a pilot program that will fund art, tech and food projects with a public benefit. [The Sacramento Bee]
- A kinda sorta rags to riches story about art dealer Peter Loughrey, who began his career as a stunt man living out of his van, got life-threatening cancer, and is now a rich art dealer. [CNBC]
- Governor’s Island will remain open for the fall for the first time ever. [Curbed]
- Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation has awarded grants to $50,000 each to eight arts journalists. The prize totals $400,000. Winners are Phong Bui (publisher of the Brooklyn Rail); Charles Desmarais (art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle); Bob Keyes (features writer for the Portland Press Herald, Maine); Jason Farago (writer for the New York Times and the Guardian and founding editor of the magazine, Even); Jeff Huebner (contributor to the Chicago Reader); Carolina Miranda (culture writer for the Los Angeles Times); Christina Rees (editor-in-chief of Glasstire, Dallas); and Chris Vitiello (freelance writer and independent curator and organizer, Durham, North Carolina). Congrats – this prize is a huge deal in the media world, where writers are chronically underpaid. [Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation]
- Random thought: Do we really need op eds about Donald Trump’s secret meeting with Vladimir Putin? There’s zero new information to be gained from this and what is there to say about this past the obvious fact that this President is not operating in the best interests of the country. [The Internet]
- Is art schwag in trouble? Damien Hirst’s store Other Criteria has announced it will close and relaunch as a book store. (Good luck making money on that venture.) In addition to selling his limited edition prints, the store sold all manner of art on skateboards, plates, mugs, t-shirts and whatever else you could print on or mass produce. [Devonline]
Apple is always looking to diversify their emoji collections. In the past few updates, we’ve seen new pictograms specifying everything from lesbian moms to personalized skin tones for emoticons. They ditched the gun emoji. And most usefully, added a taco. But this latest update seems to be taking things in a slightly more absurd direction? We can now send each other djinns, elves, a T-Rex, zombies, and somebody doing yoga. [Though, to be fair, I did find this GIF in an article with a more predictably-Apple headline: “Apple’s new emojis include a breastfeeding mother and a woman in hijab“.]
But when will finally have a button for breastfeeding hijab-wearing same-sex-parenting dinosaurs with variable skin tones? Until that day arrives, Silicon Valley still has a long way to go.
In the Marciano Art Foundation’s The Wig Museum, Jim Shaw combines theatrical sets, beauty culture, the suburban nightmare, apocalyptic imagery and more. It might feel like the end times, but it’s a promising start to a new institution.
