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Wednesday Links: Transphobia, The 00s, Chewbacca Mom Make Comebacks

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on July 26, 2017

Image of the day: France is burning. By Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images [h/t The New York Times]

The latest news from the surreal hellscape that is our nation’s government is that Trump is banning transgender people from the military. Doesn’t it seem like the right wing always comes up with a culture wars bone to pick when their political/economic agenda (Russia investigation, healthcare repeal, etc…) is under siege? At any rate, this is terrible, but if laughing is therapeutic for you, watch this Samantha Bee bit in which she provides commentary to rambling speeches made by potentially drunk Republican congressmen about trans people in the military. How is our country this insane? [Facebook]
Pussy Riot and Les Enfants Terribles are fundraising for “an immersive theater project” in which the audience would get to experience the Pussy Riot ordeal. That includes everything from their infamous performance in a Russian church to their crazy trial and time in a labor camp. Sounds fun? [Kickstarter]
Here’s a new, pretty comprehensive list of grants and loans for artists and entrepreneurs. Lots of funding sources on here we’ve never heard of. [Insight Personal Finance]
Remember “Chewbacca Mom”? The Texas woman who rose to brief, unlikely fame because she laughed so hard wearing a Chewbacca mask in a parking lot on Facebook Live? Writer Alyssa Bereznak does, as she’s been following Candace Payne via Google alerts for the past year. Here she has a timeline of the viral sensation’s rise and fall in public favor. It’s fascinating. The internet is a weird (and judgemental) place. [The Ringer]
Phew. After much outrage (including plenty of cute tributes from artists included in this link) Microsoft announced that MS Paint would NOT be disappearing, but will be available for download from their app store. [artnet News]
Rumors have been flying that beloved Baltimore dive bar The Club Charles will be closing, starting August 1st, indefinitely. Some say it will reopen following renovations, but there are few details here. The 66 year old institution is basically like the evening office of the city’s art/theater/literati scene. It’s John Waters’ favorite bar, among countless other filmmakers, musicians, artists, and drunks. I (Michael) will be devastated if this is a permanent closure. [City Paper]
The Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan 1994 Museum will partner with @popculturediedin2009—an archive dedicated to the drama of the aughts—to mine the decade’s pop-culture. I’m not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, these scandals may already be a source of nostalgia, and therefore hold some enjoyment. On the other, is it not too soon for this? I keep thinking there’s got to be a better use of intellectual engagement than this—particularly given our current political climate. [artnet News]
Karen Loew makes the case for the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, and looks at what other cities are doing to stop the spread of chain stores, closure of neighborhood retail, and “high rent blight” that’s been hitting Manhattan so hard. Basically, New York is way behind on protecting legacy businesses. This is something every gallerist or artist with a studio (or really, anyone who enjoys bodega food) should be getting behind. [City Lab]
Related: The Zapatista-inspired Eastside Café (which functions as an art/activism/community space in East Los Angeles) managed to stand its ground against gentrification and buy their building from the landlord when developers came knocking. Amazing. [Remezcla]
2070 photographs by Annie Leibovitz were purchased by a wealthy patron in 2012 and donated to The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. That was a boon for Leibovitz who was struggling financially at the time. The problem is, while the donor purchased the work for 4.75 million, it’s valued at 20 million and the Canadian government doesn’t want to sign off on the deduction. The panel tasked with approving the donation has accepted that only some of the photographs are art. Also, it seems the valuation of the portfolio is less than that of the individual works, thus creating the disparity of value. [The New York Times]
A score for Acquavella Gallery: Phillip de Montebello, former head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will join their staff as curator of special exhibitions. [The New York Times]
Applications close in four days for the free 360 Xochi Quetzal artist/writer residency on Lake Chapala, Mexico. This place looks beautiful. [360 Xochi Quetzal]

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Thursday Links: George Bush Painting Pop-Up, $50,000 Fellowships, and Keanu Reeves Art Press

by Michael Anthony Farley on July 20, 2017

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]

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Make Plans For Common Field Convening Los Angeles

by Michael Anthony Farley on June 30, 2017

Everyone working in the arts should attend this year’s Common Field Convening in November. Members are invited to propose panels, conversation sessions, working groups, workshops, teach-ins, reports from the field, and projects.

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Wednesday Links: Tonya Harding Still Muse for Artists

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on June 14, 2017

Animal rights activists in Athens smashed windows and threw paint on the studio of Aboubakar Fofana, whose Documenta 14 piece comprises 54 sheep dyed different shades of indigo. The dye is apparently nontoxic, so I’m not sure what the problem here is. If I were a sheep, I’d be happier being a piece of living artwork rather than mutton. [The Art Newspaper]
So, this is a job that exists: “Art curator for a cannabis company”. Meet Burgandy Viscosi, who picks the artwork for different strains of pot for a Washington marijuana company. [Leafly]
Daniel H. Weiss will take the helm at the Met as its president and chief executive. He takes over for Thomas P. Campbell, who was forced out of the position of chief executive and director due to the financial mismanagement and conflict of interest scandals that plagued his leadership. Weiss, will help find a director, as, unlike Campbell, he will not be overseeing both the artistic and financial direction of the museum. Much a do has been made about this, but the idea that any person can effectively fill both positions is misguided at best imo. This is a step in the right direction. [The New York Times]
Not to do with art, but the Gwyneth Paltrow Goop summit sure seems to reveal that line of product as being a total and utter sham (if the jade eggs you’re supposed to insert in your vagina weren’t enough evidence on their own.) Lectures included a talk on “integrative photosynthesis,” “spiritual Wi-Fi,” “laterality to the body,” “neuro-vegetative signs” and “the ontological experience called your life.”, a panel discussion about gut in which panelists claimed that that kale, superfood of the millennium, can be extremely dangerous; that taking one Advil or Aleve “is like swallowing a hand grenade” and that cancer does not exist among wild animals. It seems ever talk was punctuated with opportunities for guests to go buy vastly overpriced Goop products at the IRL store set up for the summit. [The New York Post]
From documentaries and musical theater to art collections, Tonya Harding has become an unlikely muse for the arts in the decades following her 1994 violent feud with fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. Erik Piepenburg considers why. [The New York Times]
The Riga Biennial (how many biennials does the world need?) is hiring a Curator of Public Programmes for their 2018 edition. Applications are due on the 24th. [e-flux]
There are $89 million worth of Basquiats on view at this year’s Art Basel. artnet News has a roundup of the works. It kinda seems like only two of these are really good? [artnet News]
We’ve never heard of UNDO Project Space in Chelsea, but John Ortved is RAVING about Alison S.M. Kobayashi’s Say Something Bunny, a performance based on an amateur audio recording made over 60 years ago that’s part detective story, part monologue, part tragicomedy. That’s not too dissimilar to our own Rea McNamara, who last year lauded the performance. [Vogue]
Adam Rogers’ tempered criticism of Norman Foster’s new Apple campus in Cupertino is a good read. Basically, it’s a building out of 1950s corporate suburban sprawl that reinforces some of the Bay Area’s biggest problems. [Wired]

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Wednesday Links: Starchitect Corpse Turned Diamond, Melania Trump Turned Goth

by Michael Anthony Farley on May 24, 2017

“It’s curious that the intellectual and artistic community transforms its aesthetic unease or personal disgust into a longing for a type of patriarchal and pre-modern moral authority,” Cuauhtémoc Medina, chief curator of Mexico City’s MUAC, speaking about the controversy surrounding Jill Magid’s exhibition at that institution. (But really, such an apt observation on any art world scandal). Magid has turned the cremated ashes of legendary architect Luis Barragán into a diamond. This diamond is being offered to art historian Federica Zanco in the form of an engagement ring as a bartering chip (Zanco owns Barragán’s professional archives in her private collection in Switzerland, denying access to other scholars. According to rumor, the archives were gifted to her as an engagement gift decades ago). Magid’s intent is to liberate the archives to the trust of an institution for public access, but many see the project as disrespectful, tacky, sacrilegious, or even an act of cultural imperialism. The problem I identify here is the choice of an engagement ring. It contextualizes Barragán’s physical remains—in addition to his archive—in a form to suit Federica Zanco, adding insult to injury. [The New Yorker]
New York’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Art has opened with a four-person show that accidentally features all women artists. Dana Awartani, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Nasreen Mohamedi and Zarina Hashmi all deal in geometric abstraction and obsessively-controlled craftsmanship. It sounds like a surprisingly tame show given contemporary identity politics. [Hyperallergic]
This glass-and-concrete artists’ retreat upstate looks like pastoral utopia. Whoever the mystery artist is (a photographer who apparently is quite successful) should invite us up for a weekend! [Dezeen]
Wow. 103-year-old Margaret Ricciardi has been taking art classes every semester at CUNY’s College of Staten Island since becoming widowed in 1983. She still stands while oil painting. Now, she’s receiving an honorary Doctorate from the school. Not a bad way to spend one’s retirement! [New York Daily News]
Wassan Al-Khudhairi is taking over the controversy-plagued position of chief curator at St. Louis’s CAM from Jeffrey Uslip. She certainly has her work cut out for her. I can’t think of another institution as hated by its host city. Thankfully, Al-Khudhairi’s internationally-nomadic lifestyle seems to have given her plenty of experience listening and adapting to new communities. And maybe some global perspective can move the museum beyond its local tensions. [Riverfront Times]
Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump accompanied the president to meet the Pope. Their outfits were INSANE. Totally snatching these looks for our next goth ball. [People]
Speaking of the batshit crazy first family, Trump once again wants to eliminate funding for the NEA. We have some other suggestions for budget trimming. [artnet News]
Baltimore artist-run spaces take note: if you’re a nonprofit or other tax-exempt organization, the state is handing out some healthy-sized grants this year, and the Bromo folks will help you with your application. [Bromo Arts and Entertainment]
“A serious dreamer, he welcomes without begging analysis, and takes analysts, even critics, seriously. The evidence of his generosity is that he doesn’t give his own interpretations. There are so many artists who think they can do my job. I let them. I like writing about art that leaves space.”—Sarah Nicole Prickett on the strange joys of watching David Lynch’s weird-AF-reboot of Twin Peaks as an art critic. [Artforum]

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Monday Links: Don’t Blame Roberta Smith for Donald Trump

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on May 15, 2017

Jeff Koons’ sculpture “Play-Doh 1994-2014” has paved the way for Donald Trump, according to Alex Melamid. Is it because there’s a melty orange blob in the center and a weird yellow thing hanging off the top?

Of everything that’s been written about Trump’s unlikely ascendence and the art world, Alex Melamid’s recent piece in TIME might just be the most specious and bizarre. According to Melamid, artists and critics have created a culture that idolizes avant-garde thinking, infantilism, and publicity above all else—thus legitimizing Trump’s outrageous approach to candidacy and governing. Two of the most laughable moments: Melamid citing Roberta Smith’s praise of Jeff Koons’ “Play Doh” sculptures (because the average Trump voter is an avid NYT Arts reader, I’m sure?) and the wildly out-of-touch statement “plagiarism in the arts has mutated into what’s now called appropriation, a term stripped of any negative judgment.” LOL. [TIME]
For anyone else who ever thought the Harvard campus reminded them of Hogwarts, you’ll enjoy this bit of news that sounds like something out of Harry Potter. The Harvard Art Museums is restaging “The Philosophy Chamber,” a sort of wunderkammer from the university’s early history that became the basis for the museums’ present collections. [The Harvard Crimson]
A lottery has opened for affordable housing units in a new Long Island City high rise, starting at under $1,000/month. Apply now! There are only 34 slots, sadly. [Curbed]
Coming as a shock to no one, Anne Imhof’s “Faust” has snagged a Golden Lion at Venice. The “health goth”-esque performance was by far the most talked-about piece of the Biennale. [ARTnews]
Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is being lauded as the biggest and most important exhibition of Cuban art in recent history. Patricia Restrepo, however, feels that the Cisneros-backed show is lacking in nuance. We haven’t seen the show ourselves, but if you’re in Texas, it looks like a must-see. [Terremoto]
AFC friend Jeanette Doyle has launched “CF” at the Research Pavilion in Venice and is looking for artists and curators to participate. The framework: you chose a nation you want to represent and an art work and stage it. CF will present these staged works via a series of projections chosen at random with the help of a computer algorithm. Deadline for submissions is August 11th. Submit here. [Art & Education]
Steven H Silberg has launched an art-making project titled “In Care of the White House”. Artists are invited to create works in response to the Trump administration, which the organization will document and send to the White House, with the idea that all the pieces will end up as a document of dissent in the National Archives for posterity. [In Care of the White House]
Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips are looking to auction off over $1 billion worth of art this week, including a 6-foot Basquiat at Sotheby’s that’s valued at $60 million. These auctions are being watched closely as a litmus test for the art market. Since Russian and Middle Eastern bidders have retreated from the auction scene due to lower oil prices, it’s been a buyer’s-market-boon for American and Asian collectors. But now the market might’ve bounced back, as the auction houses are hoping. [CNBC]
15 Art Deco buildings not to miss. [Curbed]

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Thursday Links: Get Your £1,705 IKEA Shopping Bag by Balenciaga

by Michael Anthony Farley on April 20, 2017

balenciaga

Balenciaga has released a “knockoff” of those blue IKEA shopping bags… which costs £1,705. The peculiar logic of late capitalism keeps the LOLs coming. [Dezeen]
Peter Garritano photographs New Yorkers he meets through Craigslist’s “Strictly Platonic” friend-seeking section. These are surprisingly less sad than one would expect. But some of the ads are really, really strange. And borderline not platonic at all. [The New Yorker]
The DOT is seeking proposals for a new public artwork/design object for the Canal Street Triangle for a project called “Gateways to Chinatown”. The selected proposal will receive a $900,000 budget. [Curbed]
Happy 4/20. Why is today Marijuana Appreciation Day? Like most stoner stories, it’s murky and complicated. [WJLA]
Hmmm. Alex Jones now considers himself a “performance artist” (in defense of the craziest of his rants, while in court during a nasty divorce). I’ve long suspected this of Ann Coulter, but always suspected Jones was just legitimately out of his mind. [The Huffington Post]
Here’s news that should make most city dwellers laugh: residents of a luxury highrise in London are suing the Tate Modern because visitors to the museum’s outdoor spaces have views into the floor-to-ceiling glass apartments. Apparently the condo owners didn’t understand the whole “glass houses” adage? Following this logic, does the museum have the right to sue the apartment owners for their views? [artnet News]
Wow, I had no idea Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett was an artist! Hopefully the exhibition Mentoring a Muse: Charles Umlauf & Farrah Fawcett at Austin’s Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum can disabuse us all of that oversight. [ARTnews]

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Monday Links: Be This Dog’s Neighbor

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on March 27, 2017

Gallerist Lydia Petit with her dog Ruby. By J.M. Giordano for City Paper.

Gallerist Lydia Pettit with her dog Ruby. By J.M. Giordano for City Paper.

City Paper asked some of their writers and friends to pose for awkward portraits with their pets, by photographer J.M. Giordano. These are amazing. We would do this, but sadly no one at AFC has time for a puppy. [City Paper]
Baltimore: if you’re interested in responding to an RFP for vacant buildings along Howard Street in the Bromo arts district, there are open houses and assistance available to artists and organizations. This area is full of artist-owned buildings (including Platform Gallery, where you can hang out with Ruby and Lydia, the awesome dog and human pictured above). Let’s keep it that way! [Bromo Arts and Entertainment]
Do we give too much media attention to art vandals? That’s one of several motives Noah Charney hypothesizes in his fascinating look at why people attack artworks. So far we have no clue why a man slashed a Thomas Gainsborough painting at London’s National Gallery, but motives for past attacks have included religion (from Islamic fundamentalism to believing one is Jesus Christ reincarnated) and the desire for a media spotlight. [Salon]
Robert Walsh is convinced the Met has been displaying a knockoff French medieval sculpture the museum acquired in the 1930s. The piece in question is a head, purportedly from a doorway at Notre Dame, but arrived in New York via a dealer notorious for trafficking in fakes. [New York Post]
Whatever happened to Frida Kahlo’s “The Wounded Table”? The painting hasn’t been seen since an exhibition in Warsaw in 1955. Kahlo painted it during her brief divorce from Diego Rivera, after she found out he slept with her younger sister. When she exhibited it at Mexico City’s International Exhibition of Surrealism in 1940 she was concerned it wasn’t well-received. She ended up gifting it to a Russian ambassador six years later. Following the Warsaw show a decade later, the painting’s whereabouts remain a mystery. [The Daily Beast]
Not to do with art, but in news from our dystopic country, as reported in Canada, Daniel Dale finds that Trump voters in Ohio are not bothered by the president’s lies. On the subject of Trump’s claim that Obama illegally wiretapped him, James Cassidy, an out of work construction worker said that they were obviously lies, but he liked that. “He’s ruffling every feather in Washington that he can ruffle. These guys are scrambling. So: yeah! I like it. I think it’s a good thing. I want to see them jump around a little bit.” [The Toronto Star]
Brad Pitt has taken up sculpting to help him deal with his divorce woes. Word has it, he’s a quick learner. [Page Six]
We’re having a hard time identifying the point of this article about gallery closures in artnet News. As far as we can tell, it’s an attempt to connect the closure of two middle tier art galleries in London to Andrea Rosen’s closure earlier this month. But are the two comparable? Rosen ran an upper tier gallery with two outlets in Chelsea and described what mostly seemed like personal reasons for closing. The other closures have to do with the effect art fairs have had on brick and morter locations. Speaking of which, did anyone else notice Nicole Klagsbrun at NADA this year? She closed up shop in New York a couple years ago, penning a fire-y letter about throwing the towel in on this business, and is now operating as a private dealer out of Chelsea. [artnet News]
Hyun-Gi Kim has created a chair that moves fake blood around tubes, depending where you sit on it. This looks so gross. [Dezeen]
“Fearless Girl,” a statue by Kristen Visbal that’s situated facing “Charging Bull” in the financial district will remain on view through February 18th, 2018. The new city permit extends the statue’s stay. The old permit was originally slated to expire April 2nd. The statue has been a lightening rod for critics, some of whom believe the piece represents a strong feminist statement, and others who believe it is a PR stunt rather than a “true” feminist statement. People will fight about anything. [Curbed]

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Wednesday Links: NYC’s Most-Cocaine-Worthy Hotel Lobby Landmarked

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 18, 2017

The UN Plaza Hotel, Courtesy Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates

Artist Emily Spivack has opened a T-shirt store, which only sells plain white, medium t-shirts, in honor of President Obama. The piece is in reference to an inside joke POTUS once made about not wanting to make decisions, and is presented through the Honolulu Museum of Art. [Hyperallergic]
Applications are open for Terrault Contemporary’s second annual juried exhibition. Terrault is one of our favorite artist-run spaces in Baltimore, and this year’s jury comprises artists Stephanie Barber, Mina Cheon, and Amy Sherald. This should be good, apply! [Terrault Contemporary]
Applications are also open for a two-year fellowship at Washington, DC’s Hamiltonian. This is one of the capital’s best arts spaces, and the program is pretty tricked-out. It’s open only to artists without gallery representation, and applications close Wednesday March 1st. [Hamiltonian Artists]
The National Parks Service is struggling to find space to accommodate the dozens of huge demonstrations that will accompany Trump’s inauguration in Washington, DC. There are now an estimated 1 million people planning protests, scattered among all 50 states and 37 countries across every continent. Yes. We will be striking, and have a guide for protests and other events in some of the cities where we have the most readers. [USA Today]
Yay! The UN Plaza Hotel’s retro-glam interiors are now a NYC Landmark. [Curbed]
86 artists were displaced from the massive Sample-Studios in Cork, Ireland last month to make way for a demolition/development project. They’ve documented it across social media. [YouTube]
Nancy Spector, the new chief curator of the Brooklyn Museum, shares her wisdom for balancing hectic nonprofit/online feminist/family life. My favorite gems: she writes best at 3:00 a.m. (samesies!) and sets aside one day a week to see art shows at other institutions. [The Cut]
There’s some academic debate about the veracity of a maybe-Velázquez painting at Florida’s Ringling Museum of Art. The painting is a portrait of Spain’s King Philip IV, and new scans reveal that the author had repositioned the monarch’s legs to make him look less portly, and added more fashionable garments on top of his armor. [The Art Newspaper]
Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky, of nailing-his-balls-to-Red-Square-fame, is seeking political asylum in France. [The New York Times]

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