Daniel Joseph Martinez on view at’s Armory Show booth.
Image: KATHERINE MCMAHON for ARTnews.
- This is so cool. Adam Pendleton, Rashid Johnson, Ellen Gallagher and Julie Mehretu have pooled their money and purchased the birthplace of Nina Simone—a 660 square foot house in Tryon, N.C. Plans for the structure haven’t been fully formulated yet, but for now at least it’s going to be preserved. [The New York TImes]
- A new building in the Lower East Side has entered the NYC affordable housing lottery, offering studio apartments from $519. Apply now. [Curbed]
- The Orange County Museum of Art had plans to finance a new location in Costa Mesa through a real estate deal involving luxury condos on land it owns in pricey Newport Beach. Now it’s in a world of political drama. Southern California NIMBYs make the West Village look like a tabula rasa. [Los Angeles Times]
- Here’s one museum personnel saga that’s more scandalous than the Met’s recent shakeup: Munich’s Haus der Kunst might’ve been infiltrated by Scientologists. Yep. There’s a full-on panic over a staff administrator who may have a secret agenda. In Germany, Scientology is considered a cult and they take its shadowy mechanizations very, very seriously. [Artnet News]
- Well, Baltimore is getting a new piece of public art. The prone “Homeless Jesus” was just blessed with holy water one block from my (Michael’s) house. The irony of this is that the very Basilica where it was christened has a terrible track record of landgrabs and demolition of housing in its immediate vicinity. Jesus actually has a pretty big house, now with gardens and a parking garage where once stood apartment buildings. Lots of others in the neighborhood, not so much. [ABC 2 News]
- In the same neighborhood, artists are fundraising to rehab a group of buildings for performance, studio, and affordable live/work space. The project is called Le Mondo, and is an ambitious example of artist-owned, artist-run real estate. This is a good project to support. [Crowdrise]
- More good news for the markets of the insanely wealthy, Sotheby’s recorded the highest total for any London sale yesterday evening with a £195 million ($241 million) sale of 54 lots of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist art. Their estimate was £150/180 million. [Baer Faxt]
- Speaking of the uber wealthy Pace Gallery broke ground in Chelsea yesterday as they begin construction on their new 8 story, 75,000 square foot building at 540 West Twenty-fifth Street. For reference, that’s a little under half the size of the Whitney Museum’s building on Gansevoort, which is 220,000 square feet. Unlike the Whitney, though, which is a museum built to house and display treasures that belong to the public, Pace is building a sales showroom and offices for the rich. [Baer Faxt]
- Yesterday we expressed disappointment in the lack of artwork addressing the Trump regime in the Armory Show’s curated section. But apparently plenty of gallerists didn’t shy away from bringing politically confrontational work. Good. This is a trend that was evident at Zona MACO last month, and hopefully one that gains momentum through the art fair circuit. [ARTnews]
- Lorna Mills gives good interviews. On the subject of accreditation and GIFs she says, “I wonder if any artists working online think so much about ownership. They tend to think more about credit for the things they have done. Ownership also suggests some sort of control over the work, and we know that isn’t always possible online. Transfer Gallery published a GIF catalogue of my work recently and I think that serves as a more official form of accreditation.” More Lorna Mills please. [Hyperallergic]
- Ann Pfoser Darby, member of Queens Community Board 4, allegedly said during a meeting about safety improvements to 111th street, “Once Trump removes all the illegals from Corona, there won’t be anybody to ride bike lanes.” People are calling for Darby’s removal from the board. I’d like to point out that if all the immigrants left Queens, there wouldn’t be anyone to use any infrastructure in the borough. [Streetsblog]
