Jonathan Horowitz, “Hillary Clinton is a Person Too” (2008)
- Jonathan Horowitz’s creepy sculpture “Hillary Clinton is a Person Too” has been added to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit exhibition Art as Social Force Exhibition: It’s Your Party, Cry If You Want To. That is probably the best name for a show about politics in 2016. [ARTnews]
- Outraged activists are calling for the removal of works by Kelley Walker from the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. Walker (who is White) uses appropriated imagery in his work, including magazine covers featuring Black women and historical photos of Civil Rights era protests. This has offended a number of people, including museum staff, who view the work as insensitive. In response, the museum has walled-off the pieces in question and added trigger warnings. People still want the works removed. Didn’t we all decide in the early 90s that museums should be spared from censorship? Even if the images in question might be offensive to some viewers (viewers who decide to read the trigger warning and walk around the wall anyway) censoring artwork is probably one of the least fruitful outcomes of a controversy. [St. Louis Post Dispatch, Artforum, Hyperallergic]
- And in Moscow, activist group “Officers of Russia” succeeded in getting Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography shut down in hopes of censoring Jock Sturges, who they accuse of being a child pornographer. His exhibition, Absence of Shame, documents families living in nudist colonies. The Officers of Russia succeeded in shuttering the gallery by dousing the photographs in urine, a tactic that thusfar hasn’t been employed in St. Louis. [artnet News]
- Have no fear, the (beloved?) statue of Lenin that had been watching over the East Village from a Houston Street rooftop until recently will be back. Lenin is moving a few blocks away to the roof of 178 Norfolk Street, another building owned by Michael Rosen. [Curbed]
- Uh oh. A real estate industry publication has declared the Bronx is the new Bushwick. According to the article, rents are rising and artists are moving in (I’d like to point out that the causality of these two phenomena isn’t as clear-cut as it seems) and the Bronx Museum of Arts is broadening its profile. None of the above is without controversy. The Museum has recently been focusing on expensive-to-produce blockbuster shows to elevate its profile, which sounds like a strategy that’s working—attendance is way up, and the institution is able to offer artist-centric services such as studio space for local artists. Realistically though, doesn’t it seem like far more people are leaving Brooklyn and heading to LA or small towns upstate than the Bronx? [Crain’s]
- Speaking of real estate, the Observer is up in arms about the fact that Jimmy Van Bramer won’t support a 100 percent affordable housing building in Sunny Side. They chastise him for being a hypocrite, but don’t bother to explain his position. (They just call it lame.) If they had, they’d know that the residents of Sunny Side are against the building because it’s a pilot program to redevelop the entire stripe from light manufacturing to residential. A lot of jobs are on the line here, which the Observer would care about if they were anything more than a propaganda arm for REBNY. [The Observer]
- Sacramento, California finally has its new $8 million Jeff Koons sculpture… and it’s actually pretty decent. This local news station, however, seems determined to drum up some sort of scandal surrounding the unveiling, perhaps to rival the heated debates surrounding its commissioning? No such luck. They ended up with controversies such as… a “live painter” tweeted something totally unrelated at the same time? Jeff Koons is from New York? It’s a pretty funny example of fishing for a story. I do like the suggestion at the end, that the city should flip the piece for a profit. How’s the secondary auction market for public art looking these days? [CBS Local Sacramento]
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