Huh. For some reason, someone made a kawaii commercial for Donald Trump. [Youtube]
The DAO has been attacked. The distributed autonomous organization which had centralized in one fund over $150 million in crytocurrency was hacked early this morning, with hackers siphoning off so far over $3.5 million ether, the DAO’s digital currency. To put in perspective: ether is trading at $17.50 per coin, putting the value of the stolen currency at over $60 million. [CoinDesk]
Here’s a GIF of a grandmother (the Queen) telling her grandson (the Prince) to stand up during her 90th birthday celebration. [Indy100]
Last month, Texas troubadour Guy Clark passed away. One of his final wishes, it turns out, was to have his longtime friend, singer and artist Terry Allen, make a sculpture using his ashes. “I think it was kind of like a ‘Fuck You, Terry,” joked Allen. [Glasstire, Rolling Stone]
What’s the next frontier? For Star Trek, which is marking its 50th anniversary with a new movie and TV series, turns out its unifying ts fanbase. Trekkies basically invented fandom — slash fiction, for instance, was famously coined from all the “Kirk/Spock” stories written by female fans as far back as the early 1970s — and it looks like their fan films are now competing with the official franchise productions. At the center of this is Axanar, a fan film that crowdfunded a seven-figure budget, and is now being sued by Paramount and CBS for copyright infringement. [BuzzFeed]
San Francisco poet Bill Berkson has passed away. Linked to the New York School of poets and artists, Berkson went on to become a prolific art critic, publishing reviews in Art News and Artforum. He also taught art history and critical writing at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1984 to 2008. [SF Gate]
According to this list of punk-inspired artworks for sale at Art Basel, punk’s not dead. But Jesus Christ, if it were it would be rolling in its grave. [The Art Newspaper]
Here’s good news: even if you suck at making art, the act still reduces stress hormones, according to researchers. [The Creators Project]
Sun Ping has been expelled from the official China Artists Association because, according to the CAA, Ping “ruined calligraphy at will and trampled on civilization.” Ping’s crime? A video of a woman writing calligraphy with her vagina. [artnet News]
Privately-owned “public art” can be sold or destroyed without governmental approval, in most cases. Now, Pittsburgh is trying to brainstorm ways to keep track of, and hopefully preserve, all the artwork in the public sphere that the public doesn’t actually own. [Next City]
Holland Cotter writes about the Antonio Lopez survey that just opened at El Museo del Barrio. As this show charts, Lopez created an out-gay art and helped change the ethnic profile of the fashion industry. Cotter gives the show two thumbs up, calling his art “true L.G.B.T.Q., loud and proud and unguarded.” [The New York Times]
Wow. This Lebanese Super Brazil coffee commercial is amazing. We all need to drink some of that. [via: Metafilter]
So this is what Silicon Valley billionaires do when they have a hate-on for media empires: they fund lawsuits to ruin them. It appears as if Hulk Hogan’s legal fees in his battle against Gawker for posting his sex tape — remember, he won $115 million, a decision Gawker’s now appealing — has been covered by Peter Thiel. The Trump delegate in California has long disliked Gawker: its tech site Valleywag outed him in 2007, and he once referred to it as “the Silicon Valley equivalent of al-Qaida.” [Guardian]
Further, Josh Marshall weighs in on why Thiel bankrolling Hogan’s lawsuit is so disturbing: “Being able to give massive political contributions actually pales in comparison to the impact of being able to destroy a publication you don’t like by combining the machinery of the courts with anonymity and unlimited funds to bleed a publication dry.” [Talking Points Memo]
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) held an emergency meeting with tribal leaders, government representations and NGO officials to halt a May 30 auction in Paris that would sell off sacred indigenous objects. Organized by EVE auction house Drouot Richelieu, the auction includes an Acoma shield and a ceremonial deer from the Hoopa Valley Tribe in California. [Hyperallergic]
Huh. Movie-star-cum-performance-artist Shia LaBeouf has embarked on his latest piece: #TAKEMEANYWHERE. The predictably designed-for-social-media-attention project involves LaBeouf hitchhiking, asking people to drop him off wherever they want, and apparently posing for lots of selfies. If you pick him up and need a place to put him, let me suggest somewhere far, far away from internet access. [Gothamist]
Rock star auctioneer Simon de Pury is making the rounds promoting his memoir, dishing about the life he’s led. Not only did he head up Sotheby’s and Phillips, but almost died in a boat fire in the crocodile-infested Niger river. Oh, and dated Louise Blouin. Such life-threatening experiences! [Observer]
Despite a slowing of the Chinese market, Christie’s has committed to opening an exhibition space in Beijing this fall. The exhibition space will allow permanent viewing, and joins the auction house’s Shanghai salesroom, which opened in 2013. [Art Newspaper]
Hong Kong has been majorly investing in culture in an attempt to maintain and expand its position as a global art capital. But as authoritarian Beijing tightens its control over the island city, freedom of expression has come under attack. The latest victims of censorship are Sampson Wong and Jason Lam, who had their public artwork “Our sixty-second friendship begins now” removed from the facade of a skyscraper. The piece projected a countdown clock onto the tower, which referenced, among other things, the looming reunification of Hong Kong with the mainland. [Quartz]
Staten Island is about to have its shore revitalized through art. Or at least that’s the plan envisioned by Design Trust for Public Space and Staten Island Arts, which has announced an intent to use art to create better public spaces, but no actual details on what they are doing. We don’t want to sound cynical, but the whole thing looks like a developer scheme to increase property value. The project has received funds from the EDC and developers like BFC Partners, Ironstate, Triangle Equities and New York Wheel and is being pitched as a collaborative effort between these parties and the arts community. [Curbed]
Paper Magazine thinks Medellín, Colombia is poised to become one the next big art destinations. We’ve seen plenty of great Colombian artists and galleries on the art fair circuit, so even though we’ve never been there it’s a prediction we’re inclined to believe. [Paper]
Within a 48 hour news cycle, Los Angeles-based band/romantic duo YACHT announced a private sex tape they made was leaked, then said they were going to take ownership and release the tape on their own website, and now it appears the whole situation was just an elaborate X-Files-esque alien sex hoax to promote their new music video. We have a lot of respect for singer Claire Evans — she contributed a great reading list to our Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies show — and the band has a history of trolling clickbait journalism. But given how prevalent revenge porn is online, was it gross for them to pose as victims and prey on our sympathies? Or was this fictionalized narrative no different from what’s seen on the Kardashians? [Pitchfork, Jezebel]
Last night’s results of Christie’s contemporary auction was a reassuring one for the New York art market. The sale totalled $318 million, with over 87% of the lots sold. Reserves were kept low, gaining praise from the auctioneer for being “tight, curated and profitable.” A highlight of the auction records set for artists like Mike Kelley and Agnes Martin was a Basquiat top lot (the 1982 work, “Untitled”) selling for $57.3 million (it was originally estimated at more than $40 million). [The Baer Faxt, The Art Newspaper]
The Trustees, Massachusetts’ conservation nonprofit, has announced a two-year public art initiative that will kick off this summer with commissioned outdoor installations by Jeppe Hein and Sam Durant. [Boston Globe]
Intersectional feminist dialogues went into overload over bell hook’s gripes with Beyonce’s Lemonade. There’s a smart critique in here about Beyonce’s visual album being a commodification of the black female experience. But that’s kind of a “well, duh” point, and I [Rea] can’t help but feel as if hook is kind of Camille Paglia in her second wave dismissal of pop culture, not to mention low-key transphobic in judging black femme feminists. [bell hooks institute, Janet Mock’s Facebook]
The New Museum will be expanding its Bowery footprint. The museum announced yesterday it has raised $43 million towards a $80 capital campaign to renovate it 231 Bowery neighbor and connect it to its current building at 235 Bowery. [New York Times]
Carolina A. Miranda thinks the new Eva Hesse documentary is the full-blown biography the ambitious artist has long deserved. [Los Angeles Times]
An art loving mechanic in France has scored a Renoir for $700. [artnet News]
On the occasion of their pop-up show of cheap multiples at Printed Matter, members of Colab reflect back on their groundbreaking artist-led projects from the 1980s, including the Times Square Show. [Hyperallergic]
Photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia is no longer a fan of fashion brands getting involved with the art world, especially after he learnt that money he made working with Valentino could be traced back to the company’s home base in Qatar. “Contemporary art is a cock ring on a giant erection pumped up by capitalism and keeping the masters of that game from cumming,” he writes in a recent Artforum op-ed. “I think they like it. I think the artists like it, too. They get to pretend to be profound. Some are. Most are hemorrhoids waiting to happen.” [BLOUIN ARTINFO]
Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi (A.K.A. Rokudenashiko) has been ordered to pay a 400,000 yen ($3,700) fine for distributing data created by scanning her own vagina, under Japan’s strict obscenity laws. Ironically, the courts ruled that Igarashi’s 3D-printed objects, which depict her vagina and were made with said data, are not “pornographic” but “pop art”. Just the data is “obscene.” [ABC News]
Helen Molesworth, Moca’s chief curator, states a lot of obvious facts about why gender imbalance persists in museums: the art world isn’t separate from the greater patriarchal system, and the only way you’ll get diversity is if you actually do it. “If you’re going to be equitable, some of the dudes don’t get shows that year.” Nonetheless, a refreshing interview with Julia Halperin, especially with observations about why the mid-career point happens late for female artists and how the rise of art as an asset class is bad for both female and male artists. [The Art Newspaper]
Architect Moshe Safdie has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at Cooper Hewitt Museum’s 2016 National Design Awards. [Artforum]
Sotheby’s reported a loss of $25.9 million during its first quarter of 2016. The loss isn’t surprising, especially given the re-structuring happening under the watch of CEO Tad Smith, and the general market trend. [New York Times, The Art Market Monitor]
Speaking of auctions, a roundup of reports on Christie’s “Bound to Fail” auction, which was generally considered a success given that they were selling a bunch of difficult conceptual work. The market isn’t doing as badly as we think? [The Art Market Monitor]
A 1970s high school art project was mistakenly appraised on Antique Road Show as a late 19th century artifact worth $50,000. [Hyperallergic]
What are the laws governing the sale, return, and legal status of stolen artwork? Quite a few, as it turns out. And they vary from state to state. [Artsy]
The 21-acre Brooklyn Greenway has new renderings, following a long period of community input. The plan is to connect many of downtown Brooklyn’s parks and public spaces, but based on these images, it doesn’t look very green—large paved areas dominate. Still, it’s an improvement for pedestrians.[Curbed]
Ted Cruz, the Republican presidential candidate who once said “We need to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts,” has dropped out of the race after losing the Indiana primary. This inspired Samantha Bee to tweet the above in reference to Cruz’s anti-abortion stance. [Twitter]
The Baltimore Museum of Art has named Christopher Bedford as its new director. Bedford is curating the American pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale and will be leaving his post at Brandeis University’s Rose Museum. [The Baltimore Sun]
Real estate developer/art collector Aby Rosen has been ordered to pay New York $7 million in back taxes after some shady art dealings. [Forbes]
Suzy Lake has been awarded the sixth annual Scotiabank Photography Award. The award includes a $50,000 cash prize and a solo show for the Toronto-based artist at the Ryerson Image Center in 2017. [Canadian Art]
App as conceptual art project: Disk Cactus, an Oakland-based artist duo, have created the iTunes app AI*SCRY. Playing off of AI and “scrying” (a method of crystal ball divination), the app adds words pulled from Microsoft’s COCO image recognition database to whatever images you choose to snap with your smartphone camera. The descriptors of this project — ”childlike”, “playful”, “whimsical” — makes this seem less conceptual art project and more an interactive art prototype that could be sold off to a start-up or adapted for an agency. [Hyperallergic]
In animal news, wild gorillas have been found to hum happy songs while they eat. Two sound files are embedded in the article. Singing might be an overstatement for what this is—it’s more like a guttural growl. [New Scientist]
The FBI has searched suspected mobster Robert Gentile’s home for clues related to the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, one of the largest unsolved art thefts ever. [The Boston Globe]
Iranian artist Atena Farghadani has been freed after spending more than a year in prison. Farghadani was arrested last year and original sentenced 12 years for a satirical cartoon that depicted Iranian government members as monkeys and goats for bills that would restrict access to voluntary sterilization and contraception. [Art Newspaper]
The Biennale de Montreal announced their preliminary artist list. New works will be commissioned by Moyra Davey and Anne Immhof, and the rest seems to be evenly split between international (Joe Namy, Frances Stark, Nicole Eisenman) and Canadian (Valerie Blass, Luis Jacob, Nadia Belerique). [ARTnews]
Artist Eric Oglander and writer Gideon Jacobs have a new column “Accidental Internet” in which they recontextualize found imagery that is “beautiful, compelling, or interesting, that was not created with the intention of being beautiful, compelling, or interesting.” [VICE]
Ilma Gore, the artist who drew Donald Trump with a micropenis, reports that she was assaulted by a Trump supporter near her home in Los Angeles. A man in a black Honda Civic drove up, exited the car, punched her in the face, and shouted “Trump 2016!” [The Huffington Post]
The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has completed an expansion project for the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, increasing exhibition space by 90%. [Curbed]
Independent Brussels opened yesterday, and apparently the vibes strike a good balance between Independent circa it’s scrappy Dia building days and it’s sleeker current iteration at Spring Studios in TriBeCa. “It’s the Dia building breathing new life,” marvelled Brussels collector Alain Servais. Further, it looks like a lot of booths took risks and avoided pushing paintings, which is appropriate given the city’s collector base for conceptual art. [Artsy]
Juicy Q&A of the day: this interview with Gary Indiana, who adroitly addresses why his time in New York was omitted from his long-awaited memoir, I Can Give You Anything But Love: “all the recent necrophiliac nostalgia for the late 1970s and early 1980s New York…is so off-base that I didn’t want to engage with it at all.” [The White Review]
“When is too rich, too rich to not notice you’re missing a Picasso for 10 years?” Yes, it’s true: billionaire socialite Wilma “Billie” Tisch didn’t notice her Picasso portrait “Tete” had been missing for nearly that amount of time, and was unaware it had been offered at Sotheby’s in 2013. [New York Post]
Kimiko Nishimoto is an 87-year old photographer who takes a lot of “I’m falling and I can’t get up” self-portraits. She learned how to use a camera at 71, and then took courses in digital editing. Amazing. [Booooooom]
AFC Staffer Rea McNamara wrote a feature about the tyranny of celebrity lifestyle gurus. In it she parses the love-hate relationship many women have with Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon, Blake Lively, et al. — and how the distributed content age strengthens the hold celebrities have on our lives. [Globe and Mail]
Jennifer Smith checks in on Anne Pasternak’s first seven months as director of the Brooklyn Museum. On top of green lighting the Jeremy Deller project that had Iggy Pop pose for a life drawing class, she’s striped away by at least over 20% objects on display in the American and European galleries, and plans to hire more curators. Her first show won’t appear until the summer of 2017. [Wall Street Journal]
Hate-read alert: Rémy Martin CEO Eric Vallat complains about how inconvenient a transfer to a cushy job in Tokyo was. Thankfully, he found peace by visiting Naoshima, the island of outdoor art installations and a boutique hotel designed by Tadao Ando. Also, cognac aged in a barrel for 100 years—apparently art appreciation on Naoshima taught Vallat to let it linger in his mouth before swallowing. [The Wall Street Journal]
Josh Baer recommends seeing Georges de La Tour 1593-1652 at the Museo Del Prado in Madrid. We took a look at the work and we wish we were there. Masterful. The image of a young rich man demanding an old woman’s last coin seems not so unfamiliar these days. [Baer Faxt]
Sarah Ann Ottens was raped and murdered on the University of Iowa campus in 1973. Her death inspired some of Ana Mendieta’s most provocative works, who attended the same college, but today Ottens’ name is rarely mentioned. Even Mendieta’s most thorough auto-biography includes no mention of Ottens. Read the whole piece tracing the two histories by Sarah Weinman. Incredible. [The Guardian]
Who in the art world donates what to which politicians? It’s pretty surprising how many collectors and dealers donate to right-wing super PACs. There’s also plenty of bet-hedging: many people donate to both a Republican candidate or PAC and the Clinton campaign. [ART News]
It’s the 10th anniversary of the 2006 Youtube sensation “Shoes” by actor Liam Kyle Sullivan. Not sure the video tells us too much about the internet 10 years ago, though it is a good reminder that Peaches and more generally electroclash were widely popular. The music video, which is about a teenage character named “Kelly” who likes shoes and parties, still holds up. [The Onion AV Club]
Ann Freedman, former director of the scandal-ridden Knoedler Gallery, has given her side again, and what she reveals, is well, not much. Her much-anticipated testimony in the trial over the $8.3 million sale of a fake Rothko to Domenico and Eleanore De Sole was averted when the gallery and collectors settled out of court in February. Expectedly, Freedman confesses she didn’t know any of the works she sold were fakes, and while she says she’s sorry, adds “but let me be clear, this is [about] works of art. I didn’t slay anybody’s first-born. We have to have some perspective on suffering.” While six lawsuits have been settled against Knoedler for all the fakes they sold, four are still active. [Art Newspaper]
Finally, a listicle we can get behind: 10 Awful Public Art Pieces. [Houston Press]
The art market is ripe for abuse, say some. High quality global journalism requires investment. “There were huge steps towards greater transparency in the past 20 years,” says Clare McAndrew, author of the TEFAF Art Market report. “But in the past couple of years it has been going backwards.” Apparently, the trend of private sales at auction houses has created problems as has an unwillingness of private galleries to participate in surveys about purchasing. [FT.com via Art Market Monitor]
Jerry Saltz interviews James Franco. The crux of it seems to be that Franco has been unfairly persecuted in the art world because he’s an A-List actor who’s also an artist and scored his first show at a blue chip with conceptually weak work. The cruelties of the world continue: Jay Z was also unfairly persecuted, for shooting “Picasso Baby” at Pace filled with art world celeb cameos. What planet are these two on? There’s a tiny bit of talk about how Franco’s work wasn’t that strong, but come on. He remade Cindy Sherman photographs and showed them at Pace. Terrible. Franco says the gallery was embarrassed by the show, which HELLO. Of course they were. James Franco describes Art F City as “particularly nasty”. [NY Magazine]
Somewhat tangentially related, but Franco’s talent agency, WME | IMG, have bought a stake in in Frieze. The power-house agency, run by the inspiration for Entourage’s Ari Gold, will now sponsor the Frieze Tate Fund, providing the Tate with $213,000 for acquisitions. Beyond that, this all basically means you’ll see more celebrities at the fair previews, and the parties will be even more of a hassle to get into. [Artforum]
The Art Basel stabber says she attacked a fellow fair goer to prevent an ISIS attack. [The Observer]
Norwegian grocery baron/art collector Stein Erik Hagen is giving The Norwegian National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design free reign to pick out works from his $120 million collection. [Forbes]
The dreaded L Train shutdown could begin in 2019. [Curbed]
Speaking of body-shaming Trump, meet the Spy Magazine editors who started it all. He still sends them outlines of his hands (in gold Sharpie) to prove he isn’t a “short-fingered vulgarian”. [NPR]
A rare scroll of Edo-era Japanese gay shunga illustrations is going to auction next week in New York City at Bonham’s. If you want to procure some old-timey homoerotica, it’s expected to fetch between $35,000 and $45,0000. [Hyperallergic]
Speaking of auctions, a new report confesses that the global art market is in the midst of a serious “correction”, a.k.a. decline. New Yorkers needn’t worry as much though, the market here actually expanded by 4%, even as sales have plummeted in Europe and Asia. [POLITICO New York]
Crumbs, the new film from Addis Ababa-based Spanish director Miguel Llansó is being described as “the first ever Ethiopian Sci-Fi Feature Film”. It features a protagonist navigating a post-apocalyptic landscape populated by neo-Nazis and maybe aliens. [African Digital Art]
Somehow, Syrian refugees were housed in the same Vancouver hotel as a furry convention. The children were overjoyed. Did anyone explain what furries are all about to their parents? [The Independent]
This reminds us of the 2014 incident in Chicago that prompted headlines such as: Furries Evacuate Hotel After ‘Intentional’ Chlorine Gas Leak. [NY Post]
Nita Ambani, India’s wealthiest woman, is perhaps best known for her eccentric skyscraper private home that towers over Mumbai. Recently, she’s become a patron of the arts—sponsoring travelling exhibitions at The Met, The Art Institute of Chicago, and in Mumbai. Now she’s building a museum to host “blockbuster” shows as part of a convention center developed by her husband’s company. [The Wall Street Journal]
Attention bloggers: Curbed NY is hiring a full-time nights and weekends editor. [Curbed]
After 35 years on Toronto’s Queen West, Queen Video is shuttering its doors. I know it’s been a couple years now we’ve been calling “the end of an era” on the independent video store, but it’s still depressing for cinephiles whose tastes were shaped by clerks who’d point your way to a dusty out of print videotape. Even though Queen Video is still holding onto its Annex location — and yes, they are selling their library so get ready — the Queen location was considered the best. [blogTO]
Internet, honestly, is this the best Obama/Trudeau slash you can come up with? A GIF of Obama moving in to make out with Trudeau isn’t enough. This shipping needs a name. Like, Trubama. Or, Obamdeau. And let’s open up the genre possibilities for fanworks here: a BDSM AU that spins out of an intense meeting on the softwood lumber dispute. An anthropomorphic where Justin is a panda. (I have no clue what animal Obama could be.) Whatever! The possibilities are endless. We can’t let this fandom die! [@joetoenails]
As mosquito season nears in the US, everyone is freaking out about the zika virus. Well, almost everyone. Republican lawmakers have been dragging their feet in regards to releasing funding for prevention and treatment measures. This, despite the fact that Puerto Rico (population 3.5 million) may face over 100,000 cases this year. [The Washington Post]
Today’s the press preview for the Met Breuer, but don’t worry about missing out — the Met’s tweeting from the preview. [Twitter]
OK, why didn’t we get the invite to Jeremy Deller’s life drawing class at the New York Academy of Arts last week? Iggy Pop was the model. Anyways, it’s for Deller’s upcoming show at the Brooklyn Museum, and it was invite-only. [The Guardian]
Gabrielle Moser weighs in on the “Showroom” group show at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, and what it gets wrong about the Toronto arts scene: “there are condo ads on the subway that demonstrate greater diversity than this exhibition.” Of the 48 artists in this institutional survey, seven are POC artists. I would add that the curatorial focus was flimsy — how could it not be with so many artists? — and almost conflates the institution’s recent merging of its two galleries as one institution with the city’s recent urban “revitalization” history. Like Moser said, the show’s title could have been “Toronto Artists Want Things to Look Nice.” [Canadian Art]
How can digital art improve the IRL? Rianna Jade Parker asks five producers in the realm — including artist Tabita Rezaire and POWRPLNT founder Angelina Dreem — to weigh in. [FADER]
300 pounds of marijuana, worth one million, was discovered by NYPD in a crate labelled “art”. [artnet News]
Garry Neill Kennedy reflects on his time as president of the Nova Scotia College of and Design — subject of a recent major survey at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia — and the role NSCAD play in the rise of Conceptual Art. [Artforum]
“[I realized] I can’t tell your story, I can only tell mine. I can’t be you, I can only be me.” Insightful interview with painter Faith Ringgold, and her 70-year career in art and activism. It’s a shame her quilts haven’t been taken seriously by institutions though — despite owning her masterpiece, Tar Beach, since it was made in 1988, the Guggenheim has never shown the work in New York. [ARTnews]
HG Masters remembers Kikuo Saito, the Japanese artist known for his abstract color field paintings and wordless plays. He was a former assistant of Noland and Frankenthaler, worked with Jerome Robbins and Robert Wilson — who offers a tributary poem in the obituary — and taught at the Art League up until his death. [ArtAsiaPacific]
John Hofsess, director of the trippy late-’60s Canadian underground classic Palace of Pleasure, has died. Hofsess, however, eventually became a Right to Die advocate, and posthumously revealed the secret assisted suicide service he offered to eight Canadians, including poet Al Purdy. [Toronto Life]
Jan Vermeer’s paintings are now available for high res download. [Open Culture]
Crowdfunding Art Project of the Day: The Queer Japan Project, a documentary about the country’s LGBTQ2S artists and activists. [Kickstarter]
Good morning! Let’s talk about computers and science for a moment:
70 years ago, six Philly women became the world’s first digital computer programmers.[Philly Voice]
A hospital in Los Angeles has been operating without access to email or electronic health records for more than a week. Hackers have taken over its computer systems and are demanding 3.6 million in bitcoin for the return of their systems. [The Atlantic]
A profile on Manfred Mohr, the German artist who wrote computer algorithms to generate what he calls “programed expression”. He talks about his work with the Paris Institute of Meterology’s computer in the 60’s, and his generation of a hypercube, which can only be perceived by a computer and only partially represented in 2D space. [The Guardian]
Listen to the sound of two black holes colliding. [Motherboard]
Crap. 3D printing is really not good for your health. [Dezeen]
Disillusioned Museum Admissions Employee Doesn’t Even Believe Own Annual Membership Pitch Anymore. [The Onion]
Michael Jackson’s pet chimp, Bubbles, is living out his twilight years in Florida. His early life was not ideal for a chimp. [Miami New Times]
Seriously? Jeb Bush forgot to renew the rights to his domain name. Donald Trump bought it, and now jebbush.com redirects to Donaldtrump.com. [Facebook]
The roof of Belgium’s historic Cinquantenaire Museum is in such poor condition that the staff has resorted to wrapping artworks in a type of cling wrap to protect them. [The Telegraph]
Fiercely Independent. New York art news, reviews and culture commentary. Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director Michael Anthony Farley, Senior Editor Whitney Kimball, IMG MGMT Editor
Contact us at: paddyATartfcity.com