The Trump art bus
- Musician Dan Deacon is promising free shows for his Iowa fans if they caucus for Bernie Sanders. [Facebook]
- And in other election news, a group of Philly-based artists has bought Donald Trump’s former Iowa campaign bus and have turned it into a mobile art installation, including burqas for Trump signs. [The Guardian]
- Fascinating look at Orrin Evans, a journalist who created the first black comic book in the late 1940s. [Fusion]
- The biggest revelation in the New Yorker’s profile on the Bouvier-Rybolovlev Affair? Turns out Yves Bouvier, the so-called king of the Geneva freeports, used money from his dealings with Russian oligarch Dimitri Rybolovlev to expand his storage facilities in Singapore and Luxembourg. Currently duking it out in the Monaco courts, Bouvier has been accused of price fixing and money laundering, with lawyers for Rybolovlev charging Bouvier for pocketing the difference on works he sold to the collector. [The New Yorker]
- Related: if you want to keep up with the case, there is a Facebook “Yves Bouvier Affair” community following the press coverage with almost 800 likes. Go figure. [Facebook]
- Nigeria is one of Africa’s biggest economies, and thanks to its oil fortunes, has a thriving art market driven by a band of private collectors. Despite a downturn in the price of its oil, Nigerian art is finding an international market and artists are keen to tap American hip hop stars as the next wave of collectors. [Financial Times]
- The Toronto art world is mourning the death of Jose Talavera, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art’s (MOCCA) long-time gallery attendant. Talavera had worked with MOCCA since 1993, back when it was still the Art Gallery of North York, and was one of the staffers let go when it closed its Queen West location. “It was Jose who made us [feel] welcome[d] at MOCCA, and was the embodiment of empathy and appreciation for the inner workings of the gallery and its relation to the millieu,” eulogized artist Vera Frenkel, the subject of a 2014 MOCCA retrospective. [Brett Despotovich’s Facebook]
- Related: as expected, the losers of the Junction Triangle’s revitalization — the rapidly developing neighborhood that will be MOCCA’s new home — are artists. Rents have increased as high as 55% along Sterling Road, and artists like Vanessa Maltese (winner of the 2012 RBC Canadian Painting Competition) and Lili Huston-Herterich are moving out. [Toronto Star]
- NYC Mesh is a group of self-taught network engineers attempting to create a DIY alternative to Time Warner’s monopoly on New York’s internet access. This is awesome. [VICE]
- What a great review by Thomas Micchelli on the Jonathan Lasker show at Cheim & Read. In it, he discusses what he sees as a formulaic and cold painting process and how he breaks out of it. [Hyperallergic]
- European researchers are calling for a ban on sex robots. 2016 is off to a great start. [Wired]
- The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University is hiring an assistant curator. This job could be yours. [American Alliance of Museums]
- AP Art History textbooks are being rewritten to be slightly less Euro-centric. [The Atlantic]
- WTF? If the Treasury Department is going to identify and track anonymous LLC buyers of Manhattan and Miami real estate, it needs to track wire transfers. So why isn’t it doing that? [The Real Deal]
