- Jack Shainman has hung Dread Scott’s “A MAN WAS LYNCHED BY POLICE YESTERDAY” flag above the gallery, referencing the iconic Jim Crow era NAACP flag. Predictably, our colleagues over at Fox News find this controversial and insensitive following the mass shooting in Dallas in which five police officers were killed. Because in conservative logic, the deaths of five police officers somehow outweigh the roughly 100 unarmed black people killed annually by police? [Fox News]
- Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance have presented the “Culture Forward” plan to retain and expand the neighborhood’s art scene in the face of large-scale developments. Most excitingly, they’re advocating that the city-owned properties at 31 Lafayette Avenue and 334 Furman Street be renovated into 30,000 square feet of artist studios and are offering affordable housing seminars for arts/culture workers. [Curbed]
- Mark Hudson doesn’t seem to be a fan of the Liverpool Biennial. His chief complaint seems to be that the future of art looks a lot like the 1980s, but the whole curatorial concept of “episodes” sounds bizarre and hokey. Has anyone else seen the show? Sound off in the comments, please. We’re curious. [The Telegraph]
- A French court has indicted dealer Olivier Thomas over charges he participated in the theft and sale of three Picasso paintings from the artist’s stepdaughter Catherine Hutin-Blay. The paintings were discovered at the home of Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who purchased them for €27 million from the Swiss businessman Yves Bouvier, who has been accused and fined for harboring the stolen paintings. Juicy. [artnet News]
- And in a far more bizarre case of international art legal troubles: a Canadian corrections officer, Robert Fletcher, is suing Scottish artist Peter Doig for $5 million because he won’t admit to painting a landscape painting in Fletcher’s possession. According to Fletcher, Doig was arrested for LSD possession as a teenager in Canada in the 1970s and sold the painting (which could now be worth a hefty sum) to the corrections officer when on parole for $100. The plot thickens, as there’s also a now-deceased Canadian with a similar name whose circumstances also fit the narrative. [Daily Mail]
- This is disgusting and also kind of cool: Central Saint Martins student Tina Gorjanc has filed a patent to clone human leather from Alexander McQueen’s DNA to produce a line of leather goods. I guess that human leather “Perfecto” jacket would be cyberpunk as fuck. [Dezeen]
