Posts tagged as:
gallery dinners
by Emily Colucci Rea McNamara on June 1, 2016
- In a story straight out of The Maltese Falcon, a five million dollar gold and diamond-encrusted eagle sculpture was stolen right out of the hands of its owner Ron Shore in British Columbia. Shore, who also auditioned 11 times for Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, told CNN: “Without the eagle, I have nothing.” With an emerald from the Spanish Atocha shipwreck, the eagle was strangely constructed as a marketing ploy for The World’s Greatest Treasure Hunt, a book series planned to raise money for breast cancer. [CNN]
- Artist Darja Bajagić is crying censorship over a decision by Bucharest’s Galeria Nicodim to not show her artwork Bucharest Molly, a fountain depicting a woman wearing jeans that say “Heil Hitler” holding a teddy bear emblazoned with a swastika, in an exhibition on the aesthetics of evil. In a long statement posted to her Tumblr page, Bajagić skewers the gallery’s understanding of the work, exclaiming “your evil act of censorship justifies exactly what it is that Molly is reflecting. Your unwillingness to allow a light to be shone onto a looming darkness gives life to the very darkness you desired to repress.” [ARTnews]
- LACMA’s associate curator of contemporary art, Jarrett Gregory, and Eric Shiner, the Warhol Museum’s director, have been appointed curators of the 2017 Armory Show. [Artforum]
- An interview with William Villalongo, one of the artists in the Brooklyn Museum’s Disguise: Masks and Global African Art show, elaborates on how European modernists appropriation of African masks became a point of reference for his paper collage masks. “The masquerade is a place of fiction. The viewer’s imagination is an important part of its activation,” he says, believing it is ultimately “a way to think through such historical gestures.” [After Nyne Magazine]
- Tate director Nicholas Serota is not a fan of Guggenheim-style global satellite expansions for museums: “a gallery should be fundamentally rooted in its community—it should grow out of that community and reflect that community—and if you parachute in, I think it’s extremely difficult to achieve. You can make a visitor attraction, but it’s very, very difficult to create something that really grows out of the soil.” [The Art Newspaper]
- LA’s infamous homeless neighborhood, Skid Row, continues to be mired in rezoning politics and remains a contentious civic issue as the downtown core becomes revitalized but ignores the area’s entrenched poverty issues. Local artist Rosten Woo and activist-performance art group the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) are creating a faux nine-hole golf course in response — which received $50,000 from the Mike Kelley Foundation — to explore the area’s history of zoning, and how the city organizes itself. [Guardian]
- Doreen Carvajal profiles the Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art (MIMA), a museum of “culture 2.0” i.e. street art, skateboarding and other urban art, located in Molenbeek, a largely Muslim neighborhood of Brussels. Opened in the wake of the terror attacks in the city, MIMA aims to engage the local community–many of whom feel isolated by Belgian society–including a cultural exchange with a nearby boxing academy. [New York Times]
- Invited to a fancy gallery dinner but feeling too riddled with social anxiety to attend? Artnet News presents a series of 11 tips to survive gallery dinners, which seem too general and bland such as “don’t be a schlub” and “don’t flake out.” What about Emily’s go-to strategy–drink too much free wine and blurt out regrettable comments? [Artnet News]
- Peter Beard settled his lawsuit with model and artist Natalie White whose upcoming show made AFC’s Must See Events this week. White sued the well-known photographer claiming that she spent her life-savings helping Beard create a series of Polaroid collages with iconic models like Iman. Beard and his wife counter-sued, alleging White plied Beard with booze and drugs to sign a business contract in a nightclub. [New York Observer]
- The last time Emily went to a DIS installation, she found herself drinking Red Bull and vodka out of a Starbucks cup shoved into a Croc. This year, DIS curates their “first and only biennial,” the 9th Berlin Biennale. Titled “The Present In Drag,” the collective takes to Artforum to discuss their aesthetic influences and curatorial approach to the Biennale, which will likely involve copious ironic consumer products. [Artforum]
Read the full article →
