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historic preservation

Wednesday Links: Lionel Shriver in Defense of Cultural Appropriation

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on September 14, 2016

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A must-read: the full text of Lionel Shriver’s talk about identity politics that ignited a firestorm of controversy at the Brisbane Writers Festival. It’s worth reading in its entirety, because the most cringe-worthy “can she say that?” moments are offset by smart observations on the nature of “identity”, empathy, outrage culture, and how we challenge ourselves as artists. [The Guardian]
Finally, some good news from the MTA: bar cars are coming back to the Metro North New Haven Line. This might make life a little more more bearable for all the art world people who commute back-and-forth to/from Yale. [WTNH]

In other public transit news, one London Underground station is now covered in pictures of adorable cats. [Love Meow]

Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin’s foundation has donated more than 250 pieces of Russian artwork to the Centre Pompidou. Much of the collection is from the 1970s, when the Soviet version of Pop Art, “Sots Art”, emerged. [Washington Post]

“Not only is Murry an artist who enters the contest annually, but in the film she’s featured alongside her blind, beret-wearing, long-haired dachshund, Hallie, also a painter. ‘I thought I had a pretty good year last year with my art,” Murry says in the film, “but my blind dog sold more art than I did.’” This review of the documentary “Million Dollar Duck,” about “the Super Bowl of Wildlife Art” is one of the weirdest things to read today. [The Seattle Times]

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is finally considering the creation of a Morningside Heights historic district. The best part of this idea is that it would mainly protect residential structures, which will hopefully preserve some relatively affordable Manhattan housing stock. [Curbed]

Last week, residents of glass luxury apartment towers overlooking the Tate Modern complained that museum goers are using the observation deck on the Tate’s new expansion to spy on them. First of all, is this really a problem? Secondly, did people not understand the concept of two-way transparency when they opted to spend ungodly amounts of money to live in apartments with floor-to-ceiling windows in the middle of London? [Dezeen]

TripAdvisor has named the Metropolitan Museum of Art the world’s top museum. Apparently they weren’t too concerned about that logo change. [artnet News]

Did Edgar Degas make a plaster cast of “Little Dancer,” discovered in 2004? Art historian, Gregory Hedberg says yes, Arthur Beale, the retired chairman of the department of conservation and collections management at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, says no. But now Beale has decided he thinks the piece is authentic and will give a talk on why at the Alliance Française this Thursday. [The New York Times]

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Tuesday Links: Umbilical Cord Art is a Thing

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on September 13, 2016

“Umbilical cord art” is now a trend, according to Buzzfeed.

Strangest headline of the day: “Why I Won’t Judge Women For Making Umbilical Cord Art”. [Refinery29]

Berlin’s legendary nightclub Berghain has been deemed a “high art” institution by German courts. This entitles the club to pay a lower tax rate than an “entertainment” business. ARTnews defends this “art v.s. entertainment” decision by pointing out that Art21 host Claire Danes is a fan of Berghain. But seriously, cities should be doing more to help keep their nightlife afloat. [ARTnews]

Alec Baldwin has escalated his dispute with Mary Boone and is now suing the gallery over a Ross Bleckner painting. Baldwin had approached Boone in the hopes of acquiring Bleckner’s 1996 work “Sea and Mirror.” Instead of tracking that down, Boone just sold Baldwin another, identical version of the painting, also by Bleckner. [artnet News]

Tommy Hilfiger is throwing a fashion-show-cum-carnival on a pier. This is just one of the “unconventional” venues for NYFW shows this year, ranging from public spaces to Department of Sanitation salt storage sheds (yes, really). [Curbed]

Melania Trump used $20,000 of the Donald J. Trump Foundation’s funds to buy a six-foot-tall portrait of the Donald by “speed painter” Michael Israel. To be fair, this was at an auction benefitting a charity for children. But The Washington Post reports that it’s one of many shady dealings at the Foundation. [Hyperallergic]

The Finnish government has refused state funding for the €130 million Guggenheim Helsinki. Several of the politicians who opposed the new museum outpost argued that they would support a privately-funded Guggenheim, but that the Finnish government’s share of construction costs would not be an appropriate use of state funds. [Dezeen]

10 songs that help Pitchfork staffers get shit done. This is the epitome of a music nerd/writer listening list—mostly instrumental and heavy on drone. Pretty much the opposite of anything we’d use to motivate, expect perhaps Daft Punk’s Alive and Rhythm & Sound’s The Versions. [Pitchfork]

Democratic New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo shies away from criticizing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by name. [Politico]

Shortly after the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro contrived to convert the grounds of an elite golf course into a series of national art schools, housed in creative architecture designed around economic restrictions such as an embargo on imported US steel. Unfortunately, the campus became abandoned and neglected. Today, it’s one of many culturally significant sites in the country that face preservation challenges from the coming tourism boom. It would be so great to see this complex restored and put to use as an art school. Knowing the impact tourism has had on other islands in the Caribbean, though, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see the site ironically returned to use as a golf course, unfortunately. [The Art Newspaper]

Chinese social media users are bashing painter Guo Jia, accusing her of destroying historic frescos she had been tasked with restoring. We can’t find any before-or-after images of her work, but is this the Chinese equivalent of Spain’s “Beast Jesus” in-the-making? [China Daily]

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Thursday Links: MICA to Replace Historic Buildings With Condo-Lookalike

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on August 25, 2016

MICA is demolishing the 1914 buildings that house the school’s Printmaking department and replacing them with this ugly, out-of-scale thing from GWWO Architects. It’s not surprising they opted to render it at night.

Mikolai Napieralski—a former employee of the Qatari National Museum—provides a surreal behind-the-scenes account of the tiny nation’s rise and fall in the art world. Qatar’s former Emir and his daughter Sheikha Mayassa went on an ambitious spending spree to bring Western art professionals, museum outposts, and crazily expensive exhibitions to Doha. All of this was made possible by oil wealth and underpaid foreign labor. Now, that money is gone, and there’s a new Emir on the throne. [Quartz]

With the re-opening of SFMOMA, now the country’s largest modern and contemporary art museum, and a small but loyal collector base, is San Francisco poised to be a major art capital? The article briefly touches on one obstacle: international blue chip galleries are opening branches, but the city is just too expensive for artists and artist-run spaces. [W Magazine]

Ew. You can now buy Truman Capote’s ashes at auction. [artnet News]

Painter Timothy Desmond is suing the state of California over its ban of selling or displaying images of the Confederate flag. His paintings of Civil War battles have been rejected from the Fresno State Fair because they feature the flag. Okay, that law is kinda ridiculous… but so is this painting. [The Art Newspaper]

Italy’s horrible earthquake has destroyed countless historic sites, artworks, and ancient buildings. This is pretty much almost too depressing to read. [The Guardian]

Artist and Bad at Sports contributor Amanda Browder has been wrapping old buildings in Buffalo with fabric as part of a public art initiative led by The Albright Knox. The piece is called “Spectral Locus” and is intended to create a sense of connection amongst viewers. [WGRZ]

Times Square Arts has unveiled a new installation from German artist and architect J. Mayer H that pays homage to the hyper-gentrified zone’s sexier pre-Giuliani era. Titled “XXX Times Square With Love,” the piece comprises a series of recliners in the shape of Xs, which is a fitting commentary on the area’s transformation from porno mecca to sunbathing tourist trap. [Curbed]

MICA is demolishing its printmaking department, housed in a series of buildings from 1914 in a historic district, and replacing it with a product design center that looks like bland, cheap condos. What the fuck? What will this mean for the alley behind the Mount Royal Tavern? [Baltimore Fishbowl]

This interview between multispecies ethnographer Eben Kriksey and artist Katherine Behar is nuts. They discuss Behar’s show, which includes a performance by two Roombas, and the questions look like this: The Roomba really isn’t a species as such. A Roomba can’t fuck another Roomba and make baby Roombas. In that way a plant is different from a Roomba? [Bad at Sports]

The Tate Modern is hiring assistant curators, at about half of the average London salary. The positions pay less than the museum’s cafe pays chefs. [Hyperallergic]

The impending shutdown of the L train, the oncoming development of the Cornell Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island, and the proposed Midtown East rezoning set to affect Manhattan stations along the 7 line is leading some to speculate that property further into Queens will increase in value. [Commercial Observer]

Speaking of Queens, the feud between Queens City Councilman Jimmy Van Bremar and Mayor Bill de Blasio continues. Five days after de Blasio told reporters he was going to reach out to Van Bremar and give him a stern talking to about affordable housing, he still hasn’t done reached out. Van Bremar is pissed. And rightly so. The councilman has has said will not approve a building of affordable housing units until the developer gets its act together and makes the repairs on the building it runs across the street. He has also said that these units are not actually affordable. Finally, a councilman willing to say what everyone knows—the affordable housing plan is media plan, not an actual plan. [Politico]

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GIF of the Day: DF’s Growing Pains

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 22, 2016

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We’re not sure who made the above GIF, but it was making the social media rounds amongst the gallerists Paddy and I met when we visited Material Art Fair in Mexico City a few weeks ago. It’s a pretty obvious commentary on the metropolis’s growing pains—sometimes this enormous city feels like it’s bursting at the seams, and it’s often a struggle to accommodate the building boom while respecting the amazing architectural heritage here. There’s no other city in the world that has both ancient pyramids and modernist masterpieces so futuristic that they served as filming locations for Total Recall.

I thought about this GIF today, when I saw this video (just made available in English), and petition, about preserving the 1979 Espacio Escultórico. It’s the city’s largest public artwork, designed by artists and architects Helen Escobedo, Manuel Felguérez, Mathias Goeritz, Hersúa, Sebastian and Federico Silva, and Roberto Acuna. Somewhere between pre-Columbian architecture, brutalism, and land art, it’s one of those totally “only in DF” spaces that make this city so magical. Unfortunately the sculpture is located on the campus of UNAM, a university that hasn’t maintained the space well (despite being a UNESCO world heritage site) and has constructed a highrise that blocks views of the volcanic landscape essential to the artists’ intent.

Save El Espacio EscultóricoThe Espacio Escultórico, México City’s largest public sculpture is under attack. Help us save this modern art masterpiece and its natural landscape by signing our petition: https://www.change.org/p/salvemos-el-espacio-escultórico#noH #salvemoselEspacioEscultorico #4pisosmenosalh

Posted by Salvemos el Espacio Escultórico on Monday, February 22, 2016

Anyway, part of Mexico City’s allure is that it’s a city that’s always changing but has pockets that feel timeless. I signed this petition, and I’d encourage others to do so too. It would be nice if UNAM could work out a compromise between growth and preservation that honors the uniqueness of its existing cultural assets. It would be a move that could set a precedent for other sensitive developments in the capital—because one day, it’s inevitable that DF’s sprawling skyline will advance toward Teotihuacan. And no one wants a view of condos from their pyramid.

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