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Mexico

Wednesday Links: A Tsunami of Bad News from the White House

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on January 25, 2017

@ThePoke #TrumpArtworks ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ by #DamienHirst… says it all really! pic.twitter.com/ulksCJLgWM

— Neil Wright (@neilmwright) January 23, 2017

Those with an enthusiasm for art history, Twitter, and Photoshop will enjoy #TrumpArtworks. Some of these are pretty good. [Hyperallergic]
It’s not often that dumb sculpture news starts trending on Facebook, but this week it has twice. Yesterday we noted that people really care about a bust of Winston Churchill in the White House. Today, everyone’s talking about this creepy wax sculpture of Ryan Gosling. THIS LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE RYAN GOSLING. People who say otherwise are in denial. He also never really moves his face in movies, so it’s especially life like. [MediaITE]
Japanese art collective Chim Pom have erected a tree house that peeks over the US/Mexico border in Tijuana, labelled “USA VISITORS CENTER”. It’s pretty cute. Let’s hope that tree grows faster than Trump’s stupid wall. [Los Angeles Times]
Yesterday, The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation paid homage to a group of local artists who, a century ago, proposed seceding and forming “The Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square”. Hell, today that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. [Curbed]
“For any artists questioning the purpose of their practice, the plethora and variety, the beauty and creativity, and skill and sophistication in communication presented here at this march is proof that what we do matters.” -Cara Ober on the Women’s March on Washington. Tons of great photos here. [BmoreArt]
Bearcam highlights are providing a much needed distraction from the ongoing tsunami of bad political news. [Explore.org]
Louise Blouin Media continues to bounce employee checks. [The New York Post]
Anyone else feeling depressed about what’s going down at the White House? They’ve put up a page with false crime statistics, removed the climate change page on the website, lied about crowd size at the inauguration, placed a gag order on the EPA, are complaining about non-existent voter fraud (and are threatening nation wide voter ID programs), threatened to invade Iraq, threatened to leave NATO and the UN, given Isreal’s 2500 new settler homes the green light,will lift the ban on black site prisons, reinstated abortion funding restrictions and that’s only about half of it. [The Internet]

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Thursday Links: Mexican Tolerance Museum’s Trump Invitations

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on September 1, 2016

Trump

Ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to Mexico, the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City (which has a program of artworks and exhibitions about war, genocide, racism, etc…) has been posting messages to him on their social media accounts. My favorite: “FOR YOU IT’S FREE.” [Instagram]

The Italian government, which likes to think of itself as a preservation expert, really didn’t want Venice to go on UNESCO’s list of endangered sites. But Venice is pretty endangered, largely from an out-of-control tourism industry. [The Art Newspaper]

Ramin Shokrizade used the economic model of a multiplayer online game to figure out what’s wrong with our IRL economy, years before the recession hit. Basically, property taxes should be higher to keep speculation in check. In the game, factories sat idle because players bought them up with the idea that they would be worth more “money” as the game progressed. In the real world, speculators snatch up real estate and land bank it as well—most of the “abandoned” buildings you see in East Coast cities are actually owned by investors who don’t put them to use because they’re waiting for a higher return on their investment. Taxing the hell out of vacant real estate would incentivize them to put all that inventory back on the market and force a housing/commercial real estate price correction. [Gamasutra]

The First International Contemporary Art Biennial of South America is seeking proposals from artists through September [BIENALSUR]

Is a museum show really the best and most logical capstone for an art award? Amber Eve Anderson makes a convincing argument that it’s not, based on the Baker Artist Awards exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. I agree with her—after seeing the show I thought “this is it?” All but one of the artists would have been better served with programming such as film screenings or performances. [Bmore Art]

In other Baltimore museum news, The Walters is presenting the tour “Drinking Our Way Through History” with local beers and a focus on art-historical imbibing. This looks like fun. [Facebook]

United Talent Agency is opening an art space in LA’s Boyle Heights. But the agency, which represents celebrity artists, claims it won’t function like a typical gallery. Instead, they’ll partner with out-of-town galleries who want to expand their collector base to Los Angeles and use the space for their artists to “experiment”. [The New York Times]

Huh. Dublin painter Kevin Sharkey has been homeless, arrested for destroying artwork, and collected by celebrities including Courtney Love. Now he’s running for president of Ireland. Somebody give this guy an HBO biopic. [artnet News]

Good Lord. Brooklyn Museum Chief Curator Nancy Spector gets up at 3 AM to write, because that’s the time she can find the quiet and solitude she needs to do it. That is drive. An interview with her at New York Magazine—she is intense. [New York Magazine]

The L Train’s planned disruption in services are more than three years away, and companies are scrambling now to profit off it. Uber has proposed a temporary deregulation of their services that would allow commuters to use a car pool app. We’re not sure how to feel about this. It may well be useful during that time, but it also will compete with the city’s own bus services, which as seen in other cities, has the effect lof eroding those services and creating class systems. Once we have this app will we be able to get rid of it? [Politico]

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Wednesday Links: Yoko in D.F., Cats in Worcester, Art-Porn in Dallas

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on February 3, 2016

Gustave Courbet, “Woman with a Cat,” 1864. Now on view at the Worcester Art Museum.

Somehow we missed this in our guide to D.F. events, but Yoko Ono has an exhibition that opens today at the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia: Mexico, Tierra de Esperanza (Land of Hope). It’s not too far from the art fairs, so if you’re in town, check it out! (Link is in Spanish) [El Universal]

Stylist Ursula Goff does hair inspired by art history—from acerbic and wavy in tribute to Edvard Munch to flat-blue and big like a Lichtenstein woman. [Mashable]

The Worcester Art Museum summer exhibition, Meow, promises an exploration of the feline as an art inspiration, pulling cat-related works from their collection. The show also will include a self-guided “cat walk” through the Museum and a “Cats-In-Residence” programme promising an “unorthodox” human/cat installation. I love cats, but I think I agree with Tyler Green’s assessment on this: “hard to imagine how this isn’t a substantial, mindless pander.” [Worcester Art Museum via @TylerGreenDC]

Twenty-first century progress: rainbow bagels now exist. [Buzzfeed]

LACMA’s long, strange trip to acquire a 1940s zoot suit for its upcoming historical survey on men’s fashion. [Los Angeles Times]

Dallas Contemporary has a new exhibition Black Sheep Feminism that features the work of Joan Semmel, Anita Steckel, Betty Tompkins and Cosey Fanni Tutti—artists who embraced t”he “pornographic” at the height of anti-sex second-wave feminism. From Sarah Galo: “Perhaps the greatest testament of Black Sheep Feminism’s power is that the outrage is irrelevant now for young feminists; sex positivity is the order of the day.” [The Guardian]

Related: June Mattingly, one of Dallas’s great supporters of art, has died. The former gallerist promoted the work of Texan artists, as well as started the Dallas Art Dealers Association and was a founding member of the Emergency Artists’ Support League. [Dallas Observer]

Belinda Lanks thinks we should all accept the new, “meh” Penn Station plans because “we don’t care about poetry when we’re stuck on an Acela arriving from Washington and train traffic is preventing us from making a meeting in Midtown.” To which I say: speak for yourself. [Bloomberg]

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