- It’s the 40th anniversary of the glorious Centre Pompidou, and to celebrate the offices of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers have released a bevy of gorgeous archival images. One includes their riverside inflatable office, which looks like something out of A Clockwork Orange if it were a movie about a fun slumber party I would want to go to. [Dezeen]
- Sean Spicer actually retweeted his own profile in The Onion, which labelled his job distributing “Robust and Clearly Articulated Misinformation”. For once, Spicer and the rest of the world see eye-to-eye on reality. [New York Magazine]
- Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova will be speaking tonight at JHU. If you’re in Baltimore, go see her. She’s a gem we need now more than ever. [Johns Hopkins University]
- Iranian collector Mohammed Afkhami has loaned an impressive slew of contemporary works from his country to Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum for the exhibition “Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians.” That’s the kind of cultural exchange we sadly can’t look forward to in the United States anymore. [artnet News]
- Contemporary Art Review has put out a somewhat vague call for works from artists worldwide. [NOT RANDOM ART]
- The Thompson Family Foundation has given a staggering $10 million to the Museum of the City of New York to keep the exhibit New York at its Core “open to the public from now until Trump starts a nuclear war.” [Observer]
- Anish Kapoor has joined the anti-Trump movement with a self-portrait: “I Like America and America Doesn’t Like Me.” It’s a play on Joseph Beuys’ 1974 performance “I Like America and America Likes Me,” which appropriately began at Kennedy Airport. [Blouin Artinfo]
- Art blog Saint Lucy has launched an online bookstore. Looking forward to seeing this grow! [Saint Lucy]
- Holy crap! The young handyman from cult classic Grey Gardens, Jerry Torre, is an all-grown up artist now. His work is on view at Geary Contemporary until February 3rd. [The Art Newspaper]
- What would happen if Trump cut all federal funding for the arts? Realistically, it might not be too much of a dent in the big-city art world, where grants from private organizations and deep-pocketed institutions keep things afloat. Those who would suffer the most would be rural Americans (i.e. Trump voters), who rely largely on government arts funding for basic things like radio stations. I’ve heard what those people listen to on the radio. I say screw em like they would us over a Chris Ofili show. [The New York Times]
- Why are the Republicans constantly going after the damn NEA? “Because art is one of the few things that has the power to liberate, to overthrow, to topple, to rebel, to express the forbidden, to cut the tyrants down to size? Perhaps it is a sort of secret language, only for the ‘elite’: But in this case, the elite are not the wealthy. These elite are those with open, rich and thoughtful minds.” [Salon]
- Activists are already calling for another general strike, this one on February 17th, the day before Presidents Day. Hell yeah! Let’s make this a monthly thing. [Mic]
