Posts tagged as:

ows

Artists Could Be, Should Be, Teamsters

by Whitney Kimball on April 9, 2014
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Chicago art handlers take steps to unionize.

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Berlin Biennale May Adopt OWS’s Horizontal Power Structure [UPDATE]

by Whitney Kimball on June 18, 2012
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After an upset over what Occupy Museums refers to as their “human zoo” portion of the Berlin Biennale, the exhibition has agreed to discuss adopting a horizontal power structure.

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Whitney Press Release Pranksters Strike Again

by Whitney Kimball on May 24, 2012
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The Guerilla website franchisers over at Whitney2012.org have issued another mock announcement under the guise of the Whitney. It’s a doozy. The fake museum claims they’ve taken control of the fake site, in order to preserve the honor of their sponsors.

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OWS and The Art Workers Coalition: An Ongoing History

by Will Brand and Paddy Johnson on April 6, 2012
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A little extracurricular reading has introduced us to Lucy Lippard’s essay “The Art Workers Coalition: Not a History.” First published in 1970 by Studio International, the piece feels strangely familiar in light of Occupy’s work. As it happens, their Arts and Labor group uploaded the full PDF to their site, so the essay can be read in its entirety.

We’ve excerpted a quote after the jump we felt was particularly relevant. History repeats itself.

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People Had Problems With the Art Market Eighty Years Ago

by Whitney Kimball on March 1, 2012
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Still think the Art Workers Coalition were the first to object publicly to the art market? Nay. Way back in the 1920s, the New Yorker’s first art critic, Murdock Pemberton, was a vocal opponent of the starving artist ideal. Many of his writings echo those of contemporary critics and, more recently, Occupy Wall Street groups. His granddaughter, Sally Pemberton, has spent the past two years mining his archives and recently published a scrapbook portrait of Pemberton and his peers. The following are pieces from the New Yorker and lecture notes which Ms. Pemberton found in her grandfather’s suitcase in 2009.

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Arts & Labor Calls For an End to Whitney Biennial, Pranking Follows

by Whitney Kimball on February 27, 2012
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This morning, Artinfo reports two protests staged against the Whitney Biennial, which opens to the public on Thursday. Firstly, the OWS Arts and Labor group has sent a letter calling for the end of the Biennial in 2014, indicating that it “upholds a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers.” Then a credible press release was sent out under the museum’s name and logo, announcing a break with two of its sponsors — Sotheby’s and Deutsche Bank — the morning of the press preview.

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Professors, Artists, Workers, and Activists Rally Inside MoMA

by Whitney Kimball on January 16, 2012
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Friday night, Occupy Museums conducted an exceptionally clear and efficient GA under Sanja Ivekovic’s controversial feminist monument Lady Rosa of Luxembourg. Why we need a new ABC No Rio, a continued focus on lock-outs, and how Free Fridays were won by demonstrators forty years ago.

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The Year in Brief: Good Riddance To Mainstream Media

by Whitney Kimball on December 30, 2011
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John Hockenberry, Jim VandeHei, Michael Wolff debate “Good Riddance to Mainstream Media” against Katrina vanden Heuvel, David Carr, and Phil Bronstein. This may not have been the groundbreaking internet video of 2011, but I thought about it often while reading this year’s (albeit art) internet highlights.

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Class Tension Palpable at Sotheby’s Auction Protest

by Whitney Kimball on November 10, 2011
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Sotheby's held its best auction in three years last night, while just outside its heavily-guarded headquarters at 1334 York Avenue over a hundred students, union workers, and Occupy Wall Street protesters picketed the auction house’s lockout of 42 union art handlers. Chanting such teamster slogans such as “What's disgusting? Union busting!” and blowing whistles in front of a pair of inflatable mascots – one a rat, the other a fat cat squeezing a worker in its fist – the protests had seemingly little effect on the auction, which cleared an estimated $315.8 million and exceeded the high estimate of $270.8 million. The art handlers have been locked out by the auction company over a contract dispute that began July 29.

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#OWS Arts and Culture Working Group Responds to Artist Space Intervention

by Paddy Johnson on October 26, 2011
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The Occupy Wall Street Arts and Culture working group has released an official statement in response to the Artist Space intervention. Unsurprisingly, “Artists Take Artist Space” is in no way connected to the Arts and Culture working group.

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