William Arnett

A post shared by Sharon Needles (@sharonneedlespgh) on Jun 6, 2017 at 9:57am PDT

Yep. Sharon Needles has recreated the infamous decapitated Trump Kathy Griffin photo. This is so much better than watching celebrities try to out-do each other with the ice bucket challenge. Here are our thoughts about how the “original” wasn’t very. [Instagram]

Speaking of stupid Trump-related art controversies, the hardworking journalists at FOX News have caused an upstate high schooler’s art project to be censored. A student at Shenendehowa High School invited classmates to write on black and white headshots of the president. Of course, those statements largely comprised profanities. Ever desperate for clickbait to feed the endless moral outrage machine, FOX News somehow caught wind of this nontroversy and decided to pursue it as a “story”. The school ended up taking the project down. We live in strange, dumb times. [Times Union]

Here’s some promising news out of California. In the wake of the Ghost Ship fire, state lawmakers are debating ways to guarantee safe affordable live/work spaces for artists. The proposed SB 305 would even allocate $20 million to help fix-up artists lofts. [KQED]
Former head of the FBI James Comey testifying now! [The Internet]
The Souls Grown Deep Foundation is helping museums integrate art by self-taught African American artists from the South into their collections. The foundation was established by art historian William Arnett and his sons, and once they have dispersed their own collection to institutions, will focus on education and other artist support initiatives. [The Art Newspaper]
Chinese artist and political dissident Ai Weiwei, in collaboration with architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron has an installation up at the Park Armory that uses infrared recordings, face recognition software, and a small fleet of hovering drones. It sounds creepy. [New York Daily News]
Katie Hollander resigns from her position as Executive Director at Creative Time after only one year in the position. We can’t say we’re surprised. Hollander is a contentious figure in the non-profit world and her leadership style has often quietly raised eyebrows. [artnet News]

Steve McQueen finally weighs in on #OscarsSoWhite, calling it a “watershed moment”, but notes how there’s also a lack of diversity among film set crews: “It’s like Johannesburg in 1976, if you go behind the scenes … I made two British movies [Hunger and Shame] and I never met one person of color in any below-the-line situations. Not one. No black, no Asian, no one. Like, hello? What’s going on here? Very odd.” [artnet News]

Carolina A. Miranda profiles the stARTup Art Fair, the “new kid” at LA’s art fair weekend. The year-old San Francisco fair focuses on artists without representation, and will be taking over rooms in Hollywood’s Highland Gardens Hotel. [Los Angeles Time]

Thorton Dial, the self-taught artist best known for his assemblages, has died. After years working as a metal worker for the Pullman Standard boxcar factory, Dial was “discovered” by artist Lonnie Holley and then collector William Arnett in the late 1980s. He was the subject of a 2011-2012 retrospective at the High Museum of Art, and his work is owned by institutions like the MoMA, the Whitney and the Smithsonian. [Atlantic Journal-Constitution via Artforum]

Catherine Opie’s portrait project of Elizabeth Taylor’s home finally opened at the MOCA Pacific Design Center last weekend, which means more photos have been released via the ongoing media coverage, including a detail of Taylor’s cowboy boots collection and touchingly her large pile of diamond and crystal-encrusted AIDS red ribbon brooches. [Slate]

Open call alert: Queens Museum is now accepting applications for the Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship Program for Emerging Artists. The fellowship awards three emerging NYC-based emerging artists a $20,000 grant each, as well as professional development and curatorial support. The fellowship begins this March and culminates in an exhibition at the Museum in March 2017. Deadline is Feb 1. [Queens Museum]

“But where cringing celebrity optimization meets big money, can there be serious art?” Here’s the expected critical lambast of Ai Weiwei’s installation for Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche’s display windows in Paris. [Hyperallergic]

Mansudae, the North Korean art factory (the world’s largest!), has been quietly exporting its own brand of Socialist Realism to dictatorships the world over. They have a gallery in Beijing’s arts district, across the street from Pace! [The New York Times]

There’s concern that Istanbul contemporary art center SALT has been forced to close one of its locations due to pressure from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s increasingly conservative government. SALT director Vasif Kortun claims the closure is the result of missing building permits. Anyone in Istanbul know what’s going on? [artnet News]

We’ve talked a lot about Sarah Meyohas’ residency in 303 Gallery, where she’s been trading stocks and translating the results into paintings. Now, those paintings are done. I (Michael) think they’re pretty anticlimactic/obvious. But they’re selling and got featured on a cable news finance segment, so mission accomplished? [CNBC]

Andrew Nunes reflects on Lucy + Jorge Orta’s exhibition Antarctica at Jane Lombard Gallery. The show is the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of research and utopian-minded projects on the icy continent, beginning with 2007’s The End of the World Biennale. This looks fun. [The Creator’s Project]

Thursday Links: All Eyes on Comey