- Guillermo Gomez-Peńa, Rebecca Belmore and other famous indigenous performance artists gathered last week in Santa Fe for ACTING OUT, a two-day symposium exploring performance in contemporary and traditional native arts. Some of the performances—like Belmore’s The Theatre of the Brave, which closed the symposium—are recapped, alongside the shared common struggles of artists forced to contend with their works being situated in Eurocentric traditions. [Artsy]
- A deal on the contentious plan to redevelop the Brooklyn Heights library has finally been settled. Under the new plan, which will likely be approved by the city council, the library be shrunk in size, but not the miniscule size first proposed and will now offer below market rates to lower income residents. Don’t get too excited—lower income means those who make 80 percent of the median income in the area. The report makes it sound like the developer made a ton of concessions, but it’s hard to believe any of them will make a difference to those who are really struggling in the city. [Capital New York]
- Using data from 2014, StreetEasy calculated that in all of New York City, there were only 575 apartments “affordable” to minimum wage earners who worked full time and spent 40% of their incomes on rent. In order for a renter to afford the city’s median rent of $2,700 a month (using the same dismal math as above) a full-time worker would need to make $38.80/hour. That’s more than 4x the minimum wage. [Curbed]
- Germany’s Center for Persecuted Art has finally opened in the Kunstmuseum Solingen. The exhibition spaces and library will be devoted to artists banned or censored by the Nazi and GDR regimes. [artnet News]
- This is so cool. Ancient sculptures at the Walters Art Museum inspired hairdresser Janet Stephens to investigate women’s coiffing rituals in the Roman empire—a topic that’s mostly absent from history. Now, she’s presenting at archeology conferences and giving Roman beauty tutorials on Youtube. [New York Magazine]
- Ken Johnson wants everyone to go to Philadelphia because the art on view is amazing right now. What gets a nod: Norman Lewis at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, two centuries worth of still life paintings and sculptures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, ornamental antique wrought iron at the Barnes Foundation and Christopher Knowles at the Institute of Contemporary Art. [The New York Times]
- The future of a valuable art collection amassed by Maurice Alain Amon is uncertain due to dramatic divorce proceedings with his soon-to-be-ex-wife,Tracey Hejailan-Amon. This is the couple who made headlines after Maurice’s art consultants tried to remove a Basquiat from their 5th Avenue penthouse. It all comes down to which courts have jurisdiction, as the pair own homes across the globe and filed for divorce in Monaco. [Vanity Fair]
- The community debate surrounding the turnaround on a racially-charged University of Kentucky mural—it was going to be removed, but now the campus faculty has voted in favour of contextualizing its depiction of history—brings up the interesting point about the movement afoot for a national slavery museum. [Hyperallergic]
- North Korea’s state-run art/propaganda factory has increasingly been exporting foreign commissions to dictatorships who lack their own sculptors and painters. Now, they’re opening an entire museum of artwork inspired by life in pre-colonial Khmer at Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat. [Global Post]
- Finally: MoMA, which has made recent strides in its conceptualism acquisitions, has just announced it’ll be mounting a full retrospective on Adrian Piper. [New York Times]
- Tokyo’s onto something: their police force now has a fleet of “interceptor” drones that will go after spying private drones, ensnaring them mid-air in large nets. Now patiently awaiting the artist working in surveillance culture to co-opt this. [The Telegraph]
