
More images from the world’s oldest and largest art biennial event, the Venice Biennale, including photos from the American, Egyptian, Iraqi, Israeli and Polish pavilions, view of various social events and other random sightings.


Being a freelance art writer in New York is as outwardly glamorous as it has ever been; that is, not glamorous at all. Sure, I have the freedom to wake up at 10:00 am everyday and traipse around Brooklyn armed with a carton of 27′s, my laptop, and $8 for four cups of coffee and several bananas. A the same time, I also have the freedom to make very little money. Here are some lessons learned while writing about art.
![Post image for Today's New York Protest for Ai Weiwei [UPDATE]](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/aww_protest.8-of-17.jpg)
At 1pm EST today near the Chinese embassy in Manhattan, out by the water at 520 Twelfth Avenue, a congregation of chairs gathered. Art worlders, community members and human rights activists came out in force, to the tune of a few hundred, to protest for the release of Ai Weiwei, the internationally-famed artist who has been detained by the Chinese government for the past two weeks without charge. Click through to check out a photo essay of the protest featuring a diverse group of chairs, Jerry Saltz and protesters young and old (plus a dog concerned for Panda Bears).

This week … what makes an artist a professional, taking Rirkrit Tiravanija’s relational aesthetics for a joyride, Jan Gossaert at the Nat’l Gallery, post-Katrina New Orleans, a history of title design in cinema, stereoscopic pics as GIFs, Eli Broad’s art collection, Google Street View as art & in China …

Though the art world seems to have recovered from crisis mode with the enthusiastic approach to (and beginning) of Art Basel Miami Beach 2010, the remnants of our previous recession-driven apocalypse are still close at hand. Auction successes are blazing beacons of money, but seem shaky and could prove to be singular. Museum administrations have become dangerously insular, commercially driven and intermixed with business and political influences. In comes Jerry Saltz’ Cassandra paean Seeing Out Louder, a collection of the critic’s writing from 2003 to 2009.

A generic survey of New York’s Lower East Side galleries, perused at random on the first week of November, 2010, including observations from a viewer completely outside the art world.
Jerry Saltz often ridicules artists for not going to see enough shows; that they have several cookie-cutter reasons: too busy, not wanting to overexpose themselves in the scene, fear of polluting their unique and singular artistic vision, etc. Well, I set the fear of contaminating my art aside and I went around the New York City’s Lower East Side gallery circuit on Saturday to bring you the report.

ArtReview released its annual Power 100 yesterday, a document that makes a spirited attempt at putting the art world into numbers.
The list held a few surprises, but really, what was most un-surprising about the whole affair was how lame and mainstream it was while frontin’ a snarky facade, insider-style. Because really, no one in the art world knew that Gogo had a lot of pull … right?
Here are a few graphs that try to clarify the bullshit and get at what the Power 100 really means.

Now that Jerry Saltz has proven himself — yet again — to be an attention whore with his stint on Work of Art, I’m starting to like him more … yes, I love a car crash. And just when we were all jonesing for another fix of “What is crazy uncle Jerry up to?” Artist Jennifer Dalton is opening a show today at the Flag Art Foundation called “Making Sense,” which (among other things) is an “ … attempt to make sense of … New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz’s incredibly popular Facebook page.” Let the games begin …

The most striking aspect of social media art is that it contains facets of net.art, by being digital; visual art, by existing on a two-dimensional surface; public art, by existing in spaces used habitually by hundreds of millions of people; and performance art, by being inherently social. Whether the aggregate is greater than its sum remains to be seen …