Hrag Vartanian is editor-at-large, founding editor, and co-founder of Hyperallergic.
Art
While most people's Beat Nite started last Friday night, mine began the night before at Norte Maar, where artist Austin Thomas had bitch slapped surprised me with the bombshell that she took the liberty of designing the Hippie Potluck [http://hyperallergic.com/16316/austin-thomas-hosts-hippie-potluc
Opinion
A Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) billboard for the upcoming Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting exhibition got a little wardrobe change earlier this week. The question is, who did it? A street artist or the MIA's PR team? Wait … what?
Art
Anyone who attended high school in the Western world during the last few decades knows what Goth culture is. The one-room contemporary Flemish show in Andrea Rosen's Gallery2 space, Flemish Masters, That's Life, instantly transported me back to high school and my run-ins with the weirdly morose trib
News
Peggy Guggenheim's gift to Iowa has been saved (for now), according to the Daily Iowan … On Monday, Rep. Scott Raecker, R-Urbandale, the head of the Iowa House Appropriations Committee, withdrew the controversial proposal, which would have forced the University of Iowa Museum of Art to sell the $140
Opinion
This week on Required Reading … Thornton Dial is getting ready for a major show in Indianapolis, Spy magazine is posted online by Google, thinking about animated GIFs as art, is the US military creating a fake online "army," visualizing art thefts, Linda Benglis profiled in the New York Times
News
A cornerstone of what was designed to be New York's equivalent of Baltimore’s Harbor Place and Boston’s Quincy Market, the South Street Seaport Museum in lower Manhattan is in trouble. The museum has put 32 members of its staff on unpaid furloughs and closed the Bowne & Company Stationers letterpres
Andy Warhol
Tomorrow, Hyperallergic will join WNYC, ARTnews Magazine and architecture and literary experts Mark Lamster and Bryan Waterman to live-tweet MoMA's screening of the 485-minute duration classic, Empire (1964). For a complete list of tweeps to follow for the exercise in duration art reporting, discuss
News
Animal NY reported that the Russian art collective Voina has been shortlisted for the Russian state prize for contemporary art for the memorable phallus they painted on a drawbridge opposite KBG headquarters in St Petersburg. But the group doesn't want the prize.
Art
After seeing Lynn Maliszewski's report from the Hermann Nitsch show at the Mike Weiss Gallery in Chelsea, I decided it was necessary that I attend at least part of the Action Painting by the veteran Viennese Actionist.
News
British news sources are reporting that nearly a dozen protesters "set off alarms and threw fake £50 notes in the air at Sotheby's before unfurling a large banner bearing the words 'orgy of the rich.'" Another protest outside staged a mock auction of public workers. The actions were in response to t
![Banksy/Oscar Drama [UPDATE 3] New Banksy in LA? Yup, 3 So Far…Make that 4](/content/images/size/w600/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2011/02/banksyoscar-home.jpg)
News
As soon as those of us at Hyperallergic heard that Banksy was nominated for an Academy Award, we knew that drama had to follow. Here's the latest. The Academy had to grapple with what to do with an anonymous winner.
Opinion
This week on Required Reading … a look back to Napoleon in Egypt … a history of mural whitewashing in Los Angeles … the preservation of the Watts Towers … Steven Heller tracks dowing the master style guide to the Master Race … what is "The Future of Art" … are you ready for the Singularity?