Luhring Augustine holds forth, a garrison mirage, on Bushwick’s Knickerbocker Avenue. After several hours of 56 Bogart bohemia, that grey facade, all frosted glass and sleek surveillance, seemed less sinister than inviting, the kind of place a down-to-earth oligarch might pass the time after putting their name down at Roberta’s.
Mostafa Heddaya
Mostafa Heddaya is the former managing editor of Hyperallergic.
Posted inNews
Brooklyn Councilmember Levin’s Art Agenda
In a recent announcement, New York City Councilmember Stephen Levin “signed on” to One Percent for Culture, an initiative of the Fund for the City of New York. Reached by phone yesterday afternoon, Councilmember Stephen Levin told Hyperallergic, “The arts are an important part of the fabric of New York City as a whole, and this is especially true in my district … I have a very high percentage of artists who live and work here and the percentage seems to grow every year.”
Posted inArt
iBiennale: The Venice App Roundup
Just like any self-respecting modern spectacle, the Venice Biennale has spawned a healthy coterie of iOS apps. It isn’t entirely clear how large the market is for these apps, given the scale of the Biennale and the attendant difficulty of meaningfully indexing the shows.
Posted inNews
Free Cooper Union Mounts Renegade Art Show
New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz preceded me in Jamshed Bharucha’s office by only a few minutes. He was there, as I was, for tonight’s opening of Step Down, the Free Cooper Union-organized companion to the school’s official year-end Show Up exhibition. Saltz’s appearance at the year-end show of one of Manhattan’s leading art schools is not a surprise, but his signing of Free Cooper Union’s statement of no confidence (as well as their guestbook) was just another blow to what by now can only be characterized as the Cooper Union PR piñata.
Posted inBooks
In Faygo Veritas: Shooting the Juggalos
Scorn for redneck culture — often dressed up as ironic appreciation — has long been a standby of American humor, a mechanism by which socioeconomic tension is reduced to a soothing cascade of condescension. It’s a classic indulgence of middle class banality, kind of like a mall fountain, but more cruel.
Posted inNews
Cooper Union Update: Trustee Culture and Leak
An exhausted-sounding Peter Cafiero, outgoing President of Cooper Union’s Alumni Association, took to the Rose Auditorium stage on Monday night to introduce the annual Alumni Council Forum, noting that “hopefully this will continue the process of better connecting everyone, and build a community which we of course desperately need to keep doing.” Despite the future promise embodied by Cafiero’s recently-elected successor, Kevin Slavin, desperation is a good starting point as we enter the third week of Free Cooper Union’s occupation of President Jamshed Bharucha’s office.
Posted inArt
Klaus Biesenbach #ArtTalk Recap
On Monday, a sold-out crowd turned out for our inaugural ArtTalk with Klaus Biesenbach. The event could not have been a more auspicious launch for the #ArtTalk series, with which we hope to host edifying speakers engaged with the world of visual culture in unique and provocative ways.
Posted inOpinion
Watch an Artist Have a Meltdown and Destroy a Canvas With Panache
Most folks, most days, enjoy turning their internet dial to Hyperallergic for incisive news and commentary that elevates the discourse on art. And it is with the utmost respect for that sensibility that we bring to you this gem of a mid-critique artist breakdown, a true must-see for any cultured person/viral video meltdown enthusiast.
Posted inNews
Knoedler Gallery Canoodler Glafira Rosales Arrested for Allegedly Hiding $12.5M
Glafira Rosales, the Long Island art dealer who has long been under investigation for allegedly selling counterfeit artworks by major 20th century figures, was arrested today and charged with tax fraud connected with $12.5 million of income secreted in Spanish accounts.
Posted inNews
Bogarting the Flame: Pratt Students Get a Venue at Bushwick Open Studios
Thanks to further largess from the arts community, Pratt Institute’s Flameproof student exhibition will be coming to Bushwick Open Studios on June 1 and 2.
Posted inArt
So Close, Yet So Far: Tunisia, Art, and Revolution
It has been sixty years since the last Tunisian artist, Abdelaziz Gorgi, was formally shown in New York, but that’s the first of two claims to history made by The After Revolution, a series of exhibitions showcasing Tunisian artists at White Box on the Lower East Side — the focus of this review — as well as 5Pointz in Long Island City and the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) Gallery on the Upper East Side. The exhibition’s second and more obvious claim to history is as a comprehensive engagement with the question of revolution as it stands in Tunisia two years after Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself and brought down a tyrant.
Posted inArt
Why Won’t the MTA Allow This Artist to Make Art? [UPDATE]
One February evening, Brooklyn-based artist Enrico Miguel Thomas carried his drawing board a few paces away from where he had been illustrating from a counter in Grand Central — leaving behind a bag full of markers and a folded-up easel. After a brief moment of gathering the necessary detail on his subject, which he characterizes as having taken no longer than five minutes, he turned to find a swarm of police officers gathering near his bags. After approaching them, claiming the bags, and identifying himself as an artist, the MTA police officers insisted on “clearing” his bags with a K-9 bomb-sniffing dog.
