Up until now most of the discontent being expressed in the art world has emanated from artists who were the first to feel the impact of the recession and critics who see the art world and the art market being conflated as being a bad thing … but now collectors and galleries are starting to vent.
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Hitler’s Failed Art Portfolio Goes to Auction
We’ve all heard about Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s stint a failed artist but now we get to judge for ourselves as the portfolio he submitted to the Vienna Academy of Art is going to auction.
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“All Your Tweet Are Belong to Us” — @librarycongress
First MoMA acquires “@” and now the Library of Congress (aka @librarycongress) is acquiring every tweet since March 2006. It’s always great to see institutions look past the monetary value of things and elevate the bonds we all share. So, next time someone luddite asks you “Who do you think is interested in what you had for breakfast?” You can confidently respond, “The Library of Congress, asshole!”
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Graphic Design Insanity Over Nuclear Summit Logo
In what can only be described as a case of visual illiteracy, Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times is dissecting the claim by some people on the wacky right that the logo of the recent Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, is coded with Islamic imagery. No, you didn’t read that wrong.
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Join Our Social Media Art Roundtable on Facebook
Just as social media have quickly gone mainstream, we’re starting to see social media art received more attention from the mainstream art world. I’m currently writing a survey of social media art’s (brief!) history for Hyperallergic and as part of my research, I’ve invited a number of contemporary social media artists to a roundtable discussion on Hyperallergic’s Facebook page.
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New Banksy Stencils Surface in LA [UPDATED]
This week, Banky’s new film Exit Through the Gift Shop will hit theaters in North America. For complete listings, visit Wooster Collective, which seems to be the official PR agency for all things Banksy. The movie premiere’s today in Los Angeles, so it’s no coincidence that these images hit the intertubes this past week to turn up the hype around his film.
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New 9/11 Museum Renderings Released
Last fall, the designs of the new 9/11 Museum were released and now the renderings of the exhibition design have been made public. I will reserve comment on the museum and the displays until it opens but I have to say that I practically forgot this project was still in the works. — via Curbed
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Help Camp Pocket Utopia Raise $25K For Kids & Artists
Bushwick’s Nortre Maar and Austin Thomas of Pocket Utopia are teaming up this summer to create “Camp Pocket Utopia” for community children & artists.
They’ve been given the chance to raise $25,000 from the Pepsi Refresh Project and need your support (and vote) to win funding for the project.
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Art Professor Under Fire For Artistic Protests
Ricardo Dominguez, a visual arts professor at the University of California, San Diego, is under fire for electronic civil disobedience work. Today, the San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that Dominguez is really feeling the heat from his university, auditors, and the police over a virtual sit-in he staged last month on the website for the president of the University of California system.
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Controversial “African Renaissance” Statue Rises in Senegal
On April 3, the West African nation of Senegal has officially unveiled one of the strangest statues in the history of Africa. Costing $28 million and built by North Korean labourers, the 160-foot “African Renaissance” statue is made of copper and has been embroiled in controversy since it was announced in 2006.
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Droog Design Invites Designers to Re-interpret Corporate Refuse
Sure the economy is still crappy, but Netherlands-based Droog design has found another way to be creative. In the past several months they have been bidding on liquidation auction items from bankrupt companies and they have invited 14 designers to re-interpret them.
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The Destroyed Bamiyan Buddha Inspires An Exhibition
While it became a worldwide symbol of the cruel Taliban regime and its intolerance towards difference, the destroyed colossal Buddha of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan valley has inspired a small exhibition which opened last Saturday at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum.