Today is the day that Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough is going to face the press in Los Angeles to answer questions related to the Wojnarowicz censorship case.
I’m sure there will be lots of news from the event, particularly since LA Raw will be protesting the appearance at the Biltmore Hotel, but before things kick off, we wanted to get you up to speed on the latest developments.
Even after the reviled imperialist Thom Krens regime ended at the venerable Guggenheim, the museum is still trying to push its brand with new art outposts abroad. Yeah, the Guggenheim Bilbao was a surprise architectural and economic success, but it’s not a given that the same windfalls will come to every international Guggenheim post. Add to that the fact that most planned Guggenheim outposts have fallen through. So really, a Helsinki option is in the works? Why don’t I feel good about this?
Los Angeles-based art protest group LA Raw will be staging a Funeral Procession for Freedom of Expression on Thursday, January 20, 2011 (11:00 AM) at the Biltmore Hotel (506 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90071).
The event will coincide with the visit of Smithsonian secretary Wayne Clough, who will speak at the Biltmore the same day at noon as part of Town Hall Los Angeles public issues series.
In a plot worthy of Indiana Jones (or maybe Angelina Jolie in a B-movie), Italian police have apprehended a man attempting to smuggle a suspicious sculpture out of Lake Nemi in the south of Rome. After examination of the statue and questioning of the thief, authorities have determined that the sculpture was stolen from Emperor Caligula’s lost tomb, a previously undiscovered site.
Last Thursday January 13, there was a panel discussion at LA’s Fowler Museum titled “How Does Street Art Humanize Cities?” Organized with Zócalo, the event featured curators, artists, and reporters, most of whom were associated in some way with the LA MOCA’s upcoming street art exhibition, yet to everyone’s surprise the topic of the Blu mural whitewash wasn’t even discussed. But that’s not to say it didn’t come up in other ways. A new protest group, LA Raw, handed out condoms branded with MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch’s name on them to remind those in attendance that the erasure of artist Blu’s mural is not forgotten. One source told us that he estimates 80% of the audience to the Fowler event received one of the protest condoms as they walked in and additional condoms were placed around the venue.
Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has initiated a course for contemporary visual artists to protect themselves and their art projects. It is an introduction to legal issues that is designed to make “legalese comprehensible and manageable.”
The New York Times announced today that the Museum of Modern Art has acquired David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly,” including both the artist-cut 7 minute version and the 13 minute full work. The acquisition pays testament to the work’s newfound significance after being censored from the Smithsonian’s Hide/Seek exhibition.
For the first time in more than 25 years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will display five of its original Autochromes by Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz for one week only — January 25-30, 2011 — as part of the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand.
This Friday, January 14, Williamsburg art galleries will be open late for art lovers and fans to crawl through the bodacious borough of Brooklyn’s hipster-est neighborhood on earth. Dozens of art galleries and spaces will be open from 6-8pm to ensure that you can wander around and discover new talent and art from some familiar faces.
In Fall of 2010, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was requested by government officials to vacate his newly built Shanghai studio so that it could be demolished. The weird thing is that the Shanghai city government were the ones to ask Ai to build the studio. Following a blow-out demolition party on November 7, the studio has been emptied and demolished.
Photographer Thomas Hawk visited the World Erotic Art Museum in South Beach took photos, he claims he didn’t see the no photography sign. Now the South Florida institution filed “fradulent” DMCA notice with Flickr and Yahoo, which owns Flickr, has threatened Hawk’s entire account with permanent deletion without future warning.
The art world presents an overwhelming threat to clowns everywhere as Jeff Koons sues San Francisco store Park Life and Toronto creators imm Living for producing and selling balloon dog bookends that look only slightly similar to the famous artist’s balloon dog sculptures in that they both look like puffy dogs. A cease and desist letter from Koons commanded that the bookends no longer be sold and the objects are now removed from Park Life’s shelves. If Koons should succeed in his suit to have utter dominion over all the balloon dogs he surveys, we all know who would be hurt the most: clowns, America’s greatest balloon dog producers.
The latest episodes of the PBS documentary series explore the intersection between play and artistry, as well as the world of small objects and the artists who make them.
