This week has been pretty huge for New York City’s museum community. Newly announced shake-ups mean that the Metropolitan Museum will be taking over the Whitney’s uptown Breuer building as the younger institution heads downtown to a new Renzo Piano-designed space. The Museum of Modern Art is buying the embattled American Folk Art Museum’s 10 year-old building down the block, a sale that has become necessary with the Folk Art Museum’s low admission sales and mounting debt, caused in part by the construction of the building. With all this property-buying and hotel museum-building, New York City has become a giant Monopoly board for art institutions. The question remains — who gets the railroads?
May 11, 2011
Posted inOpinion
An 80s East Village Phenomenon Art History (Almost) Forgot
Mark Kostabi is a name I haven’t heard for ages. The man is synonymous with New York’s 1980s East Village scene but he’s disappeared from many recent narratives of the era. Now, our favorite guy on the bike (aka James Kalm) caught up with the artist at his current show in Soho. This short video is a taste of a longer interview James Kalm promises to post in a few days but it’ll give you a good sense of the once ubiquitous artist who art history (almost) forgot.
Posted inBooks
Steve Martin Attempts to Skewer the Art World & Fails
You may know Steve Martin from being one of our time’s defining comedians, actors and celebrity figures. But along with those first few titles, the man is also a renowned collector of contemporary art, as well as a novelist and a playwright. These pursuits could be called hobbies if they didn’t require quite so much dedication. Martin’s An Object of Beauty (2010), his third novel, attempts to combine the actor’s sidelines in writing and art into a narrative showpiece that aims a satirical skewer at the art world. Unfortunately, the punch never lands. Object of Beauty is too simplistic and editorializing for an art world-savvy audience and too limping for readers just looking for a punchy narrative.
Posted inArt
Visual Treats at DC’s Phillips Collection
Washington, DC is a great museum town. During my dozen or so trips over the years I have yet to see all the Smithsonian institutions so I didn’t feel the need to ventured far from The Mall for my art fix. This time I avoided the Smithsonian all together and headed for one situated in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of the city, The Phillips Collection. This jewel box of modern art — and not soo modern — avoids -isms so you ended up encountering the art of 19th C. America to 20th C. France or 17th C. Spain in just a few steps.
Posted inNews
New 25,000 Year Old Cave Paintings Discovered in Spain
Cave paintings are so in right now! From Werner Herzog’s documentary to the recent discovery of new cave paintings in Spain, primitive art is totally in fashion. These newly uncovered 25,000 year-old paintings are thin line drawings of horses and human hands, rendered in a deep red.
