Category: visual

“The rumors are true: Banksy is — or was, or has been — in town, and he’s doing more than just painting, or hiding.” The graffiti artist’s handiwork has been spotted downtown recently, “and on Wednesday a Banksy piece was unveiled at 89 Seventh Avenue South (near Bleecker Street) in Greenwich Village. This one is not a mural but an installation: a mock pet supply shop, filled with animatronic creatures….”

“Enron Corp.’s former chief operating officer of global markets, Jeff Shankman, was sued by a New York art gallery for allegedly trying to extort more than $150,000 by claiming a painting he bought was a forgery.”

“A Rubens sketch for the Banqueting House ceiling in Whitehall, described as a ‘unique treasure in the history of British art’, is to remain in the UK after the Tate raised £5.7m by the final day of the deadline to buy it.”

“Violence has fallen across Iraq in recent months and artifacts to the country’s National Museum are trickling back — about 6,000 have been returned of the 15,000 or so that went missing in the chaos that erupted following the U.S. invasion in 2003. But Iraqi authorities are taking no chances, and will not re-open the museum until security is assured.”

Everyone’s angry about the Wall Street collapse and bailout, but what can someone in the arts do about it, really? “A full-time artist based in New York, [Laura] Gilbert used a computer and her drawing skills to create the ‘The Zero Dollar,’ a slightly shrunken version of the greenback. Yesterday, she headed to Wall Street, hoping to find the masters of finance who have just body-slammed our economy and, as she put it, ‘confront them with my art.'”

“I was the victim of a brutal emotional mugging… I was shaking, on the verge of tears and genuinely frightened… [by] a set of paintings that are so filled with rage, fear and frustration that, for the first time in my life, I began to understand what it must be like to be a woman.”

The Museum of Russian Icons, tucked away in an old Massachusetts mill town, is doubling its exhibition space and preparing to host a show featuring rare loans from the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

“Artist Ed Stross faces a 30-day stint in jail unless the American Civil Liberties Union manages to overturn his conviction for painting the word “love” on his mural in this Detroit suburb. Stross’s long-running dispute with local officials is over his addition of the word to his mural in 1997 in memory of Princess Diana.”

“Having already finished more than half of the fund-raising, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum plans to begin work in January on the renovation and expansion of its ornate [Manhattan] mansion. The project is aimed at energizing the Cooper-Hewitt, regarded in recent years as a somewhat sleepy institution, by carving out space for more ambitious shows and the display of works from its permanent collection.”

A trio of artists in Boston is presenting live “remixes” of the presidential debates at the city’s new Institute of Contemporary Art. “For the members of Sosolimited, their remix, called “ReConstitution 2008,” is an act both of political engagement and mischief, examining the language of politics while gently mocking its repetitious nature with a kind of scorecard.”