Category: visual

But what does that mean for their art – and who owns it? “Astute artists are using Instagram to connect with their fanbase in ways they couldn’t before. Earlier this year, it became clear that Damien Hirst’s people were no longer writing his Instagram posts, but rather the artist was. Suddenly it became worth following – Hirst was disarmingly explaining how he got the diamonds for his skull, why he was wrong about minimalism, and how sausages are ‘stupid.'”

The British Museum is planning to offer pencils and sketchpads to those who come to the new blockbuster Rodin exhibit. “Curators hope to encourage the visiting public to look more closely at its objects, swapping a quick photograph, often uploaded onto social media, with the time it takes to sketch by hand.”

What else is there to say? (Quite a lot, but – ) “‘Everyone thinks anyone can replicate a Jackson Pollock painting,’ said private conservator Chris Stavroudis, recalling a Three Stooges bit in which they spit paint on a canvas. ‘There’s a lot more to the process.'”

The style has its roots in colonialism, and in a place that hasn’t been Mexico for quite some time. Carolina Miranda has the story: “The architectural style known as Colonial Californiano is the story of ideas ricocheting between two cultures in unlikely ways. And it is one that leaves its mark on Mexico City to this day in the form of apartment buildings and grand private homes — neocolonial structures whose immediate design antecedents lie not in Mexico, but, ironically, in the United States.”

The statue of a Black woman in a country where 98 percent of statues are of white men, is nearly 23 feet tall and was inspired by Mary Thomas, Queen Mary, a 19th-century rebel queen who led a revolt against Denmark’s colonial rule in the Caribbean.

Yikes; “Community United is asking a Manhattan Supreme Court judge to vacate the approvals for the museum’s planned 203,000-square-foot Richard Gilder Center in Theodore Roosevelt Park, claiming it would cause ‘catastrophic environmental damage to the area.'”

Whew: “Tensions over the role of galleries in the gentrification of the predominantly working-class Boyle Heights neighborhood have often swirled around 356 Mission, one of the district’s largest and most high-profile galleries.” The activists who are against gentrification posted a celebratory note to Instagram.

You can’t measure schmoozing skills in auction data—or, can you? Trustees and big-name art collectors, after all, tend to collect (and, therefore, want to see exhibited) the kind of expensive art, mostly by white men, that Molesworth explicitly tried to move away from. More generally, they like to see the value of their market-friendly collections ratified with prestigious museum shows. Once you’ve spent millions of dollars on a certain artist’s work, you generally want museums to reinforce what your art advisor and your dealer have been telling you, which is that the artist in question is a great genius worthy of being preserved for posterity.

This perplexing explanation of private family control, regardless of public ownership by the city of Paris and listing as a historical monument, was confirmed to Hyperallergic by Sylvie Lesueur, the conservator of Cimetières Montparnasse, who gave no further details other than confirming that the Rachewskaïa family is behind the boxed Brancusi. For now, “The Kiss” sits covered in secrecy by a very solid wooden box with a tiny hole, ostensibly serving to confirm that the sculpture is indeed still there — for now.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy’s wish has come true, with President Donald Trump signing his Eliminating Government-Funded Oil-Painting — or EGO — Act into law on Wednesday. The cheekily named legislation prohibits taxpayer funds to be used on officially painted portraits. The law applies to portraits of the President, the Vice President, a member of Congress, the head of an executive agency, or the head of an office of the legislative branch.