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daily-art-news · 2 years
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The Dulwich Picture Gallery Is the Latest U.K. Institution to Drop the Sackler Name
The Dulwich Picture Gallery is the latest arts institution to distance itself from the Sackler family following years-long protests over their role in the opioid crisis. Since April 1, the institution stopped describing Jennifer Scott, who took the helm in 2017, as the “Sackler Director.”
The South London gallery has deep ties to Sackler philanthropy: the Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation has supported the director’s post for several decades, and Sackler family charities have funded the Sackler Centre for Arts Education at Dulwich. Additionally, a part of Dulwich’s education program is funded by the Sackler Trust, a separate entity from the foundation.
The Dulwich gallery quietly dropped the name without any announcement, the Art Newspaper reported Thursday.
The Sacklers have a long history of philanthropy in the United States and the United Kingdom, enabling the building of new museum wings and galleries, as well as the endowment of directorships and curatorships.
Public opinion has turned against the family in recent years as the company Purdue Pharma, founded by Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, has been accused of aggressively marketing the painkiller Oxycontin while downplaying its highly addictive properties. The painkiller is often credited with greatly exacerbating the opioid crisis, which has killed roughly one million American between 1999 and 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last year, Purdue was formally dissolved and, in March, the family agreed to pay $6 billion to settle legal claims against them. However, as part of the settlment, the family admitted to no wrongdoing.
In the US, the Met, the Guggenheim, and other major institutions that have long accepted the family’s money have faced pushback by activists, most prominently the group P.A.I.N. led by artist Nan Goldin.
In 2019, the Met said it would stop accepting donations from members of the Sackler family, citing the litigation ongoing at the time. That same year, the National Portrait Gallery in London rejected an the offer of a £1 million donation towards its current renovation project from the Sacklers. In 2021, the Serpentine Galleries, which operated two spaces in London, rebranded one location, formerly named after the Sacklers, as Serpentine North Gallery.
Last December, the Met removed the Sackler name from any galleries in the museum. The Tate followed suit in February, removing the Sackler name from five locations at its two London locations, and in March the British Museum did the same. Last month the National Gallery also wiped the disgraced family from the entrance of one of its rooms. For now, the Victoria and Albert Museum as the only major UK art institution still prominently displaying the Sackler name.
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daily-art-news · 2 years
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The Dulwich Picture Gallery Is the Latest UK Institution to Drop the Sackler Name
The Dulwich Picture Gallery is the latest arts institution to distance itself from the Sackler family following years-long protests over their role in the opioid crisis. Since April 1, it stopped describing Jennifer Scott, who took the helm in 2017, as the “Sackler Director”.
The South London gallery has deep ties to Sackler philanthropy: the Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation has supported the director’s post for several decades, and Sackler family charities have funded the Sackler Centre for Arts Education at Dulwich. Additionally, a part of Dulwich’s education program is funded by the Sackler Trust, a separate entity from the foundation.
The Dulwich gallery quietly dropped the name without any announcement, the Art Newspaper reported Thursday.
The Sacklers have a long history of philanthropy in the United States and the United Kingdom, enabling the building of new museum wings and galleries, as well as the endowment of directorships and curatorships.
Public opinion has turned against the family in recent years as the company Purdue Pharma, founded by Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, has been accused of aggressively marketing the painkiller Oxycontin while downplaying its highly addictive properties. The painkiller is often credited with greatly exacerbating the opioid crisis, which has killed roughly one million American between 1999 and 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last year, Purdue was formally dissolved and, in March, the family agreed to pay $6 billion to settle legal claims against them. However, as part of the settlment, the family admitted to no wrongdoing.
In the US, the Met, the Guggenheim, and other major institutions that have long accepted the family’s money have faced pushback by activists, most prominently the group P.A.I.N. led by artist Nan Goldin.
In 2019, the Met said it would stop accepting donations from members of the Sackler family, citing the litigation ongoing at the time. That same year, the National Portrait Gallery in London rejected an the offer of a £1 million donation towards its current renovation project from the Sacklers. In 2021, the Serpentine Galleries, which operated two spaces in London, rebranded one location, formerly named after the Sacklers, as Serpentine North Gallery.
Last December, the Met removed the Sackler name from any galleries in the museum. The Tate followed suit in February, removing the Sackler name from five locations at its two London locations, and in March the British Museum did the same. Last month the National Gallery also wiped the disgraced family from the entrance of one of its rooms. For now, the Victoria and Albert Museum as the only major UK art institution still prominently displaying the Sackler name.
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daily-art-news · 2 years
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Backstory: Big Bang
I made Cold Dark Matter in 1991 for the Chisenhale Gallery in East London. It’s a dark space with no natural light, so I wanted to make something that had its own light source. I was making a series of works about things having almost a cartoon death—falling off a cliff, getting blown up, steamrolled, burned. I said to the curator, Jonathan Watkins, that I wanted to blow something up in the space. There were a lot of explosions happening in cities at this time, because of the IRA [Irish Republican Army], so that’s what gave me the idea. He had just laid a new polished concrete floor, so he talked me out of that.
I would have loved to blow up a house, but that wasn’t practical. I decided that a garden shed is the kind of place where all the stuff from the house gets dumped anyway. It’s full of psychological baggage. Jonathan asked me who I wanted to have blow it up, and I suggested the British Army. Jonathan phoned them up, and they said we should come to the Army School of Ammunition in Banbury. By the time we got there, they’d already decided to do it. I had some shed-builders construct a composite shed for me. The objects came from boot sales where people were selling things from their own sheds. A few friends gave me things from their sheds, like pushchairs and motorbikes. It was a bit of a crowd-sourced piece in a way.
We did the explosion in a big open field. The Army treated it like another exercise. A few friends came along, plus some journalists. Major Doug Hewitt, who oversaw the project, was there. Sadly, he has died, but I still keep in touch with his daughters. There was also a group of Kenyan soldiers who were there training; they were very puzzled. The major said, “Oh, this is what we do in Britain—we have this ritual where we blow up sheds.” It was so funny; everyone was having a joke. It was quite joyous.
The show at Chisenhale was two weeks after the explosion. The materials got taken straight to the gallery and laid out on the floor. It smelled of explosives and looked very menacing, as if a disaster had happened. Once we put the work in the air, it stopped being like a morgue and became more like a dynamic display. I also didn’t realize how much the shadows would play into the work. That was really lovely to see.
—As told to Leigh Anne Miller
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NFT Platforms Shift Strategy in the Wake of Crypto Slump
Ethereum, the crypto-currency on which most NFTs are minted, dropped below $1,800 Friday, its lowest value in over a year. It’s a far cry from its peak in the high $4,000s last November. 
With the drop, the mourning has begun, even among a crypto-community used to weathering the asset’s volatility. NFT platforms, however, are not wading through the five stages of grief before taking action.
In quick succession, major NFT platforms like Foundation, SuperRare, and OpenSea have announced major changes to the way they run their businesses. 
While none of these pivots has been explicitly labeled as a response to the market, the timing and nature of the new initiatives seem designed to make up for the lack of enthusiasm in the market currently.
Take Foundation, for example. 
Foundation is an NFT platform known for its high quality and focus on one-of-ones, or  single edition NFTs (as opposed to large PFP NFT collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club, or Crypto Punks). This was partly possible because, to sell works on Foundation, an artist had to be invited by Foundation or by other artists already using the platform.
In mid-May, Foundation announced that it would be doing away with their invite-only strategy, which they framed as a shift away from the gatekeeping mentality of Web 2.0 (the internet we have today) to the greater freedom and democracy of Web3 (an internet experience built off of decentralized technologies like blockchain).
Yet, Foundation’s tight curation was what made it different from platforms like OpenSea, which has made significantly more money but have also been plagued by scams, hacks, rug-pulls, and all the other risks that come with not verifying users. But, as the market changes, exclusivity could have presented itself as a threat to the scale needed to survive..
On the flip side, Foundation seems like it’s focusing more on a new operating system initiative called Foundation OS, whose motto is “The building blocks for a new internet.” The operating system, a kind of key service infrastructure, is built off of the data sharing protocol Foundation built for its marketplace. Leaning on infrastructural offerings may seem like a more sustainable aspect of the business to focus on when short-term trading isn’t in vogue.
Sunil Singhvi, chief business development officer at the NFT platform Rarible, said that in this moment, having this kind of diversity is key (Rarible has not announced any changes). 
“The protocol has always been our business, and the marketplace was a shining example of what that protocol can build. But we have a whole raft of things we’ve built alongside the marketplace,” Singhvi told ARTnews.
Meanwhile, NFT platform SuperRare believes it  has found a way to respond to the shifting market without changing the core aspects of SuperRare’s identity.
“SuperRare represents trust,” CEO John Crain told ARTnews. However, Crain said that the company knew it had to try something new. 
“Just having a marketplace isn’t something novel anymore. Creating an NFT isn’t something to write about. So this moment is really pushing people to add value and push boundaries,” He said.
Similarly to Foundation, SuperRare was a place to discover artists selling unique works, as opposed to the collectible-type PFP NFTs. Furthermore, SuperRare has never been a secondary market. Now, SuperRare is exploring both PFPs and the secondary market.
In partnership with Async Art, an NFT platform that specializes in creating big, generative projects, SuperRare offered its first massive collection called Across the Face, made by Nigerian artist Osinachi. The series is inspired by Rene Magritte’s famous painting The Son of Man (1946) in which a floating, green apple obscured the face of a man in a fedora. In Across the Face, a black man’s face is obscured by a variety of objects: a dove, a book, a Rubiks cube, and so on, with randomly paired accessories and color backgrounds.
SuperRare usually mints 20-30 works a day, a SuperRare spokesperson told ARTnews in an  email, but working with Async has allowed them to handle a much larger load. Async minted 1,000 NFTs and then these were sold on the secondary market through SuperRare. The move is one that was tightly controlled, allowing SuperRare to widen its range of offerings without suddenly flooding its own market. More large collections will be made available with Async in the future.
Unlike many NFT initiatives and platforms, SuperRare was in business before most people even knew what an NFT was, which meant operating on a shoe-string budget for years. For the many platforms that popped up during the 2021 boom, this may be their first time operating in a major downturn.
“In a bull market money is easy to get. But venture capital spending on crypto start-ups and stuff peaked in December,” Crain said. “In this market, investors are certainly going to be thinking twice about how they deploy capital, it’s not like, ‘Cool idea, here’s some money’ anymore.”
Whether or not these summer children-platforms will survive a crypto winter is a question no one can answer, especially when chasing the jagged peaks and dips of a market which promises to shoot up at the next moment. 
But, if there is one platform that is too big to fail, it might be OpenSea. At a $13 billion valuation, OpenSea is undoubtedly the highest-valued NFT market around, but even this behemoth has been making some changes. 
Unlike Foundation or SuperRare, OpenSea didn’t structure itself around exclusivity, but focused on getting the most amount of users possible from the get-go, which has helped OpenSea capture market share but has also meant sacrificing the quality of their service in the eyes of many crypto-enthusiasts. At this point, then, OpenSea didn’t have many options for how it could expand. In an incredibly savvy move, OpenSea is starting to open up its marketplace to NFTs minted on a cryptocurrency called Solana.
Like Tezos, Solana is a crypto infrastructure that is less energy intensive and is thus considered better for the environment. The same things that make it greener make it cheaper to use, meaning that gas fees on Solana, the fees that one pays when completing transactions (such as buying an NFT) are much, much lower than the gas fees for using Ethereum. 
Solana is also valued much lower than Ethereum. Its peak price was around $200 and is now worth about $40. By offering Solana NFTs on OpenSea, the platform is enticing NFT collectors to keep buying without having to make the larger investments implicit in trading in Ethereum-based NFTs.
Solana NFTs on OpenSea are still in the beta phase, that is,  still being tested. 
Whether any of the changes that NFT platforms are pursuing will be effective is something that remains to be seen. Maybe the market will miraculously turn and none of this will matter anyway. 
Or maybe not.
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daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
NFT Platforms Shift Strategy in the Wake of Crypto Slump
Ethereum, the crypto-currency on which most NFTs are minted, dropped below $1,800 Friday, its lowest value in over a year. It’s a far cry from its peak in the high $4,000s last November. 
With the drop, the mourning has begun, even among a crypto-community used to weathering the asset’s volatility. NFT platforms, however, are not wading through the five stages of grief before taking action.
In quick succession, major NFT platforms like Foundation, SuperRare, and OpenSea have announced major changes to the way they run their businesses. 
While none of these pivots has been explicitly labeled as a response to the market, the timing and nature of the new initiatives seem designed to make up for the lack of enthusiasm in the market currently.
Take Foundation, for example. 
Foundation is an NFT platform known for its high quality and focus on one-of-ones, or  single edition NFTs (as opposed to large PFP NFT collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club, or Crypto Punks). This was partly possible because, to sell works on Foundation, an artist had to be invited by Foundation or by other artists already using the platform.
In mid-May, Foundation announced that it would be doing away with their invite-only strategy, which they framed as a shift away from the gatekeeping mentality of Web 2.0 (the internet we have today) to the greater freedom and democracy of Web3 (an internet experience built off of decentralized technologies like blockchain).
Yet, Foundation’s tight curation was what made it different from platforms like OpenSea, which has made significantly more money but have also been plagued by scams, hacks, rug-pulls, and all the other risks that come with not verifying users. But, as the market changes, exclusivity could have presented itself as a threat to the scale needed to survive..
On the flip side, Foundation seems like it’s focusing more on a new operating system initiative called Foundation OS, whose motto is “The building blocks for a new internet.” The operating system, a kind of key service infrastructure, is built off of the data sharing protocol Foundation built for its marketplace. Leaning on infrastructural offerings may seem like a more sustainable aspect of the business to focus on when short-term trading isn’t in vogue.
Sunil Singhvi, chief business development officer at the NFT platform Rarible, said that in this moment, having this kind of diversity is key (Rarible has not announced any changes). 
“The protocol has always been our business, and the marketplace was a shining example of what that protocol can build. But we have a whole raft of things we’ve built alongside the marketplace,” Singhvi told ARTnews.
Meanwhile, NFT platform SuperRare believes it  has found a way to respond to the shifting market without changing the core aspects of SuperRare’s identity.
“SuperRare represents trust,” CEO John Crain told ARTnews. However, Crain said that the company knew it had to try something new. 
“Just having a marketplace isn’t something novel anymore. Creating an NFT isn’t something to write about. So this moment is really pushing people to add value and push boundaries,” He said.
Similarly to Foundation, SuperRare was a place to discover artists selling unique works, as opposed to the collectible-type PFP NFTs. Furthermore, SuperRare has never been a secondary market. Now, SuperRare is exploring both PFPs and the secondary market.
In partnership with Async Art, an NFT platform that specializes in creating big, generative projects, SuperRare offered its first massive collection called Across the Face, made by Nigerian artist Osinachi. The series is inspired by Rene Magritte’s famous painting The Son of Man (1946) in which a floating, green apple obscured the face of a man in a fedora. In Across the Face, a black man’s face is obscured by a variety of objects: a dove, a book, a Rubiks cube, and so on, with randomly paired accessories and color backgrounds.
SuperRare usually mints 20-30 works a day, a SuperRare spokesperson told ARTnews in an  email, but working with Async has allowed them to handle a much larger load. Async minted 1,000 NFTs and then these were sold on the secondary market through SuperRare. The move is one that was tightly controlled, allowing SuperRare to widen its range of offerings without suddenly flooding its own market. More large collections will be made available with Async in the future.
Unlike many NFT initiatives and platforms, SuperRare was in business before most people even knew what an NFT was, which meant operating on a shoe-string budget for years. For the many platforms that popped up during the 2021 boom, this may be their first time operating in a major downturn.
“In a bull market money is easy to get. But venture capital spending on crypto start-ups and stuff peaked in December,” Crain said. “In this market, investors are certainly going to be thinking twice about how they deploy capital, it’s not like, ‘Cool idea, here’s some money’ anymore.”
Whether or not these summer children-platforms will survive a crypto winter is a question no one can answer, especially when chasing the jagged peaks and dips of a market which promises to shoot up at the next moment. 
But, if there is one platform that is too big to fail, it might be OpenSea. At a $13 billion valuation, OpenSea is undoubtedly the highest-valued NFT market around, but even this behemoth has been making some changes. 
Unlike Foundation or SuperRare, OpenSea didn’t structure itself around exclusivity, but focused on getting the most amount of users possible from the get-go, which has helped OpenSea capture market share but has also meant sacrificing the quality of their service in the eyes of many crypto-enthusiasts. At this point, then, OpenSea didn’t have many options for how it could expand. In an incredibly savvy move, OpenSea is starting to open up its marketplace to NFTs minted on a cryptocurrency called Solana.
Like Tezos, Solana is a crypto infrastructure that is less energy intensive and is thus considered better for the environment. The same things that make it greener make it cheaper to use, meaning that gas fees on Solana, the fees that one pays when completing transactions (such as buying an NFT) are much, much lower than the gas fees for using Ethereum. 
Solana is also valued much lower than Ethereum. Its peak price was around $200 and is now worth about $40. By offering Solana NFTs on OpenSea, the platform is enticing NFT collectors to keep buying without having to make the larger investments implicit in trading in Ethereum-based NFTs.
Solana NFTs on OpenSea are still in the beta phase, that is,  still being tested. 
Whether any of the changes that NFT platforms are pursuing will be effective is something that remains to be seen. Maybe the market will miraculously turn and none of this will matter anyway. 
Or maybe not.
0 notes
daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
Man Breaks Into Dallas Museum of Art and Smashes Artworks, Including Several Greek Artifacts
A man broke into the Dallas Museum of Art on Wednesday night, significantly damaging several artworks, including three Greek artifacts and a contemporary Native American piece.
According to the Dallas Morning News, Brian Hernandez, 21, shattered the museum’s glass entrance with a metal chair. Once inside, he began targeting the collection. Among the casualties of his vandalism was a 6th-century BCE Greek amphora, a ceramic vessel used to store liquids, and a Greek box dated from 450 BCE.
Police said Hernandez also destroyed a delicate bowl from ancient Greece decorated with vignettes of Heracles fighting the Nemean lion. A ceramic Caddo bottle depicting an alligator worth $10,000 was pulled from its displayed case and shattered on the museum floor. A dozen smaller objects also suffered minor damage.
“While we are devastated by this incident, we are grateful that no one was harmed. The safety of our staff and visitors, along with the care and protection of the art in our stewardship, are our utmost priorities,” the museum said in a statement.
Hernandez reportedly called 911 on himself while inside the museum before being apprehended by DMA security. He confessed to police and is currently detained at the Dallas County Jail on a charge of criminal mischief. In addition to the collection pieces, he is also accused of causing tens of thousands of dollars of damage to museum property including display cases and furniture.
The Dallas Morning News reported that a DMA security guard told police that Hernandez said “he got mad at his girl so he broke in and started destroying property.”
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daily-art-news · 2 years
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How David Cronenberg’s Latest Film ‘Crimes of the Future’ Draws on Body and Performance Art
Early on in Crimes of the Future, filmmaker David Cronenberg’s newly released big return to body horror, a man named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) has his chest opened up for a rapt audience. A machine with fast-moving scalpels pulls apart his stomach and reveals his innards to the crowd. Meanwhile, his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) paces around the room, fingering a squishy gadget with blinking lights to control this surgery, which serves no medical purpose. All the while, Saul moans and writhes, perhaps in pleasure, perhaps in pain, perhaps in a mix of the two.
Could this makeshift surgery be considered art? At least within the film’s world, yes. Caprice labels herself as a performance artist, though Saul is not merely her subject — he is a collaborator unto himself, and he considers his organs his creations.
While this may all seem rather strange, Crimes of the Future is, in fact, couched in recent art history. It draws on a kind of performance art in which artists use their body as their material, subjecting themselves to particularly painful situations that have involved bloodletting and the modification of their skin.
“Twenty years ago when I wrote this script, there were lots of performance artists of various kinds,” Cronenberg told critic Amy Taubin in an Artforum interview this week. “Once you have it in your head that something exists, that artists were compelled to make those performance works and that there was an audience for them, that frees you to invent what you’re going to invent.”
Orlan, The Kiss of the Artist, 1977.
Performing Surgery 
Cronenberg’s latest is set in a not-far-off future in which human bodies have changed so much that some people can barely feel pain. Because of this, knives are wielded in the alleys of Athens by couples seeking semi-sexual thrills, and quasi-secret happenings such as Saul and Caprice’s have developed a loyal following. Throughout, characters make one repeated pun: performing surgery has become a kind of performance art.
Outside the film, in the real world, artists have undergone medical procedures in an attempt to propose new forms for the human body. Along the way, they have questioned gender binaries and sexual norms.
The French artist ORLAN, for example, has received plastic surgery, memorably giving herself curved lumps on her forehead that she still has today. (Midway through Crimes of the Future, Caprice gets a similar kind of plastic surgery.) ORLAN has been clear about the fact that plastic surgery is typically used to make bodies beautiful—and that in modifying her own body, she wanted to become less conventionally attractive.
“Working with my body was a political gesture,” ORLAN told Artnet News in 2019. “It was an act for the woman I was/I am/I will be, and all women, to claim their freedom, which was denied to them.”
Cutting, puncturing, sewing, and wounding flesh have been utilized widely by artists from the late ’60s onward, from Vito Acconci to Zhang Huan. But it is feminist art of the ’70s that seems to exert the greatest influence on this film.
Even before Crimes of the Future premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Caprice’s character had earned comparisons to the feminist artist Gina Pane, who ultimately stopped using her body in her work because her performances became so physically taxing.
For her 1974 performance Action Psyché, for example, Pane repeatedly cut her eyelids and stomach, leaving the incisions open so that they dripped blood. Her goal in doing so was to “reach an anesthetized society” — one with so much pain in it that there was no longer discomfort among viewers, similar to the world seen in Crimes of the Future.
Materials used in Marina Abramović’s 1974 performance Rhythm 0.
Creators and Creations
At a certain point in Crimes of the Future, it becomes clear that there are subversives seeking to create new bodies, and it is unclear whether the government supports this or not, given that there appear to be moles on the inside. A federal investigator visits the National Organ Registry in one scene. He lifts up his shirt, points to a mass on his chest, and asks if it may be art in the vein of Duchamp, who likewise didn’t create many of his objects. Everyone in the room seems dumbfounded by the question.
What the scene implies is that bodies can be art, and that the artists behind them are not just natural forces but also people who come in contact with them. Indeed, Caprice and Saul’s artistic relationship is likely to recall that of another famed performance-art duo: Marina Abramović and Ulay.
Prior to working with Ulay, during the early ’70s, Abramović gained international recognition for her “Rhythm” series of performances in which she would enact violent scenarios using her own body. In Rhythm 10 (1973), she played a hand game using 20 knives, stabbing herself repeatedly in the process. In Rhythm 2 (1974), she took medication typically used for patients suffering from catatonia and began to experience violent seizures.
The series culminated in Rhythm 0 (1974), in which audience members were invited to use objects on Abramović’s body, including a scalpel and a pair of scissors. At one point, one viewer raised a loaded gun to Abramović.
Ulay and Abramović never undertook anything quite so shocking together, but their performances blended aspects of their romantic and artistic collaborations in queasy ways. Their famed 1977 performance Breathing in/breathing out involved blocking their nostrils and exhaling into each other’s mouths until they nearly pass out. In exchanging breaths, the two use each other’s bodies to transform one another, creating and using each other’s creations in a vicious cycle.
While never explicitly invoked within the film, Breathing in/breathing out, with its odd erotic qualities, seems to hang over the scenes in which Caprice and Saul take part in what they call “the new sex,” or relations conducted primarily through surgery rather than intercourse. In one scene, the two disrobe and allow themselves to be repeatedly punctured by a machine.
Stelarc.
The Ear Man
Perhaps the most haunting scene in Crimes of the Future, when Saul visits a performance by an artist billed only as the Ear Man. It’s an apt name: this artist has sewn his eyes and lips shut, and adorned his arms, chest, legs, and head with extra sets of ears. He jerks his body around to an unsettling score while wearing only a small set of underwear.
The Ear Man’s performance appears to be a direct reference to a work by the Australian artist Stelarc called Ear on Arm. The work has involved placing a functional third ear onto his arm, and has taken Stelarc well over a decade to produce, partly because of the medical difficulties involved and partly because of the bureaucratic strictures that forbid surgeries of this sort in certain countries. He has stated that he aims for viewers to be able to hear what this ear does by tuning in online and on their phones.
Stelarc has said the performance is a reflection on bodies undergoing radical shifts in the digital age. “Certainly what becomes important now is not merely the body’s identity, but its connectivity — not its mobility or location, but its interface,” he has written. “In these projects and performances, a prosthesis is not seen as a sign of lack but rather as a symptom of excess.”
Although Cronenberg somewhat dodged Amy Taubin’s question when she asked about Stelarc, Crimes of the Future seems to eye the artist’s work with suspicion. Midway through the Ear Man’s performance, Saul is approached by a businesswoman who waves off the work as being bad conceptual art. He’s a better dancer than he is an artist, she suggests.
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daily-art-news · 2 years
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Man Breaks Into Dallas Museum of Art and Smashes Artworks, Including Several Greek Artifacts
A man broke into the Dallas Museum of Art on Wednesday night, significantly damaging several artworks, including three Greek artifacts and a contemporary Native American piece.
According to the Dallas Morning News, Brian Hernandez, 21, shattered the museum’s glass entrance with a metal chair. Once inside, he began targeting the collection. Among the casualties of his vandalism was a 6th-century BCE Greek amphora, a ceramic vessel used to store liquids, and a Greek box dated from 450 BCE.
Police said Hernandez also destroyed a delicate bowl from ancient Greece decorated with vignettes of Heracles fighting the Nemean lion. A ceramic Caddo bottle depicting an alligator worth $10,000 was pulled from its displayed case and shattered on the museum floor. A dozen smaller objects also suffered minor damage.
“While we are devastated by this incident, we are grateful that no one was harmed. The safety of our staff and visitors, along with the care and protection of the art in our stewardship, are our utmost priorities,” the museum said in a statement.
Hernandez reportedly called 911 on himself while inside the museum before being apprehended by DMA security. He confessed to police and is currently detained at the Dallas County Jail on a charge of criminal mischief. In addition to the collection pieces, he is also accused of causing tens of thousands of dollars of damage to museum property including display cases and furniture.
The Dallas Morning News reported that a DMA security guard told police that Hernandez said “he got mad at his girl so he broke in and started destroying property.”
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daily-art-news · 2 years
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How Harper Levine Became the Go-To Dealer of Long Island’s Art Scene
Most New York gallerists who’ve opened spaces in the Hamptons got their start in the city and built up a network of artists and collectors before venturing out east. Dealer Harper Levine did the reverse. He started his gallery in East Hampton in 1997, tapping a rich community that would launch him from a rare bookseller to an established gallerist. Now, he has five spaces under his auspices, with three of them located in Manhattan.
This past weekend, Levine celebrated a major milestone, opening “25 Years,” a show in East Hampton that toasted the gallery’s 25th anniversary.
Dealer Jack Hanley and artist Cindy Sherman were among those who came this past Saturday to see the show, which includes work by Mark Grotjahn, Richard Prince, and Eddie Martinez. Artists Rashid Johnson and Joel Mesler, who both have nearby studios and also have work in the show, were also on hand, mingling among artist Mary Heilmann and collectors Stafford and Laura Broumand.
“I want to celebrate the fact that I survived this for 25 years,” Levine said in an interview last week in the gallery space he opened in New York’s Chelsea art district in 2020. The anniversary show, he said, is “a celebration of my life and business and is a way for me to sort of commingle artists. [It’s] about believing in my own story and seeing what we’ve been able to do.”
In 2001, Levine, who was born and raised in Manhattan, was living in Minnesota when he decided to come back to New York and make a new start. As he puts it, “I had a hundred bucks.” But his trip back home ended up coinciding with the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and, with a new baby in tow, he and his wife decided to instead settle in the Hamptons, where Levine opened a rare book store that eventually also became a gallery.
His goal in opening an art space of his own was to join a long art-historical lineage in the Hamptons. “The Hamptons has such a rich artistic history, with Jackson Pollock and the other Abstract Expressionists, and over the years there have been some very serious galleries out there,” he said. “[Bookseller] Glenn Horowitz always used to describe [the area] as a butterfly net… a captive audience.”
Levine’s expertise eventually attracted figures like Richard Prince, who went to Levine in search of books. Gradually, Levine’s network of supporters in the art world expanded, slowly converting him from a book dealer to a gallerist who had a special ability to link artists from all over with Long Island’s monied collectors and art lovers. 
“Working with Harper is such a dream,” said the Quebec-based painter Joani Tremblay during the reception of “25 Years,” where her abstractions are on view. “He’s a great gallerist, has all the connections, and is a sincerely nice person.”
For Tremblay, and the other artists who work with Harper, like Jennifer Guidi, Joel Mesler, and Frederic Tuten, having access to the Hamptons is an incredible opportunity.
“There are not many places where you can have a strong summer show,” Tremblay said, referring to the lull that hits the city once the warmer weather moves in. “Maybe you can get a group show or something small, but working with Harper essentially gives us an extra season.”
Having a space and network on the East End became doubly advantageous when the pandemic flushed the rich from Manhattan to their second (or third, or fourth) homes on the East End. There, Levine was ready to receive them, unlike other gallerists who scrambled to find space for pop-ups.
But it wasn’t always clear it was going to turn out this way.
“When the pandemic started,” Levine said, “everyone told me, ‘Fire your team.’” Instead, anticipating that collectors would come to their Hamptons homes to ride it out, he kept his team, and took on additional space in his East Hampton gallery’s building.
In an even bolder move, Levine then expanded to new spaces in New York and Los Angeles, marking Harper’s as a veritable empire.
While Levine’s East Hampton gallery will always be his home, these days, he is equally focused on his New York galleries. In March, he opened a second, larger space on 22nd Street. An artist friend of his was fond of saying that because of all the galleries opening in East Hampton, Newtown Lane, the town’s main thoroughfare, had become the equivalent of 22nd Street: Ross + Kramer, the Hole, Eric Firestone, a new Sotheby’s outpost, and other spaces dot the lane.
But Long Island’s art scene will never rise to the level of Manhattan’s, and Levine seemed to suggest that this isn’t a bad thing. Looking out his newest Chelsea space’s wide windows, the dealer observed, “22nd Street is 22nd Street.”
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daily-art-news · 2 years
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How Harper Levine Became the Go-To Dealer of Long Island’s Art Scene
Most New York gallerists who’ve opened spaces in the Hamptons got their start in the city and built up a network of artists and collectors before venturing out east. Dealer Harper Levine did the reverse. He started his gallery in East Hampton in 1997, tapping a rich community that would launch him from a rare bookseller to an established gallerist. Now, he has five spaces under his auspices, with three of them located in Manhattan.
This past weekend, Levine celebrated a major milestone, opening “25 Years,” a show in East Hampton that toasted the gallery’s 25th anniversary.
Dealer Jack Hanley and artist Cindy Sherman were among those who came this past Saturday to see the show, which includes work by Mark Grotjahn, Richard Prince, and Eddie Martinez. Artists Rashid Johnson and Joel Mesler, who both have nearby studios and also have work in the show, were also on hand, mingling among artist Mary Heilmann and collectors Stafford and Laura Broumand.
“I want to celebrate the fact that I survived this for 25 years,” Levine said in an interview last week in the gallery space he opened in New York’s Chelsea art district in 2020. The anniversary show, he said, is “a celebration of my life and business and is a way for me to sort of commingle artists. [It’s] about believing in my own story and seeing what we’ve been able to do.”
In 2001, Levine, who was born and raised in Manhattan, was living in Minnesota when he decided to come back to New York and make a new start. As he puts it, “I had a hundred bucks.” But his trip back home ended up coinciding with the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and, with a new baby in tow, he and his wife decided to instead settle in the Hamptons, where Levine opened a rare book store that eventually also became a gallery.
His goal in opening an art space of his own was to join a long art-historical lineage in the Hamptons. “The Hamptons has such a rich artistic history, with Jackson Pollock and the other Abstract Expressionists, and over the years there have been some very serious galleries out there,” he said. “[Bookseller] Glenn Horowitz always used to describe [the area] as a butterfly net… a captive audience.”
Levine’s expertise eventually attracted figures like Richard Prince, who went to Levine in search of books. Gradually, Levine’s network of supporters in the art world expanded, slowly converting him from a book dealer to a gallerist who had a special ability to link artists from all over with Long Island’s monied collectors and art lovers. 
“Working with Harper is such a dream,” said the Quebec-based painter Joani Tremblay during the reception of “25 Years,” where her abstractions are on view. “He’s a great gallerist, has all the connections, and is a sincerely nice person.”
For Tremblay, and the other artists who work with Harper, like Jennifer Guidi, Joel Mesler, and Frederic Tuten, having access to the Hamptons is an incredible opportunity.
“There are not many places where you can have a strong summer show,” Tremblay said, referring to the lull that hits the city once the warmer weather moves in. “Maybe you can get a group show or something small, but working with Harper essentially gives us an extra season.”
Having a space and network on the East End became doubly advantageous when the pandemic flushed the rich from Manhattan to their second (or third, or fourth) homes on the East End. There, Levine was ready to receive them, unlike other gallerists who scrambled to find space for pop-ups.
But it wasn’t always clear it was going to turn out this way.
“When the pandemic started,” Levine said, “everyone told me, ‘Fire your team.’” Instead, anticipating that collectors would come to their Hamptons homes to ride it out, he kept his team, and took on additional space in his East Hampton gallery’s building.
In an even bolder move, Levine then expanded to new spaces in New York and Los Angeles, marking Harper’s as a veritable empire.
While Levine’s East Hampton gallery will always be his home, these days, he is equally focused on his New York galleries. In March, he opened a second, larger space on 22nd Street. An artist friend of his was fond of saying that because of all the galleries opening in East Hampton, Newtown Lane, the town’s main thoroughfare, had become the equivalent of 22nd Street: Ross + Kramer, the Hole, Eric Firestone, a new Sotheby’s outpost, and other spaces dot the lane.
But Long Island’s art scene will never rise to the level of Manhattan’s, and Levine seemed to suggest that this isn’t a bad thing. Looking out his newest Chelsea space’s wide windows, the dealer observed, “22nd Street is 22nd Street.”
0 notes
daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
Artworks Attacked at Dallas Museum of Art, Shanghai Arts Venues Remain Closed, and More: Morning Links for June 3, 2022
To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
The Headlines
ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, a 21-year-old man was arrested for allegedly breaking into the Dallas Museum of Art and seriously damaging at least four pieces on display, including a Greek amphora from the 6th century B.C.E., the Dallas Morning News reports. Initial reports had placed the value of the damaged works at $5 million, but the museum’s director, Agustín Arteaga , said that the actual figure may be “a fraction” of that. The man was charged with criminal mischief of $300,000 or more, which carries a possible sentence of five years to life in prison, according to the Guardian. Dallas police said that the suspect told the guard who apprehended him that “he got mad at his girl so he broke in and started destroying property.”
CHINA DISPATCH. The exact date has not been announced, but Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam said that the Hong Kong Palace Museum will be inaugurated this summer amid celebrations tied to the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China, the South China Morning Post reports. Over in Shanghai, an intense Covid lockdown has ended, but cultural venues institutions remain shuttered, and there has been no word about when they will be allowed to reopen, the Art Newspaper reports. A rep for UCCA Edge, branch of the Beijing-based museum in the city, said that it will soon be able to install shows, which will ease reopening when that is allowed.
The Digest
Paul Gunther, a revered expert in arts administration who held posts at the Municipal Art Society, the New-York Historical Society, and the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, has died at the age of 65. [The New York Times]
The Dulwich Picture Gallery in London has quietly stopped billing its director as the “Sackler Director.” The move comes as many museums have removed the Sackler name from projects supported by the family, some of whose members have been accused of fueling the opioid crisis through the sale of OxyContin via their company Purdue Pharma. [The Art Newspaper]
Rich Aste, who has been at the helm of the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, for almost six years, said that he will step down in January to become an executive coach at the University of California, Irvine, and start his own practice in that field. [San Antonio]
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has acquired its first painting by the pioneering African American painter Archibald Motley, who was the subject of an acclaimed touring survey in the mid-2010s. Tongues (Holy Rollers), 1929, is now on view on MoMA’s fifth floor. [MoMA Magazine]
ANOTHER STRONG DAY FOR INTERVIEWS WITH ARTISTS: Judith Baca is in the New York Times, Wangechi Mutu is in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Christopher Wool—making his second Breakfast appearance this week—is in the Guardian.
The Kicker
GOOD ARTISTS COPY. An artist in the Czech Republic who was hired to create a reproduction of a 19th-century painting as part of a refurbishment of Prague’s famed Orloj clock, is being accused of deviating from the original, by Josef Mánes, the Guardian reports. The reproduction was unveiled in 2018, but a recent complaint alleges that the painter, Stanislav Jirčík , altered the clothing of figures and may even have inserted the faces of his friends. Jirčík has not commented. Adam Scheinherr, a local politician, told the paper, “I want to have a serious discussion with him and ask him about the quality of the painting, what was his inspiration, did he study Josef Manes.” [The Guardian]
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daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
Artworks Attacked at Dallas Museum of Art, Shanghai Arts Venues Remain Closed, and More: Morning Links for June 3, 2022
To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
The Headlines
ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, a 21-year-old man was arrested for allegedly breaking into the Dallas Museum of Art and seriously damaging at least four pieces on display, including a Greek amphora from the 6th century B.C.E., the Dallas Morning News reports. Initial reports had placed the value of the damaged works at $5 million, but the museum’s director, Agustín Arteaga , said that the actual figure may be “a fraction” of that. The man was charged with criminal mischief of $300,000 or more, which carries a possible sentence of five years to life in prison, according to the Guardian. Dallas police said that the suspect told the guard who apprehended him that “he got mad at his girl so he broke in and started destroying property.”
CHINA DISPATCH. The exact date has not been announced, but Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam said that the Hong Kong Palace Museum will be inaugurated this summer amid celebrations tied to the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China, the South China Morning Post reports. Over in Shanghai, an intense Covid lockdown has ended, but cultural venues institutions remain shuttered, and there has been no word about when they will be allowed to reopen, the Art Newspaper reports. A rep for UCCA Edge, branch of the Beijing-based museum in the city, said that it will soon be able to install shows, which will ease reopening when that is allowed.
The Digest
Paul Gunther, a revered expert in arts administration who held posts at the Municipal Art Society, the New-York Historical Society, and the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, has died at the age of 65. [The New York Times]
The Dulwich Picture Gallery in London has quietly stopped billing its director as the “Sackler Director.” The move comes as many museums have removed the Sackler name from projects supported by the family, some of whose members have been accused of fueling the opioid crisis through the sale of OxyContin via their company Purdue Pharma. [The Art Newspaper]
Rich Aste, who has been at the helm of the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, for almost six years, said that he will step down in January to become an executive coach at the University of California, Irvine, and start his own practice in that field. [San Antonio]
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has acquired its first painting by the pioneering African American painter Archibald Motley, who was the subject of an acclaimed touring survey in the mid-2010s. Tongues (Holy Rollers), 1929, is now on view on MoMA’s fifth floor. [MoMA Magazine]
ANOTHER STRONG DAY FOR INTERVIEWS WITH ARTISTS: Judith Baca is in the New York Times, Wangechi Mutu is in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Christopher Wool—making his second Breakfast appearance this week—is in the Guardian.
The Kicker
GOOD ARTISTS COPY. An artist in the Czech Republic who was hired to create a reproduction of a 19th-century painting as part of a refurbishment of Prague’s famed Orloj clock, is being accused of deviating from the original, by Josef Mánes, the Guardian reports. The reproduction was unveiled in 2018, but a recent complaint alleges that the painter, Stanislav Jirčík , altered the clothing of figures and may even have inserted the faces of his friends. Jirčík has not commented. Adam Scheinherr, a local politician, told the paper, “I want to have a serious discussion with him and ask him about the quality of the painting, what was his inspiration, did he study Josef Manes.” [The Guardian]
0 notes
daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
Maya Maize God’s Severed Head Discovered in Palenque
A stuccoed stone head from a 1,300-year-old statue of an ancient Mayan maize god has been unearthed by archaeologists in Mexico.
The head was found among ruins in Palenque. Located close to the Usumacinta River, Palenque (or Lakamha in the Itza language) was a Mayan city state in southern Mexico that ultimately ceased in the 8th century CE. The ruins there date from roughly 226 BCE to 799 CE. The former city is known for its impressive Mayan architecture, sculpture, roof comb, and bas-relief carvings.
Archaeologists with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) found the head while they were excavating a site in Palenque. While removing debris from a corridor connecting two sections of a palace complex, the team found inside a container with the head in a small pond.
Researchers believe that the pond was meant to symbolize the entrance to the Mayan underworld. According to Mayan beliefs, the universe was divided into three parts: the sky, the earth, and the underworld. In each were venerated locations that included caves and cenotes, which would have operated as a portal to the subterranean realm, Xibalba, ruled by the Maya death gods and their aids.
Arnoldo González Cruz, a researcher with INAH Chiapas Centre, told Heritage Daily, “The discovery allows us to further understand how the ancient Maya of Palenque relived the mythical passage about the birth, death and resurrection of the maize deity.”
The severed head sculpture would have been placed by the Maya on a tripod. It would have been positioned in an east-west orientation, making it so that the statue would face the sun as it rose. Its positioning was meant to allude to the sun’s role in growing corn plants.
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daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
The Best Dry Erase Markers for the Studio, Classroom, and Office
Say goodbye to the days of dusty chalkboards and hello to the glories of dry erase. Dry-erase boards have become a staple in homes, schools, and offices, making dependable dry-erase markers must-haves. In the classroom, teachers hoard and treasure them. On the job, workers use them to quickly communicate ideas in meetings. Kids love to draw and write with them. While most dry-erase markers are made for whiteboards, you can also find dry-erase markers specially designed for use on glass. Perfect for brainstorming sessions in glass-walled offices, as well as writing on glass boards, windows, and mirrors, these markers lay down smooth, vivid color on glass without beading or streaking.  Browse our selection of dry-erase markers for glass, below.
0 notes
daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
Maya Maize God’s Severed Head Discovered in Palenque
A stuccoed stone head from a 1,300-year-old statue of an ancient Mayan maize god has been unearthed by archaeologists in Mexico.
The head was found among ruins in Palenque. Located close to the Usumacinta River, Palenque (or Lakamha in the Itza language) was a Mayan city state in southern Mexico that ultimately ceased in the 8th century CE. The ruins there date from roughly 226 BCE to 799 CE. The former city is known for its impressive Mayan architecture, sculpture, roof comb, and bas-relief carvings.
Archaeologists with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) found the head while they were excavating a site in Palenque. While removing debris from a corridor connecting two sections of a palace complex, the team found inside a container with the head in a small pond.
Researchers believe that the pond was meant to symbolize the entrance to the Mayan underworld. According to Mayan beliefs, the universe was divided into three parts: the sky, the earth, and the underworld. In each were venerated locations that included caves and cenotes, which would have operated as a portal to the subterranean realm, Xibalba, ruled by the Maya death gods and their aids.
Arnoldo González Cruz, a researcher with INAH Chiapas Centre, told Heritage Daily, “The discovery allows us to further understand how the ancient Maya of Palenque relived the mythical passage about the birth, death and resurrection of the maize deity.”
The severed head sculpture would have been placed by the Maya on a tripod. It would have been positioned in an east-west orientation, making it so that the statue would face the sun as it rose. Its positioning was meant to allude to the sun’s role in growing corn plants.
0 notes
daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
The Guggenheim is Making a Major Investment in Digital Art and Technology
The Guggenheim is committing to the burgeoning field of technology-based art.
The museum announced Wednesday the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative, which encompasses a new annual award program and the creation of a curatorial position dedicated to art that engages with virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, NFTS, and more.
The LG Guggenheim Award, administered by the Guggenheim Foundation, will recognize one artist every year for “groundbreaking achievements in technology-based art.” The award will be juried by an international panel of  artists, curators, museum directors, and other art professionals, and carries an unrestricted prize of $100,000. The first recipient will be announced at next year’s Young Collectors’ Council Party.
The inaugural LG Electronics assistant curator will focus on “deepening” the Guggenheim’s ties to such artists, in the form of exhibitions, research, and education.
Naomi Beckwith, museum deputy director and chief curator, said in a statement that by “promoting scholarship and public engagement, the LG Guggenheim initiative will provide essential support to the visionary artists who inspire new understanding of how technology shapes and is shaped by society.”
The LG initiative is a significant step in the Guggenheim’s efforts to innovate its programming. In 2021, the museum debuted a series of installations titled “Re/Projections: Video, Film, and Performance for the Rotunda”, that filled its central spiral with experiments in familiar art forms and cutting-edge technology. Its final presentation was Wu Tsang’s unearthly “Anthem”, a looped film projected on a long curtain suspended from the ceiling.
The program may also help the Guggenheim catch up to New York institutions with long-term investments in emergent art: Christiane Paul has served at the Whitney as adjunct curator of digital art since 2000. She was responsible for the museum’s essential exhibition “Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018,” which tracked the history of technological art and attempted to imagine its future. The New Museum debuted an incubator for art, technology, and design in 2014.
Every institution, however, is still grappling with how nascent technologies like NFTs and the metaverse will shape the experiencing of art.
The LG Initiative, the Guggenheim said, “will provide essential support” to the “mission to collect, preserve, and interpret the art of our time.”
0 notes
daily-art-news · 2 years
Text
The Guggenheim is Making a Major Investment in Digital Art and Technology
The Guggenheim is committing to the burgeoning field of technology-based art.
The museum announced Wednesday the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative, which encompasses a new annual award program and the creation of a curatorial position dedicated to art that engages with virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, NFTS, and more.
The LG Guggenheim Award, administered by the Guggenheim Foundation, will recognize one artist every year for “groundbreaking achievements in technology-based art.” The award will be juried by an international panel of  artists, curators, museum directors, and other art professionals, and carries an unrestricted prize of $100,000. The first recipient will be announced at next year’s Young Collectors’ Council Party.
The inaugural LG Electronics assistant curator will focus on “deepening” the Guggenheim’s ties to such artists, in the form of exhibitions, research, and education.
Naomi Beckwith, museum deputy director and chief curator, said in a statement that by “promoting scholarship and public engagement, the LG Guggenheim initiative will provide essential support to the visionary artists who inspire new understanding of how technology shapes and is shaped by society.”
The LG initiative is a significant step in the Guggenheim’s efforts to innovate its programming. In 2021, the museum debuted a series of installations titled “Re/Projections: Video, Film, and Performance for the Rotunda”, that filled its central spiral with experiments in familiar art forms and cutting-edge technology. Its final presentation was Wu Tsang’s unearthly “Anthem”, a looped film projected on a long curtain suspended from the ceiling.
The program may also help the Guggenheim catch up to New York institutions with long-term investments in emergent art: Christiane Paul has served at the Whitney as adjunct curator of digital art since 2000. She was responsible for the museum’s essential exhibition “Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018,” which tracked the history of technological art and attempted to imagine its future. The New Museum debuted an incubator for art, technology, and design in 2014.
Every institution, however, is still grappling with how nascent technologies like NFTs and the metaverse will shape the experiencing of art.
The LG Initiative, the Guggenheim said, “will provide essential support” to the “mission to collect, preserve, and interpret the art of our time.”
0 notes