Image via Metmuseum.org
- Change.org, the online petitioning platform, is known mostly for efforts at improving labor conditions in the garment industry or protesting a motor company’s dumping toxic waste into a state park. Now, it’s being harnessed to attack an issue of real social concern. Following the titanic success of the exhibition “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” at the Met, designer and fashion blogger Selena Norris has formed a petition to get the show to go on a world tour. At the time of this writing, her 1,020 count still doesn’t best a 2,457-strong effort to bring “Savage Beauty” to London, McQueen’s city of birth. Melanie Rickey, fashion editor at the London-based magazine Grazia writes, “that the McQueen exhibition took place in New York without a forward plan to bring it to London, is a scandal.” ArtInfo reports that rumors of such negotiations taking place have remained, on the whole, rumors.
- Following a $2 million grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Seaport Museum is being taken over by the Museum of the City of New York. The move is expected to result in a stabler future and improved collection for the Seaport Museum, which has not been without its financial difficulties in recent years. In addition to laying off more than half of its staff last winter, the institution has reduced swash-buckling, wench-mongering, and other pirate-related concerns by 30% (if you laughed at that bit of recession humor, we hope you feel appropriately guilty).
- Can we help it that street art and overheated art journalism go so well together? With the UK’s Channel 4 having aired a documentary entitled “Graffiti Wars” following events that placed the famed graffitist King Robbo in a coma (where he remains, after several months), the Sunday Times has further dramatized the relationship between Robbo and fellow spray-painter Banksy, comparing their relationship to “the rivalry of Picasso and Matisse.” As Banksy continues to cite inaccuracies in both reports and King Robbo offers little comment (because he’s in a coma), we look forward to the day when the case can be covered with more restraint–or at least without quoting unnamed sources from graffiti message boards.
- Some of us might not make it to all the art openings going on tonight because we need to get our nails did at the New Museum. Starting with the winner of a raffle at tonight’s launch party, the artist and jeweler Dzine will apply avant-garde nail polish designs to visitors on consecutive Saturdays during the month of September. Intrigued parties who didn’t manage to sign up in time can purchase Dzine’s pinky nail jewelry, which are described, with not a trace of irony, as “a little funky, a little eccentric, and completely ghetto fabulous.”
"Goddam Rodin. Three drinks and I'm nude." via Billy Crystal
- A cloud of bummers has formed over the Buenos Aires cast of Rodin’s most famous statue. Seeking to repair damage inflicted by vandals who spray painted the cast of “The Thinker” that stands near Argentina’s national Congress building, the Buenos Aires government arranged to have the statue blasted with water. Some experts wish the authorities had acted less hastily, cringing at the effect water blasting might have on the statue’s unique shades of blue-green oxidation. Image via AFP.
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I am from Buenos Aires, and the Rodin´s statue is located not more than 150 meters from the National Congress. Other great statues in the area have been conserved using fences, that of course make them look sad. I am a tour guide and have to explain almost every day this kind of things. Buenos Aires is a great city, but sometimes I wish to live far away.
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