Results tagged “brooklynmuseum”

Astonishing. Graffiti artists are still doing the ol' "sneak into a museum and hang unsolicited work" trick. The latest, Mat Benote, fancies himself a "Fine Art Graffiti Artist" and has actually already pulled this stunt at the Guggenheim. His latest conquest was the walls of the Brooklyn Museum, and one of his minions wrote to tell us this is "the Cloak & Dagger style of graffiti art that he has become known for." So controversial! So... 2005!

It looks like the Queens Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum are battling it out... on Twitter! It's impossible to say who is winning this publicity stunt war, but the Queens folk had a pretty good burn, posting the above pic and saying they found the Brooklyn Museum on their panorama.

     

The Brooklyn Museum has taken four of their eleven human mummies to get CT scans at North Shore Hospital on Long Island... and they're updating their Flickr account with photos and live Twittering. Surely so much technology can't be good for the mummified soul. They tell us that "Through the CT scanning, Brooklyn Museum curators hope to learn more about each of the four mummies and the ancient civilization in which they lived. The Mummies that will undergo CT scanning are a Royal Prince, Count of Thebes, who is more three thousand years old; the Lady Hor on view in her elaborately painted cartonnage since 1993, some two thousand years old; Thothirdes, over 2,500 years and; and a mummy about which little is known, that dates back to the first century C. E." And so far today they found out that Lady Hor is a really a man, baby.

The Brooklyn Museum has been robbed! No, we're not talking about Albany, or a good old fashioned caper, rather a former payroll manager stole more than $620,000 from the institution. The NY Post reports that Dwight Newton, 40, siphoned the money into bank accounts he held with his wife. He "faces fraud charges for drafting 38 bogus electronic checks between April 2005 and December 2005, authorities said." As of now there's no evidence that his wife, Donna Tricarico, was involved. Though one might find it odd that the 49-year-old who just retired from the Brooklyn DA's Office where she was a detective took no notice of the extra $620K coming into their bank accounts. As for Newton, he had left the museum last summer to work for a non-profit called Action Against Hunger, where he was arrested. The Daily News has a photo of him fleeing from court; the museum's spokeswoman said that "the losses were covered by insurance."

     

The Arctic is making a cameo in New York this month, as the Brooklyn Museum houses The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want by Tavares Strachan. "In 2005, Tavares Strachan journeyed to the Alaskan Arctic and worked with a skilled team to extract a single two-and-a-half ton piece of ice from a frozen river. This ice block was shipped to the Bahamas (the artist's birthplace) and exhibited there in hot summer weather, kept cold in a specially designed freezer powered by solar energy," which is now at the museum. The sun keeping the ice freezing? Far out man.

Yesterday the Brooklyn Museum sent out a press release regarding the new economic reality and how it will impact the establishment. The laundry list of cuts and changes included: a new budget, hiring freeze, the cancellation of a major exhibition (which would have included works from the likes of Roy Lichtenstein), reduced number of major exhibitions overall, a moratorium on staff travel, and offering buyouts to all of its 281 full-time employees. This certainly doesn't paint a very pretty picture. The Brooklyn Paper notes that "The art world hasn’t seen cuts like this since Vincent Van Gogh lopped off his ear" (har har), citing a $2.3 million loss in aid from city government over the past three years. Last month they suggested visitors donate $2 more (upping the fee from $8 to $10).

With more patrons opting to go to museums on their free days or only paying the minimum suggested donation on others, local museums are being thrifty themselves by dipping into their own collections for upcoming shows. WCBS 2 points to the Brooklyn Museum's recent exhibition of Coptic and Pagan sculpture and the MOMA's fall presentation of Claude Monet's water lilies series as shows that draw largely or entirely from the museums' own respective holdings. The Brooklyn Museum recently just raised its rates after recent months have seen an increase in visitors on their free First Saturdays by almost 50% to over 10,000. A spokesman for the Met doesn't think cutbacks will get too dramatic saying, "There's no thought of changing hours, closing galleries, aborting the schedule.'' The president of the Association of Art Museum Directors added, ''Although all nonprofits and profits are struggling, we do have a curious place in this reality.''

During a time when art appreciators aren't paying the full suggested admission price to get into museums, and the Queens Museum is selling off panorama real estate, the Brooklyn Museum has just announced they'll be raising their suggested admission fee. Starting on March 21st (just prior to the opening of Sun K. Kwak's Enfolding 280 Hours installation) the suggested fee will go up 2 bucks (making it $10 for adults and $6 for older adults and students). Director Arnold Lehman addressed the change, saying, "We truly regret that the challenges created by the economic downturn have made it necessary to modestly increase the admissions fee at the Brooklyn Museum. We are grateful to the Department of Cultural Affairs for its support as we move forward with this suggested admissions increase." The museum will, however, keep running their Target First Saturdays series, with free admission for all. And let's not forget, there's even a free shuttle that'll take you there.

       

Masking tape as art? Whatever! The Brooklyn Museum is making it so, however, with Sun K. Kwak's Enfolding 280 Hours installation. The New York-based artist has created her masterpiece from approximately three miles of black masking tape in the fifth-floor Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery. She began installing the piece, with help from assistants, in early February and guessed it would take around 280 hours to complete, thus the exhibit's title.

On January 3rd the Brooklyn Museum will launch a new "Socially-Networked Membership" at their First Saturdays called 1stfans, which will offer paperless benefits through outlets like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Benefit numero uno: "Artists from Swoon's studio will be on hand to help launch the initiative...They will create prints on found paper to be provided that evening by new 1stfans." (Keep in mind that this will likely mean Swoon studio artists will be working off a stencil she created, but she may not be there herself.) Want one? Want to also get exclusive updates via the museum's new Twitter art feed? Gotta pony up 20 bucks for the annual membership fee first. TONY notes that the social networking platforms will bring "updates to your Facebook or Twitter accounts, and the possibility of corresponding with other members and museum staff through these sites." You'll also get the benefit of skipping the ticket line for movies.

The Brooklyn Museum has become nothing more than a storage closet for its "storied couture clothing collection," but now the Brooklyn Paper explains the "cash-strapped" institution is "unloading" the 105-year-old cache to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The BMA, which hadn't displayed the clothing since 1991, won't receive any money, but it's saving some, since it will no longer pay for the storage and care. The Met, with its funding (not to mention 10 times the BMA's visitors) can mount a proper exhibition of what's being called "one of the world’s best collections of American fashion" (the NY Times reported that its "largely assembled from the closets of grand ladies of Brooklyn and Manhattan"). The paper also notes that while the "Met’s Costume Institute will own, curate and preserve the pieces, the two museums will collaborate on a bi-borough costume show in 2010."

       

Internationally acclaimed British artists Gilbert & George are getting their first American retrospective in more than two decades with an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that opens tomorrow. On view are more than ninety pictures produced since 1970, including more than a dozen that will be seen only in the Brooklyn. The exhibit will be on view through January 11th and is the final stop an acclaimed international tour organized by the Tate Modern.

         

Everyone’s a curator at the Brooklyn Museum’s Click! exhibition. Last March, the museum invited photographers to submit one photo that addressed the theme of "Changing Faces of Brooklyn." Inspired by James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds, organizers uploaded the 389 responses to the museum’s website for the general public to evaluate.

      

The Brooklyn Museum's Steinberg Family Sculpture Garden features an array of salvaged sculpture that managed to triumph over the wrecking ball. The preserved work on view points back through time to sculpture's architectural prominence before the advent of Modernism, when it was as bountiful on building facades as in museums.

Beyond the significance of individual works, the collection as a whole demonstrates the Museum's agile response to the destruction of architectural treasures even before the historic preservation movement reached its stride in the late 1960s. As public appreciation of architectural ornament and sculpture has grown, the Museum's collection has served not only as an archive of historic objects, but also as a welcoming outdoor installation beloved by visitors.

Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner wasn’t the only one causing controversy at the Brooklyn Museum’s gala celebration for the Takashi Murakami retrospective last Thursday night. Some attendees say Jamie Snow, wife of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, was rather boorish in her accumulation of freebies at the event.

             

As anticipated, last night's gala event at the Brooklyn Museum honoring real estate developer Bruce Ratner attracted protesters opposed to the $4 billion Atlantic Yards stadium and residential development proposed for a 22-acre site just a stone's throw from the museum. Atlantic Yards Report was at the scene and writes: "The protest organized by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn last night outside the museum was notably angry, with some 80 people gathering at one point, many chanting 'Ratner is a liar' and 'Shame on you' at vehicles coming to drop off their passengers."

Brooklyn community groups opposed to the Atlantic Yards project are outraged developer Bruce Ratner will be honored tonight at a gala at the Brooklyn Museum. Ratner's Forest City Foundation gave $100,000 to the museum in ’05 and again in ’06; now the museum's is giving him their highest honor, the Augustus Graham Medal. Brooklyn resident Michael White is organizing a protest, and tells the Daily News, "A museum should be a good neighbor to its community. You cannot be a good neighbor by promoting the activities of someone who is a bad neighbor."

During a conference call with investors yesterday, Forest City Enterprises CEO Charles Ratner acknowledged that a window of opportunity had all but closed for the ambitious, 22-acre housing, retail and stadium project proposed for Brooklyn. But he also insisted that the delay – brought on by recession and dogged opposition from community groups – was just temporary:

The economy sometimes alters the timeline, but we have demonstrated our ability to see these projects through to completion—the value they create is well worth the time and effort. … Real estate is a long-term business. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

              

© MURAKAMI, a retrospective of the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, opens Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, where it was on view until February, the exhibit primarily focuses Murakami's work between 1991 and 2000, when the artist began exploring "his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity." (One additional work, Murakami's 6,613 pound, 18 foot-tall Oval Buddha sculpture, will be on view at the Sculpture Garden at 590 Madison Avenue at 56th Street.)

Today marks International Women's Day; in 1908 more than 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights (IWD didn't officially begin until 1911). 100 years after the march, women are not only voting, but they're running for president.

The Chrysler Building. The Seagram Building. The Apple Store Soho? The Center for Architecture's executive director Rick Bell made a list of 10 great buildings to see in New York City (presumably for tourists) and spoke to the AP about it. The list spans two boroughs, a classic skyscraper, a beloved transportation hub, and retail stores, and some landmarks are deliberately left off (like the Empire State Building which everyone knows about):
• Conde Nast Building, for its "environmentally correct" design by Fox & Fowle.
• Brooklyn Museum, for the modern entry pavilion and plaza, designed by James Polshek, against its Beaux Arts facade; the AP writes the addition makes makes the museum "inviting and accessible, a suitable centerpiece for Brooklyn's burgeoning hipster art scene."
• Prada New York in Soho, designed by Rem Koolhaas, for the way it "displays the merchandise, it doesn't sell it."

THEATER: Wolf Lane Productions presents Victims of the Zeitgeist (The Tragedy of Martin Luther King, Jr.), written & directed by Ellwoodson Williams. The production "offers an exciting and telling insight into just who Martin Luther King, Jr., was as leader and simply as a sensitive and intelligent human being who loved life and who had a sense of humor, a deep understanding of the human condition - its strengths and weaknesses - and a profound belief in justice."

Zagat's updated Best of Brooklyn 2008 guide was released yesterday, filled to the brim with all that the city's largest borough has to offer, including 216 restaurants, 141 nightspots, 355 shops, 25 tourist attractions and more. Like all Zagat guides, this one is a complilation of surveys from the public and each entry is rated on a scale of 1-30. The guide is broken up into five sections: Dining, Nightlife, Shopping, Gourmet Shopping & Entertaining,...

ArtCal calls him, "the most controversial and downright interesting graffiti artist at large in the UK today" and whether or not you agree -- Banksy is decorating our streets, galleries...and even Brangelina's household walls. In New York he has pranked his way into the Met, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. Recently it was announced that his images would be used to sell luxury condos in Williamsburg...and just yesterday...

Photo via Hamevugar's Flickr. The Brooklyn Museum housed a Ron Mueck exhibit that we pointed out last year and CubeMe just reported on. The exhibition, now closed, included "about 15 mixed media works on loan from the artist’s collection, major museums, and private collections..that explore the ambiguous relationship between reality and artifice, creating figures that express the contradictions between the real world and the imaginary. The figures seem to be alive: every detail -...

These photographs were garnered from the Brooklyn Museum's holdings to create an exhibit titled: Goodbye Coney Island? The collection "traces the evolution of this fabled part of New York over the past 125 years," over which time it has undergone many transformations. The most prominent of which is still in the future -- with Thor Equities redeveloping the area. The above ride looks terrifying! If you'd like to revisit the glory days, head over...

This week, the NY Times has some suggestions for wedding gifts from stores affiliated to museums, reasoning that those stores have wonderful gifts that are appealing to "people who are tired of shopping in the same old places — and might enjoy spending a couple hours in a museum as well." We wholeheartedly agree - when you know the couple well, that is.

Two years ago, we wondered if there was a big list of all the fountains in New York City. We haven't made that much progress with the list, but at least now we have a list of the "display fountains" the Parks Department maintains. And it's interesting - Brooklyn only has three while Staten Island has eight. Of course, there are many fountains outside of the Parks Department's jurisdiction (for instance, the fountain outside the Brooklyn Museum), so if you can help remind us of others in the comments, that would be great.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a large fight on Fordham Rd. and Jerome Ave. in the Bronx, police activity in the employee parking lot at JFK Airport in Queens, and a pedestrian was struck on East 57th St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan.
• Donald Trump owns almost 20% of Brooklyn's Starrett City that his dad bought for him when he graduated from business school. He now advises lower-income residents of the development that "This is not Communist China," in response to protests against a proposed sale and probable eviction.
• New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer points to the obvious conclusion of recent trends: two Duane Reade drug stores directly across the street from one another. What, no Chase banks nested inside?
• CSI: Egypt. The Brooklyn Museum catscanned a mummified body from Egypt and analysts determined that it died a completly normal and uneventful death.
• A former East Village drug kingpin is now busy getting West Village residents high on endorphins as a personal trainer.
• New York tap water may be proclaimed as the best by Mayor Bloomberg, but the city still pays $1 million annually for Poland Spring and other delivered water.
• The city is re-opening the bike-only lane on the north side of the Manhattan Bridge. Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn notes that it's been closed since October 2006.
• And a City Council member wants Councilman Dennis Gallagher, indicted on rape charges, to resign.

MOVIE: The new Hairspray has set up special Sing-A-Long screenings! They begin nationwide today, and there will be three right here in New York. If you don't like rowdy theaters, skip this one!