Results tagged “finearts”

Last night Beverly Sills lost her battle with lung cancer, she died at her home in Manhattan at the age of 78. While she was a lifelong non-smoker and only found out about the cancer a few weeks ago, this wasn't her first experience with it - she underwent a successful surgery for cancer in 1974.

Governor Spitzer nominated H. Dale Hemmerdinger to be Peter Kalikow's replacement as MTA Chairman. Hemmerdinger is a real estate developer with long and varied ties to New York City. He is the president of ATCO Properties and Management, which owns and manages two million square feet of residential, commercial, industrial, and retail space. A longtime backer of Democratic politians, Hemmerdinger's wife donated $40,000 to Spitzer's campaigns since 2000, and Mrs. Spitzer hosted a fundraiser at the Hemmerdinger's Central Park South home last month, according to the Daily News. He is also the former head of the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission, where he recommended balancing the MTA's operating budget by hiking subway and bus fares, as well as increasing tolls for motorists.

Many look at Woodlawn Cemetery as more than just a graveyard. The NY Times reports this will be true on another level soon as the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, who took title of the cemetery archives a year ago, is now receiving "the family correspondence that illuminates the backgrounds of the dead and their mourners."

EXHIBIT: Apparently there's an exhibit of Anna Nicole Smith photographs starting tonight. We can't find much info on it, but What's Up NYC says there's a "reception and exhibit of portraits and candid photographs of, wait for it, Anna Nicole Smith."

Last night we headed to one of our favorite local bars, Lolita, for a Sunday night, post-CMJ, drink. The bar rotates artwork every month or so and right now it's all New York themed pieces. The Greek coffee cup, the parking ticket, the Metrocard, the subway sign...you get the idea. For some reason, they are all painted on canvas that is meant to resemble a refrigerator door. Example at right.

PARTY: Disorient & Kostume Kult invite you to The Black & Light Ball; a Black-Lit Burner Formal. It's like a rave, in your dorm room...but in a gallery, with a lot more blacklighting than you could afford in college. With lighting art on display and blacklight flooding the space - we think it's okay if, just this once, you wear your sunglasses at night. Much more art, craziness and music (er, of the "techno" and "house" variety) will be a backdrop to the ball, a summer fundraiser. There will also be a blacklight sensitive fashion show by PHil's PHads and Caitlin Stolley at 10 pm.

Oh man, when was the last time we had a good artistic freedom vs. religion controversy? Hmm... maybe the Black Virgin Mary covered in poo back in 2000-- which itself was nothing compared to Serrano's Piss Christ back in 1989. Well, here's a new one! CBS reports on the National Black Fine Arts Show at the Puck Building:

Well, despite overwhelming public opinion against it, and numerous setbacks, the Arts Commission has spoken: The fountain in Washington Square Park, and the two statues that abut it, will move twenty-two-odd feet to the east. The vote, in case you are curious, was 10 for and 1 against the changes.

- Tonight gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson gets his final wish: his ashes will be shot exactly six months from his death out of a cannon over his Colorado compound.

Francesca Kaplan, Artist/Designer/Stylist

Gothamist Wants You! Yes, you. We are looking to add some contributors to the ever-expanding Arts & Events section. More specifically we need people who can write two posts a week in one of the following areas:

Murtaza Vali, Graduate Student

Rachelle Socol, Designer

Look at Michael DeFeo's own site. And Bluejake's moblog is mainly about street art.

Margaret Braun, Sugar Artist

Tonight & Tomorrow night @ Volume come witness some large scale art as installation artists show off their works before some of them head out to Burning Man.

Ack - a fine arts framer left his portfolio containing a Picasso drawing and a Sophie Matisse painting on the 1/9 platform at West 79th Street Thursday morning. Framer W.H. Bailey, who also framed Starry Night (but did not lose it), sobbed when the subway clerk told him the portfolio hadn't been returned. This makes Gothamist wonder what other high-ticket items that one wouldn't think should be transported in the subway are actually in the subway?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be opening its newly renovated $30 million cafeteria on June 17. The Times notes that it's like the Conde Nast cafeteria in its price tag, use of metal and glass (laminated, thought), and the chef who formerly headed up the 4TS Conde Nast cafeteria, but the main difference is that the Met cafeteria is open to the public, not underfed fashionistas, although Gothamist would like to see a crossover episode of "Expensive New York Cafeterias" where tourists from Iowa rub shoulders with Vogue editors. The food at the Met's cafeteria will be provided by Restaurant Associates, which runs New York restaurants Brasserie, Brasserie 8 1/2, the Seat Grill, and eateries at other museums, like the American Museum of Natural History, the Cooper-Hewitt, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Times article also outlines the history of the cafeteria.

One reason I like press releases from the Martinez Gallery is their use of flowery prose: "The primary examples of this bloodline of real, authentic Bombers are Ghost, in the 80s, VFR, since ’88, JA, since ’90, and Giz, since ’93. Not one of them kowtows before the idols of (1) legality, which of course changes with time; (2) Muralism, practiced so majestically by the Mexicans in the wake of their 20th century revolution (Orozco, Rivera, Siquieros) and from which Jackson Pollock, among many others, learned so much; nor (3) the “Fine Arts,” which are the exact opposite of the kind of work seen, for example, in the extraordinary Thomas de Quincey, that opium-eating murderer of art and life; and of course (4) the piecing, or assembly-line repetition that feeds the hungry maw of the market; not to mention even remoter influences, each with their appellation d’origin. Before this conceptual swindle, which won’t even admit to its own name, only the Bombers propose to do battle, counter current. Only the Bombers dare to look across the river of lies that so many pay tribute to, that so many permit by averting their eyes -- those mute masses that know nothing of true graffiti and even less of its spirit, philosophy and world vision." - opening: feb 22 2002, 8 PM after party: 10 PM.