DOMINIC ALVES/COURTESY CREATIVE COMMONS
Big Apple
The Whitney Museum proposed plans for a public art project by David Hammons to a Manhattan community board last night. The work would outline an old pier building along the Hudson River, in a nod to Gordon Matta-Clark. [ARTnews]
It turns out David Geffen had some more (and not-so-nice) things to say about the culture of giving in New York after Lincoln Center announced intentions to downgrade its renovation plans for the recently renamed David Geffen Hall. [The New York Times]
Spurned
A video reporter from Vice was banned from Yayoi Kusama’s studio in Japan after an interview that didn’t go so well. [Vice]
Here’s an overview of the situation surrounding the impending sale of artworks in a controversial move by the Berkshire Museum, home to “lost masterpieces of Norman Rockwell country.” [The New Yorker]
Artists
“What’s the biggest question facing artists today?” See answers proffered by the likes of Tacita Dean, Stefan Kalmár, Marina Abramović, Arthur Jafa, and more. [The Guardian]
A.O. Scott reviewed Faces Places, a new documentary film that chronicles Agnès Varda’s travels with the artist JR. [The New York Times]
See some bewitching pictures of ’70s/’80s-era carnival workers as memorialized by photographer Randal Levenson, including a fire-eater, a pupil-popping master of shock-eyed looks, and “the world’s largest steer.” [The Guardian]
Art Music
A review of a new book about the one lone copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s $1 million album and its acquisition by the vilified financial operator Martin Shkreli ponders a pair of questions: “Was this a disastrous end to the Wu-Tang’s single-copy scheme? Or did it simply prove their point that if you put music at the mercy of the market, the result would be ugly?” [Bookforum]
Geoff Dyer is obsessed with the cultishly adored Australian improv-art-rock-drone band known as the Necks—enough so to write a long magazine profile about a subject that might surprise. [The New York Times Magazine]
Despite an intensely inhospitable political climate, underground dance music is up and pumping in Turkey. [Noisey]
And More
Writer Selin Thomas goes in for Kara Walker’s celebrated gallery show currently inspiring poetic waxings. “Last night, they scaled my walls as I slept,” she writes of Walker’s haunting apparitions. “The silhouettes moved closer—paralyzing me—with each flash of yellow light from the street.” [The Paris Review]
In mind of all the “thoughts and prayers” offered by wan politicians in the wake of yet another national tragedy, here’s a considered take on a 50-year-old tome about the history and aspirations of “black magic” and followers of the dark arts. [The Washington Post]