CRIME
A Long Island City arts nonprofit, the Healing Arts Initiative, has shut down following a lengthy embezzlement scandal, during which the organization’s director was attacked with lye. [CBS]
Works from the collection of the former shah of Iran, who reportedly had one of the finest art collections in the world, will go on view in Berlin later this year. [TheLocal.de]
TITANS
George W. Bush started his art career on his iPhone, apparently: “There was actually a period where he only communicated through his ‘art,’” Jenna [Bush] told [Jimmy] Fallon. “He would send Barbara and me a text that said ‘Going on an airplane’ and would do a stick figure of an airplane.” [Hyperallergic]
Of his art collecting, Aby Rosen tells the New York Observer, “I want to buy something pretty and something that I can do something with.” Of his career, he says, “I take good buildings and make them better. That’s all I do.” [The New York Observer]
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh is adding Warhol’s Do It Yourself (Sailboats) to its permanent collection. [The New York Times]
THE FUTURE
New startup Moving Pictures Gallery is one of the first online galleries to sell art using Bitcoin and blockchain technologies. [The Creator’s Project]
THE PAST
The show “Impressionism: American Gardens on Canvas” at the New York Botanical Gardens features the same living plants that appear in 20 works of Impressionist art created around the year 1900. [The New York Times]
EXTRAS
Chadwick Rantanen at Essex Street. [Contemporary Art Daily]