COURTESY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
The Pictures Generation
T magazine brought together 17 key artists affiliated with what’s called the Pictures Generation for an historic photoshoot, and has released the striking image alongside a making-of video that goes behind the scenes of the shoot. These accompany an essay by the great Gary Indiana, who argues, elegantly, that “our present bedazzlement-by-pixels was anticipated by a loosely affiliated group of artists who emerged in New York in the mid-1970s and early ’80s — before iPhones, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.” [T]
Institutional Matters
The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, reopened its permanent collection galleries yesterday after a lengthy renovation. [KXAN]
A former shtetl in Lithuania will be the host of a new “state-of-the-art” Jewish museum, to be designed by the same architects who helmed the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. [Jewish Telegraphic Agency]
Protests erupted after the Russian government announced that it will be handing over the most prominent religious museum in St. Petersburg to the country’s powerful Orthodox Church. [RT]
New Yorkers are getting their workout fix in the hallowed halls of one of the world’s great museums. Yep, that’s right, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts exercise classes. Well, actually, it’s a MetLiveArts commission called The Museum Workout, and involves a collaboration between the contemporary dance choreographer Monica Bill Barnes and writer/illustrator Maira Kalman. And it sure beats SoulCycle! [ABC News]
Fashion Week!
For his first women’s runway show since taking over the as creative director of Calvin Klein, Raf Simons commissioned work from his good friend, artist Sterling Ruby, resulting in a “permanent, total-room installation” in the fashion brand’s New York offices, works hanging from the ceilings and the runway’s edges littered with found objects. [Dazed]
Raf also gave Sterling a pretty ideal seat in the front row: right next to actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Julianne Moore. Looks like he was having a swell time! [Billy Farrell Agency]
Lucien Smith made a short film for the new Cynthia Rowley collection. [WWD]
Christie’s teamed up with IMG, NYFW: The Shows and the E! network to show a bunch of Warhols at Skylight Hudson Sq, in the thick of all the fashion action. The works come via the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and will be included in an online sale this month. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Protest
The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, has shut down “HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US,” a work by Shia LaBeouf, the actor who dabbles in performance art. It was supposed to run uninterrupted, 24 hours a day, for the entirety of the Trump administration, inviting participants to visit the filming site and engage in the protest. But a spate of violence and arrests—including, quite publicly, an arrest of LaBeouf—forced the institution to close it down. [Page Six]
Here’s a look at the artist behind the instantly iconic cover of the New Yorker from last week, which depicted Rosie the Riveter wearing a “pussy hat,” the iconic headgear donned by thousands and thousands during the Women’s March last month in Washington, D.C. Abigail Gray Swartz, an artist based in Maine, sent the artwork in unsolicited and it was selected from the slush pile. [The Huffington Post]
Pettibon
Another positive review of Raymond Pettibon’s show at the New Museum. [The Wall Street Journal]
Meanwhile, the artist was off being a genius on Twitter again. On Sunday, he mused that if his gallery, David Zwirner, is closed on Mondays, does that make him a free agent one day a week? [Twitter]
Come to think of it, Pettibon’s Grammy live-Tweeting was pretty excellent, too. Maybe the best in the game. At one point, he bragged about serving more prison time than Merle Haggard. [Twitter]
The Market in Mexico
The local Mexico City edition of the Metro papers takes a look at the ever-growing Zona Maco fair, which continues to draw galleries from the world over every February. [Metro Mexico City]
And here’s a look at the scene from on the ground at Zona Maco. [W]
Reviews
A glowing review of the new David Hockney retrospective at the Tate Britain, in which the English artist brings sunny scenes of Southern California back to his native country. [The Guardian]
Bonus
The new hot trend at auction houses? Science! Here’s a look at how the acquisition of James Martin’s forensics firm by Sotheby’s could make the once-anonymous, deeply unsexy process of authenticating works a center-stage act in the art market circus. [The Art Newspaper]
Almine Rech Gallery in London has up a group show devoted to work made with a single material. What material is that? As one of Ben Braddock’s parents’ friends tells the young man in “The Graduate,” by way of advice: “Plastics.” [The New York Times]