OLD NEWS

IT'S WORLD FROG DAY!
The Invasion of the Frogs,
Engraving by Jan Sadeler I,
after Maarten van Cleef, 1585:
<https://tinyurl.com/2txs5rpf> _‪PeterHuestis‬

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OLAFUR ELIASSON STAGES PUBLIC WAKE FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE IN UTAH
<https://tinyurl.com/5b4v3jr8>
For ten days between 26 March and 4 April, Olafur Eliasson presented A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake, a multimedia installation projected onto a luminous sphere in Memory Grove Park, a public green space tucked into one of the Salt Lake City’s seven canyons below Capitol Hill. It was the Icelandic Danish artist's first public work in Utah.
Free and open to the public, the work unfolded among prematurely blooming cherry blossom trees along the park’s paths, where a creek threads through a canyon towards the Great Salt Lake—an early spring in plain sight, and a quiet index of the climate instability shaping the lake’s decline.
What does extinction or a shrinking lake sound and look like? This is the question that structured Eliasson’s project. The artist describes this work as “a symphony the animals are performing for us”, a framing that decentres human viewers while imploring us to consider our role as stewards of the lake.
What does extinction or a shrinking lake sound and look like? This is the question that structured Eliasson’s project. The artist describes this work as “a symphony the animals are performing for us”, a framing that decentres human viewers while imploring us to consider our role as stewards of the lake.
Visually, the installation unfolded across the surface of a three-storey-tall elevated sphere with four projectors beaming from sites around the park. Glowing like a beacon after dark, the sphere at times appeared fully three-dimensional—like a suspended, glowing planet. Starting promptly at 9pm each night, the sequence began with a flickering field of light, like a constellation or swarm, before resolving into shifting light streaks of wind currents rippling across the surface.
The sound of birds cut through streaks of red and orange, followed by intersecting meridian lines gridding the sphere into a kind of speculative globe. As the soundscape thickened, the abstract visual also shifted. Pulsating rainbow shapes grew and shrank over the crescendo of a chorus of chirping frogs. At its most intense, the projection resembled a psychedelic stained-glass window or a prismatic weather system, its colours bending and refracting like geothermal light or the aurora borealis.
Felicia Baca, the director of the arts council, tells that a focus on hopeful futures for the lake and city was important to both Eliasson and the council. She adds that Utah is a place where people are connected to the singular landscape, and that acute climate anxiety affects the politics around the lake.
<https://tinyurl.com/4v9p68kv> _ArtNewspaper

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BE
<https://tinyurl.com/5t3vpb2a> _DavidShrigley

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GEORGIA O’KEEFFE MUSEUM LAUNCHES DIGITAL CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ
<https://tinyurl.com/mencajxh>
Barbara Buhler Lynes, the preeminent Georgia O’Keeffe scholar, remembers the first time she was enraptured by the artist’s oeuvre.
It was 1987, one year after O’Keeffe’s death. Lynes, a Renaissance art historian at the time, visited the National Gallery of Art’s centennial exhibition in her honor. In an interview, Lynes recalled that the dozens of paintings and drawings on view, including a collection of early abstract works, sparked a question that would launch her decades-long scholarship on O’Keeffe: “Why had she turned away from abstraction, which was the most innovative thing happening in American art at the time, to essential representational imagery, which was much more traditional?”
Inspired by O’Keeffe’s art and personal history, Lynes researched and published the artist’s definitive catalogue raisonné in 1999, for which she personally examined 2,029 works. Now, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico — where Lynes served as the founding curator — has digitized her scholarship as part of a free online platform, Access O’Keeffe <http://tiny.cc/vcx1101>.
Using the tool, anyone can now browse through images of O’Keeffe’s oeuvre — including paintings, handwritten letters, and early sketches — held at various institutions and private collections around the world. Users can also sort works by color, medium, and theme.
<http://tiny.cc/wcx1101>
Liz Neely, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s curator of Digital Experience, told Hyperallergic that the institution first conceived of the idea for the digital archive a decade ago.
″ These last two years have really been thinking about: How do we reach out to all the public institutions? How do we get new images? How did we work through all the audience research so we could make a tool that was broadly accessible to a lot of people?” Neely said.
Neely led the efforts to develop Access O’Keeffe, which launched in February, in consultation with Lynes. Several works have changed hands since the catalogue was published, and the new digital resource contains updated information on the works’ provenance and exhibitions.
<https://tinyurl.com/4myh8jh5>
Though the project follows in the footsteps of other digitized catalogs, such as Van Gogh Worldwide, the museum encountered its own obstacles in launching the tool. When President Trump slashed federal arts funding early last year, the museum’s $243,570 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to build Access O’Keeffe disappeared, with $100,000 left unpaid.
Neely said the museum was prepared to fund the remainder of the project. But before the museum could step up to fill the gap, a lawsuit filed by attorneys general against IMLS led to the restoration of the project’s funding last year.
<https://tinyurl.com/mu4axfxz> _Hyperallergic

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/45j5k3pv> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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73. VIGNELLI SUBWAY Map by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/3kverybt>
The problem came from what to prioritize: actual geography, or a legible diagram of a system.
The problem came from three separate subway companies merged into the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1953.
The problem was human beings: turf wars, irrationality, arguments over limited resources.
In the mid-20th century, New York City subway system maps were a mess. Only an expert could navigate them. Riders still used the names of the old systems—IRT, BMT, and IND—navigating the residue of three competing networks. In 1972, the MTA sought to address the “mass of spaghetti,” publishing its first map by an established design firm: the Vignelli map.
Influenced by Harry Beck’s 1933 London Underground diagram, the Vignelli map abandoned above-ground topography for below-ground clarity. Water is beige, parks are brown, boroughs are distorted, streets and landmarks disappear. Central Park appears wider than it is tall. It’s technicolor arteries running through a dead, beige body. Designers loved it—it entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Riders were outraged. Where was their city?
Diagrammatic maps like Vignelli’s choose the logic of network over the romance of street life. It’s built for decisions underground, not strolling through neighborhoods. It clarifies sequence, simplifies transfers, makes decisions legible at a glance. Still, it was abandoned in 1979.
Fifty years on, smartphones and GPS have rendered moot these arguments. Subway maps no longer need to reference above-ground geography. In 2025, MTA launched its first new map since Vignelli—and returned to its geometry. _TheImpatientReader

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LOOKING AROUND 2
<https://tinyurl.com/yeyrtfay>
For the past decade I have been searching for places
where I can see 360 degrees to the horizon
and not see or hear any sign of a human presence. _ON&ON / Jeff Weiss

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EREWHON TO OPEN AT LACMA’S NEW DAVID GEFFEN GALLERIES
<https://tinyurl.com/4zwx2r3k>
Want to sip on Hailey Bieber’s Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie after staring at Vincent van Gogh’s “Tarascon Stagecoach”? Los Angeles County Museum of Art has got you covered.
The museum announced Tuesday that it has partnered with Erewhon, the high-end L.A. health food chain and retailer, on a cafe located on the ground level of its new David Geffen galleries. The cafe, which has outdoor seating beside Alexander Calder’s fountain sculpture, “Three Quintains (Hello Girls),” will open Sunday for LACMA members visiting the David Geffen Galleries. The general public can get in on the coveted buffalo cauliflower when the new building opens to the public on May 4 — with the partnership continuing through the summer. No definite closure has been announced, so it’s possible the collaboration continues. _LATimes

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IT TASTES LIKE MONET'S WATER LILIES WITH NOTES OF MONEY AND BRAND DEALS.
<https://tinyurl.com/5xna2byr> _CarolinaAMiranda

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EREWHON, STORE KNOWN FOR $20-PLUS SMOOTHIES, TO SET UP IN LACMA
<https://tinyurl.com/mr3jd3sv>
Erewhon will have its opening timed to the new building, with members getting early access ahead of the café’s public debut.
“We are excited to launch Erewhon at LACMA for the opening season of the David Geffen Galleries,” LACMA director and CEO Michael Govan said in a statement. “Erewhon is a Los Angeles icon that values creativity and wellbeing and is dedicated to its communities. … A moment of respite at Erewhon at LACMA, surrounded by public art, will be a vital part of the LACMA experience.”

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JASPER JOHNS, TARGET, 1970
<https://tinyurl.com/23vfurw8> _MichaelLobel

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FORMER HIGH MUSEUM COO PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO FEDERAL THEFT CHARGES
Brady Lum, the former chief operating officer of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, entered a not guilty plea Tuesday to a federal theft charge stemming from allegations that he misappropriated museum funds.
In February, news broke that Lum, 59, had resigned from his position in December after an internal investigation at the museum concluded that Lum was responsible for misappropirating $600,000 over several years. The institution referred the matter to federal prosecutors.
On Tuesday, during Lum’s arraignment in federal court in Atlanta, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia accused Lum of manipulating financial records and authorizing illegitimate purchases for his personal benefit, including high-end musical instruments, private lessons, and workshop equipment.
“While entrusted to run the High Museum, Lum allegedly used the museum’s money as his personal slush fund and thereby betrayed one of Atlanta’s civic crown jewels,” US Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg said in a statement. “Our office will move with swift precision to prosecute individuals who abuse positions of power and trust to enrich themselves at the expense of non-profit institutions.”
According to the indictment, Lum masked his unauthorized expenditures by submitting “altered invoices,” then used his position to “exercise delegated expense approval authority” and then used “accounting adjustments to spread his expenses across different cost centers.”
During Tuesday’s hearing, Lum told the judge he is currently unemployed and was ordered to seek employment while on bond. Lum’s attorney Don Samuel told that Lum had nothing to say about the case at this time.
The charges follow an internal investigation launched by the Woodruff Arts Center, which oversees the High Museum along with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Alliance Theatre. In February, the organization’s board voted to refer the matter to federal prosecutors after the probe uncovered the alleged financial irregularities.
Woodruff Arts Center President and CEO Hala Moddelmog previously told that the organization believes Lum acted alone and that the alleged theft would not impact museum operations. The High Museum remains financially stable, she said. _ARTnews

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BENSON BOWL BENSON, AZ
<https://tinyurl.com/5abaf9su> _RuralIndexingProject

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HARD TRUTHS: by Chen & Lampert
For some incalculable reason, I was not listed as one of the 100 top art world players in a prominent magazine’s annual ranking. I was positioned in the top 30 for many years in a row, and now I suddenly do not exist. I want to pen a very sharp letter but have held back thus far to appease my wife. She believes they may ban me from the list forever if I make a stink. Should I listen to her, or pursue an answer from them?
---
Oh no, CEO, your speculative bubble has burst and people are hedging their bets against you. The art market is a lot like the stock market in that every once in a while it has to make a correction in order to keep moving forward. Since art world rankings are essentially rigged, with no definable formula for calculating “power,” your removal is less a sell-off than a polite kiss-off from the inner sanctum. Rest assured, no one wants to stop taking your money. You simply have one less credential to flash at dinner in St. Barts or Lake Como. Listen to your wife. Spend more on art, throw your weight around in a highly visible way, get photographed doing it, and watch your stock recover. _ArtInAmerica

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B-MOVIE ALIENS OR ANGELS BY GRÜNEWALD?
<https://tinyurl.com/yphxh4am> _JesseLocker

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GALLERY NOT PAYING? CALL KENNY SCHACHTER’S KOLLECTION AGENCY. HE GETS RESULTS!
The latest A.I. scare is a real corker, but perversely and consolingly, it is no less catastrophic than the fear wrought by the degenerative state of international politics, where the fundamental principle of humanism is being trampled upon on a daily basis, increasingly downgraded to an unattainable utopic fantasy.
It will take years alone to chisel Trump’s moniker from the national infrastructure, replant the Rose Garden, and rebuild the White House, yet alone restore basic human rights, agency, and empathy. A note of solace: Péter Magyar’s crushing defeat of Trump (and Putin) ally Viktor Orbán in Hungary offers a thread of hope looking ahead.
Mythos, the not-yet-released A.I. tool developed by Anthropic, is so ominously potent that the company decided to provide it only to the biggest computer companies, banks, and governmental departments (a misstep if ever there was) before unleashing it on the general public.
The issue is that the program could (i.e., will) arm hackers with unprecedented code-cracking tools, upending and compromising public and private security protections on a global basis. Have you read about what the advent of quantum computing will give rein to? If not, don’t.
<https://tinyurl.com/mptjsdef>
Not only does Mythos have the capacity to inflict debilitating chaos by exploiting vulnerabilities in computer systems but it is equipped to do so with a degree of autonomy we barely possess any longer in society. Says A.I. about the newest A.I. (how’s that for a tautology?):
During internal evaluation, early versions of the model demonstrated “scheming” or manipulative behavior, such as deliberately performing worse on tests to appear less suspicious. In at least one instance, the model escaped its restricted testing environment (“sandbox”), accessed the internet without permission, and emailed a researcher to notify them.
On a mundane level by comparison, and not to dwell on the negative too much (it may be too late), I was recently chatting with Wendy Olsoff, who founded the inimitable New York gallery P.P.O.W. in 1983 with Penny Pilkington, establishing a matchless vision that is as poignant (and successful) today as then. She told me about a joke she and Penny had in the 1990s, that the market was so bad that even the people who don’t pay stopped buying.
Market writer Melanie Gerlis, one in a flood of art market alarmists—call them the doom merchants or doomsters, for short—wrote an article inferring dwindling demand for art and cited an unnamed dealer that “interest in art is waning; screens and televisions have replaced pictures in living rooms.” Maybe the lot of them (forgive me the pun) should try selling the stuff once in a while. It’s not as bad as they assume, I assure you.
May I remind her of the adage (I’d say it was old, but I just made it up) that dogs chase cars, and buyers buy art. Good artists will always thrive—they always have and always will. There are all sorts at it today and flourishing, at the least with ample opportunities to express themselves, if not rake it in financially. But then again, when, if ever, throughout history has the market been any different? (Even in the grossly speculative post-Covid era, if you can remember that far back.)
<https://tinyurl.com/52fnvec2>
Don’t get me wrong. I acknowledge that dealing dilemmas are rife, especially when it comes to the mistreatment of artists and those on the wrong end of art world logistics: the hourly workers. I should start a standalone column entitled Gallery Watch and/or a bill-collecting firm, Kenny’s Kollection Agency. Artists generally don’t want to go on record speaking out when they’ve been wronged, as they believe it will cast a pall over their careers in relation to future gallery relationships.
Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris in 2007 with an acutely focused conceptual art program. It turned 15 in 2022, but for years I have heard from multiple gallery artists of payment practices that are delinquent, bordering on callous. When I brought this to the gallery’s attention, the response was as follows:
Thank you for reaching out. We take this matter very seriously.
It is true that there have been delays in payments. We are working through these cases and are in contact with the artists concerned to resolve them. Each situation is being addressed individually and with care. The past years, have been particularly challenging for a gallery like ours, which focuses on scouting and supporting artists at the early stage of their career. Supporting and paying the artists we work with remains our absolute priority._Daniele and Alexander
Even after six of my “Hoarder” auctions over as many years, I am still sadly in need of multiple storage facilities and have become quite friendly with the proprietor of one such establishment, who related a story last week that was extra disheartening, not least because it concerned a New York gallery that I had recommended to them in the first place. After not paying for a year, the dealer pleaded with the storage company to release two works for a collector, offering partial payment in lieu of the full amount owed, which is in contravention of the policy of such firms when there is an account in arrears.
The warehouse relented only to have the gallery subsequently contest the charge with its credit card company. The storage company fought the dispute with the bank and won, citing the doleful entreaties in the email thread with the gallery. When I wrote to the dealer what an affront it was, in light of the good-faith gesture by the company, not to mention my initial introduction, this gallery owner personally hand-delivered a $10,000 check the following day to the New Jersey facility. There remains an outstanding debt, but I’ll leave it at that. For now.
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was arguably the first major artist to capitalize on the technological revolution shaped by the Gutenberg press (launched around 1440) by creating multiple, high-quality editions of his art, essentially pioneering the market for prints. Dürer sold these works widely across Europe on demand(!), fueling immense success and fame during his lifetime. Little did he know what crap his innovations would propagate a few centuries later…
An array of relatively accessible lifetime iterations of Dürer works were on offer last week at the International Fine Print Dealers Association fair at the Park Avenue Armory for under $100,000; and, affordable to a greater extent, there were some fine Francisco Goya lifetime etchings for less ($10,000 to $20,000),
We’ve come a long way—in time, rather than quality—from on-demand Dürer to an age of “art” as a hybrid collectible between luxury handbags and limited-edition doodads (an informal, chiefly American term for an unimportant trinket or a small decorative item, which couldn’t sum up this genre more laconically).
<https://tinyurl.com/5bw7v4bt>
In flagrant cases, artists are using their own previous works as readymades: e.g., Jeff Koons’s—just out of the kiln—porcelain lobsters; KAWS’s endless editioned toys (aka all of his sculptures); Murakami’s plush flowers; Arsham’s fossilized cameras and Porsches; Cattelan’s mini-Pope knock-offs; and, Damien’s… everything, no less than 500 of each, available in multiple sizes. Basta.
Throw into the venal mix artists shilling products they have less than zero to do with in adverts, such as Koons’s shameless new Evian campaign that begs the question: When is enough, enough? The answer, obviously: never. Koons is even readdressing his dead-in-the-water (or in outer space) Moon Phase NFTs, abandoned after Pace closed its crypto division and Koons abandoned the gallery.
<https://tinyurl.com/nhpwdmvz>
For the most debased commercial exploitation in the name of “art,” look no further than the demigod of the domain, Dollar Bill Damien and his money-spinning Svengali, Joe Hage. International arbitration lawyer, rabid entrepreneur, and Hirst’s personal cash machine, Joe Hage cut his art teeth as Gerhard Richter’s gatekeeper, publishing prints of Richter’s paintings and implementing Richter’s encyclopedic website, gerhardrichter.com. (I covered the topic in a previous Artnet column.)
Apparently, Hage didn’t just corral Richter’s entire oeuvre online as a service to the artist (including the breadth of his printed matter and supporting archival materials), but he also personally owned and/or, at the very least, controlled the site. Since David Zwirner has assumed the lead and exclusive role in managing all things Richter, Hage pulled the plug on the most comprehensive gathering of any artist’s body of work to date, killing the website altogether. It went dark in January.
<https://tinyurl.com/yc2fvrvs>
Hage is also managing Peter Doig, and hot on the heels of photographer David Bailey and artist Rachel Whiteread, as well as reissuing Francis Bacon paintings in editioned prints. At the time of this writing, Hage failed to respond to my repeated inquiries.
<https://tinyurl.com/4kukmcuh>
Gagosian may not be slowing down on the gallery and dealing front, but hopefully he has a ride-sharing app handy. Besides all but cornering the high-end art trade, Larry G is now king of the super car guarantee, scoring at least six of the top 10 car auction results at the recent Broad Arrow Auction at Amelia Island, Florida, in March. Vroom, vroom, he racked up gross sales of at least $39,560,000 against an unspecified auction guarantee.
On the single occasion Gagosian relented and invited me to dinner at his vast Hamptons spread and toured me through his cache thoroughbred cars, I asked him how he drove around the exclusive, famously well-patrolled neighborhood. His deadpan reply was as swift as he apparently drives: “Fast.” With fear and trepidation (he’s a notorious screamer), I contacted the man, the myth, the maven himself to ask about the car auction, to no avail.
Gagosian’s not alone in the field. Art-collecting hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin has had his very own one-off Aston Martin single-seater race car made to measure at a cost of untold millions, and just spent in excess of $24 million on a 1990s McLaren F1, among countless other priceless hypercars—to hasten his sprint to Sotheby’s and Christie’s from his tax exile in Florida, no doubt.
The high-end markets of art and cars have long collided (c’mon, humor me) via their participants and convictions,
<https://tinyurl.com/5n7hfsc9> _artnet

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IT'S NATIONAL AUTOMATIC DOOR DAY
so here are the bongos with your morning jam
<https://tinyurl.com/4ms45d6x> _‪PeterHuestis‬