OLD NEWS

MINK: WATER-LOVING WEASELS by Mary Holland
<https://tinyurl.com/yczmrdch>
Mink are closely associated with water and are found along streams, rivers, and lakes and in or near marshes. Their aquatic adaptations include a streamlined body, partially webbed toes, a thick undercoat and oily, water-repellent guard hairs. Mink have a top swimming speed of around one to two miles/hour. They can dive down as far as 15-20 feet, but usually forage near shore in vegetation. In winter Mink will forage underwater and come up for air through an air hole in the ice.
Active all year, Mink may travel up to seven miles daily while foraging for small, slow-moving fish, frogs, crabs and crayfish, birds, muskrats and small mammals. This member of the weasel family is known for its habit of caching surplus prey for later consumption. One Mink’s cache consisted of 13 freshly killed Muskrats, two Mallard ducks and one American Coot in a hollow ash stump six feet above ground at the edge of a marsh.
_NaturallyCurious

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LOOK
<https://tinyurl.com/2s4zj2u3> _DavidShrigley

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ELEANOR ANTIN: ‘A PARTICULARLY FEMINIST FEELING’
<https://tinyurl.com/5dkwfz2d>
“There’s a way to solve every problem,” says Eleanor Antin earnestly, dressed in a white tutu, in her 1975 video The Little Match Girl Ballet. It’s both the promise and the pretence of so much of her work. The dancer, one of the American artist’s invented personae, dreams of becoming a Russian ballerina. Art makes it possible: across several bodies of work during the 1970s and 80s, Antin conjured the life of Eleanora Antinova, the counterfactual history of a Black ballerina who once performed with the Ballets Russes. In a portfolio of prints here, she even wrote the dancer’s memoir, opening up the past as if it were a machine to be reengineered.
Now ninety, Antin has always been a political artist, pursuing a vision of a more equitable society. But her commitment to problem-solving seems deliberately wayward. Her first major retrospective in 25 years and first ever in Europe, spanning 1965 to 2017 – the ballerina pieces are shown with self-conscious drama: the facade of a theatre from Antin’s 1986 installation Loves of a Ballerina leads to a darkened basement gallery, punctuated with dozens of photographs, videos and films, all versions of the artist as Antinova. It has the extravagance of a fantasy, the fragility of an illusion.
<https://tinyurl.com/2j7v5dcd>
Before settling in San Diego in 1968, Antin emerged amid the Conceptualism of mid-60s New York, but had a slant relationship to the systems-oriented approach of some of her male peers. One of the earliest pieces here is Blood of a Poet Box (1965–68): 100 samples of blood collected from artists she admired, including, among others, Yvonne Rainer and Allen Ginsberg. Methodical and rigorous, it also won’t let go of romance, a project without clear purpose other than Antin’s personal impulses. Domestic Peace (1971–72) categorises conversations with her mother in annotated graphs, from ‘bored’ and ‘calm’ to ‘hysterical’. These works have faith in art’s power to find answers, to make visible the body, women and everyday lives. But the solutions are usually funny, unsure of their seriousness. In an iteration of one of Antin’s best-known works, 100 Boots (1971–73), 50 pairs of black rubber boots process down a staircase: going somewhere, going nowhere. For the original mail-art project, Antin sent postcards documenting the boots’ journey across the United States.
In a section entitled ‘Melodrama’, the waggishness verges, deliberately, on poor taste. Antin’s video The Nurse and the Hijackers (1977) stages a scenario in which ecological terrorists hijack a plane to hold oil-producing nations to ransom. Lifesize paper-cutout passengers and hijackers are moved around a cardboard set (also displayed), as if Antin hopes artistic experiment might illuminate a route out of the dead ends of history. Reassemble the pieces and another, better version could emerge. Or, the puppet-theatre setup implies, that kind of optimism is just child’s play.
<https://tinyurl.com/54vwxneb>
<https://tinyurl.com/45x9udfb>
From one angle, Antin’s position can look like a cop-out. Her work imagines political interventions, but a dose of cynicism protects it from the failure of critique. It resists, knowing the system will absorb resistance. But this mix of stuckness and hope is a particularly feminist feeling. Antin’s key feminist works are here, including Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972), in which she documented her attempt to lose ten pounds: across 148 monochrome photographs her naked form is gradually chiselled away like a classical nude, transformation also a sorry capitulation to a white patriarchal ideal. In her most recent work, Carving: 45 Years Later (2017), Antin repeated the diet and again documented her weight loss in a series of frank photographs. Grieving after the death of her husband, poet and artist David Antin, her self-scrutiny as an older woman is now full of subversive promise._Sophie Oliver _ArtReview

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/3xcf2c9z> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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EVELYN & JEROME ACKERMAN AT CRAFT CONTEMPORARY by William Poundstone
<http://tiny.cc/ttkx001>
The joint career of Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman almost demands comparison to that of a better-known designing couple, Charles and Ray Eames. Like the Eameses, the Ackermans went to art school in Michigan, became partners in life and art, and headed west for Mid-Century Los Angeles. Their work combines sophisticated abstraction with a Brady Bunch palette and excursions into middlebrow ditsy. The Ackermans are only now being rediscovered, and Craft Contemporary’s "Material Curiosity by Design: Evelyn & Jerome Ackerman" is a worthy introduction.
<http://tiny.cc/5vkx001>
<http://tiny.cc/6vkx001>
<http://tiny.cc/7vkx001>
Jerome Ackerman was a studio ceramicist, and Evelyn was the idea woman, mistress of all media. She got first billing (unlike Ray Eames, whose contributions were often slighted). The Ackermans collaborated most directly on ceramics, where Jerome was potter and Evelyn was painter. Evelyn is unquestionably the show's star.
<http://tiny.cc/avkx001>
Evelyn's version of Modernity has a medieval vibe. Her best-known works are tapestries and mosaics. Figures of the late 1950s have El Greco, stretched-on-the-rack proportions. She took up cloisonné enamel in the 1960s.
The Eameses produced practical objects—leg splints, chairs, coat racks. Their output falls easily under the heading of industrial design and into MoMA's timeline of serious Modernism. Most of Evelyn's work is decorative. With her tapestries and mosaics she achieved the elusive goal of making Modern design affordable.
<http://tiny.cc/evkx001>
Some of Evelyn's work of the late 50s is indebted to Matisse's cut-outs. In the 60s she took on elements of Op and California Hard-Edge, creating textile abstractions rivaling any of her So. Cal. contemporaries.
<http://tiny.cc/jvkx001>
<http://tiny.cc/mvkx001>
<http://tiny.cc/vvkx001>
<http://tiny.cc/yvkx001> _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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SHOKYOKUSAI TENKATSU AND FLOWER HEAVEN TROUPE
wearing a strap-on hooked into a 300,000 volt Tesla Coil
to shower bolts of artificial lightning on the girls below holding conductor rods,
part of the Japanese movement called Eroguronansensu (erotic-grotesque-nonsense). 1930.
<https://tinyurl.com/282nf84n> _RabihAlameddine

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CY TWOMBLY NOT WRITING by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/3hzye8ax>
Thierry Greub’s research on the inscriptions in Cy Twombly’s work fills multiple volumes. Dean Rader wrote an entire book of poems from experiencing Twombly’s work. Reading Greub’s essay on Rader’s book <https://tinyurl.com/4u4xu74e> and being caught in the flow of Twombly’s writing, I found myself suddenly stuck on the marks on this painting, Note I from III Notes from Salalah (2005-07).
They look like letters—Greub calls them, “lasso-shaped ‘ls’ and ‘es’ of Twombly’s writing-evoking traces of painting.” When the Art Institute showed the series in 2009, James Rondeau made reference to the “pseudo-writing” of the blackboard paintings, and to how the loops and apostrophe-like strokes interpreted “the calligraphic nature of printed Arabic.”
Honestly, I’m fine either/or/and/also, but I am just stymied by how they were made. The strokes on the right seem to start from the right, but each loop/stroke seems to start from the left. And the strokes on the left seem to start from the left. The point is, I think the strokes and drips tell this entire story of their making, yet they are not written. They look like letters or calligraphy, but they’re not made by writing.
<https://tinyurl.com/5fy22ev9>
The Art Institute goes on, “Although ostensibly based on writing, the paintings are also specifically indebted to place,” and then heads straight to the lush, green, tropical landscape of Salalah in Oman. Meanwhile, the only place I can picture is Twombly’s tiny storefront studio in downtown Lexington, Virginia where the series was painted. Because each Note is three wood panels, each 8×4 feet, like sheets of plywood, joined together, into a massive wall. Did he join them first? Or join two and add one later? Could the studio even fit all three Notes at once? Twombly made these when he was 80. The mind may reel, but it’s nothing compared to Twombly’s arm. _greg.org

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SHOPPE PINE APPLE, AL
<https://tinyurl.com/mdxp6nfj> _RuralIndexingProject

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8. LADY ELAINE FAIRCHILDE vy Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/bdzj73e2>
But the very same people who are bad sometimes
Are the very same people who are good sometimes.
It’s funny, but it’s true.
It’s the same, isn’t it for me... Isn’t it the same for you? - Fred Rogers
There’s always one of them, even in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Fred Rogers’ parallel universe of puppets and trolleys, castles and clocks was an alternate reality to our own, complete with difficult personalities. The most difficult of all was Lady Elaine <https://tinyurl.com/bde8mx53> , the sharp-tongued, selfish, occasionally even destructive curator of the Museum-Go-Round. She was unattractive, rough around the edges. She called everyone “Toots.”
She was the foil to all the pleasantness around her, the shadow. But that also means she was necessary. She would say what others would not; would question the arbitrary rules of King Friday; would cut through any politeness getting in the way of honesty. She was the fearless space explorer who discovered purple planets, keeper of the boomerang that turned the world upside-down. And she showed her tender core: “It seems I’m always falling, and somebody else is standing all the time,” she sings dejectedly in one episode. Even as children, we could relate.
Remarkably, the other characters accepted her. The great lesson of Fred Rogers—what he preached, if you will—was not just radical tolerance, but community resilience. Lady Elaine was allowed her full, thorny personality without ever being cast out. The others included her, worked through conflicts with her.
It seems the country has gotten so down on itself. But we’re all here together in this, our land of make-believe. We can make ourselves believe anything, including the essential goodness of our neighbors and ourselves. So let’s make the most of this beautiful day.
<https://tinyurl.com/yycc7p6e> _TheImpatientReader

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LOUISE HOLLANDINE, PRINCESS PALATINE, SELF-PORTRAIT HOLDING A PAINTBRUSH, C. 1650
<https://tinyurl.com/wjxdy4wr> _JesseLocker

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SMITHSONIAN REMOVES TRUMP IMPEACHMENT TEXT AS IT SWAPS HIS PORTRAIT
<https://tinyurl.com/bk4rnk8j>
The National Portrait Gallery removed a swath of text that mentioned President Donald Trump’s two impeachments and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as it swapped out a prominent photo of him this week.
Trump and the White House posted on social media Friday and Saturday to highlight the updated portrait in the “America’s Presidents” exhibition, which now features a framed black-and-white photo by White House photographer Daniel Torok. It shows Trump staring intensely, with his fists on the Resolute Desk — an image the president first shared on his Truth Social account last year.
It replaced a photo by Washington Post photojournalist Matt McClain, which showed Trump with his hands folded in front of him, and was accompanied by a longer caption recounting Trump’s first term and his reelection. “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials,” it read in part.
A Trump official specifically complained about that passage months earlier, when the president was trying to force out the Portrait Gallery’s director.
The placard has been replaced with one whose caption is so short that the outline of the old sign was visible on the wall beneath it, simply noting Trump’s years in office. It now contrasts with portraits of other former presidents, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which all hang alongside wall text highlighting events during their time in office. Clinton’s notes his impeachment.
National Portrait Gallery spokeswoman Concetta Duncan said the museum is “exploring” less descriptive “tombstone labels” for some new exhibits and displays, and she noted that Trump’s portrait in the popular exhibition has changed before.
Neither the Smithsonian nor the White House directly responded when asked if the Trump administration had requested the changes. _WashingtonPost

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MARTIN WONG, "UNTITLED (STATUE OF LIBERTY)," 1990
<https://tinyurl.com/bdze9txy> _MichaelLobel

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SMITHSONIAN FACES LOOMING DEADLINE FROM TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
The Trump administration has given the Smithsonian Institution until 13 January to provide all remaining documents related to a review of the content and plans of eight of the institution’s 21 museums. The government first requested these materials on 12 August in a letter addressed to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, which stated that a review would ‘ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism’ and ‘remove divisive or partisan narratives’. Although the Smithsonian has provided the White House with some internal materials, a letter sent to Bunch on 18 December said that these ‘fell far short of what was requested’. It also stated that the government’s funding of the museum, which makes up some 62 per cent of the museum’s budget, was contingent on the Smithsonian’s compliance with both Trump’s executive order ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History’, issued in March 2025, and the terms of the review. In a letter sent to Smithsonian staff late last year, Bunch said that some aspects of the request would require ‘a significant amount of time’. The administration has not stipulated what penalty the museum might face if it does not meet the deadline. _ApolloMag

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VILLA RONCONI
<https://tinyurl.com/45bcnrnc> _‪Brutalismbot‬

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LOUVRE CLOSES AGAIN AS STAFF STRIKE DISRUPTIONS CONTINUE
The Louvre Museum closed to visitors on Monday, January 12, after staff launched another strike over pay, staffing levels, and working conditions. The closure marks the latest in a string of disruptions at the world’s most visited museum.
In a notice posted on its website, the museum said it was unable to open due to the walkout and that tickets would be automatically reimbursed. The closure follows a series of stoppages and delayed openings that have repeatedly interrupted operations since mid-December. _ARTnews

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DAVID LYNCH WITH HIS FIRST PAINTING, 1963
<https://tinyurl.com/bdhkekws> _‪CowToolsDaily

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HARD TRUTHS by Chen & Lampert
I’m part of a Brooklyn painting crew that spends weeks scaling walls to make mural ads for luxury brands. I’ve painted cars, watches, celebrities—you name it. People on the street stop, take photos, and call it “art.” I went to art school, and I respect street art, but this is a joke. All I am is a human printer helping brands cash in on places where real art could be made instead. I feel like I’m ruining the city. Am I part of the problem, or is it just a job that I can’t quit because of my debt?
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Hey, it’s a day job, and you found employment in your field of study. That’s a small miracle. Maybe you aren’t in the studio realizing your own visions, but at least this gig involves wielding a brush instead of hovering over a customer while they select the lowest-tip option on the handheld credit-card reader you just handed them. Be happy that you are gainfully employed just like the millions of New Yorkers who work as nurses, bank tellers, baristas, injury lawyers, sanitation workers, and assistant curators at museums. And rest assured that the fancy billboards you are painting will be covered up in a month. You aren’t permanently ruining the city. Brooklyn was already gentrified years before you picked up your paint roller and extension pole. If you want to find meaning in your work, think of it as making a sort of sand mandala: countless hours devoted to something that disappears with a single swipe. _ArtInAmerica

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FRIDA KAHLO, 1931 BY PHOTOGRAPHER IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM
<https://tinyurl.com/2m26naf9> _#WomensArt

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OUTCRY AS SOUTH AFRICA PULLS GAZA-INSPIRED ARTWORK FROM VENICE BIENNALE
<https://tinyurl.com/yv38hm83>
South Africa has cancelled its “highly divisive” submission for this year’s Venice Biennale because its chosen artist had planned to use the exhibition to commemorate the deaths of women and children in Gaza. The shock, last-minute decision by South African culture minister Gayton McKenzie has raised serious questions about freedom expression and left the status of the country’s pavilion uncertain.
Gabrielle Goliath was unanimously selected to represent South Africa at the Venice Biennale on December 6. She had proposed an updated version of her decade-long Elegy project, a performance piece that responds to the unjust killing of various groups, including women and queer people in South Africa, and victims of atrocities like the Herero and Nama genocide of the early 1900s. This new iteration, curated by Ingrid Masondo, would also touch on the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazan women and children at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces since October 2023.
“We refuse the cancellation of Elegy,” Goliath said in an email this morning. She added that she and Masondo had been shocked by McKenzie’s decision. Asked whether there remained any possibility of staging Elegy, Goliath said “we are not cowed,” and quoted the Black American activist Mariame Kaba in stating “hope is a discipline.”
In a longer open letter to McKenzie dated January 4, Goliath, Masondo, and their colleague James Macdonald described the cancelation as an act of “censorship” that, “if enforced, would enact a grave violation of the right to freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.”
McKenzie first took issue with the subject matter of Elegy on December 22, in a letter to Art Periodic, the nonprofit that organized the South Africa pavilion in Venice on behalf of the culture ministry. He requested a change in artistic direction, otherwise threatening to withdraw financial support for the project, which he described as “highly divisive in nature and relates to an ongoing international conflict that is widely polarizing.
On January 2, McKenzie terminated his ministry’s partnership with Art Periodic, just over a week before the January 10 deadline for countries to submit their pavilions to the Biennale. Despite this last-minute decision, McKenzie has assured local press that South Africa will still have a presence at this year’s event, which opens in May. No details have yet been released about this participation but, in a statement released over the weekend, McKenzie claimed that his ministry would “give access to the Biennale to artists who promote our country.”
McKenzie’s decision has been condemned by the selection committee that chose Goliath, who described it as “an abuse of executive authority” in an open letter.
<https://tinyurl.com/29xxs6pm> _artnet

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SOUTH AFRICAN MINISTRY DENIES CENSORING
The new statement, signed by McKenzie, casts that decision not as censorship, but as a safeguard against foreign interference in South African politics. It reads in part, “[W]hen it was brought to my attention that a foreign country had allegedly undertook [sic] to fund South Africa’s exhibition, this was raised as a concern with Art Periodic, who clarified that—according to their understanding—this foreign country had actually undertaken to purchase the artworks concerned following the conclusion of the Biennale. This nevertheless still raised alarm, as it was being alleged that South Africa’s platform was being used as a proxy by a foreign power to endorse a geopolitical message about the actions of Israel in Gaza.” _ARTnews

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LEONARDO DA VINCI, CATS, LIONS, AND A DRAGON, 1517-18
<https://tinyurl.com/5eh7zy8t> _JesseLocker