Today let’s turn up a little Papi Juice set in honor of MoMA PS1’s return to the Warm Up season this weekend. Just in time for Labor Day, the museum is hosting a remote version of its DJ party series, to be streamed live at venues around the city (Elsewhere, Public Records, and Ode to Babel, etc.).
The event is also raising money (mostly from Red Bull) for NYC Nightlife United, an emergency relief fund focused on supporting BIPOC-owned and led venues that create safe spaces for BIPOC and LGBTQIA communities. You can also donate if you’re able, or just dance, dance, dance. More on all that here.
Look no further than the image above to internalize how white the Whitney is. Or if that’s not doing it for you, perhaps you’ll be interested in their performative mutual aid show. Collective Actions: Artist Interventions in a time of change planned to exhibit art and ephemera responding to Covid and the Black Lives Matter movement, but the museum executed it so offensively that the whole thing is now cancelled. Truly, there’s fault at every turn: First, as you may have seen over the past several months, some artists have been selling their work at super discounted prices to benefit racial justice orgs; the Whitney evidently took advantage of those fundraising events and bought a number of works by artists of color at an extreme discount (think: $100 per). After “acquiring” these artists’ works for next to nothing, staff went on to inform the artists after the show was announced that their work would be included, foregoing the usual months-long consent and negotiation process. To add insult to injury, the work wouldn’t be part of the museum’s official collection, but rather its “special collections,” a category assigned to art books and ephemera. It’s almost as if the show was self-serving.
The Whitney is in good company with the British Museum, which recently received the distinction of being the world’s largest recipient of stolen property. (I would have guessed it was The Met, but there’s plenty of room in this boat.) It’s no surprise that Anglo art museums own a ton of plunder, but the British Museum literally offers a “stolen goods” tour, which suggests they’re maybe not as ashamed as they should be. Speaking of “should be,” Vanity Fair just did a little interview series with artists and curators on what museums could look like if they cared. Read that to counter the rest of this nonsense.
Perhaps you’d like to engage with art in a way that acknowledges its creators’ value, and for that, let me direct you to Vacation With An Artist. In normal times, the program arranges mini apprenticeships with master artists around the world; in the time of Covid, it’s offering artist-led workshops online. Coming up, there’s a 5-session course on Islamic calligraphy with the Turkish calligrapher Deniz Oktem-Bektaş; a single session on slow stitching fabric coasters with the LA textile artist Debra Weiss; and on September 13th, you can attend a free showcase following the Moroccan craftsman Hamza’s class on Moroccan geometry. At the showcase you’ll also meet Hamza’s dad, Mokhtar El Fasiki, Head of the Brass-Smith guild of Fes— and you’ll be able to purchase the participants’ works, perhaps making you a better benefactor than the Whitney.
(Many more programs coming up @VAWAA, both in person and online; to hear about them as they’re announced, sign up for their newsletter.)
