junk culture

Next up, Junk Culture, who we discovered via twitter. Seems they’ve just started a simple tumblr image blog, which links mostly to Etsy postings (all their stuff on Etsy). This is an out and out shop, with no claim at museumdome, but we like their taste in vintage objects and somehow view them through a collector’s lens.

Recent stuff we like: A Pyrex Casserolle Dish, A Lamp made of Galvanized Iron, and a teal dinnerware set.

plan 59 from cyberspace

Plan 59, THE MUSEUM (AND GIFT SHOP) OF MID-CENTURY ILLUSTRATION. Really it’s just a shop, but again, a wonderful collection of images. Our favorites are the scary kids, demonic little angels, aren’t they?

Like project b, they sell to advertisers, libraries, and individuals alike. They also sell prints of Shorpy’s photo finds. We love these high-res images that he(she?) digs up from (mostly) public archives, but do remain dubious at his(her?) monetization of the project.

retail me not

We’re going to look at a bunch of museum-cum-retail outlets today, as the G20 assembles and capitalism faces the inevitability of a reality which does not align with models of constant expansion. We’ve touched on this a bit in the past, with “projects” (stores) such as the Etsy revolving paperback book “museum.” And to be fair, we kind of like these projects. They involve curation, they are genuinely filled with interesting items. We guess everything is for sale, in the end.

Read more about our first entry, Barbara Levine’s Project B

Jansen Addendum

And here is a video:

STRANDBEESTEN from Alexander Schlichter on Vimeo.

Pretty Art Robots

Jansen, who comes off as a mad scientist with a hint of a god complex, has been developing (“evolving”) these things for almost twenty years, and his labor is evident in the creatures’ graceful movement. Most are made from PVC, but one particularly striking Strandbeest is made from 3.2 tons of what looks to be Corten steel. It’s so perfectly engineered that a single person can push it around, its many lumbering metal legs attached to an axis that somehow lets a person move forty times his body weight.

More inside.

The End of Capitalism; Damien Hirst is some Bullshit

Damien Hirst and Murakami need an ass kicking. Conflating consumerism with high art was funny and original when Warhol did it, guys. But 50 years have passed, and Warhol’s been inducted into the canon. So that just makes you greedy, derivative profiteers. Hirst, for example, sold his diamond encrusted one-liner for $100 million, then sued a 16-year-old who was making bootleg collages of his work. Because, you know, it’s a self-conscious meta-criticism.

“But at least we’re talking about art,” apologists will cry. “Isn’t that the point?” No, no it’s not.
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We didn’t sleep well last night, and we’re taking it out on capitalism! Read on.

New Type of Museum Tactic: Cater to the Visitors

Subway + PATH + Newark Light Rail = A Long, Strange, Trip to the Newark Museum in Newark, NJ.

Wait, that sounds terrible. But the museum – New Jersey’s largest – was great. Full review, inside!

Yesterday was a Stumble in the Rain

While stumbling around in the rain on Sunday, our gang came across Black & White Project Space, a new non-profit gallery on Driggs Avenue in Brooklyn (n.b. we are an actual gang with matching leather jackets). The space opened on March 7, and its inaugural exhibition, a collection of photos, videos, and objects taken from Brighton Beach, will evolve over a 3-month run.

If you like half-baked ideas on art and architecture, you’ll probably want to step inside.

Hope Springs Eternal: Nope

We took a gander at the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History last weekend. To be honest, it pales in comparison to the entire backroom of incredible, naturally formed crystals, not to mention several of the large, many-faceted gems (that’s a cut crystal, we learned) elsewhere in the room. Oh and the crystal ball that was polished into a perfect sphere in China in 1923. Wowzors.

At any rate talk of diamonds always reminds us of this article from the Atlantic Monthly, Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? It is one of the greatest articles EVAR, in our humble. It’s all about the shady-as-fuck diamond industry, monopolies, the invention of a luxury through advertising and product placement, and other romantic and eternal qualities of the diamond industry.

Dress v. Success

I hate dress codes. It’s a pathetic beef, but they just feel like such an archaic corporate-control mindfuck, as if college graduates couldn’t themselves determine what constitutes “appropriate” in a given professional context. Spending so much time weighing the relative nonsense of such things, I’m hoping this post will jump-start a semi-semi-regular analysis of dress codes in various NYC museum-like institutions vs. the amount of clout they actually seem to have over our “collective” culture at large. (Hypothesis: more conservative = more lame.) I should say that I think what the people who work with the actual public (ticket takers, shop workers, and the like) are required to wear is the most interesting, since museum behind-the-scenesters are generally sitting in ivory office towers or relegated to the basement and therefore wearing winter coats in July.

Yes, there’s a specific Museum we’re beefing with! Read more and guess which one, inside.

you got review’d: die roboter kommen!

Suggested Donation’s less-employed half spent the month of August in Berlin, where every German earnestly implored, “oh but you must visit the Jewish Museum.” Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to spend an afternoon looking at family pictures of ghosts of holocausts…

lapsed exhibition review: a review

We never claimed that we were timely. Via the excellent Old is the New New, we caught Stefan Schmitt’s thoughtful review of the “Game On” exhibition on the history of video games, which closed last February at the Science Museum of…