Princeton Architectural Press is set to release a new book on November 1st titled Finding Frida Kahlo.  In fact, it’s already available for pre-order on Amazon.com.  This is all well and good, except that half of the art world believes the featured collection of works to be fakes.  Read about the controversy here.

While the author of the article clearly blames the publisher for a lack of due diligence, it’s hard to get angry at anyone who prints a book titled Hand Job: A Catalog of Type.

From The New York Times:

Dan Flavin, the minimalist sculptor who died in 1996, spent his life producing graceful light sculptures. But what happens when a bulb breaks? And how easy are they for collectors to install?

The Chelsea dealer David Zwirner has just begun to represent the artist’s estate. On Friday he is starting a website (davidzwirner.com/danflavin) that is intended as a practical resource for Flavin aficionados, covering issues of conservation and installation as well as the artist’s exhibition history and examples of his work.

In November his gallery will present “Dan Flavin: Series and Progressions,” a show that includes work from Flavin’s four-decade career, including his earliest pieces from 1964, “Nominal III,” and a series that was originally shown in the 1970s at the German art dealer Heiner Friedrich’s gallery in Munich.

A new “art virgin” executive at Phillips de Pury is adding 18 themed contemporary art sales to its auction calendar over the next year and a half, despite the downturn in the art market.  Learn more about this questionable strategy in this Wall Street Journal article by Kelly Crow.

This fantastic image by Korean artist JeongMee Yoon is Lot 72 in Phillips’ September 26th sale in London (somewhat obviously) entitled: “Now: Art of the 21st Century”.

Richard Weisman once observed that “Andy [Warhol] didn’t know the difference between a football and a golf ball.”  Hardly a sports buff myself, I surprisingly transform into an avid tennis fan each year during the U.S. Open.  Something about the volley rhythm is deeply soothing to me.  Well, tonight was the men’s final and I thought I’d honor the sport by posting Andy Warhol’s Chris Evert, which was stolen this week along with nine other Warhol silkscreens from Weisman’s Los Angeles home.  Art market experts, including A.A.C.-favorite Tobias Meyer, are “scratching their heads” because the resale of the pieces is virtually impossible due to the insular market for Warhol works.

A.A.C. fave Daniel Traub currently has a solo exhibition (three large-format images) at the Art Institute of Philadelphia’s 1622 Chestnut Street Gallery through October 16th.   An artist’s reception is scheduled from 4:30-7:30 pm on Thursday, September 17th– no RSVP required.

Enticed by my affection for Paula Deen and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I spent the long weekend in Savannah, Georgia, and it was simply charming.  Besides eating grits (delicious when served with fish, who knew?), drinking mint juleps and chatting with strangers, I checked out some of the the lovely ladies in the city:

Felix de Weldon captured the Savannah legend, Florence Martus, who for forty years welcomed ships entering the port.  It’s said she was waiting for a sailor with whom she’d fallen in love, but who never returned.  Sculpted in 1972, the piece sits on River Street, allowing Florence to still greet ships entering the harbor.  Pictured above.

The haunting Bird Girl sculpture created by Sylvia Shaw Judson in 1936 was made infamous by the Midnight book cover (photograph by Jack Leigh) and film adaptation directed by Clint Eastwood.  So many tourists flocked to Bonaventure Cemetery to see the piece that the constant traffic became a concern for the family on whose burial plot the sculpture stood; it was subsequently moved to the Telfair Academy at the Telfair Museum of Art.  No photography is allowed in the Museum, unfortunately.

I miss cornbread.

Two BILLION dollars in cash, seven (!) life insurance policies, and a first-rate art collection is (possibly) being left by Europe’s wealthiest woman, Madame Liliane Bettencourt, to the photographer and socialite Francoise-Marie Banier.  A snubbed daughter!  French lawyers questioning Banier’s “talent” as an artist!  Manipulation of the elderly!?

Read about the life you were meant to live, from the Style section of the New York Times.

If you’ve ever read my “about” page, which likely dissuaded your continued interest in my blog (should I say I’m a 30-something for credibility?), you’ll know I was once on the fence between graduate school for public policy and art history.  Knowing what I know now, I should have gone straight to law school and never looked back.  But, in haste, I ended up at the London School of Economics.

It seems LSE has gotten some religion on public space (it’s not a very attractive campus), and commissioned San Francisco-based artist Michael Brown to create a super cool piece of public sculpture out of blue LED lights that literally reflects the research going on inside the library.  Online database searches and the titles of books being checked in and out of the building are displayed– sort of like a muddled, real-time Jenny Holzer sculpture.  Such a cool idea.  Learn more details from the press release here and a check out a YouTube video of the piece in action here.

I’d love to do something like this for my blog, but the search “amateur ass” would unfortunately come up all too often.

“Cleveland– at least we’re not Detroit!” was written on a white T-shirt worn by a fellow passenger on my flight back home this past weekend.  Clearly something did go wrong; a comparable city, Pittsburgh, which grew to prominence via similar industrial means, has successfully built up other sectors and is thriving.  Cleveland, however, is still visibly suffering.  Surprisingly, the city remains a cultural hub even if it does not seem to have the cultural capital to sustain it.  The Cleveland Museum of Art is a world-class institution, the Cleveland Orchestra is considered one of the best in the country, the Cleveland International Piano Competition is prestigious, and so on.  I’m thankful I had these resources growing up, but I still don’t get it…the culinary, nightlife and entertainment scenes are so far behind those of other metropolitan areas.

My apologies for the photograph being a little dark– there’s a charming permanent sculptural piece titled “Home, School and Office” by Andy Yoder in the Continental Airlines Terminal at Cleveland Hopkins Airport.  If you can’t make it out, there are three “paper” planes, each a different form and type of paper, whimsically floating to the ground.  Note to self: airport art is a great topic for a coffee table book.

Remember when CNN used to be respectable, before it started competing with FOX for viewership who prefer headlines like “Dog Poops in Church, Exorcised”?  Sometimes I worry that with its financial problems, the New York Times might be slowly tip-toeing in that populist direction…but I guess this is in the Style section, so maybe I’m worrying over nothing:

Annie Leibovitz, one of photography’s most recognizable names, is the focus of a gossipy article today.  Even though she “has a seven-figure salary from Vanity Fair and commands tens of thousands of dollars a day from commercial clients like Louis Vuitton,” she’s being sued for non-payment on a $24 million dollar line of credit from Art Capital Group.  The finance firm has apparently been shopping around Annie’s photo archive, which has always been held tightly by the artist, to the tune of $50 million– the Times snootily predicts (and rightfully so– THAT’S my NYTimes!) her portraits of celebrities will be “found on postcards in Times Square” as a result.

Annie’s otherworldly, Lewis Carroll-inspired photograph pictured above is available at New York’s Danziger Projects.

I’d like to see Art Capital Group and my student loan administrator, Sallie Mae, get in a fight.  I’m guessing Sallie Mae would win because their employees are aggressive assholes on the phone.  Although, selling a living artist’s body of work to the highest bidder is pretty low.