With five days left in the 2012 Olympic Games, the pressure is on for athletes in London eager to make their marks in sporting history. But for a year now, the pressure has been on, more or less, for the architects, city planners, and engineers behind the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. Last August, global firm AECOM took home the bid to convert the site of an abandoned F1 racing circuit into a stadia-studded urban spectacle. Today, the disused racetrack remains surprisingly intact. “Time was always going to be an issue in this project,” wrote Blueprint Magazine critic Johnny Tucker, “as they do things with a different sense of urgency in Brazil.”

Urgency is one thing. But as for ambition, Brazil is right on track. AECOM’s master plan (presented in a vibrantly colored video) is defined by a snaking, black-and-white striped boulevard that bisects the triangular plot of the former Barra de Tijuca race circuit. Known as “The Olympic Way,” the concourse separates residential villages and sporting venues during the Games, carving out pockets of space with its zigzagging form and terminating with a circular viewing park, an enclosed, forested oasis equipped with screens that will broadcast live events. The Olympic venues too will be designed by AECOM and its master planning team, which includes Rio-based firm DG Architecture as well as London’s pop-up Basketball Arena architects, UK-based Wilkinson Eyre.

The infrastructure in AECOM’s master plan is smartly designed, with built-in means to collect and recycle rainwater and a transportation network that provides separate channels for spectators and athletes. But the focus of the project is not to construct a shimmering image of Brazil during its highly publicized two weeks of glory next summer, but to stimulate long-term change in Rio through the multi-billion-dollar Olympic build-out. This comes as no surprise, as AECOM is the same firm behind the master plan for London’s Olympic Park, which has been lauded for its radical emphasis on creating a sustainable, post-Games legacy.

The legacy of Rio’s Olympic Park will come in two distinct stages, a transitional phase that will bring farmers markets, festival grounds, public art, and even a skate park to the Barra de Tijuca area, and a more permanent phase five to seven years down the line, with new housing and commercial space as well as a new school bordering a nearby favela. At least 70 percent of the infrastructure built for the Games is expected to be used afterwards.

With the same firm designing the master plan for two successive Olympiads, it may seem naïve to draw any conclusions about Olympic architecture and urbanism judging from AECOM’s visions. But there is no denying a marked trend in the way cities are positioning the Games. The celebrated sporting event is swinging away from the display of nationalism and economic prowess seen in Beijing just four years ago and toward a calculated effort to develop a city, not just through the fabled profitability of Olympic hype, but through the concrete measures of architecture and urban design.

Although the myth that the Olympics can stimulate a national or even a local economy has been largely debunked, the debt continues to surprise. “Research has consistently shown that unless you've a beautiful-but-neglected city you want to put on the tourist map (Barcelona), or plenty of world-class sporting venues already (Los Angeles), the impact of holding the Games is ambiguous at best,” wrote Guardian reporter Heather Stewart. The influx of jobs and tourists, even on the long term, cannot fund the cost of a newly built city district, especially one loaded with spectacular sports stadia.

What the Olympics can do, however, is spur investment in the built environment as a whole.  Host cities — and even cities that lose Olympic bids — can benefit from new or updated public transit systems and redeveloped neighborhoods, much more so than from the short-lived buzz of any one "white elephant" stadium. And as seen in London and in plans for Rio, architects and planners have begun to concentrate on these crucial, long-term effects in addition to designing the perfect venue to welcome the glory of the Games. From an urban perspective, when the Olympic flame goes out in 2016, the magic really begins.

SALE: Car Week in Monterey

LOCATION: Gooding and Co. and RM Auctions in California  

DATE: August 17-19

ABOUT: If you are the kind of person who doesn’t just lust after a Bentley, but wants a mint-condition 1931 Bentley 4 ½ Litre SC “Blower” Sports 2/3 Seater Boattail with original vintage fabric covering, then ARTINFO suggests a trip to northern California next week for Monterey Car Week. Among the most anticipated events are two auctions: one from Gooding & Co. and the other from RM Auctions, both of which are known for offering top-notch automobiles. The aforementioned Bentley will be sold at Gooding & Co.’s sale and is estimated to hammer down between $8 million and $10 million.

Among RM’s top-valued lots is a 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder (est. $7.5-9 million), which was, according to the catalogue, “developed for a group of performance-oriented drivers who wanted both the pace of the berlinettas and the open-air feel of a convertible.” California Spyders from the 1960 are especially popular with the vintage car collecting set. A 1961 set a record for vintage cars at auction in 2008 when it was sold for $10.9 million at an RM Auction in Italy.

In an unassuming dirt lot on the corner of 46th Street and Eighth Avenue — a mere stone’s throw from Times Square — a stained-glass cutout of Josephine Baker sits among a constellation of multicolored star sculptures in hand-blown, translucent, iridized, and modeled glass. “Chorus,” a site-specific installation by Kiki Smith — an artist best known for creating unnerving sculptures of extremities, entrails, and cadaverous figures that epitomized the body-conscious “Abject Art” of the early '90s — reveals her deft handling of much sunnier fare. “As the sun shines through and glitters upon the translucent and opaque glass, the stars will contrast with the raw urban lot,” Smith said of the installation in a press release. Created in conjunction with the Art Production Fund, it is up through September 4th in the Last Lot Project Space. Smith spoke to ARTINFO about her memories of Times Square, her penchant for nostalgia, and the anonymous joys of public art.

What initially drew you to Josephine Baker as a subject?

Josephine Baker really exemplifies the glamour of Times Square. She exemplifies the imagination of raw sexuality, but in a way that’s very cleverly constructed. She didn’t really work or perform that much in Times Square because of racism in America. That said, almost 100 years later, she really exemplifies a lot of what Times Square represents. Also, she was very active in the civil rights and all different kinds of movements in her life. You know, people want to turn [celebrities] in to these flat things that just existed in one period of their life. But she had a long life. Her interests spanned over a great deal of time. Also, there are not very many African American women who are represented in pop culture all the time. There are not that many women. Period.

A chorus girl, music hall diva, movie star, civil rights activist, she was an icon of civil rights and feminism. She was also a sex symbol.

I think that she was someone constructing, and playing in those languages. Sexuality and the construction of sexuality are not static. They are changing all the time. I don’t think that she is fixed any more than sex is fixed or race is fixed. She was extremely bright, innovative, and clever. She was addressing and playing with these things, playing with racial identity, playing with sexual identity. She was also one of the most famous women in Europe, perhaps in the world in a certain way. She had a tremendous impact in Europe, in Europe's interest in African American culture, and in how American culture was perceived abroad.

You’ve been working with stained glass for 25 years. What draws you to this medium?

I started painting on glass in the mid '80s in really rude, crude conditions. It’s something that I really love: painting on glass. In more recent years, I’ve made things on a much larger scale. But I’ve never had an installation. Glass enables one to have a clear light. It’s a kind of transparent color. It retains its clarity, but at the same time has this luminosity about it. In a certain way it mimics organic life, in that it has a vibrancy.

Time Square used to be synonymous with seediness, danger, and sex. For better or worse, Robert Moses and then Rudolph Giuliani imposed a conservative social agenda onto the space. The spectacle of sex has been replaced by the spectacle of advertising, With Josephine Baker, are you attempting to bring sexuality back into Times Square?

I don’t want it to be forgotten. There’s very little representation of sexuality — in both its glamorous and messy aspects — in our culture. It’s not like I want to know about other people’s sexuality. But in terms of cultural representation, in other cultures [sex] is not hidden. It’s not separate. In my work, I’ve always been interested in how sexuality is separated from spirituality in our culture. I think that separation often gives us convoluted understandings of our lives and vilifies sex. There are a lot of things about sexuality that can be scary and negative. The scariness, the awkwardness, of it. But it’s also a celebration of our vitality, of exuberance. I don’t want that to be negated. Times Square sort of represents all of that. It doesn’t necessarily represent all aspects of sex. It represents the artifice of sex. It doesn’t represent intimacy. But it represents the image, the spectacle of sexuality, which is something that humans rarely share collectively. At least in our society, we rarely collectively share the image of sex, or what is tantalizing, what is provocative.

How do you think your project interacts with the site of Times Square, as opposed to Josephine Mekseper's "Manhattan Oil Project?"

I can’t speak to the other people’s work, but in a way maybe their work is more of a juxtaposition to the space. What I made is more speaking to what happened there, to historical images of Times Square, to Broadway as a theatrical space —as an exuberant environment.

Midtown, and particularly Times Square, is considered by many to be the armpit of New York City. It's synonymous with blockbuster theater, tourist traps, schlocky attractions, basically capitalism run amok. If you were appointed mayor or city planner, what would Times Square look like?

People would be in trouble.

Do you think Times Square deserves its bad rep?

I think that, in America, there really is a loss of place. Because of the scale that business exists on now, there’s more of a generic aspect to our lives as you go from one city from the next. I think a lot of places have lost the uniqueness that was once fundamental to them. I think Times Square is a victim of that. But Times Square has many facets to it. It’s really this place where many different constituents in society are all on top of one another temporarily. You used to be able to go to the movies, very cheap movies, all night long. When I was young we could go up there and just watch one movie after the other, you could go to the movies at midnight. It’s really the place of entertainment and spectacle. If you think about all the lights in Times Square, it’s just mind-boggling. You could be on LSD or something. People could make analogies to certain places in Asia, but, in America, there's really nowhere else besides maybe Las Vegas that offers visual stimulation on such an enormous scale. All because of light. Maybe that’s related to the stained glass too. It’s a quiet reminiscence of the natural way that happens, that the daylight or the nightlight passes through it, rather than generating light the way electrical light does. I think for the whole country and for a great deal of the world, Time Square still represents some intersection of magical realism. I always think the best places in New York are the subways. That’s where you get the largest insight into the vibrancy of living in a place with people from all over the world. We’re all just sort of on top of one another co-existing.

What was it like to create work for Times Square, as opposed to a gallery or museum? You’re forced to compete with the surroundings.

“Chorus” isn’t minimalistic by any means, but anything I made would have been dwarfed. I’ve rarely had the opportunity or been invited to make things outdoors... When I was younger I don’t think I was really that interested. I was more interested in just making things on a domestic scale. At this stage in the game, it’s really exciting to make something in public, something that has an anonymity to it. I put my work in small gardens in my neighborhood. I didn’t wait to be asked, because I might be dead by the time somebody asks me to do something. There’s enormous activity of people making things for the streets in New York and not being asked. I think there’s a lot of exciting work being made like that. The graffiti art of the '70s and '80s very much revitalized the public space and what public space means. It’s really fun. I’m just interested in having an experience — and so for me, this is wonderful.

Tons of passersby who have no idea who you are see the work.

That’s the thing I think is nice: it’s not about you. You just put something out and it just does its own thing. That passivity is really attractive. Maybe somebody sees something. Maybe they don’t see it. Maybe they see it after it's been there five years. You know, I just saw two enormous buildings in Midtown that I’d never seen before. They must have been there at least in the last 10 years. Then there’s the opposite. Things disappear and you don’t notice. Like Times Square: it disappeared. My version of it from the late '50s. I remember when people used to walk around with sandwich boards in Times Square saying “The End is Near,” seeing kids putting bubble gum on string down the subway gratings to try to catch coins. You would never see that now. Then there were the “ban the bomb” people. That was later. It’s a space where all different groups of people use it as a platform to proselytize and stand up on soap boxes and entice people into shows. I used to work there, so I hung out there a lot.

Did you have a studio there?

No. I worked in a bar there called Tin Pan Alley on 49th street. So I spent all my New Years Eves in Times Square. There were lots of artists living or renting studios there.

Are you a Broadway fan?

I hardly ever go to Broadway, but I actually went to a play called “Cock” at the Duke theater the other night, and quite enjoyed it. But “Chorus” isn’t really about plays. When I worked in Times Square, at night you’d go out into the street, and people would hang out in these rattan chairs. I think there are famous photos of the Black Panthers sitting in them. People would take polaroids of [passersby] for a dollar. It has a street spectacle aspect to it. For me, that’s what I’m interested in: this idea of spectacle.

In a recent interview you said, "I am interested in the 1920s... in the visualization of spectacle pageantry and how that relates to medieval art... the exuberant festiveness of public experience." Can you elaborate on the affinities between the twenties and the middle ages?

It exists in my own convoluted imagination. It’s completely my fantasy life. It’s not based in any research or anything whatsoever. It’s just my impression of things. But both periods have a larger-than-life iconography attached to them. I mean, film is much older, but the 1920s were really when Hollywood got going — when those enormous, theatrical stagings began. Where you have thousands of people involved in [creating] an image. You know, if you go into small towns in Italy or all over Europe, there are still these vestiges of medieval life, which have a great deal of pageantry in them. Carnivals. Processions. I just think about the magnificence and scale of churches: the rich, vivid layering of images that you see in the cathedral. Something about that in my mind has this enormous, fanciful theatricality to it.

You've said that one of your worst personal problems is nostalgia.

One does have emotional attachments to different time periods, but often that negates lots of reality. We negate lots of reality in our lives everyday period, just to get through the day. I don’t know why. Sometimes I think it can be a romantic, revisionist, or slightly blind version of what was going on, but also that’s something that is very useful to me. It’s emotionally useful. It’s sort of like how denial helps people stay alive. Maybe it has to do with the feeling of a time rather than the actual — whatever it means — time.  I don’t know. I don’t know the answers. For me, I just go to what I’m attracted to and I feel like, in different aspects, I learn something from it.

Can neuroscientists kickstart interest in museums? The art world is about to find out.

The Arts Consortium — a new think tank for museum professionals funded by Christie’s and started by former Milwaukee Art Museum director of exhibitions Laurie Winters — plans to bring neuroscientists, behavioral economists, tech specialists, and art critics to Vienna in October to meet with a group of museum administrators. Think TED Talks for cultural institutions.

“We want to bring in people from outside fields. That’s the only way to introduce new thinking into an organization,” said Winters, an alumna of both the Center for Curatorial Leadership and the Getty Leadership Program. “I don’t [just] want the membership talking to the membership,” she added.

According to Winters, there are four areas that will be addressed at the first meeting: alternative ways of financing museums, attendees’ short attention spans, new ways to use technology, and art critics.

Art critics? “They have very strong opinions,” she told ARTINFO, but rarely are they brought into a practical conversation about how museums are run. She wants to change that.

Then there are the neuroscientists, who will be asked to help museums find ways to rethink their approach to exhibitions considering the rapidly decreasing average attention span of its audience. Perhaps the expansive career retrospective is a thing of the past (kidding). But seriously, the way our brains are trained to process information is becoming quicker, which could have an effect on the way that museums consider programming.

“How can you encourage or enhance an aesthetic experience when the way people are thinking is different than it was 20 years ago?” asked Winters.

In the same vein, the Consortium seeks answers to the equally impossible question of how to fund small- and mid-sized museums in an age of tightening belts and lagging attendance. To that effect, the organization is turning to behavioral economists, who may help smaller institutions “nudge museum goers to slow down or come back several times.”

But the consortium might not even need an economist to help change thinking about museum finances, as its executive director is one of those rare art-world people who has no problem talking about the business of culture. When asked about funding from Christie’s auction house, she was quick to break down barriers between museums and commercial arts institutions.

“To call them [museums] a nonprofit is a sort of artificial distinction,” she said, noting that museums function like businesses in most respects. “In fact, I would raise the question does that even make any sense anymore to talk about it in those terms?”

The first thing to greet visitors to the Museum of Modern Art’s new retrospective of auteur animators and filmmakers the Quay Brothers, a show of hundreds of objects and dozens of videos on the second floor, is a dark, moody scene. A few eerie birch trees run floor to ceiling in front of a black-and-white photograph reproduced on the gallery wall depicting a woman doing yard work and a pair of twin babies sitting in front of a New England house. The small boys are the young Quay Brothers themselves, and that gothic photo installation is just the start of a joint life story mingling nigh-mythic self-creation with restless creative adventuring through the worlds of graphic art, theatrical design, and film-making.

The Quay Brothers were born in 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in relative isolation. Their talent for drawing and painting, showcased in the array of juvenilia on display at MoMA, led them to study with the renowned local illustrator Rudolf Fruend, whose densely analytical, photorealistic drawings of flora and fauna inspired the twins’ own taste for taxidermy. There is a messy biological quality to the Quays’ drawings, a taste for the morbid that was intensified as the artists attended the Philadelphia College of Art and then London’s Royal College of Art, falling under the influence of 1960s surrealist Polish poster design, Kafka, and the melancholic aura of the Eastern European avant garde.

Though the exhibition’s drawings and commercial work, ranging from book covers to a spot for the BBC, are powerful, the true payoff comes in viewing the Quays’ original films and props. Dioramas are sprinkled throughout the galleries, tiny environments composed of found objects, crumbling doll furniture, and attenuated humanoid and insectoid figures made from wire, string, and bits of cloth. Waiting at the end of the show is a literal multiplex of theaters where viewers can take in reels of the brothers’ short and feature films. Their iconic “Street of Crocodiles,” the elegiac tale of a puppet cut loose from its strings, gets its own space. It’s hard not to stay for the full 20 minutes.

Click on the slide show for a photo tour of the Quay Brothers’ MoMA exhibition.

“Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets” is open at the Museum of Modern Art from August 12, 2012 to January 7, 2013. 

Chanel nailed it again! The French fashion house has a talent for creating must-have nail polishes, and their fall 2012 lineup is no exception. Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s films, next season’s Le Vernis lacquers — all available now for $26 at Nordstrom.com — include Vertigo (an inky shade infused with red glitter), Frenzy (a gray with lavender undertones), and Suspicious (a vibrant fuchsia). While these, like many of Chanel’s polishes, are limited edition, the label’s main nail line still offers some of its best sellers from seasons past (remember 1994’s Vamp? And the Particuliere craze of 2009?). 

Get ready for some beauty nostalgia and click through the slide show to see our top ten all-time favorite Le Vernis shades, both permanent and, sadly, discontinued. 

Visit Artinfo.com/fashion for more fashion and style news.

ARTINFO Fashion is now on Twitter. Follow us at @ARTINFOFashion.

Woody Allen’s name is all over the newspaper ads for “2 Days in New York” and you can find his fingerprints on Julie Delpy’s new movie as well — this sequel to her 2007 comedy “2 Days in Paris” is a wacky, Woodmanesque comedy of cultural difference in which the French director-actress gets to play ditzy, neurotic Annie Hall to her own manipulative, kvetching Alvy Singer.

A claustrophobic farce, aptly framed by a display of hand puppetry, “2 Days in New York” is a mirror and companion to Delpy’s earlier film: Here, the ex-pat French artist Marion (Delpy) has a new American boyfriend, an alt-journalist cum talk radio personality named Mingus and played by Chris Rock; instead of bringing him to Paris to meet her parents, the trip she subjected the Adam Greenberg character to in “2 Days in Paris,” Mingus gets the treatment when her family descends upon their shared East Village digs. (Creative geography enables the couple to have what looks like a loft apartment in a housing project building.)

Marion’s rambunctious father (again played by Delpy’s actual father Albert Delpy) but now (as in life) a widower, exhibitionist sister Rose (Alexia Landau) and doper ex-boyfriend Manu (Alex Nahon, Delpy’s co-writer), who has taken up with Rose, are an insanely obtrusive bunch and, French alternating with (often mangled) English, the culture shock is even more extreme, largely predicated on the French trio’s obnoxious lack of couth. The performances are nothing if not naturalistic, meaning the actors wear out their welcome no less than their characters. In a way, their antics serve as camouflage for the film’s underlying psychodrama: Marion (like Delpy) is both an anxious mother and a bereaved child.

Alternating between a comic lack of vanity and a fearless willingness, long evident in her dramatic roles, to flirt with the annoying, Delpy can be very funny. Although always a strong presence, Rock is largely a foil. Humorous rather than riotous, he gamely plays straight man to a gaggle of French lunatics and mime a condition of perpetual sexual frustration, as well as engage in prolonged, painfully cute “conversations” with the life-sized cardboard cutout of Barack Obama he keeps in his office.  (A far more effective cameo is provided by the always alarming Vincent Gallo, who has a terrific  time playing himself in the context of the annual Greenwich Village Hallowe’en parade.)

Still, it’s Delpy’s show and the movie’s most elaborate scene is her gallery opening at which, in addition to situational photographic self-portraits, Marion is selling her soul as a conceptual work. Inevitably all the characters collide and then some — “This whole evening is turning into a horrible disaster,” she wails — and the theater of embarrassment is compounded when, having been driven mad by her family, the artist attempts to ingratiate herself by winds up insulting the snooty (and bizarrely unprofessional) art critic who shows up looking to review.

Their interaction is an inoculation against criticism of the movie because, in some respects, the critic is right. “2 Days in New York” is initially quite pleasing in its chaotic near slapstick but the non-stop manic insouciance grows wearisome and ultimately self-indulgent.

Read all of J. Hoberman's movie reviews and news at ARTINFO's Movie Journal blog. 

The German cosmetics and skincare company Nivea is undergoing a PR makeover – and it does not include Rihanna. Stefan Heidenreich, the new CEO of parent company Beiersdorf, made clear this morning that the pop tart and Nivea are not a good match.   

In an interview with the German newspaper “Welt,” Heidenreich said, “I do not understand how to bring the core brand of Nivea in conjunction with Rihanna … Nivea is a company which stands for trust, family, and reliability.” Heidenreich said last year’s centennial ad campaign — which featured a half-body nude portrait of the “Good Girl Gone Bad” — was a “no-go.” In the photograph, Rihanna — her mercurial hair extensions dyed bright magenta — smiles and modestly covers her breasts.

The innocuous image, a reprise of the age-old Venus Pudica (or “Modest Venus”) trope that dates back to ancient Greece, is the least of the skincare brand’s problems. If the past is any indication, Nivea can get itself into tons of trouble without RiRi’s help. Last year, the company was forced to eat serious foot for running a bizarre and flagrantly racist ad that featured a black man in preppy garb hurling the head of his former, afro-wearing self across an empty parking lot. As if the message wasn’t clear enough, the scene of lily-white self-transformation is presided over by the slogan, “Re- Civilize Yourself.”

In our polemicized, value-laden economy where chicken sandwiches are political weapons, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the pop star, who tweets expletives and posts raunchy photos under the handle “Bad Gal Riri,” might come under scrutiny for her self-broadcasted wild ways. Granted, singing from the rooftops about the joys of whips and chains and rolling a blunt on a bald guy’s head don’t exactly scream wholesome family fun. But Nivea’s dropping of Rihanna, viewed in the context of last year’s incendiary ad blunder, raises thorny questions about brand identity, cultural values, raciness, and race. What does it mean that the sexually and sartorially adventurous Rihanna doesn’t fit in with Nivea’s “re-civilizing” agenda? What role, if any, might Rihanna’s race and ethnicity play in her public image?

These are probably questions Nivea doesn’t want to answer. Back-peddling furiously, the brand’s communications vice-president Thomas Schönen released this statement: “Within the future brand positioning Nivea focuses more than ever on its core values. This leads to a change in advertising strategy as well as marketing campaigns. Beiersdorf and Nivea thank Rihanna for her work in relation to the 100th birthday anniversary campaign and feel respect and sympathy for her as a person and artist.” Rihanna, who — according to unsubstantiated estimates — may lose up to $25 million over the firing, took the setback in stride, tweeting a picture of Heidenreich with the words, “no caption necessary.” Guess you really can’t keep a bad girl down.

Visit Artinfo.com/fashion for more fashion and style news.

ARTINFO Fashion is now on Twitter. Follow us at @ARTINFOFashion.

WEDNESDAY, 8/8

 “Eyes Closed/Eyes Open: Recent Acquisitions in Drawings,” at MoMA, 10:30 AM - 5:30 PM
11 West 53 Street, Midtown West

Akira Horikawa "1000 Drawing Project," at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, 5:30 - 7:30 PM
137 Leroy Street, West Village

"Summer Feeling,” at FB gallery (Panini Cafe), 2 - 6 PM
188 Lafayette Street, Soho

Closing Reception: One Hundred Dollars, at Littlefield, 6 PM
622 Degraw Street, Gowanus

Jon Nalley, at Michael Mut Gallery, 6 - 8 PM
97 Avenue C, East Village

Panel Discussion: "Art and Community Development," at Nicholas Cohn Art Projects, 6 - 9 PM
26-15 Jackson Avenue, Queens

Lecture: Stacy C. Hollander "Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions," at American Folk Art Museum, 6 PM
2 Lincoln Center, Upper West Side

"SMALL," at Art In FLUX Harlem, 6 - 9 PM
1961 Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, at 118th Street, Harlem

Artist Talk: China Marks, Iviva Olenick, Patricia Dahlman, Rebecca Carter, at Center for Book Arts, 6:30 PM
28 West 27th Street, Floor 3, Chelsea

Artist Talk: "Tell Me How You REALLY Feel: Diaristic Tendencies," at Center for Book Arts, 6:30 PM
28 West 27th Street, Floor 3, Chelsea

Artsministratist?? Behind the Scenes and Center Stage Divided, at EFA Project Space, 6:30 PM
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor, Midtown

BATTLE: Elka Krajewska vs. John Williams, at Postmasters Gallery, 7 PM
459 West 19th Streeet, Chelsea

Performance: "Total Styrene: Breakdown,” at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, 7 - 9 PM
54 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side

"Détournement : Signs of the Times,” at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, 7 - 9 PM
529 West 20th Street, Floor 9, Chelsea

BxIndie Music at Sunset: Jazz Trio, at Wave Hill, 7 PM
West 249th Street and Independence Avenue, The Bronx

"Lost Mirrors," at Con Artist, 8 PM
119 Ludlow Street, Basement, Lower East Side

Screening: “The Heretics,” at Spectacle Theater, 8 PM
124 South 3rd Street, Williamsburg

Opening Night: “Bullet for Adolf,” at New World Stages, 8 PM
340 West 50th Street, Midtown

Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra: “Emperor” Concerto, at Avery Fisher Hall, 8 PM
132 West 65th Street, Upper West Side

THURSDAY, 8/9

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS **
 Jessica Rath "take me to the apple breeder," at Jack Hanley Gallery, 5 - 7 PM
136 Watts Street Tribeca
“‘Edible fruits are not born of nature, but are cultural objects carefully preserved through grafting,’ says the press release for Rath’s applecentric show at Jack Hanley Gallery. The artist worked with Cornell University’s apple curator (yes, that’s a thing!) Philip Forsline to make porcelain sculptures of esoteric species endangered by centuries of husbandry.” - Chloe Wyma

Global Projects, at Broadway Gallery, 6 - 8 PM
473 Broadway, 7th Floor, Soho

Rob Servo: "Silent Conversations," Midoma, 6 - 8 PM
545 Eighth Avenue, Suite 750, Midtown

Altered Land: “Perspectives from Tohoku,” FiveMyles
558 St Johns Place, Brooklyn

Scott Weingarten "hide and seek,” at Orchard Windows Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
37 Orchard Street, Lower East Side

"Room No. 5 Circle of Arts," at Skylight Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
538 West 29 Street, Chelsea

Aidan Sofia Earle "Bricolage," at Gallery Ho, 6 - 8 PM
547 West 27th Street, #208, Chelsea
“This quirky series of works in bas relief and embroidery from found materials brings new meaning to the show’s title, a reference to the process by which people acquire objects from across cultural strata to assemble new ideas and altered aesthetic identities.” -Reid Singer

Artist Talk: Ji Dachun "Splendid Isolation," at Fred Torres Collaborations, 6:30 PM
527 W 29 Street, Chelsea

"HEATWAVE,” at MISC. (The Fuller Building), 6 - 9 PM
41 East 57th, Suite 702, Upper East Side

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS **
Closing: Abigail Deville “Invisible Men,” at Recess in Red Hook, 6 PM - 8 PM
159 Pioneer Street, Red Hook
“The closing celebration for Deville’s summerlong residency in Red Hook, in which she has utilized masses of material found in the South Bronx to explore the tension between a material-obsessed culture and its invisible inhabitants.” -Sara Roffino

Artist Talk: Crystal Clarity, at Heath Gallery, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
24 West 120 Street, Harlem

“Children of Hercules,” at Naumburg Bandshell, 6:30 PM
Central Park

Lawn School Workshop: Kites Fly, at Fort Greene Park, 7 - 8 PM
Fort Greene

Screening: “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty,” at Brooklyn Museum, 7 PM
200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights

Metropolitan Opera Summer Recital Series, Socrates Sculpture Park, at 7 - 8:30 PM
3205 Vernon Boulevard, Astoria

"Still Figuring it Out: a feminist coming-of-age" curated by Ana Cecilia Alvarez, at RAC (Recession Art at Culturefix), 7 PM
Clinton Street, Lower East Side

Simon Amstell: Numb, at Theatre 80, 8 PM
80 St. Marks Place, East Village

Performance: Catherine Jauniaux, at The Stone, 8 PM
2nd Street and Avenue C, Alphabet City

Celebrate Brooklyn: Complexions Contemporary Ballet, at Prospect Park Bandshell, 8 PM
Prospect Park West at 9th Street, Brooklyn

Performance: "Shake In/Shake Out," at flux factory, 8 - 11 PM
39-31 29th Street, Long Island City

Kevin and Matt Geek Out about Shark Cinema, at The Observatory, 8 PM
543 Union Street, Gowanus

FRIDAY, 8/10

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS **
FringeNYC, New York International Fringe Festival
Venues around Downtown
“The 16th year of FringeNYC brings another 16 days of theatre, with around 200 plays, musicals, and performances. The choices are overwhelming, with everything from comedy ‘The Abduction of Becky Morris’ about an abducted psychic pregnant woman, to the already sold out ‘Tail! Spin!’ with Mo Rocca, Rachel Dratch, and Sean Dugan, and ‘The Importance of Doing Art,’ contemplating the reasons for creating art.” - Allison Meier

Chris Stain, Joe Iurato "Deep In The Cut," at Mighty Tanaka Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
111 Front Street, Suite 224, DUMBO

“My Love For You Burns All The Time,” at Soloway, 6 - 8 PM
348 South 4th Street, Williamsburg

Closing Reception: "Dog Days," at Gitana Rosa Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
19 Hope Street, #7, Williamsburg

RAISE THE ROOF 2: Workshops, Benefit Party, and Night Market, at Brooklyn Fireproof East, 7 PM - MIDNIGHT
119 Ingraham Street, Bushwick

"Growing the Garden: up from the sand comes cities,” at Secret Project Robot, 8 - 11 PM
389 Melrose Street, Bushwick

Screening: “Red Hook Summer” and Q&A with Director Spike Lee, at BAM Rose Cinemas, 7:10 & 10 PM
30 Lafayette Avenue, Downtown Brooklyn

dacops "Linejams," at PiPs, 7 PM - LATE
158 Roebling Street, Williamsburg

“Who'z Got Game!,” Sacred Gallery, 8 - 11 PM
424 Broadway , 2nd Floor, RSVP required

Panel Discussion: "Boys with Toys" moderated by Amy Kisch, at Causey Contemporary, 6:30 PM
92 Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg
“Curator Tracy Causey-Jeffrey talks about how her eighteen years of experience as a gallerist and curator informed her selection process for this exhibition, a vision of sculpture that characterizes sculpture and the tools used to make it as ‘toys’ in the artist’s hands.” -RS

Model Theories, at fordPROJECT, 6 - 8 PM
57 West 57th Street, Penthouse, Upper West Side

Target Passport Fridays: Taiwan, at Queens Museum of Art, 6:30 - 10 PM
New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Amanda LaMarco "HAIR" curated by Verrinia Amatulli, at The One Well, 7 - 10 PM
165 Greenpoint Avenue, Greenpoint

“Alli Uccelli e Al Lupo: The Birds and The Wolf,” at chashama 461, 5 PM
461 West 126 Street, Harlem

Karen Marston and Kerry Law, at Storefront Bushwick, 6 - 9 PM
16 Wilson Avenue, Bushwick

Tom Rush, at Rubin Museum of Art, 7 PM
150 West 17 Street, Chelsea

Performance: Kohji Setoh: "Elegy for Graveyards," Mount Tremper Arts, 7 - 10 PM
647 South Plank Road, Mount Tremper, New York

SATURDAY, 8/11

Summer Streets, from Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park, 7 AM - 1 PM
Manhattan

Tour: "Virtual/Monumental,” at Bronx River Art Center (BRAC on the Block),11 AM - 4 PM
2064 Boston Road, The Bronx

29th Annual Roots of American Music Festival, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 12:30 - 4 PM
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side

2nd Annual History Day Celebration, at Deno’s Wonder Wheel & Park and the Coney Island History Project, 1 - 6 PM
Coney Island, Brooklyn

Battery Dance Company, at Downtown Dance Festival, 1 PM
Venues in Lower Manhattan

Lecture: Christoph Cox on Max Neuhaus, at Dia Art Foundation (Dia:Beacon), 2 PM
3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New Yor

Dance Heginbotham, at Doris Duke Theater, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, 2:15 & 8:15 PM
358 George Carter Road, Becket, New York

Screening: Andy Warhol’s “Since,” at New Museum, 3 PM
235 Bowery, Bowery

Closing Reception: Cassius Fouler "Four Borough," at Weldon Arts, 3 - 7 PM
181R Irving Avenue, Bushwick

PS1: Warm Up: Photek, Morgan Geist DJ (Storm Queen), Shlohmo, Autre Ne Veut, Howse, at MoMA PS1, 3 PM
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City

Free Art for the People, at Dorian Grey Gallery, 5 - 8 PM
437 East 9th Street, East Village

"Streamlines,” at KANSAS, 6 - 9 PM
59 Franklin Street, Tribeca

 The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, 6 - 9 PM
26 Wooster Street, Lower East Side

The Nutriarts, at RH Gallery, 6 - 9:30 PM
137 Duane Street, Tribeca

"Parts & Service," at Eric Firestone Gallery, 6 - 9 PM
4 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, New York

Eddie Martinez, Jose Lerma, at Halsey Mckay, 6 - 8 PM
79 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, New York

Closing Reception: "India: Time, Space and Astronomy - A Quest to Depict Akasa,” at Lambert Fine Arts, 8 - 11 PM
57 Stanton Street, Lower East Side

Rooftop Films: “Detropia,” at Old American Can Factory, 8 PM - 12:30 AM
232 Third Street, Gowanus

Screening: “The Night of the Hunter,” at MoMA, 8 PM
11 West 53 Street, Midtown West

Performance: “Self Made Man Man Made Land,” at Mount Tremper Arts, 8 PM
647 South Plank Road, Mount Tremper, New York

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Gemini & Scorpio: The Lost Circus, at Irondale Center, 9 PM
85 South Oxford, Fort Greene

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS **
 Screening: "ART + ANGER: a Kenneth Anger Screening," at RAC (Recession Art at Culturefix), 10 PM - 1 AM
9 Clinton Street, Lower East Side
“Anger’s occult world of Biker gangs, Crowleyan ritual, and rock and roll will go down easy with Culturefix’s extensive beer selection.” -Chloe Wyma

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS **
Cheryl’s 4th Birthday Party: At the Car Wash, at The Bell House, 11 PM
149 7th Street, Gowanus
“Brooklyn based art collective Cheryl celebrate their 4th birthday with a day of their usual bizarre dance party antics. Car washes hosted by the group all over Brooklyn, including one at the Brooklyn Museum, lead up to an all night car wash themed dance party at the Bell House. The $5 admission fee, ‘$1 for every year plus $1 for good luck,’ will let revelers get wet and wild.” - Ashton Cooper

Screening: “House (Hausu),” IFC Center, 12:20 AM
323 6th Avenue, West Village

SUNDAY, 8/12

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS **
Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets, at MoMA, 10:30 AM - 5:30 PM
11 West 53 Street, Midtown West
“The curious and enticingly creepy stop-motion and live-action film work of the Quay Brothers is deservedly celebrated in this MoMA retrospective. Their unique and otherworldly perspective, infused with 1950s and 60s surrealism, is explored through an exhibition of objects and illustrations related to their 30 years of creation, as well as screenings of their haunting films.” - Allison Meier

"eMerge: Danny Simmons & Artists on the Cusp Gallery Talk,” at Strivers Gardens Gallery, 3 - 5 PM
300 West 135th Street, Harlem

Discover Watermill 2012, at The Watermill Center, 3 - 6 PM
39 Watermill Towd Road, Watermill, New York

Easy Sunday, at The Brecht Forum, 4 - 7 PM
451 West Street, West Village

The 3rd Annual American Beatbox Championships, at le Poisson Rouge, 6 PM
158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village

Sap, Straddle and Joy, at Wayfarers, 6 - 9 PM
1109 Dekalb Avenue, Bed-Stuy

Pardon Our Analysis: An All-Star Gathering for Gil Scott-Heron performed by Black Rock Coalition Orchestra, at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, 8:15 PM
Damrosch Park Bandshell, Lincoln Center

MONDAY,  8/13

CHOEL NAM Solo Exhibition "Stories From the Stars,” at Amsterdam Whitney Gallery, 11 AM - 5 PM
511 West 25th Street, Chelsea

MyWays: The Art Book Club hosted by Court Square, at Meulensteen, 6 - 8 PM
511 West 22nd Street, Chelsea

Opening Night: “Soul Doctor,” New York Theatre Workshop, 7 PM
79 East 4th Street, East Village

Smuin Ballet, at Joyce Theatre, 7:30 PM
175 Eighth Avenue, Soho

TUESDAY, 8/14

The Small Works Show, at Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavilion at Columbia University, 5:30 - 7 PM
1150 St. Nicholas Avenue, Harlem

Colleen Blackard: "Shifting Perception,” at Orchard Windows Gallery,  6 - 9 PM
37 Orchard Street, Lower East Side

Performance: Peter Edwards "Nova Drone," at The Clocktower, 6 - 8 PM
108 Leonard Street, 13th Floor, Soho

Screening: "Vision Quest,” at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (Anthology Film Archives), 7 - 9 PM
32 Second Avenue, East Village

Shuhei Mochizuki "GEKKO," at Ouchi Gallery, 7 - 10 PM
170 Tillary Street, Suite 507, Downtown Brooklyn

** ARTINFO RECOMMENDS **
Panel Discussion: Gary Hustwit, Jon Pack: "The Post-Olympic City," Storefront for Art and Architecture, 7 - 9 PM
97 Kenmare Street, Lower East Side
“An evening with the artists and other guests invited for a panel discussion about the long-term effects of the Games on their host cities.” - Sara Roffino

Previews: “The Train Driver,” Pershing Square Signature Center, 7:30 PM
480 West 42nd Street, Midtown

Having a Whiskey Coke With You, Freddy’s, 8 PM
627 5th Avenue, Brooklyn

Would you pay more taxes if it meant funding your local museum? Detroit residents will. Yesterday, a controversial millage for the Detroit Institute of the Arts narrowly passed in three counties by just 1,340 votes, with a total of 125,000 cast. The 0.2-mill property tax will cost residents $15 annually for every $150,000 in fair-market home value. The tax means DIA will receive a total of $23 million in annual public funding for the next 10 years.

“We’re getting 10 years of security,” museum director Graham Beal told the Wall Street Journal. “With those funds coming in, we can be a normal museum.”

DIA’s campaign for the tax, and the flood of press coverage that surrounded it, provided a candid look at the value the Detroit community places on having a marquee museum. The tax will affect the three voting counties that make up 80 percent of DIA’s visitors. DIA promised that if the measure passed, it would offer residents of the those counties free admission and amp up its public programs. Without the measure, museum leadership said, the institution would have to lay off as many as 70 employees, curtail temporary exhibitions, shutter four days out of the week, and eliminate most of its education programs. 

Though the stakes were high, the campaign yielded some heartwarming anecdotes. Last Wednesday, a pair of local brothers — Harrison Hunger, 5, and Dash, 3 — set up a lemonade stand outside their home to raise money for the Detroit Institute for the Arts. They brought in $22.50 in 45 minutes.

“Even though I don’t get there often, I think of the museum as a jewel, as a gem of our region, and I would be embarrassed if we had to close it,” Plymouth resident Nancy Parent, who voted for the millage, told the Detroit Free Press. 

The opposition ranged from those with a blanket distaste for increased taxes in today’s climate to those who maintain the arts are an extravagance that should not be funded through taxes. (“It's a luxury for the area," Robert Gosselin, an Oakland County commissioner who voted against putting the measure on Tuesday's ballot, told the Journal.) Others suggested DIA was overstating the seriousness of its financial situation and criticized its director’s over $400,000 salary.

The museum’s victory follows years of shrinking public funds familiar to many museums in struggling cities across the country. DIA received $16 million from the state of Michigan in 1990; this year it got nothing. Beal said that the 10-year tax will give him time to build the museum’s endowment; by 2024, DIA hopes to have a nest egg of $400 million. The interest from the endowment would generate 60 percent of the annual budget.

The method isn’t particularly innovative. The millage isn’t the first of its kind in Detroit and similar measures have been passed to buoy museums in Denver and Saint Louis. What makes this one notable is the economic climate in which it was passed. Those similar measures in Denver and St. Louis were voted through in the 1980s and 1960s, respectively. Detroit’s earlier millage, which raised money for the zoo, was approved in March 2008, before the market crash.

More remarkable still, Detroit residents voted down a millage proposal for cultural institutions including DIA in 2000 and 2002. (The tax was much higher then — $1,000 per household — but then, so was the Dow Jones.) Museum employees all over the country should celebrate. The public — at least a narrow majority of the public in Detroit — sees their work as something worth paying for, even when there is plenty it can’t afford.

BERLIN — A trio of Australian performance artists moved into a 30 square meter (323 square foot) patch of dirt outside Berlin’s newly relocated Platoon Kunsthalle on Sunday for a period of ten days equipped with nothing but their naked bodies. Called “Deliverance: Art Stripped Bare,” the project sets the three artists — Kat Henry, Penny Harpham, and William McBride — inside their imaginary cell for 240 hours straight, only leaving to use the bathroom, the path to which is marked by a dotted line. Their ability to survive, never mind clothe themselves, lies solely in the hands of the people of Berlin, who have been asked to bring whatever they can for the artists’ nourishment, comfort, or whimsy.

“For the first five minutes no one was doing anything, just looking at us and smoking cigarettes,” Harpham says of their very nude introduction to performance art complacence Berlin. Their first donation was a fire engine red valise, which Harpham nabbed quickly to cover up her nether regions. Within ten minutes or so the group was fully clothed and began to amass what, two days later, amounted to a considerable haul.

“There’s always booze, nicotine, and bread,” Harpham told ARTINFO Germany, “strangely, bananas too, but I won’t eat the bloody things.” In typical Berlin fashion, the patch of dirt has turned into a pop-up party spot, with well over 50 revelers in various stages of drunkenness congregating outside of the Kunsthalle on Monday night. More practical nourishment abounds as well. There are Ikea bags full of food and a stockpile of water bottles. A sign in one corner asks passersby by to avoid turning the artists' new home into a toilet for their dogs, and a tent adds to the emerging red theme. Henry also jokes about an older gentleman who brings them tea and breakfast each morning in a strange trade for being able to train his telephoto lens on them throughout the rest of the day from his apartment across the street.

Regardless of usability, the trio has to keep the gifts within their performance area for the entirety of the piece. Thus far, the strangest offerings have been a set of squirt guns and a sex toy, which according to Henry and Harpham, don’t match the creative gifting that previous editions of the piece have garnered. “A band set up and played a gig in the space one night in Adelaide,” where they performed “Deliverance” during the city’s Fringe Festival, says Harpham. “In Brisbane, a woman gave us her breasts to hold for the full 40 hour trial run of the piece,” Henry adds.

The group ended up in Berlin through a residency at the Center for Arts and Urbanistics but plans to continue the piece in further international locations in the future. Asked how they would adapt it to locations like New York where laws aren’t so forgiving to public nudity or incineration of trash (their main means of cleaning house), Henry responds, “I don’t think we would change anything. It’s a piece that can’t fail, really. If it got interrupted by police or otherwise two minutes in, that would just be that version of 'Deliverance,' which reflects that city.”

Deliverance is on view 24 hours per day outside of Platoon Kunsthalle’s new location off of Berlin’s Rosa Luxemburg Platz until August 25 at 6pm.

This article also appears on ARTINFO Germany.

Needing a lusty American lad to boost the international sales potential of his upcoming “Nymphomania,” the Danish agent provocateur Lars Von Trier has lighted upon Shia LaBeouf to play, presumably, an object of desire for Charlotte Gainsbourg’s highly promiscuous protagonist. Another American, Willem Dafoe, who starred with Gainsbourg in Von Trier’s controversial “Antichrist,” had already joined the cast.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 26-year-old LaBeouf is currently in talks for the picture. It will also feature Nicole Kidman, who told the French movie magazine Positif that she will do “a few days” filming on the project. Kidman had one of her most arduous experiences working with Von Trier as the sexually enslaved Grace in “Dogville.”

“Nymphomania” is due to start filming in September near Cologne. As previously reported here, the movie will relive the amorous escapades of the Gainsbourg character, from age zero through fifty, as recounted by her to her husband (Stellan Skarsgård).

It will be shot in two feature-length parts. “It is a big operation,” Von Trier’s producer and Zentropa partner Aalbæk Jensen told Screendaily (paywall site) back in April. “I personally hope that we should be ready for Cannes next year. We will shoot both and edit both – and we want to finish both at the same time.” The first part will deal with the main character’s sexuality in childhood and adolescence, the second part will deal with her adulthood.

Von Trier intends to present softcore and hardcore versions of the two-parter. “We will probably blur the central points of the human body for the release worldwide but we will probably make one unblurred that will be for screening, maybe in Cannes,” Jensen said.

It will be shot, like “Melancholia,” “in a mixed style,” Jensen added. “Some will be Dogme hand-held and some will have very carefully made photography, crane shots and beautiful images.”

The casting of Kidman and Dafoe confirms Jensen’s belief that the clumsy “Nazi” remarks Von Trier made (and later retracted) during his 2011 Cannes press conference for “Melancholia” has not diminished his standing with actors. “His value for [them] to work with him has never been better,” Jensen said in the Screendaily interview.

One wonders why Von Trier is restricting the film to two parts. Should he wish to follow Peter Jackson, who is now expanding “The Hobbit” into three movies, he could shoot a third part that follows the “Melancholia” heroine’s life as a “GILF,” in the novelist Martin Amis’s parlance – “G” standing for “grandmother.”

A new hotel in Delhi's Shahdara district is set to become party central.

Commuters in Las Vegas were shocked out of their morning traffic routines on Wednesday when they spotted mannequins dangling from a pair of freeway-adjacent billboards scrawled with cryptic messages of discontent about Wall Street and the job market. Concerned motorists began calling 911 as the sun came up, AP reports, for fear that the dangling silhouettes were real suicides. One of the billboards featured the words “Dying for Work” in large white letters, while the other read “Hope You're Happy Wall Street.”

Though nobody has claimed responsibility for the startling street art stunt, images of the two hangmen billboards were posted on Occupy Las Vegas's website on Wednesday, along with unemployment and suicide statistics for Nevada and Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. “Nevada has the highest sustained unemployment of any state in the U.S.,” the post reads, “with almost no real hope in sight and politicians more concerned with corporate campaign donations than they are helping the middle class and poor.”

“It's a publicity stunt, obviously done in bad taste,” Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Jeremie Elliott told AP.

Responding authorities worked quickly to take the ominous installations down so that they wouldn't distract drivers. An employee of Lamar Advertising Co., which owns one of the billboards, considered the hangmen and their painted messages vandalism rather than a publicity stunt. The other billboard is owned by Clear Channel Outdoor.

“We condemn the destructive behavior against one of our billboards because it is illegal and punishes our advertisers,” Clear Channel spokesman Jim Cullinan told the AP. “This is not an innocent protest, but it is illegal and dangerous behavior that Clear Channel Outdoor and the industry will not accept.”

Sebring Frehner, who posted the photos of the installation on Occupy Las Vegas's website, had a different take: “People saying it's in bad taste are living sheltered lives and don't pay attention to what affects the working class.”