From MoMA and PS1 to the Cleveland Institute of Art, I keep finding myself at institutions that have benefited not just from Agnes Gund’s philanthropic support but her moral clarity and kindness. Rest in peace.

I’m giving a talk at e-flux on Thursday 9/25, 7:30pm, “The Fluxhouse Cooperatives and the Future of the City.” The program will also include a performance of Maciunas’s “Solo for Violin” by Laura Ortman. www.e-flux.com/events/67832...

It’s Labor Day! In Baffler no. 59, Dana Kopel took us inside the fight to unionize at the New Museum, where management skimped on raises but found the money to hire union-busting consultants and lawyers. thebaffler.com/salvos/again...

Transgender studies professor Dr. Susan Stryker tears Gavin Newsom a new one while accepting the Transgender Legacy Award from the California state legislature 🔥🔥🔥 @susanstryker.bsky.social

Apparently Rocky Balboa is once again at the top of the Philadelphia Museum steps. I wrote about the Balboa statue back in 2008 for an early issue of Triple Canopy. tc3.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/the...

It works!!

Did not expect to learn in the Christophe de Menil obit that Dash Snow and Uma Thurman are related.

The best way to think in dark times is to think with others. It has been sustaining to work with Lindsay Caplan and Nadja Millner-Larsen on “Writing Art History After Occupy,” first as a panel and now as a (no-paywall!) article in the journal October. direct.mit.edu/octo/article...

Downtown Cleveland is filled with fantastic architecture (much of which is featured in the new Superman movie). Great news that this Art Deco Greyhound station will be given a new role. www.artforum.com/news/clevela...

The next time College Art Association makes a call for conference panels, I’m going to propose a panel on the prevalence of redundant panels. #CAA114

reposting with alt text

There are now three leftist academics with children who have become prominent Democratic politicians— Marxist economist Donald Harris; Gramsci scholar Joseph Buttigieg, and post-colonial theorist Mahmood Mamdani.

It’s wild how much politicians from Queens have shaped the national political scene in the past ten years. I’d read a take.

Greedo ranked Cuomo first.

“Where are the greatest museum seats in the world? Thanks for asking. The soft modernist squares in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna are hard to beat, as are the Ashmolean’s cosy circular sofas and benches.”

The Baffler is seeking a new Senior Editor. Apply by July 11.

Excited to be in conversation with the great Annie Ochmanek on Saturday, June 21, at 4pm at MoMA PS1.

Just saw the obit for Amanda Feilding, whose love of parrots and drilling holes in skulls we covered @cabinetmagazine.bsky.social www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/28/tu...

“The current avant-garde, such as it is, rightfully refuses to coalesce around any single identity, and it’s competing calls for abolition, access, decolonization, or care reflect the breadth and nuance of its viewpoints” Colby Chamberlain on Park McArthur.

shout out to all the ISP folks who pulled out and for all these folks for writing this letter www.e-flux.com/notes/674086...

Open letter from the alumni and faculty of the Whitney Independent Study Program. Ispalumni.org

Read the statement by Sara Nadal-Melsió—associate director of the Whitney Independent Study Program—regarding the Whitney’s cancellation of “No Aesthetics Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance.” www.cabinetmagazine.org/kiosk/nadal_...

Not mentioned in this obituary: Hans Noë was one of the Cooper Union students that Tony Smith took on his famous late-night drive on the unfinished New Jersey Turnpike. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/a...

Gregg Bordowitz is an incredible educator and it's heartbreaking to witness the kneecapping of such a widely-respected program. Thanks for sharing this...

There’s trouble at the Whitney Museum’s storied Independent Study Program. Can it maintain its vaunted independence from the larger institution? news.artnet.com/art-world/wh...

What I’ve heard secondhand: The Whitney’s curatorial affairs department demoted ISP director Gregg Bordowitz to “director at large” earlier this year and has since taken a stronger role in supervising (and apparently censoring) the program.

When speaking of the Whitney Independent Study Program, the former Whitney director Adam Weinberg emphasized the “independent” part. Now under new management, the ISP is being so surveilled by museum staff that the curatorial and critical cohorts are cancelling their end-of-year events in protest.

This is the health care equivalent of spending millions on police to save a pittance on toll evasion. They’ll need more admin at every front desk for the soul-destroying task of demanding payment and turning away people in need of care.

Robert Storr will never miss an opportunity to complain about Glenn Lowry. www.vulture.com/article/moma...

What people in every part of higher education need to understand is that Republicans now want to do to universities what they’ve tried to do to labor unions: erase them from the institutional landscape. The question is how much you want to collaborate in your own destruction.

“For classroom discussion, the bill would set rules around topics involving ‘controversial beliefs’ such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion. S.B. 1 would only affect Ohio’s public universities.”

Columbia admin just sent out an email to alumni: “Sharing Progress on our Priorities.” Not only are they succumbing to blackmail, they are claiming the extortion was their idea.

FYI, the account for the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District is incredible.

My posts from when the New Yorker first hired Jackson Arn and the collective response was “Who?”

BREAKING: A court overturned Ohio's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. This is a critical victory for trans rights.

Shocker: An organization predicated on siphoning off funding from public education is now saying that higher education costs too much.

EDITORIAL: ArtHist.net Now on Bluesky / jetzt auf Bluesky https://arthist.net/archive/43872

On Mel Bochner and the entire language of botany in art. www.artforum.com/events/mel-b...

Institutional Fatigue in the Twenty-First Century, panel at #CAA113. Has institutional critique run out of steam? with Alexander Alberro, Samuel Shapiro, E. C. Feiss, Brianne Chapelle, Philip Kelleher, and Luke Skrebowski.

My dears, it’s really here. You gotta stop looking at us and fight it now.

Amazing how effective a communicator Tim Walz is when he hasn’t been debate-prepped by an army of consultants and Pete Buttigieg.

"Writing Art History After Occupy" -- I'll be in talking with Lindsay Caplan and Nadja Millner-Larsen on Thursday 2/13 at Printed Matter in NYC. A bit of counter-programming to that week's #CAA113 conference.

Missing from the Delphine Seyrig retrospective at Metrograph is Robert Frank & Alfred Leslie’s “Pull My Daisy” (1959), where she plays the unnamed wife. I recently rewatched “Daisy” and—with apologies to Kerouac, Ginsberg, et al.—found her to be the most interesting part.

Starting class today with 'In Dreams'.

Nam June Paik: “George Maciunas wanted to be reincarnated as a frog the most ecologically sane of all creatures.” In this 1993 print by Paik, Maciunas seems to get his wish.

Autocorrect just turned MLK into Lmk.