James and I saw this when we went to visit Bruce High Quality Foundation. The church is next door to their storefront space. I’m told that the foundation’s space had been a secret indoor pot-growing location before they took over the lease.

• Ultrasparky: The Matter of Anti-Matter
  Dan designed a new book: a 1990s post-punk & hardcore reader
  tags: music punk postpunk hardcore

This is going on until 6pm today at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, so you have about half an hour to run over there. Sorry for the late notice. Flickr issues delayed me, and the darned slideshow still doesn’t work or I would post that.

Check out the whole set on Flickr. That is gallery director Jennie Moore in the background in the overalls. She’s no Prada-wearing diva gallery director! She gets her hands dirty.

• Cheney in ‘94: Iraq overthrow would be ’quagmire’ — amNY.com
  tags: cheney iraq war

As we move into the middle of August and Chelsea starts shutting down for the month, there are still some interesting things happening, especially related to performance. There are 2 events tomorrow I recommend:

• 4pm: A walk-thru of the exhibition with private dealer Betsey Geffen, aka Charley Friedman as part of Ceci n’est pas… (This is not…) at Sara Meltzer Gallery
• All day: "An improvisational dance performance by Felicia Ballos and Flora Wiegman. Staged in the midst of demolishing the exhibition format of Part One and constructing the setting for Part Two, the performance takes inspiration from the actions performed by the gallery workers, with each dancer creating her movements in response. " This is part of Carte Blanche at Elizabeth Dee Gallery.

In March I mentioned that I was looking into this, and I wanted to let people know that we now have a website:

Culture Pundits

and the ability to buy or sell ads on ArtCal plus 9 blogs so far. For ArtCal, it’s only for the banner ad at the top, or a 125×125 button under the left nav. The ad network software isn’t really set up to manage something like the gallery ads on the right at the moment.

I’m sure some of my readers are interested in buying an ad, or signing up as a blogger/publisher. There is a signup link if you wish to serve ads on your site. You also will have the advantage of seeing some of your posts show up on the home page of the newly redesigned ArtCal which launches this month.

Elizabeth Murray in 1998 with one of her New York subway murals, at the 59th Street and Lexington Avenue station in Manhattan. G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

This is my favorite paragraph of her obituary, written by Roberta Smith, in the New York Times:

Born in Chicago in 1940, Ms. Murray had a hardscrabble childhood that included bouts of homelessness caused in part by the ill health of her father. Ms. Murray traced her interest in art to watching a nursery-school teacher cover a sheet of paper with thick red crayon, an experience that she said gave her an indelible sense of the physicality of color. She drew constantly from an early age, inspired mostly by newspaper comic strips, and once sent a sketchbook to Walt Disney asking for a job as his secretary. By the fifth grade she was selling erotic drawings to classmates for a quarter.

• Surveys Show US Image Plummeting in Germany
  "At the start of the decade, according to US State Department polling, 78 percent of Germans had a favorable view of the US," Wike said. "Today, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes survey, only 30 percent have a favorable view, the lowest …
  tags: germany usa statistics
• The Strange, But True Tale of a Communist Cowboy
  A new German documentary, "The Red Elvis", tells the extraordinary tale of Dean Reed from Denver, Colorado who became a star behind the Iron Curtain.
  tags: germany gdr history east-germany cowboy film