art hoarders face the music ... reluctantly

Andy Warhol

5 Coca Cola Bottles, 1962

Today’s NYT’s story “’This Space for Rent’: Arts Must Now Woo Commerce” reports on the crisis European museums face as government subsidies and corporate contributions dry up. To remain viable, European museums are now renting their facades and facilities to advertisers and corporate sponsors.

The sellout hasn’t gone without an outcry. Famous architects and museum directors petitioned Italy’s Minister of Culture last summer to remove huge ads that detract from Venice’s classic views. And, at least in one instance of the unseemly coupling, the aesthetic yardstick was levered against the commercial barbarians. The Musée d’Orsay may have sold out to Chanel No. 5, but drew a line when it came to Coca Cola. “The flacon of Chanel is beautiful because it is made in three dimensions and moves with the wind,” said an insider at d’Orsay. Take that, Andy Warhol!

Link: The New York Times

Heriberto Yépez makes me go coastal!

Sir Francis Drake Circumnavigation World Map

It’s been a long time (maybe never) that I felt this euphoric with a writer. I mean, like sighting new land, unapologetically Columbian in my discovery. And cocky, too, amid familiar landmarks. That is, until I brush the shores of otherness. Tijuana. Matamoros. True, my hybrid gear, my half-ass ability to code-switch, my dubious passport got me invited to a dinner of chicken flautas and toothpaste flavored cool whip pie in the kitchen of an undocumented family in the southwest side of Chicago more than once. I enjoyed the cozy satisfaction of the insider, even as I knew damn well I never really left the “simulated sky” of my “indestructible egg”.

“Soy parte del deslinde. Solamente que no soy uno más de los migrantes hacia el norteamiento. Todo rumbo es autoritario. El zig zag que llevo todavía no tiene nombre. Y al que se lo ponga: balazo. No lo olviden: soy francotirador, a.k.a., tu paranoia.”

--Heriberto Yépez
La Bifurcación de las Cosas