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Climate activists in Europe targeted artworks in three locations on Friday, but these protests were a departure from past actions as these works were not protected by glass. The three protests were also for the first time staged to take place on the same day as part of a concerted effort.

On Friday in Paris, Milan, and Oslo, climate activists from local organizations under the umbrella group A22 Network doused sculptures with orange paint or flour, as U.N. climate talks were taking place in Egypt. This time, the works were hit directly, and lacked protective covering. Two instances involved outdoor sculptures. Nevertheless, none of the art pieces were reportedly damaged, though some are still being monitored for possible further cleaning.

At the front entrance to the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection museum in Paris, two members of the French group Dernière Rénovation (Last Renewal) doused Charles Ray’s stainless-steel sculpture Horse and Rider with orange paint. One of the protesters also climbed the life-sized horse and put a white T-shirt over the rider’s torso. The shirt read, “We have 858 days left,” referencing a deadline for reducing carbon emissions.

The hotly debated attacks on artworks by climate activists continue at a fast pace around the world, but until now, most instances have involved art kept behind glass coverings, preventing any real damage. But fears persist that similar acts could potentially do irreversible damage. Earlier this month a joint statement by international museum directors said they “were deeply shocked by …[the] risky endangerment” of artworks in their care in light of this continuing trend.

On Friday, French minister of culture Rima Abdul Malak visited the Bourse de Commerce following the incident, and tweeted: “Eco-vandalism steps up a notch: an unprotected sculpture by Charles Ray was sprayed with paint in Paris.” Abdul Malak thanked personnel who “intervened rapidly,” adding: “Art and environmentalism are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are common causes!”

The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa has let go of four senior staff members, including its chief curator and its longtime Indigenous art curator, in an unexpected move Friday evening that shocked Canada’s art community.

The news comes less than six months after the departure of Sasha Suda, who left her role as the institution’s chief operating officer and director in July to become the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in September.

A memo from interim director and CEO Angela Cassie said a restructuring was the reason for the departures of NGC deputy director and chief curator Kitty Scott; director of conservation and technical research Stephen Gritt; senior manager of communications Denise Siele; as well as Greg A. Hill, Audain senior curator of Indigenous Art.

“The workforce changes are the result of numerous factors and were made to better align the Gallery’s leadership team with the organization’s new strategic plan,” Cassie wrote. “For privacy reasons, the Gallery is not at liberty to discuss details regarding these departures.”

Hill, who worked at the NGC for 22 years and was the museum’s first Indigenous curator, said he was immediately let go for much clearer reasons. “I want to put this out there before it is spun into meaningless platitudes,” he wrote on Instagram on Thursday. “The truth is, I’m being fired because I don’t agree with and am deeply disturbed by the colonial and anti-Indigenous ways the Department of Indigenous Ways and Decolonization is being run.”

For “Tectonic Tender,” Nina Canell’s recent exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie, the Swedish artist spread seven tons of seashells across the gallery floor. Then, she invited visitors to walk across them, crushing and crunching shells beneath their feet as they meandered. After their walk, they encountered Energy Budget (2017–18), a 16-minute video Canell made with her Swedish collabtakorator Robin Watkins. It showed shell-less mollusks—leopard slugs—dragging themselves across electrical switchboards intercut with striking scenes of colossal concrete towers. Taken together, these elements gesture toward calcite. The construction industry often sources the mineral, which is essential to making modern concrete, from limestone deposits that comprise the shells of marine mollusks. To discuss this surprising supply chain, Canell met with anthropologist Sophia Roosth on Zoom. An expert in the life sciences, Roosth is at work on a book about geobiology, a discipline that looks at how biotic and geologic systems affect one another. Roosth is an associate professor at New York University and the author of Synthetic: How Life Got Made (2017). Her research often asks the question: what is life? Below, the two discuss the process behind and implications of biomineralization—the ways living organisms form and accumulate minerals.

NINA CANELL I titled the show “Tectonic Tender” after coming across the intriguing etymology of the word “tectonic.” I found “carpenter” and “builder” in its Latin and Greek origins [tectonicus and tektonikós, respectively]. I housed the shells in a kind of sound chamber, so you could really hear them breaking under your feet. I was quite surprised by the crunchiness of the material; it’s not a comfortable experience.

SOPHIA ROOSTH Where do you think the discomfort comes from?

CANELL From the feeling of breaking something. You can sense that it’s a form that’s been compromised.

ROOSTH Interesting; I find it to be a very satisfying crunch.

Earlier this week, a partnership between Stolpe Publishing, Acute Art, and GODA announced that Hilma af Klint’s artworks from her series “Paintings for the Temple” (1906-1915) had been made into NFTs currently for sale at auction. But, amid the buzzy launch, a relative of af Klint spoke out about the project to Hyperallergic on Tuesday.

“Even if you don’t believe in spirits, everyone carries spiritual beliefs and aspirations for something higher in life,” Hedvig Ersman, the granddaughter of af Klint’s nephew, Erik af Klint, told Hyperallergic. “Hilma af Klint’s paintings speak to us about that … That they’re being monetized, and itemized, and sold as NFTs — this completely goes against the will of Hilma af Klint.”

Ersman argued that af Klint saw her series as a profound spiritual project and had insisted that the works be kept together and not seen by the public until two decades after her death.

“She saw these paintings as all part of one project. They were meant to be kept together,” Ersman said. “They’re not meant for a person to have hanging on their wall in the living room.” 

Accordingly, af Klint’s paintings from the series were never intended to be sold, and the physical versions of the works never will be. They are held, instead, in the care of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, a nonprofit based in Sweden.

Banksy appeared to encourage his fans on Instagram to steal items from a Guess clothing store, alleging the company used his images without permission.

“They’ve helped myself to my artwork without asking, how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes?” the famous graffiti artist wrote to his 11.5 million followers in a post Friday on the social media platform.

The photo Banksy posted was of the window display of a Guess store on Regent Street in London showcasing several items from a capsule collection with the word “Brandalised” and featuring several Banksy graffiti images.

The artworks referenced include “Flower Thrower”, “Queen Ziggy”, the “Living the Dream” Mickey billboard in Los Angeles, the “Thug for Life Bunny”, and “Flying Balloon Girl”.

Employees at the Storm King Art Center, a sculpture park in upstate New York, announced plans to unionize late last month, the Art Newspaper reported Tuesday. The move follows the non-profit’s announcement in August of a $45 million revamp of its campus.

Staff organizers, who come across numerous departments of the outdoor destination, detailed their plans to join the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), an affiliate branch with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

A charity auction at Christie’s on Friday featuring works donated by Richard Serra, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Maya Lin, and others will raise funds in for the sculpture park’s pending project.

“We hope Storm King Art Center will adhere to its values and promptly agree to a neutral election,” an online petition issued by CSEA organizers that is targeted at the art center’s board of trustees reads. “Storm King’s vision of nurturing “a vibrant bond between art, nature, and people” cannot be meaningfully achieved without respect and inclusion of the people who bring this bond to life day-to-day.”

The unionization is just the latest in a widespread movement by art staffers to unionize at institutions across the art world. This week, union staffers at the Brooklyn Museum protested outside of the museum during an opening of a fashion exhibition by Thierry Mugler in response to stalled negotiations for wage increases and benefits. In March, union workers at the Whitney Museum of American Art staged a protest related to wage issues during this year’s edition of the museum’s hallmark biennial exhibition.

It’s 4 p.m. on a Monday afternoon and Anna Sorokin is blasting Drake from her quaint apartment in the East Village of Manhattan. When I arrive at the top of her five-floor walk-up, she doesn’t come out, instead yelling from the bathroom to let myself in.

“Sorry, I’ll be right out. I can’t figure out what to wear! What’s the vibe?” she asks, in that iconic European accent that Julia Garner mastered in her portrayal of the fake German heiress in “Inventing Anna.”

The Netflix series created by Shonda Rhimes details the real-life story of 31 year-old Sorokin, who throughout the 2010s took the name Anna Delvey as she scammed her way through Manhattan, using an invented trust fund to persuade the city’s power brokers to invest in a members-only arts club. In 2019, she was convicted with grand larceny, among a slew of other financial crimes, for stealing more than $200,000 from investors, banks and friends, and ultimately destroying the lives of many in her innermost circle. She spent the majority of her two-year sentence in Rikers prison.

The rap music playing from a shoddy Bluetooth speaker, a messy display of outfit choices splayed out on her bed: it feels as if we’re getting ready for a night of clubbing in Downtown Manhattan. But of course, nightlife is no longer an option for Sorokin, who after being released from prison in February of 2021, was detained by immigration authorities for overstaying her visa. Now, she’s on house arrest with an ankle monitor and an agreement to stay off social media, meaning her photo shoots for the foreseeable future will have to take place from home. And she seems to have a lot of them. She’s been on a packed press schedule since her release last month, usually the sign of some sort of promotional campaign for a new product release or the announcement of a book or show. But now that she’s out of jail, Sorokin is back to promoting more of the same: herself.

Her ad-hoc home (she signed onto a temporary six-month lease) is small the way all New York apartments are small, but anyone familiar with the New York housing market knows that you need a fairly sizable savings account to land a newly renovated one-bedroom apartment in the heart of the East Village. Four massive prints from Graham Fortgang’s “New York Is Dead” photo series take up most of the real estate on her wall (these cost $2,500 to $8,000 each, but she says she got them for free through a pop-up event she has planned with gallery owner Samara Bliss). One wall is dedicated to her own art, illustrations that she created behind bars and whose copied prints, she says, have already made her a whopping $200,000.

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This holiday season, you might already be looking to the year ahead and considering learning a new skill or brushing up on an old one. But an online art class might just be just the right gift for a creative friend or family member. Below, see our list of some of the best online courses for artists. 

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On June 2, 2021, a noteworthy event took place in the world of online education. On that day, LinkedIn completed its incorporation of the online educational content and thousands upon thousands of video classes that had been part of the website Lynda.com. Lynda.com was one of the first online education websites and one of the most successful. Now, all that content will appear on LinkedIn Learning.

This transition comes more than six years after LinkedIn bought the online education company from its founders, Lynda Weinman and her husband, Bruce Heavin, who started the website in 1995. The price: $1.5 billion.

In addition to being an author and business leader, Lynda Weinman is also an artist. On Lynda.com students all types (including artists) could learn to crop a selfie in Photoshop, produce a funny animated GIF for their grandparents, or edit a graduation video for family and loved ones.

In August, climate change activists glued themselves to the frame of a Peter Paul Rubens painting at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. According to a report in Monopol, the legal consequences of that action have arrived.

The Munich District Court has issued criminal orders against the two activists who stuck themselves to the frame and one against the protestor who filmed the action. The Munich I Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement that “a significant” but unnamed fine was applied in each case. “We will of course assert our claims under civil law,” Tine Nehler, a spokeswoman for the Pinakotheken said, suggesting that it would be an expensive number. 

According to the public prosecutor’s office, the demonstration in August resulted in 11,000 euros worth of damage. One of the gluers and the filmmaker have objected to the penalty order, which will be addressed in a trial at the district court on an unspecified date. 

The activists are members of the climate crisis group Letzte Generation, which has orchestrated a slate of actions targeting world-famous artworks at museums across Europe.

Other activists with the group have attached themselves to several masterpieces, including Raphael’s Sistine Madonna (1512–13) at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. Similar groups have hurled food at works by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Emily Carr, and others.

Climate activists struck again earlier this morning, when members of Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) threw roughly 18 pounds of flour at a BMW art car painted by Andy Warhol at the cultural center Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan.

Women in the group aimed to draw attention to the “collapse of the climate,” they stated. In a video, they can be seen approaching the Warhol-painted 1979 German sports car and dumping packages of flour on it. Security guards then dragged two of the activists out of the room.

“It is useless to have more sustainable materials if governments don’t even do what they have pledged to do to reduce climate-changing gas emissions,” said Maria Letizia, a researcher in science and technology of materials who took part in the protest. “Emissions continue to increase and this leads us towards hunger and wars for water, for food, for survival.

“Staying in the classroom or in workshop with my students without trying everything possible to get governments to do their part has become unbearable to me,” Letizia continued. “These young people with me in action belong to the last generation that can still do something, I want to help them so that they are not the last generation on the face of the planet.”

Members of the group had reportedly planned to stick themselves to the car windows, but were unable to do so.

September 17 – November 19, 2022