The Hamptons is a battleground of epic proportions: the world’s rich fight to develop the highly prized land of the East End while planning boards raise infrastructural and environmental concerns, creating bureaucratic stalemates. David Zwirner, owner of the mega-gallery of the same name, has found himself caught in the throes of this very problem as he attempts to set up an artist’s residency next to his home in Montauk.

As documented in the East Hampton Star, the Planning Department has some issues with the project. Zwirner hoped to build some 17 cottages on the shore of Lake Montauk, to be known as the Bridgeford Cottages, that he would offer to artists at a subsidized cost. He is aiming to construct those cottages within the next two years.

As the structures abut Zwirner’s estate, the Planning Department was initially worried about zoning issues. The cottages were to be zoned as commercial space, but if invited artists crossed over into the residential zoning of the Zwirner home, perhaps to use the pool, things could get awfully muddled, at least by zoning standards.

It now seems that the issue is not so much who uses the pool but rather the environmental health of the lake, which already suffers from pollution. The Planning Department would like to see a deteriorating existing bulkhead either completely removed, allowing the natural shoreline to emerge, or rebuilt, so the rotting debris doesn’t continue to filter into the lake.

The Zwirners, it would seem, prefer that it remain in its current, slightly dilapidated condition.

Traveling with your art supplies can be cumbersome and even harrowing—unless you have the right bag to pack them in. If you’re a painter, you probably want separate pouches for your brushes that can keep them secure; you might even want to carry an easel. If you’re a sculptor, you likely have many oddly shaped tools. It’s important to think about organization when browsing for a travel bag, but don’t forget to consider comfort: Is a backpack, messenger bag, or briefcase-style carrier best for your journey? To help you decide, we’ve found five artist-friendly canvas or nylon bags that make commuting a cinch—whether to and from your studio, the classroom, or the great outdoors.

London’s Victoria & Albert Museum has signed an agreement with the French city of Bayeux that will see them work together on scholarship surrounding the Bayeux Tapestry, a 223-foot-long work that ranks among the most important pieces of the Middle Ages.

The deal, first reported by the Times of London, could put the V&A one step closer to reviving a loan agreement for the tapestry itself, which hasn’t left France in more than 950 years. In 2021, that deal was put in jeopardy when a condition report on the Bayeux Tapestry found that it was too fragile to travel. Some read the report as a sign of strained relations between the U.K. and France in a post-Brexit Europe.

Created in the 1070s, the nine-panel embroidery depicts 58 scenes chronicling the 1066 Normandy Conquest of England following the Battle of Hastings. Scholars believe it was commissioned by the Duke of Normandy’s William the Conqueror’s brother Bishop Odo following the political victory.

It is not the first time the V&A has worked with French officials on efforts around the medieval artifact.

The museum’s first director, Henry Cole, helped lead the effort to produce a replica of the tapestry in 1869, negotiating with a Bayeux official to complete the project. The replica was first exhibited in 1873 and later displayed in the Cast Courts at the South Kensington Museum.

Lorenza Böttner gazes confidently and seductively over her left shoulder in a pastel self-portrait from 1989. Her hair is flowing; meanwhile, her naked and muscular body reflects the bands of rainbow light surrounding her. Though the environment lacks a horizon line, the rainbow fades into a deep, dark blue that helps ground the scene. Chalky, dirty footprints are scattered over the gradient, as if the paper had at one point itself been a ground—or more specifically, a dance floor. The portrait is a record of irreverent dancing in more ways than one: Böttner is grooving, and it’s contagious.

If you know anything about Böttner—a Chilean-German artist who was born in 1959, started presenting as female in art school, made many self-portraits, and died in her thirties of AIDS-related complications—you’ll recall that there is no arm at the end of that left shoulder she’s gazing over, nor at the end of her right one. Though it’s right there, in the middle of the five-foot sheet of paper, the nub on her shoulder is far from the first thing a viewer notices in this work. The other striking details include the deft, Degas-esque linework; the immaculate vibe; and Böttner’s skillful handling of color. The rainbow is both campy and delicate, gently refracted by the surfaces of her sculpted figure and windswept hair.

All this the artist pulled off by drawing with her feet and her mouth. Yet rather than depict herself as a freak capable of feats, Böttner appears, in the 20 or so self-portraits on view in “Requiem for the Norm,” her retrospective at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York, engaged in various banal and tender acts: bottle-feeding a baby or reading a book as she turns the pages with her toes. The self-portraits don’t invite pity or applause, nor do they hide her disability. They are joyful and beautiful, and decidedly not about “overcoming.”

Spanning Böttner’s 16-year career, the show also highlights a few series of photo-based works as well as ephemera from performances, including footage, photographs, and posters. A video of her 1987 performance Venus de Milo, a landmark work of disability culture, shows Böttner covered in a fine layer of white plaster and standing on a platform with a cloth draped over her lower body. For more than 20 minutes, she holds a pose resembling that of the titular armless statue. Before descending the podium and exiting stage left, Böttner asks the audience, in German, “Well, what would you say if the artwork moves of its own accord?” This wry piece retools the politics of staring, calling attention to how impairment can seem downright romantic as a metaphor, or when depicted in art or suggested by ruins, while in daily life, visibly disabled people are often gawked at or shunned.

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