Rules for Openings, Matta-Clark, Merzbow/Merzbau, etc. [Collected]

Martin Creed, Work No. 878, 2008, at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. Photo: 16 Miles

"It is bad form, however, to cut in while the artist is doing a snow job on a potential buyer, buttonholing a critic or curator or licking the shoes of a more important artist."

– William Grimes, "When Art Puts on a Party Hat: A Guide to Gallery Openings," NYTimes, 1995

• Really big photographs of Gordon Matta-Clark works. [History of Our World]


• "What happened to the house in that first Matta-Clark photo?" you ask. SFMOMA owns it, thanks to the generosity of the late Phyllis Wattis, a collector "admired for her unpretentious character, her astute eye and her adventurous embrace of contemporary work." [NYT]


• Tyler Green points out that the Dallas Museum of Art now has a blog, and DMA conservator David Marquis has a fascinating post on two very similar Gauguins. [Uncrated via MAN]


• Fifty days of mayhem: Brent Burket is documenting his journey through Japanese noise musician Merzbow's 50-CD box set, Merzbox. [Heart as Arena]


• A full-scale reconstruction of Kurt Schwitters' sprawling Merzbau installation will be included in the Menil Collection's upcoming retrospective of his work. [Menil Collection]


• Get read to hack Artforum. On a barely related note: I can't believe no one has scanned and uploaded the old "Ed Ruscha says goodbye to college joys" ad onto the Internet. [Greg.org]


• Art-theft pundit Turbo Paul weighs in on Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris's reward for information leading to the return of the missing Cairo van Gogh: "He is a billionaire and the cheapskate offers $175,000 reward for a $55 million Van Gogh. That's 0.3% zero point three per cent of the value. Get the fuck outta here. To be fair he is just following orders from art loss investigators and Egyptian authorities. It is called the psychology of low worth." [Art Hostage]