“Berlin Museum Removes All Artwork Depicting Rivers or Seas…”

Hyperallergic.com’s report on the state of the art world in 2024.

Says Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor, “As the Venice Biennale approaches, Israel’s air force flattens all neighboring pavilions at the international exhibition, claiming that Hamas fighters are hiding underneath. The Biden administration has already pledged $225 million for the repairs. Get all the details on this developing story in our report today.

Meanwhile, Germany’s National Gallery in Berlin removes all artwork depicting rivers or seas from view to avoid any possible allusion to the chant “From the River to Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.”

Back here in New York, the Whitney Biennial puts out an open call for “controversial” work in light of disappointing admission numbers this year. At the same time, we’re seeing fatigue of art-world activists as hundreds sign an open letter against open letters.

In other news, art handlers are elected the art world’s “best lovers” in a new survey, while another research finds that 93% of people use art catalogues primarily as coasters. There’s more, including exciting news about the discovery of history’s first thumbs-up “like” symbol in France’s Lascaux cave and a new phone app that allows you to date AI versions of dead artists. Welcome to April!” See the whole report here, probably today only though.

Announcing NYC’s 39th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade

New York’s irreverent April Fools’ Day Parade returns, poking fun once again at the past year’s displays of hype, hypocrisy, deceit, bigotry and downright stupidity. Nothing is sacred. Our satire knows no bounds.

For the 39th year, the public is encouraged to participate, in or out of costume, with or without floats, and may join the procession at any point along the parade route. Floats can be no wider than 10’ and no longer than 30’. They can be self-propelled, towed, pushed or pulled. Customized bicycles, tricycles, baby carriages and aerial balloons are welcome.

The parade will form at Grand Army Plaza at 5th Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan at 12:00 noon sharp on Monday, April 1, 2024, and head down 5th Avenue to Trump Tower and then to Washington Square Park for the climactic crowning of the King of Fools.

This year’s parade will feature a giant mobile billboard truck featuring “Democracy at the Guillotine” which encourages all to vote to save our democracy.

The parade press release and downloadable images are here: http://aprilfoolsdayparade.com

Here are some of the images:

Please share the message widely.

Art for the Birds…

…with a sense of humor


Apocalyptic Birdhouses Touch Down in NYC, Elaine Velie, Hyperallergic.com, November 26, 2023

Artist Paul Gagner’s sculptural avian dwellings offer an absurdist take on the core structures of small-town Americana.

Near Highland Park, a few square blocks of Queens’s Ridgewood neighborhood jut southward into Bushwick, Brooklyn. The industrial area boasts clubs, recording studios, a slew of warehouses, and now, 10 carefully arranged birdhouses in artist Paul Gagner’s newly opened exhibition Calamityville. They’re displayed in a small outdoor exhibition space co-run by Lower Manhattan’s Chart Gallery and the artist-run Marvin Gardens Gallery next door.

Gagner’s tiny homes, arranged on moveable iron pipes, depict the core structures of small-town Americana. They also each depict a disaster: Flames ravage a fire department, a UFO beams up a church, an asteroid crashes into a city hall, and a sea monster wraps around a movie theater.

Gagner has long made art that ventures into the humorous and absurd, but he started making birdhouses in 2020 after he bought a home upstate with his wife. He had lived in the city for over 20 years and found himself inside a cozy new house immersed in nature at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There was no one else looking at my yard at the time, so I thought it would be funny to make art for birds,” Gagner said… Read the whole article here.

Who Are You Kidding?

Fox News reported on October 16, 2023: Bigfoot and Sasquatch: Longtime resident reveals legends, pranks after latest ‘proof’, By Chris Eberhart, October 16, 2023.

Whoa! This doesn’t hold a candle to the escape of Big Foot from Peppe Scaggolini’s (a.k.a. Joey Skaggs’) Tiny Top Circus in 2014. Hailed as the world’s only pataphysical circus, Big Foot was caged and on exhibition in Washington Square Park when it escaped and unfortunately got lost in the New York City subway system. Scaggolini is still offering a $1,000,000 reward for its capture and return.

The Steak was Real but the Restaurant was Fake

The only item on the “To Go” menu was the restaurant itself.


How NYC’s fine-dining elite got pranked by Gen Zer’s fake steakhouse — complete with milk servers, ‘celebs,’ and wedding proposal by Hannah Frishberg, September 25, 2023

This Manhattan restaurant is a tough reservation to book — because it doesn’t exist.

The foodie gentry who gathered for their dinner at Mehran’s Steakhouse this weekend believed they’d at last gotten off the years-long waitlist for a highly exclusive, 100-year-old chop house, which finally had an available table at its Lower East Side location.

In reality, what some 140 diners experienced this Saturday evening was an elaborate prank pulled off by a 21-year-old AI startup founder — and some 65 of his friends.

The practical joke of a white tablecloth institution was born during the pandemic, in 2021, when Mehran Jalali’s 16 housemates decided to commemorate the biweekly steak dinners he’d cook them by marking their Upper East Side home as a chop house on Google Maps.

The mostly teenage roomies all left glowing reviews for the newfound institution, leading to intrigued strangers showing up at their door seeking steak.

Mehran then made a website for their solidly booked, “revolutionary steak experience” and, by the end of 2022, had accrued a 2,600-person waitlist. Read the whole article here.