A band of mysterious vigilantes just swept through the ref room posting pictures of naked (“nude” for you sophisticated Art History major you!) people. It turns out they are leftover drawings from Artist Society’s weekly life-drawing classes. They’re there for the taking, but we’re obviously all watching you, so good luck!

But wait! There’s more fun sexy time for you. Tipster Christine Hsu sent us some art she found in Lerner; another commenter says there’s art in John Jay lobby. Seek, and you shall find.

Bwog contributor Lily Icangelo wandered into an art exhibition in Dodge showing through Thursday.

You only have to pass Dodge, Milbank, or Lerner so many times before viewing them as mere obtrusive chunks of space keeping you from the finer things of life, such as break dancing to Destiny’s Child on the lawn. In reality, the buildings of our school actually hold some pretty awesome things, from adorably ancient Slavic Language professors to thousands of scores of music.

One such gem hanging out in Dodge (for a limited time only!) is the Visual Arts Alumni Exhibition at the LeRoy Neiman Gallery located in room 310. Ten to fifteen minutes is all you really need to look at each piece in the show, making the gallery the perfect place to decompress after that strenuous ear training class you just walked out of.

The exhibit features a wide range of mediums including oil painting, sculpture, printmaking/woodblock, and video art. Some works certainly pop out, including Anna Craycroft’s “The Agency of the Orphan.” But be careful not to stumble over it (as this Bwogger so embarrassingly did) as it’s placed in the middle of the gallery. Other noteworthy pieces include a video and two mixed media pieces by Mary Simpson and two vibrant works by Arlen Austin entitled “Let’s face it we are undone by each other” and “Let your nonanthropomorphic caring be accountable to irreducible difference.”

The gallery was not crowded on Tuesday morning, but surprisingly students started walking in to stroll around the gallery—not because the show is not worth seeing, but because, well, it was early on a Tuesday morning. So stop by the art gallery before it closes on Thursday. Its hours are 9am–5pm.

Photos by Lily Icangelo

Photo via NY Magazine

Tavi was cute. A 5 year old fashion-blogger is just creepy. (Racked)

The city is training the next generation of arborists (tree climbers!) (NYT)

An un-known name in the art world, Shaquille O’Neal curates a new show at the FLAG Art Foundation, opening Friday. (NY Mag)

Prestigious pooches parade! (NY Post)

You can be great too: Phi Gamma Delta is co-sponsoring a blood drive today in the Low Rotunda. From 12:00 to 8:00

tips@bwog.net with a picture.”>

RoomHop is back, this time with a DIY/modern art/bricolage special from Watt, courtesy of Carolyn Ruvkun. If your room needs Hopping, contact us at tips@bwog.net with a picture.

“I imagine my room to be a giant junkyard, but not so dirty,” says Patrick Han of the Watt double he shares with Shao-Wen Ang. The “garbage aesthetic,” as Shao-Wen calls it, starts at their front door plastered with an original art piece. “We broke some pens and splattered the ink, then stuck a blunt knife through an orange.”

The interior, too, makes creative use of dried fruit. While most people throw away Clementine peels and old tea bags, Patrick and Shao-Wen choose to feature them. They unhinged their window guards and weaved fruit peels, playbills, and photos through the diamond slits. “The window covering is a useful way to hold things,” says Patrick.

Read more…

Bwog’s Julia Mix Barrington checked in with the double feature at Postcrypt Coffeehouse and Postcrypt Art Gallery.

What’s that you say?  You didn’t find

your way down the winding stone steps of St. Paul’s Chapel to check out the Postcrypt LOVE show last night?  Well, here’s what you missed.

Anthony da Costa serenaded full tables of discerning Coffeehouse-goers with his guitar, harmonica, and twangy vocal stylings.  Not surprisingly, he wore plaid, and, despite the cramped space (attractive exposed brick!), his audience seemed to be enjoying him quite a bit. When he asked how much time he had left, one female admirer piped up “Oh for us you have HOURS!”

Two rooms over, the gallery held the artwork, all riffing on the theme of (you guessed it) love; there were paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures, and even a quasi-interactive “FREE LOVE” box by Lego-obsessed New York artist Rick Anthony Diaz.  A pack of markers and a large piece of yellow paper tacked to the wall invited gallery-goers to post the things they loved; eccentrically dressed artsy types wrote things like “insects,” “Boulder,” and “Perez.” Bwog won’t pretend to be an art critic, but instead invites you to take a look at some of the pieces for yourself.

UPDATE: A commenter points out that Postcrypt Coffeehouse now has a YouTube channel, where you can watch scenes from last night’s set. Read more…

This Saturday, the New Museum of Contemporary Art will officially open its new building on the Bowery between Stanton and Rivington.  If you’ve been around the area you may have noticed the rising stack of icy white boxes—designed by Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA—that seem as if they’re about to topple over into Nolita.  You may have even confused them for condos and shaken your head at the imminent Soho-ifying of the Lower East Side.

      Instead, the New Museum exhibits contemporary artwork from all around the world.  On Saturday, the opening exhibits include a performance piece by New York artist Sharon Hayes about communication, as well as an expansive thirty artist exhibit called Unmonumental: The Object in the 21^st Century, which examines new methods of sculpture and creation.  The Seoul collective Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries has also created Black on White, Gray Ascending, a complex, multi-faceted film noir narrative combining text, animation, and music.

      In celebration of its opening, the New Museum will be open for 30 free hours starting at noon, meaning that you can walk in at 11:30 p.m from a bar—the New Museum may seriously regret this. 

    Tickets can be found on the New Museum website, but they are close to being (if not already) sold out.  In any case, you should head downtown Saturday and try to get your hands on unused or extra tickets, or pry them from someone’s unwitting, skinny little fist.  Nighttime may be the best time to go; even if you can’t get a ticket you’ll be within walking distance to bars in the area like Max Fish or Good World, which will probably be packed with New Museum refugees.

- James DeWille

1020 not cutting it on Friday nights anymore? Bwog nightlife correspondent James DeWille is your tour guide to a better weekend. Here, he provides a user-friendly guide to Every 2nd Friday in Williamsburg.

Friday night is starting early this weekend, so prepare to don your dumpiest and head on over to the Bedford L stop for Williamsburg’s Every 2^nd Friday.  Every gallery in the ‘hood will be open until at least 9pm (most later) for a smattering of paintings, Pabst, and plaid.  Expect a lot of debauchery and stumbling from gallery to gallery, as most are within walking distance of each other and beer and wine will run freely till they run…empty (which reminds me, don’t be cool and show up late.  At least for tonight you’ll be in the wrong neighborhood for that kind of attitude; drink up and early).  Keep the night open and organic: follow invitations (except to Bushwick) and interesting people/sounds to hunt out after parties, impromptu band performances, and chilly but pretty rooftops.

For those who still need a guide map, here’s a round up a few shows definitely worth hitting up:  Read more…

Over the last week we asked you, our readership, to submit your entries to our first Photoshop competition featuring your favorite/least favorite professors in remodeled garb.  Anyway, we hated to have to choose a winner, so instead we decided to play the proud parent and post all the lovely artwork we received on what we’d like to think of as the Bwog Refrigerator of Achievement (metaphorical magnets included). To the right: an anonymous entry we’ve dubbed as “AhmadineBo” — and let Bwog tell you, judging from the entries, President Bollinger is quite a popular man!

More entries below (in no particular order) after the jump.

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Jerone Hsu, CC ’07, former Editor-in-Chief of Tablet, founder of Eclectica Esoterica (whose latest, beautifully designed issue includes essays about Times New Roman and psychedelic drug use), and B&W graphics editor of yore is still gracing campus with his artistic talent. Now, though, it’s for hire, albeit for a good cause: he’s selling his mural-painting services to raise startup capital for a non-profit group that will help arts organizations in the area find funding. Yes, your McBain double could look like an updated Sistine Chapel–e-mail primeinteriormurals@gmail.com for a consultation. 

Meanwhile, other former editors-in-chief are doing cool shit too: Current founder Bari Weiss just finished a fellowship at the Wall Street Journal and is now off for another in Israel. Former Spectator head Megan Greenwell is nearing the end of a tour in Iraq for the Washington Post. Birch founder and last year’s CPR editor Paul Sonne will begin his Marshall-funded stint at Oxford this fall, and B&W editor emeritus Avi Zenilman is scribing for the Politico, a new-ish journalistic venture in D.C.

See what a bustling campus publications scene launches! Or maybe it’s just them.

UPDATE, Saturday, 11:50 PM: Last year’s editor-in-chief of the Columbia Review, Katarzyna Kozanecka (now Nikhamina), married her high school sweetheart in June and is now working for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

- LBD

The system’s far more intriguing history is written on its walls, says Bwogger Armin Rosen. Tunnel graffiti is a running history of everyone who found their explorations momentous enough to permanently commemorate….

But there’s nothing boastful or egotistical about the hastily-scrawled notes found on practically every flat and indeed most of the cylindrical surfaces in the tunnel system, and if the point of the near-ubiquitous Benoit tag is to say “I was here,” then the “I” is conspicuously absent–to this day the tunnels’ most notorious explorer is without face and name.

The artist of the less notorious but just as abundant “mouse” graffito leaves tantalizing clues as to his identity: “still here in ’06, if anybody cares,” reads one note adjacent to the 119th street parking garage. But the mouse artist remains anonymous as well. This penchant for anonymity is hardly surprising in an environment as alienating as the tunnel system. Subterranean in both the literal and figurative sense, the tunnels are the domain of a subversive and adventurous few–It takes a particular kind of person to want to go down here, and an even more particular kind of person to actually go down here. Tunneling therefore creates a sense of kinship with the past; an ironic sense of connection within a world that doesn’t seem to be connected to anything. Among such kindred spirits, identity is nothing more than an afterthought; an annoying bit of ephemera that has to be discarded in the interest of leaving something truly enduring. Benoit will endure. John Galt, who apparently misses the point of even tunneling in the first place, probably won’t.

More photos and commentary after the jump!

Read more…

Bwogger Anna Corke reports from work-study in the Art History department… 

There is a stack of give-away fine art posters on a table by the girl’s bathroom on the 8th floor of Schermerhorn. Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, others. Some are ripped, but would still make good editions to boring dorm rooms.

And Izumi Devalier chimes in from SIPA…

In front of the 7th floor IAB elevators you can find a huge box full of free poli sci books discarded by some professor who, from a cursory content analysis, looks like he specializes in post-colonial Algerian agro-economic policy with a modest side of Korean security issues.