I am delighted to announce that the 2025 Artoons holiday edition, benefiting Beautiful Eccentrics, is now available. This year the theme is PETS AND WILDLIFE, featuring 20 classic Artoons.
It’s a perfect gift for your art-savvy pet (or for any friend, relative and/or significant other who loves both art and animals—I know there are a few of you out there).
Limited, signed edition. 20 cards, 4.5 x5.5”. $150 + shipping
There are more holiday offers! Link in bio, under 2025 holiday edition.
IM me today so we can get it to you!
Goodbye Chicago. Im at the end of our annual end-of-summer family visit and this year I am thrilled to have this show open at the MCA. It is such a joy to see these great works together in conversation, like the conversations that generated the show itself. The show is up for a year.
Painting for @helguerapablo@manifestabiennial in zurich 2016. That was over eight years ago. Back then I got a call from @christianjankowski_official , who asked me if i would like to paint enlarged images of Pablo on the walls of the “Löwenbräukunst-Areal” as an assistant for the Manifesta he was curating. Who would say no to a job offer like that? I love the biting and true commentaries on the art world that Pablo draws and was looking forward to it. I spent two weeks hanging on walls and ladders, and yes, it was pretty exhausting. But it was worth it, because I was most pleased that Pablo was happy and liked my enlargements. I would have liked to talk to him a bit longer but there was a lot going on that day and not much time. It was a really intense time that I look back on fondly. Thank you Christian, thank you Pablo!
#manifesta #zurich🇨🇭 #zurich
Very proud of my graduating students in the MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship at the New School’s College of Performing Arts. Over the last two years, this extraordinary group of singers, actors, musicians, and cultural practitioners from around the world developed and launched imaginative projects marked by both artistic vision and public consciousness.
This is always one of the most inspiring moments of the year for me: witnessing not only their talent, but their generosity, rigor, and commitment to shaping culture in meaningful ways. The future is truly in good hands.
If you are not an artist, you may not know that contemporary art operates through an elaborate informal support system: a kind of underground hotline where artists call each other to ask things like how to suspend a taxidermied goose from a cathedral ceiling, remove chewing gum from a video projection, negotiate with a llama handler, or transport 400 pounds of wet clay across state lines.
Behind the scenes of the art world lies a shadow network of whispered technical knowledge, emergency troubleshooting, improvised engineering, emotional support, and highly specific disasters. We all have stories.
This week’s dispatch is about this secret life of studio problem-solving—and the strange forms of solidarity that hold artistic practice together.
Featuring anecdotes from fellow artists, improbable predicaments, and the realization that sometimes the most important part of art school is simply knowing who to call.
☎️🎨
Link in bio
#beautifuleccentrics
Image: Marta Minujín and her psychedelic “Minuphone” at the Torcuato di Tella Institute, Buenos Aires, 1969
🆕 Anunciem nova exposició al Centre del Carme: 'Pablo Helguera. Teatre Magnètic'.
'Teatre Magnètic' és una exposició que pren com a punt de partida el fenomen històric del magnetisme animal –la teoria proposada en el segle XVIII per Franz Anton Mesmer– per a explorar una pregunta profundament contemporània: per què continuem sent atrets per sistemes que prometen explicar el món de manera total, simple i convincent?
Pablo Helguera @helguerapablo (Ciutat de Mèxic, 1971) és un artista conceptual, pedagog cultural i escriptor basat en Nova York. El seu treball se centra en temes que oscil·len entre la història, la pedagogia, la sociolingüística, la memòria i l’absurd, que tracta mitjançant formats variats com la museografia, el performance i la ficció escrita.
🗒 Inauguració: 20 maig – 19:00h
Entrada lliure fins a completar aforament
Comissariat: Pablo Helguera i departament d’Educació i Mediació del Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana: Patricia Chamorro, Fabiola Garozzo, Irene Verdeguer, Mariona Ribas, Elena Sanmartín, Jose Campos.
Col·labora: @masterpermea
@gva_consorcimuseus | @gvacultura
Muy feliz de anunciar Teatro Magnético, mi nueva exposición en el Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània en Valencia.
Inspirada en las teorías del magnetismo animal de Franz Mesmer —ese extraño momento histórico donde ciencia, espectáculo, pseudociencia y deseo colectivo se confundían— la exposición propone un teatro de inducciones, sugestiones y experiencias compartidas.
La muestra incluye partituras performativas, dispositivos escénicos, objetos, sesiones e intervenciones concebidas como ejercicios de percepción colectiva: un espacio donde la intuición, la credulidad, la empatía y la imaginación funcionan como fuerzas magnéticas.
En tiempos dominados por algoritmos, teorías conspirativas y sistemas de creencia cada vez más totalizantes, Teatro Magnético se pregunta por qué seguimos deseando ser hipnotizados.
Inauguración: 20 de mayo, 19h
Hasta el 13 de septiembre de 2026
Gracias al equipo del Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana y al programa PERMEA por hacer posible este proyecto #centredelcarmeculturacontemporània
I am absolutely thrilled to be part of Chimera, the Exquisite Corpse project by Denniston Hill at the 61st Venice Biennale. The conversations I began during my residency there with fellow artists have continued long afterward, and I love seeing how this collective body ultimately came together.
Each of us was invited to represent a different body part and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I chose the mouth: a tribute to conversation as the thing that connects us, but also an excuse—given the Venetian occasion—to sing/ record a little Italian aria: “Deh vieni alla finestra” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Thank you to Julie Mehretu, Megan Steinman, Paul Pfeiffer, and the entire Denniston Hill team for making this happen. A true honor.
(h/t @nifleetwood )
The decision by the Administration of the Venice Biennale to institute an “Audience Award” following the resignation of the jury presents an irresistible opportunity to opine. Here’s my take on crowdsourced judgment, collective taste, and the old adage about camels being horses designed by committee.
Image: unknown artist, Moorish Merchant with a Camel, c. 1250, Palazzo Mastelli del Cammello, Cannaregio, Venice
Link in bio #beautifuleccentrics
This week I reached a benchmark of sorts: 200,000 steps in seven days—the equivalent of walking from New York City to Philadelphia, with miles to spare, or roughly three and a half marathons in one week. I seem to be turning into a kind of migratory species—but a boring one that, paradoxically, migrates only around the block.
The irony is that this was also one of the busiest weeks of the year for me. Perhaps for that very reason, walking became not incidental but necessary. By now, I can hardly think without it. As Nietzsche wrote once, one should not trust an idea that is not born in the open air. Movement, then, not as an escape from work, but as a way to sustain it—a means of keeping pace with those free-range ideas that roam widely and must be captured.
In 2009, I was in Havana the night Tania Bruguera first presented Tatlin’s Whisper #6—an open mic where anyone could speak freely for one minute. In Cuba, that gesture was nothing short of radical.
Today, she restaged the work in Times Square—a reminder that free speech is never a settled matter, even here.
For my minute, I sang the opening of We Shall Overcome.
Thank you to @falloffreedom and @tsqarts Times Square Arts for making space for this, and gracias, Tania, for insisting that we use it- while we still can.
Italy is having a moment in the art world (again). The Raphael exhibition at the MET and the Venice Biennale opening next week.
At the Raphael show, one of the key works is the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione. Castiglione, author of The Book of the Courtier (published in Venice 500 years ago), gave us the original manual for navigating power without appearing to want it. Today we have simply traded palaces for museums, dukes for donors, and courts for biennials, so perhaps it is time for an update. Call it sprezzARTura: the art of appearing free while moving entirely within constraint.
A few revised precepts for the contemporary artist-courtier:
– Arrive as if summoned, even when you’ve spent years engineering the invitation.
– Never appear grateful; gratitude reveals the transaction.
– Circulate without purpose, but always toward advantage.
– Offer critique that signals intelligence but produces no discomfort.
– Listen attentively, retain nothing, repeat strategically.
– When patrons speak, protect them from the consequences of their own opinions.
– Be everywhere, but never accountable to any one place.
– If contradiction becomes unbearable, rename it “practice.”
After sufficient rehearsal, you will no longer distinguish between performance and self. At that point, success is assured.
Link in bio
/p/the-book-of-the-artist-courtier
#beautifuleccentics #sprezzatura #venicebiennale
