The artwork, which depicts a posh young schoolboy spray-painting the phrase “Ghetto 4 Life” while a butler holds a tray of spray cans, was removed from the Melrose building at 651 Elton Avenue as part of the structure’s demolition to make space for a charter school.

The relocation of the mural, part of Banksy’s “Better Out Than In” residency in New York in October 2013, has stirred strong emotions among Bronx locals, with many lamenting the loss of a piece considered a source of community pride.

“Everybody was crying around here. This is art,” Steve Jacob told The New York Post. “The gentleman made it for us, the community. I’ve lived all my life in the Bronx, and this was made for the Bronx people. And now someone’s taken it away from us.”

Despite the efforts of the building’s owner, David Damaghi, to keep the mural within New York City, including offers to local schools and institutions like MoMA, it was ultimately decided to relocate it to 800 Union Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which the New York Daily News identified as owned by Kiumarz Geula of Pillar Property Management.

In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Banksy said he didn’t think much about when his tags and murals are removed, “but for the art form as a whole it’s unhealthy. When you paint illegally you have so much to contend with—cameras, cops, Neighborhood Watch, drunk people throwing bottles at your head—so adding “predatory art speculators” to the mix just makes things even harder.”

A representative of Fine Art Shippers, who were hired to transport the work, told ARTnews the move to Bridgeport is temporary. “It is uncertain whether it will be sold or moved again in the future.”

Despite Banksy tagging buildings across the globe, some of which lead to million dollar sales of buildings and the removal of the murals, his true identity remains a mystery. A recently unearthed BBC interview from 2003 identified him as an artist named Robert Banks, however, there are other theories.

The recent absence of Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, from the public eye following a reported abdominal surgery has led to a deluge of conspiracy theories. On February 27, X user @LMAsaysno posted “not a single banksy since kate middleton disappeared. coincidence?”

The Headlines

MUSEUM UPDATES. Starting today, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s general-admission ticket price is $30 (up from $25), the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. That puts it on par with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A PMA exec said that the increase will “help the museum’s continuing recovery from the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.” ● Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, inaugurated the newly refurbished National Portrait Gallery in London yesterday, People reports. The museum’s director, Nicholas Cullinan, said on his (quite excellent) Instagram that it “was such a pleasure to welcome our wonderful patron.” ● And the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney is launching a music festival in September called Volume, Double J reports. The lineup will include superstar Solange, indie favorite Mount Eerie, and the interdisciplinary legend Lonnie Holley.

LUXE LIVING. Speaking of Sydney, a home in Malibu, California, that may have helped inspire architect Jørn Utzon’s design for the city’s famed opera house is on the market, the Guardian reports. The “wave house,” created by Harry Gesner, was once the home of singer Rod Stewart and is priced at a cool $49.5 million. If you’re looking for a place that is a bit more modestly priced but still has a choice pedigree, the New York Post may have just the offering for you: A three-bedroom Upper East Side apartment designed by the revered architect Tadao Ando that currently has an asking price of $22 million. Ando, whose art-world projects have included the Punta della Dogana in Venice and a number of museums on the Japanese island of Naoshima, created the two-level penthouse abode for art dealer Kazuhito Yoshii, who has called it home since 2017.

The Digest

At the 2024 Venice Biennale, the Nordic pavilion will feature a joint work by artists Lap-See Lam (of Sweden) and Kholod Hawash (Finland) and composer Tze Yeung Ho (Norway). The piece takes Cantonese opera as its starting point. [ArtReview]

The next Berlin Biennale, scheduled for 2024, has been pushed to 2025, with its management team citing the abundance of biennials that are already on the calendar for next year because of pandemic delays. Its curator has not yet been named. [ArtDependence]

Artist Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, a deal that will likely see him sentenced to probation. As part of the agreement, the Department of Justice will not prosecute Biden on a gun charge if he remains drug-free for two years. [The New York Times]

Actor Gérard Depardieu, who is facing numerous allegations of sexual assault and harassment that he denies, is selling 250 works from his art collection at Hôtel Drouot in Paris, including pieces by Auguste Rodin, Alexander Calder, and Hans Hartung. The total high estimate: €5 million (about $5.5 million). [AFP/Euronews]

The veteran nonprofit Artspace New Haven, in that Connecticut university town, is leaving its brick-and-mortar location of more than two decades and will operate remotely. [Hartford Courant]

The Kicker

RIDDLE ME THIS. Congratulations to Bloomberg reporters Tom Maloney and Chris Dolmetsch for penning one of the most memorable ledes in recent memory. Forthwith: “What do billionaire Ken Griffin, a Hamptons fire, and Cy Twombly’s painting Untitled (1971) have in common?” The answer—to try to summarize a complex case—is that they are all part of collector Ron Perelman’s ongoing fight with an insurance company over his claim that five artworks of his artworks, worth more than $400 million, were damaged in 2018. [Bloomberg]

Mario Testino, TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge , 2010, London.© MARIO TESTINO. FROM THE EXHIBITION “MARIO TESTINO: BRITISH ROYAL PORTRAITS” AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON.

After having her official engagement portrait shot by royal favorite Mario Testino (it’s now on view at Boston’s MFA), for her first solo turn, the new duchess had chosen an old-school portraitist to render her more “natural” self, an apparently rookie mistake that might well reflect the precedent of her late-mother-in-law, as well as of the Queen. But maybe it was part of her strategy. With tradition dispensed with, Middleton is freer to experiment with future commissions. Maybe she’s been waiting to ask Chris Ofili, an artist Jerry Saltz thinks could do a good job. Maybe her fantasy is to be in a Will Cotton painting, like Katy Perry was. Or a Chuck Close. Or a Cindy Sherman. Paradoxically, that might be the artist who can make her look most like her self.

Ancient Pompeiians, They’re Just Like Us!

Graffiti in Pompeii.PHOTO COURTESY ALLISON EMMERSON.

The Roman cities buried by Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 are back in the news, as the British Museum prepares for the March opening of “Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum,” a blockbuster that uses new discoveries, celebrated finds, and intimate family furniture to paint a portrait of a literate, cultured, and even relatively gender-neutral society. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Museum will present “The Last Days of Pompeii,” the Getty’s show on the legacy of the disaster in the arts.

As the sites keep falling apart, archeologists keep digging, and some of them presented their findings at the Archaeological Institute of America’s recent conference. According to one story, scholars analyzing writings on the wall in the art-minded city have identified two main types of graffiti — some from avid scribblers, and other and professional painters doing p.r. for people like politicians. Just like us, homeowners would have given permission for election campaign literature to be placed on their walls — an endorsement that makes them, according to the team from the University of Helsinki, like the social networks of today.

Did They Really Get Pinned?

A Cooper-Hewitt Object of the Day: Stefan Sagmeister, Levi’s The Strongest Thread, 2009.GIFT OF STEFAN SAGMEISTER. 2011-34-1.

Speaking of which, The New York Times Style Section revisits the evolving meaning of curate as it covers the online Object of the Day series from the Cooper-Hewitt, the Smithsonian’s National Design Museum, whose Fifth Avenue headquarters is closed for renovation until next year. Objects on the site, selected by a mix of staff, scholars, and more, include a colonial Andean mantle, Marimekko, Braille wallpaper, William Wegman’s doggie alphabet, Lebbeus Woods’s architecture, and Pinterest (entry: “The demographics skew younger and more female than other social networks — perhaps exactly where a museum like Cooper-Hewitt needs to be.”) Pin that.

Everyone’s a Curator Now

Shepard Fairey, The January 28, 2013, edition of The Nation, cover illustration and design.©THE NATION

“We’re all agents of history, curators of our evolving humanity.” That’s the sentiment, writes Antonino D’Ambrosio, that inspired his film Let Fury Have the Hour, and it also inspired the new special issue of The Nation, which he guest-edited. Using Ai Weiwei and Pussy Riot as examples, Paul Klee as a guiding spirit, and Shepard Fairey as the cover artist, Ambrosio calls for creative response to generate inventive actions in every area of society.

Search All

Screenshot of “art” search on difference.theinfo.org.

In the wake of the suicide of Internet visionary Aaron Swartz, many turned to the project he made with Taryn Simon for the Rhizome 7 on 7 conference at the New Museum last year. The image-searching tool allows users to see results of searches for objects or concepts across multiple countries’ search engines all at once. Try “freedom,” or “liar,” or “crazy” — or, as we did here, “art.”

Man with Movie Camera Meets Man with Digital Processing Software

Lev Manovich, 72 shots from the 52 minute experimental documentary film The Eleventh Yearby Dziga Vertov (1928) showing close-ups of faces. The shots are arranged left to right, top to bottom in order of their appearance in film. AUTHOR: LEV MANOVICH / SOFTWARE STUDIES INITIATIVE (SOFTWARESTUDIES.COM)

More data visualization. Lev Manovich explains how computational analysis illuminates the inner workings of classic avant-garde films by Dziga Vertov, a master of montage.

Beyond the Academy

Inocente Izucar paints Masters of Disguise, 2012, film still.
© SEAN FINE/COURTESY ALEXANDRA BLANEY.

Inocente, Sean and Andrea Nix Fine’s MTV film about a 15-year-old homeless painter from San Diego who learns to find herself with the help of the nonprofit ARTS, has been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Documentary Short category. The story of Inocente Izucar, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, shows the transformative power that art can have in the lives of vulnerable populations. Watch her mother and little brothers go to her first opening.

Brace for Impact

Haroshi, Skull, 2012, skateboards, wheels, dental braces, and 18-karat gold teeth.COURTESY OF JONATHAN LEVINE GALLERY.

Wired reports on Haroshi’s sculptures made from skateboards, which will be shown at Jonathan Levine this month. They include a blinged-out skull from a long line that leads from the Mixtecs through Damien Hirst, but with better teeth.