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Young V&A, Museum of the Year Winner, 2024
Image courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © David Parry
I had been ‘gaslighted’ and ‘ghosted’ and so I did what any self-respecting ‘one-night stand ‘ would do. I reached out to the new squeeze, the ArtFund. I asked if they might get the NPG to get back to me.
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We live in charged, racially fractured times, and constantly seek evidence to support our bias. Why was Moses Gomes Silva, a Sephardic Jewish trader and slave owner, even part of the story? It wasn’t a painting of him.
Becoming this week’s poster boy for the Conservative press, allowed a critique of the museum behind my mixed-race front, ‘our’ octoroon, a mullato mascot, and nobody could accuse anyone of being a whiny ‘white’ bigot.
This Brown, Brit, Bloke, Broke, Woke. The press could use my story as the NPG had done with Edward Fox-White and Moses Gomes Silva. We are just sliced-up scraps to be used in someone else’s collage. Paintings cut to fit ready-made frames.
Read moreUnlike most, my protest at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London has been a sedate affair. Emails bounced back, and forth over months without an open can, paint and glue anywhere in sight. No arrests, and ultimately I reign supreme.
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© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Are all Basquiat’s works created equal?
One work that was recently donated to Yale University Art Gallery, Famous Negro Athletes, challenges this notion. I was honored to have the opportunity to help facilitate this generous gift into this internationally acclaimed collection.
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Salvador Dali "Geopoliticus Child" 1943
Here is a quick recap to clear up any confusion.
A client was ready to sell an original unopened iPhone that he had stored away.
I contacted Richard Wright of Wright/Rago Auction in Chicago and arranged for it to be consigned along with an X-ray image.
The New York Times ran the story in the Style section which went viral.
Tech influencer, Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) buys it for $40,000.
He posts it on YouTube where it goes fully viral and gets nearly 4 million views in 4 days and 2 million on Twitter as well as numerous online stories, blogs, posts, comments, etc.
Who was the client? A little old lady from Bayside Queens, New York, who bought it at a charity shop? Or was it a playboy, who is hiding out in a Monaco hotel suite after racking up gambling debts he can’t cover?
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John William Waterhouse
Is it that all things contained inside its screen are readily available? That searching for us now is just a click (or prompt) away. Or it has turbocharged our attention span so fast that everything not ‘now’ is history, to be discarded because we fear holding onto it slows us down? That we may never catch back up.
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© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Association Marcel Duchamp
It was said, a touchy-feely type of ‘art lover’ had not been satisfied to look, and with a prod, the shiny balloon-shaped sculpture slid off its dedicated plexiglass plinth and shattered.
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Blue Blonde, Donald Gajadhar
The rebellious European teen, on a New York vacation, had snuck out onto the fire escape at the back of the rented Air BnB to steal a few furtive puffs of a cigarette. A wisp of smoke mixed with sounds of Friday Night crowds and car horns in the warm summer air.
Recalling the show’s catchphrase, I had to remind myself, ‘I am not a number, I am a man’! However, according to my ticket and the ‘Frieze Organization’ staff ushering me in, a number is exactly what I was.
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Sebastiaan-Straatsma-Hahaha Centrepiece 2019
There were crowds, as expected, as well as the lackluster gallery staff buried in digital devices, giving a frosty shoulder to anyone tiresome enough to ask obvious questions. With their ‘It’s all sold anyway (not that you were able to buy in the first place), look.’
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