What’s Happening: As climate activists continue to deface priceless artworks with tomato soup and mashed potatoes in cities around the world, museums are resorting to eye-opening measures to protect their holdings.

The Download: Over the past month, chaos has erupted at museums in Europe as activists hurled foodstuffs at famous artworks and superglued their hands to gallery walls to protest fossil fuels. The most famous incident saw Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers get doused in tomato soup at London’s National Gallery. In an impassioned speech, two youthful protesters affiliated with Just Stop Oil decried climate complacency, asking if visitors “are more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people?” Copycat incidents have quickly ensued from Madrid and Berlin to Rome and Sydney.

None of the paintings were harmed—activists have so far only targeted paintings encased behind protective glazing—but the brazen acts quickly went viral and ignited fiery discourse about whether such attention-seeking protests are misdirected. The sheer shock value has certainly generated a frenzy of international headlines. “History has shown us that civil resistance works,” Phoebe Plummer, a Just Stop Oil protester, told NPR. “The reason I’m able to vote, go to university, and hopefully someday marry the person I love is because of people who have taken part in acts of civil resistance before me.”

Yet art critics and pundits have denounced the publicity stunts as misguided for recasting priceless artworks as political pawns (not to mention the silly stagecraft). The trend may also pave the way for less protected artworks to suffer irreparable damage at the hands of increasingly brazen and less scrupulous activists, which has compelled some museums to place pieces behind less accessible barriers. “The works put in danger belong to the world’s cultural heritage and need to be protected as well as our climate,” Olaf Zimmermann, director of the German Cultural Council, told Deutsche Welle. With heightened security potentially obfuscating the art, protesters may achieve the opposite.

Museums haven’t resorted to desperate measures yet, but some of their new tactics are—no pun intended—alarming. Besides enacting “zero-bag” policies and reinforcing paintings behind glass, some cultural institutions have explored hiring ex-military pros to teach guards expert surveillance tactics. “It’s all about early detection,” says Amotz Brandes, a former member of the Israeli military whose California security training firm is instructing security guards on counter-maneuvers. When pressed for comment, officials at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum wouldn’t disclose their security plans, but experts agree that stateside institutions may soon be targeted next.

These heightened security interventions are costly—and endowments aren’t what they used to be, especially following the pandemic. Previously, most security budgets have been allocated to fortifying digital infrastructure to prevent heists. Steve Keller, a veteran museum security consultant, says designing elaborate, high-tech systems to combat hackers is a “constant battle.” But in the age of climate protests, he warns, “a museum might have to add $100,000 worth of additional security now for the next 20 years because [of] this incident. That’s money out of the educational program.”

In Their Own Words: “When you’re thinking about a problem as consequential as climate change, it’s tempting to grade for effort,” Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic. “Getting angry about climate change is the easy part; actually finding ways to cut carbon emissions, to disrupt the fossil-fuel-powered economy that has dominated since Monet, is something else. The soup protests don’t make sense, aren’t obviously justified by bank-shot social science, and—worst of all—they look bad. Humanity is already doing enough to tarnish its precious inheritance. We don’t need extra help.”

Surface Says: At least one famous vigilante is avenging Van Gogh.

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Heading to Miami for Art Week? Surface is producing and co-hosting activations, panel discussions, and cocktail moments with renowned brands in Web3, fashion, design, beauty, and more. Want a first look at what we’re cooking up this year? Drop your info and keep an eye out for exclusive invites from the Surface team.

The Art Students League of New York hosted its annual gala at MoMA to celebrate its ongoing legacy, artists, alumni, and patrons, and raise funds and support its mission to make fine art education accessible to all. The evening began with a cocktail hour in MoMA’s atrium, where guests were enveloped in a graphic installation by Barbara Kruger, before being seated for dinner at a ceremony where Tschabalala Self spoke about honoree Faith Ringgold and Denise Green welcomed honoree Susan Donoghue of the New York Department of Parks and Recreation. It concluded with a riveting piano number by Grammy winner Simone Dinnerstein in honor of her late uncle, Harvey.

When was it? Nov. 7

Where was it? MoMA, New York.

Who was there? Willie Cole, Jeffrey Meris, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Chakaia Booker, Sharon Sprung, Ronnie Landfield, James Little, and more.

The self-taught painter channels his architectural background to distort perspectives in his decadent canvases of entangled bodies, whose dramatic gestures and carnivalesque moods ripple with a gin-soaked voyeurism.

Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Jean-Pierre Villafañe, 29, New York.

Title of work: Midnight Menagerie (2022).

Where to see it: Embajada Gallery, San Juan.

Three words to describe it: Cosplay, deviance, voyeurism.

What was on your mind at the time: Eternal nights, flirty chats, glassy martinis, velvet curtains, burgundy carpets, smoky chandeliers, red lights, rusty lamps, camera flash, a wet piano, dark hallways, copper-stained mirrors, patchouli bathrooms, lively restrooms, guilty shots of bourbon, nicotine-covered wallpapers, crowded stairs, the deep bass of music beating through the burnt parquette, theatrical figures dressed in costumes and bare outfits dancing above it, glowing cheeks, smokey eyes, rosy lips, loose hair, curly heads, chokers, black pumps, stiletto heels, garters, and purses filled with nightly curiosities.

When: Until May 7

Where: Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Netherlands

What: Dozens of sculptural carafes highlight the Dutch designer’s experimental approach to creating schenkers, whether rendered in materials like silver and Japanese lacquer or for brands like J Hill’s Standard and Puiforcat. “Although ultimately just functional objects that have to meet a variety of technical and functional criteria, Bakker’s designs also stimulate the sensorial and imaginative capacities of their users and beholders,” historian Ernst van Alphen writes about the show. “That’s how each vessel embodies a new feeling, a new imagination.”

If you have any relation to China, chances are you’re on WeChat. With more than one billion active monthly users, the world’s largest standalone mobile app combines instant messaging, social media, payments, news sources, and search engines into an indispensable digital tool for millions in China. It’s so crucial to communication that when former president Trump considered banning Apple and Google’s app stores from distributing WeChat in 2020, some Chinese immigrants feared they wouldn’t know how to check in with their families.

For artists, galleries, and museums, WeChat is becoming a crucial way to build an audience. Even before pandemic isolation forced the technology-averse art market to embrace virtual viewing rooms and NFTs, Blum & Poe, Perrotin, and David Zwirner were experimenting with WeChat’s manifold features to connect with potential buyers. Dealers say the app has been useful in reaching deep-pocketed Gen Z and millennial collectors—a hybrid generation dubbed “MZers” in South Korea—who were willing to test the waters of the art market during the pandemic and gained curiosity for contemporary art after exploring fashion drops and luxury collectibles.

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Wallpaper Projects is a boutique design studio specializing in custom-made, custom-fit, high-end wallpaper and fabric. Working closely with artists and clients, the brand’s experimentation with different materials and chemical processes promotes a collaborative exploration of exciting new designs with which they transform traditional uses of wallpaper and other wallcoverings for commercial as well as residential applications.

Surface Says: Wallpaper Projects designs wall coverings that feel more akin to murals. The studio transforms spaces through both its artist collaborations and unapologetic use of color.

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