What’s Happening: One year after Vienna’s viral campaign to promote its museums’ nude artworks on OnlyFans, artists facing censorship on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are still hesitant to make the leap.

The Download: Vienna’s museums have struggled to promote nude artworks in their holdings because of stringent censorship rules on social media platforms. The Albertina Museum’s TikTok account was suspended for showing Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki’s works depicting an obscured female breast. Facebook took issue with the Natural History Museum’s busty photograph of the 25,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf figurine. Instagram even rejected a video promoting the Leopold Museum’s 20th anniversary as “potentially pornographic” for including Liebespaar, a Koloman Moser painting of two lovers embracing.

In a sly rebuff to the censorship, the Austrian capital’s tourism board started an account on OnlyFans, the subscription-based platform known for its adult entertainment. (A tantalizing promotional video called “Vienna strips on OnlyFans” teases erotic expressionist Egon Schiele’s “unique assets” and promises to reveal “every feature” of a Rubenesque woman.) The account, which also lured visitors with free museum passes, earned more than 150 million visits. “These works are crucial and important to Vienna,” tourist board spokesperson Helena Hartlauer told The Guardian. “If they cannot be used on a communications tool as strong as social media, it’s unfair and frustrating.”

Hartlauer notes that beyond driving tourism, the campaign aimed to start discussions about the power social media companies wield regarding censorship and illuminate the challenges some artists face in promoting their more provocative work. The message clearly resonated—the video landed a coveted Cannes Golden Lion award this year.

While Vienna found success in leveraging OnlyFans as an inclusive venue for uninhibited artistic expression, observers note that artists have yet to follow the city’s lead. The reason may lie in the website’s stigma as a platform for sex workers and performers—in 2020 alone it experienced growth from 7.5 million subscribers to 85 million. (Some say Beyoncé is partially responsible for shouting it out in her “Savage” remix.) Though OnlyFans hosts family-friendly accounts for cooking, gardening, and fitness, it has yet to shake its X-rated reputation, especially after a botched attempt to ban pornography in 2021 garnered widespread ridicule.

As artists like Lisa Yuskavage (pictured) and Betty Tompkins face censorship and “shadowbanning” for depicting nudes, demand for alternative social networks is rising. Those who’ve made the leap, such as Savannah Spirit, describe the environment as “safer” and less beholden to strangers or the algorithm. Many artists remain hesitant, however, a mindset that erotic painter Armando Cabba says should beckon reflection about how we perceive sex workers. “It’s incredibly important that artists know who made the platform what it is today,” he told The Art Newspaper, pointing to the exploitation and undervaluation both groups regularly face. “Even outside the digital space, artists have more in common with sex workers.”

In Their Own Words: “We question this kind of censorship because we believe it’s not a good idea to let an algorithm determine our cultural legacy,” Hartlauer tells NPR. “It might lead to some unconscious self-censorship when artists make art differently because they know a tool as strong as social media would not show or promote certain types of art. This is quite frightening.”

Surface Says: “Hips TikTok when I dance/On that Demon Time she might start an OnlyFans.”

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NeueHouse has an eye for historic spaces. When the creative-minded coworking venture and private members’ club first landed in Los Angeles, it transformed the landmarked former broadcasting studio designed by William Lescaze where Orson Welles broadcast radio programs and Lucille Ball filmed the I Love Lucy pilot. Right before the pandemic, it rejuvenated the famed Bradbury Building in Downtown Los Angeles—the city’s first commercial structure whose ornate ironwork, bird-cage elevators, and skylit atrium set the gloomy scene in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner.

Its latest outpost, located along Venice Beach’s vibrant Market Street, is also steeped in entertainment lore. The Academy Award–winning director Tony Bill created a community hub for writers and filmmakers there in the 1970s; Larry Gagosian opened his first L.A. gallery nearby shortly after. Inside, longtime collaborator DesignAgency channeled an “endless summer” through organic materials, warm tones, and seating areas shrouded in natural light. Its art collection, which includes a David Hockney canvas, comes courtesy of Silent Volume and Eleven+, a collective that champions female curatorial talent. When it opens in 2023, members can look forward to dining at Reunion, a restaurant and rooftop bar informed by Italian seasonal ingredients.

Carved in gypsum plaster and wood from his home state of Puerto Rico, the initial batch of handmade furniture and lighting by RISD-trained industrial designer Reynold Rodriguez on view at London’s Charles Burnand Gallery speaks to the power of human ingenuity and clarity during times of chaos. It’s a remarkable debut, imbued with fantastical character and effortlessly crystallizing the energy of specific memories over the past two years through material and form.

When: Until Feb. 4

Where: Stroll Garden, Los Angeles

What: Reflecting his vision of a more unified Corea, the Los Angeles–based artist debuts more than 75 raku-fired stoneware dokkaebi figures that celebrate the untold stories of radical queer people. Dokkaebis are mischievous nature spirits from Corean folklore that possess special powers and reflect the spirits and intentions of the humans they encounter.

Kimy Gringoire’s fine jewelry stands out for the way it combines subtle punk references and understated elegance. The designer’s Eye Temple ring is no exception; a pear-cut diamond represents the piece’s namesake eye, and two round-cut diamonds are symbols of wit and intuition. Six pavé diamonds evoke teardrops, while parallel linear gold bands evoke the interplay of the sky, earth, and sea. “I designed the Eye Temple ring like an emotional landscape unfolding over a strip of gold,” Gringoire says. “I felt that strength—invincibility even—coexist within me, along with the shimmering beauty of my inner fragility.”

Though it exists outside the typical fashion calendar, Chanel’s Métiers d’Art is always a highlight of the sartorial circuit. The annual event transcends the typical runway show by recognizing the craftspeople taken under the French label’s wings at Paris’s new Le19M building, the residence of Chanel’s artisans, putting the rare manufacturing skills involved in embroidery, shoe-making, millinery, featherwork, and pleating on full display in an ultra-exclusive setting. Invites are rare, and Chanel ambassador Kristen Stewart was the only guest during the 2020 show at the 16th-century Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley, in accordance with France’s social distancing rules.

The itinerant show has traveled to Shanghai, Tokyo, and Monte Carlo in the past, but this year touched down in Dakar fresh off the heels of the Senegalese capital’s 20th annual fashion week. It marks both Chanel’s inaugural runway outing on African soil and a headlining moment for the country’s thriving fashion industry, which has produced labels like Tongoro, Diarrablu, and Adama Paris, helmed by Dakar Fashion Week founder Adama Ndiaye. In an announcement, Chanel explained how the savoir-faire of its Métiers d’Art aims to “resonate with the artistic and cultural energy of the city.”

Avant Arte is a creative marketplace that makes discovering and owning art radically more accessible for a new generation. From Tau Lewis and James Jean to Jenny Holzer and Cai Guo-Qiang, Avant Arte collaborates with leading contemporary artists to create limited-edition works, from sculpture editions and NFTs to works on paper and hand-finished screenprints. They are building the world’s largest creative community with more than 2.5 million young art lovers, collectors, and artists.

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