The Guardian profiles how Cuban artists are fearing a government crackdown on artists in the wake of Tania Bruguera’s arrest this week over a new law restricting artistic speech in the country. “The decree criminalizes independent art activity,” the Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco says. “It allows a cadre of roving censors to go around issuing fines, to take away your equipment. These are not liberal individuals – if you are a rap musician and they simply don’t like your lyrics, they will shut you down. These draconian actions already take place but this law systemizes it.”
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Art Newspaper profiles the increasingly high popularity of street art in mainstream art fairs, and questions how it is affecting the medium. According to adviser Lisa Schiff, sales of street artists like the recent bidding war for KAWS prints at Art Basel “encourages pure speculation; it’s an empty value-making system. Street art should disrupt the commercial and institutional setting. I don’t want it in a museum or a fair.”
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The NYT profiles the recent protests by MoMA PS1 art handlers over pay and worker rights at the museum, as they demand equal pay to the museum workers across the East River at the main museum space. “I feel as an artist worker you’re betwixt and between,” handler and artist Marley Freeman said in a telephone interview. “You aren’t seen as a professional art handler. At PS1 they are always treating us like this is just temporary work we’re doing between other things.”
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