Melissa Gould It was 96 years ago today, in 1912, that the unsinkable Titanic sank in the Atlantic near Newfoundland. The Bowery Boys recap New Yorkers who were lost with ship, well -- the rich ones.John Jacob Astor IV had run to Europe with his mistress Madeleine Talmage Force to avert attention from the fact that Ms. Force, a native Brooklynite, was 18 years old. Mining million Benjamin Guggenheim approached his impending death like......

Even though Tom Otterness, who just installed his newest creation in DUMBO, cheers up commuting New Yorkers underground...he has a dark past that wouldn't make anyone smile. The artist, in short, shot a dog (that he adopted) for the sake of "art" -- something he did, and filmed, 20 years ago. He's apologized for the unforgivable act, but with each new piece he creates or installs -- it seems his past will always come back......

Photo by Jake Dobkin While a Tom Otterness sculpture can really brighten up the dark underground of New York, for his latest installation he's shedding some sunlight on his work. The above was just installed in DUMBO near the pedestrian exit to the Brooklyn Bridge. This won't be the first time Otterness has been above ground, of course. Remember his temporary 2004 installation that spanned Broadway from 60th to 168th Streets? And in 2005......

About three months ago the residents of 475 Kent were evicted due to a possible fire hazard -- what with the matzoh factory in the basement and all. But it was still home to over 200 people, many of them artists. Now a couple dozen of the residents have come back together to put on an art show. Titled “475 Kent Lives,” the show is at the Queens Museum of Art (a curator who signed......

Photo of Orphic Memory Sausage by Matthew Weinreb 2008, printed with permission from the artists: Mimi Oka and Doug Fitch. Lots of chefs consider their food to be art, but few artists see their art as food. A new festival called Umami – a Japanese word meaning "savory" or "meaty" – is trying to change all that. The ten day smorgasbord, which started Tuesday, spotlights artists and performers who use food as a medium, and......

Sure, you know Dave Eggers as the celebrated author and founder of McSweeney's, that plucky independent book-publishing house in San Francisco, but were you aware that back in the day he was on track to be an art curator? While it’s been a long time since he’s organized an exhibit, he’s in town now to put together a show at apexart that explores, in Eggers's words, “a very small and specific type of artmaking exemplified......

Photo via Minicloud's Flickr. As mentioned late last year, Flux Factory (LIC's beloved art space) is being forced out of their home under eminent domain to make way for the MTA's $6.3 billion East Side Access project. They report on their (hopefully temporary) end online:Now it must all be destroyed. Our entire block will be razed by the pitiless bulldozers of the MTA. Everything Must Go. Alas, such is the fate of all terrestrial......

Photos © John Coffer Noah Kalina, the photographer who made a splash by taking a snapshot of himself every day for years, now has some unusual competition: John Coffer, a master of nineteenth-century tintype photography, is unveiling his series “The Daily Tintype” tonight at Gerald Peters Gallery on East 78th Street. The willfully anachronistic exhibit features 365 tintypes from his daily life, one per day from 2007. Coffer (pictured above) himself is quite a character,......

The tenth edition of The Armory Show, the International Fair of New Art, starts tomorrow and continues through Sunday at Pier 94, on the West Side at 55th Street. The massive show hosts over 150 galleries and nonprofit organizations from around the world; here's a small taste of some of the 2,000 works on display.......

Troy Landwehr, a champion cheese carver (who knew there was such a thing?), took four days to create this lovely Lady Liberty out of what started out as a 1,200 pound hunk of aged cheddar. Despite the fact that the video is essentially a promo for Tracey Ullman's upcoming Showtime series, it's still oddly difficult to turn away. Troy, whose cheese carving is backed by a band in this video, has also carved Mount Rushmore......

Barack Obama has popped up in the form of street art in Brooklyn, and AAVR Magazine points out the Grattan Street mural near the Morgan L stop. That's part of his More Perfect Union speech in the background, and yes, it looks a little bit more like Fred Armisen's Fauxbama than the real thing. Less detailed Obama murals can be found on Carlton Avenue at Dean Street in Prospect Heights (photos here and here). How......

Nearly three decades ago, Andy Warhol's dealer made a list of 100 prominent 20th century Jews. Warhol created silkscreen paintings of ten of them. The show, Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, premiered at The Jewish Museum in 1980. It was met with both admiration and criticism, and turned a pretty penny for the painter. Back then, The NY Times criticized, remarking, "the show is vulgar, it reeks of commercialism, and its contribution......

Photos via Hakanu, Mockstar and JBlough's Flickr. As the John Varvatos boutique moves into the CBGB space, good news washes over 313 Bowery (which used to house the CB's 313 Gallery). The space will maintain both its art and music roots as the The Morrison Hotel Gallery moves in.This historic location will be preserved by providing some of the best in visual music art curated by the staff of our gallery and created by......

Large faces loom over Times Square every day, so why not yours? Join the ranks of over-sized famous faces with a 50-foot-high version of your own face hanging 48 stories above the tourists. The chashama gallery is currently running Raul Vincent Enriquez's "I in the Sky" project, which the artist says is about making eye contact (something most New Yorkers avoid). The Brooklyn artist recently told Wired, "We just need more eye contact; it's what......

Will 2008 be the year frustrated artists stop whining about the Whitney Biennial for being too cliquey, too scattershot, too short on women, minorities, and criminally overlooked artists like the ones doing all the griping? Hardly, but this year’s themeless Biennial, which opened last night, goes a long way toward appeasing the disgruntled hipster artist crowd with a big, rowdy slate of installations and events at the Park Avenue Armory through March 26th. Curators Shamim......

Photos from the Met's exhibition of Lee Friedlander's Work Art is often accused of being contrived, especially in comparison to nature. But some of New York's most well-loved natural landscapes are themselves largely artificial, so it's interesting to see an artist like a photographer double-back on a landscaper's craft. Photographer Lee Friedlander did exactly that with with a lens pointed at the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, the co-designer of Manhattan's Central Park and......

"The Blue Wall of Violence" courtesy of MoCADA Yesterday, The Daily News printed an article that began, "A cop-bashing art exhibit at a taxpayer-funded museum in Brooklyn portrays the city's Finest as trigger-happy racists who have put bull's-eyes on the backs of black New Yorkers." The exhibit is a retrospective of the artist Dread Scott's work called "Welcome to America," and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) is calling the paper out......

MOVIE: After Marion Cotillard took home the gold for best actress in La Vie en Rose last Sunday, French cinema is sure to be all the rage. Today the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2008 series kicks off with a screening of Roman de gare (pictured). Buy tickets and get the schedule here. Friday// 6:30 and 9pm // Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts [70 Lincoln Center Plaza] // $12 (stand......

Neil O'Fortune and Clams Casino co-produce and co-host the Smells Like Tease Spirit! a 90s Burlesque Tribute tonight at Galapagos Art Space. Clams Casino is a burlesque performer, producer and writer who you can find entertaining anywhere from the Coney Island boardwalk to The Slipper Room. Together her and partner Neil O'Fortune have created a bevy of Burlesque shows for New Yorkers, as well as some non-Burlesque fun like the monthly, live-on-stage game show, What's......

Buildings, clockwise from upper left corner: Prada Store Soho, American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center, Hearst Building, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Morgan Library expansion, Apple Store Soho, Conde Nast Building, and Seagram Building; in the center, Grand Central Terminal interior and the Chrysler Building The Chrysler Building. The Seagram Building. The Apple Store Soho? The Center for Architecture's executive director Rick Bell made a list of 10 great buildings to see in New......

Photo: Banksy Banksy, the cheeky street artist/prankster turned multimillionaire art star, was in town last week, presumably for the Damien Hirst-coordinated auction at Sotheby’s to benefit the (Project) RED campaign, which works with corporations like the Gap to raise money for the treatment of A.I.D.S. patients in Africa. The $48 million raised at the event – through the sale of works by Hirst, Banksy, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning and others – will......

Today marks the third annual Informal Presentation on the Art of Dance, a dance event put on by the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Dancing Through Barriers Ensemble. The two troupes converge each year in a most unconventional space: The State Supreme Court of Manhattan! Arthur Mitchell (himself a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet in the '50s and '60s) co-founded DTB after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, and the......

MOVIE: As the Oscars approach, take a look back at one of the past films to be granted a golden statue. Tonight Agatha Christie's classic mystery Murder on the Orient Express leaps from the page to the big screen when the 1974 movie is shown at Film Forum. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall and Anthony Perkins, the movie will help you hone your crime-solving skills (and possibly make you think twice about taking Amtrak).......

Photos via the Guggenheim Museum. Everyone's bursting with anticipation for the opening of Cai Guo-Qiang's new exhibit at the Guggenheim; the site-specific installation serves as a mid-career retrospective and is now just four short days away from being unveiled. The NY Times has a lengthy profile of the artist (who has lived in New York since 1995) which begins with this insight: "his favorite artistic moment is the pregnant pause between the lighting of......

The late artist Jim Flora, perhaps best recognized for his album cover art in the 1940s and '50s, was also known for his commercial art, illustrations, paintings, woodcuts and prints. The above is "a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of a 1954 Jim Flora hand-tinted woodcut entitled Manhattan." There were 5 of these prints selling on eBay (only 25 were made), but they sold out quick! Here's the seller's description of the coveted work:The......

PARTY: Perhaps as a nod to Warhol, or simply as a reason to party, PBR has been on an Art Tour. Come check out their 18 PBR-inspired paintings, and more importantly drink free beer from 7 to 8 tonight as the tour hits the Knitting Factory. Music provided by DJ Awesome Derek, Cody Ranaldo, and Rezound. 7pm // Knitting Factory [74 Leonard St] // Free EVENT: The Women's Expressive Theatre storms the Angel Orensanz......

Paintings by Jasper Johns, from left: Periscope (Hart Crane), 1963; Flag, 1958; Winter, 1986 (all photographs by Jamie M. Stukenberg / Professional Graphics Inc. Jasper Johns, a South Carolina native currently residing in Connecticut, first came to New York City in 1949 when he (briefly) attended Parsons School of Design. In 1954 he painted his first flag picture, and by 1958 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery. Today, The......

Islero: This new Spanish restaurant (pictured) takes its name from the bull that killed famous toreador “Manolete” in 1947, shocking the nation and resulting in three days of Franco-decreed mourning, during which only funeral dirges were permitted on the radio. Anyway, there’s no bull on the menu, but chef Jessica Floyd, previously of DB Bistro, does have an appetizer of crispy pork belly, olive oil poached apple, fino vinegar jus and candied pinollas. An entrée......

Get ready to groan: "I look forward to 'Phase Two' of the 'blinging up' of the Parachute Jump," said inveterate cornball Marty Markowitz during his recent State of the Borough speech. The 262-foot Coney Island landmark was retrofitted with a lighting system two years ago, but borough president Markowitz and others deemed the effect too subdued and “artsy.” Now the city is soliciting proposals from companies to create a flashier effect. $1.5 million has been......

Amitai Plasse has been sketching his fellow straphangers for 11 years now, and has just begun getting his portraits online. His goal, he tells us, is to "try and capture the characters and scenes I encounter every day on my travels." These remind us of faster-paced versions of what Marvin Franklin, the late subway track inspector/artist, had been creating all of his years underground. At least no one is going to try to ban......