Wassmann Foundation

The War on Bohemia Critic Diedrich Diederichsen on political repression and precarity in the arts sector.

The number of places in the world where someone can earn a living making serious-minded fine art has shrunk drastically—now the number of places where people go to prison for rigorous creative action is rising at an alarming speed. How did that happen? @artforum.com www.artforum.com/features/yea...

Nicolas Africano, Untitled, 2007
www.famsf.org/index.php/ar...

...my daughter at the de Young Museum, San Francisco

Frankfurt to Dubai along the northern border of Iraq and Iran, 13 hours on to Melbourne and nearly the same bleary-eyed in the darkroom.

A rainy morning in Kassel but the sun shineth on Joseph Beuys’ ‘7000 Eichen’. Beuys ambition to plant 7000 oaks, each paired with a basalt stone, began with Documenta 7 in 1982. 40 years on, Beuys’ legacy of ‘social sculpture’ feels more relevant than ever.

Mushrooms in the Gespensterwald Nienhagen 🍄‍🟫
(that’s the Baltic peeking through on the left).

An acorn-fed pig is often described as an olive tree with legs. The fat is rich in healthy oleic acid, similar to that found in olive oil, making the olive tree a fair comparison.
Ivernack, Mecklenburg

Wes Anderson will recreate Joseph Cornell’s New York studio in Paris this Christmas, with a dozen iconic shadow boxes displayed behind glass.

buff.ly/7wQ6tin

Twelve-o’clock noon in the Jacobskirche Weimar bell tower.

… and of course, the Bauhaus Museum Weimar café.

Back in Weimar… of course, Weimar.

‘War-ravaged’ Portland airport a couple weeks ago.

SOUND UP (the pianist singing I Can’t Tell You Why by The Eagles is pretty good… and apropos.)

My kids, NGA, Washington, D.C., 2011

Photography’s Next Generation, Bursting Out of the Frames

Photography’s Next Generation, Bursting Out of the Frames www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/a...

Van Gogh and the End of Nature A groundbreaking reassessment that foregrounds Van Gogh’s profound engagement with the industrial age while making his work newly relevant for our world to...

I wrote a book on Van Gogh, industrial pollution & climate change that I'm really proud of & connects his art to some of our most pressing concerns today yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Man Ray’s Mysteries, in Glorious Bloom at the Met

“We’ve spent years working on this and pulled in lots of experts and conservators,” D’Alessandro said. “But there’s still a lot that is a mystery. That is a wonderful thing about his work.”

Man Ray’s Mysteries, in Glorious Bloom at the Met www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/a...

Old growth stumps, Tillamook State Forest, Oregon.

Kelly’s Marina, Brighton, Oregon.

19 August 2025. Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Vancouver to Portland.

Attributed: Frederick Alexcee (1854-1944), txaldzap'am nagyeda laxa (carved wooden angel), baptismal font, 1886. Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

A couple of Arthur Erickson’s fabulous buildings in Vancouver: the MacMillan Bloedel, 1968 and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, 1976, inspired by the post-and-beam architecture of the northern Northwest Coast First Nations people.

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Bone Box, 2007.

Spending a few days in Vancouver dodging the raindrops but managed to fit in a morning at the Museum of Anthropology.

Atget: Une vitrine Avenue des Gobelins à Paris. Foto von 1925 zeigt den Blick durch Schaufenster auf eine Auslage von Hosen, dahinter männliche Schaufensterpuppen. Im Fenster spiegelt sich die gegenüberliegende Straßenseite. Nachweis von wiki commons folgt.

Eugène Atget (12. Februar 1857 – 4. August 1927)

"Das beispiellose Aufgehen in der Sache, verbunden mit der höchsten Präzision, […] Atget war ein Schauspieler, der, angewidert vom Betrieb, die Maske abwischte und dann daran ging, auch die Wirklichkeit abzuschminken."

Walter Benjamin, 1931. 🧵

The Dennis Hopper Photograph That Caught Los Angeles The actor stopped at an intersection, took out his Nikon, and made history.

Sometime between the fall of 1963 and the late summer of 1964, the actor and photographer Dennis Hopper stopped at an intersection in L.A., took out his Nikon, and made history.

📸🤳👇🔮

Eternity the Butterfly reflects the transcendence narratives of Aboriginal peoples, grounded in their deep spiritual connections to ancestors and the colonial horrors they continue to endure. Eternity, the butterfly, embodies the cyclical view of life, death, and rebirth central to Aboriginal philosophies. Her relationship with the monuments— serving both as ancestral guides and symbols of colonial oppression - captures a potent duality. Through ritual calls to the ancestors, empowered by her profound connection to the land, Eternity constructs the monuments as vessels, offering momentary housing for the spirits, allowing them to manifest and offer their guidance.

Hayley Millar Baker, Eternity the Butterfly, 2025 (video).

The Veil, Hannah Presley, curator. Buxton Contemporary, University of Melbourne.

Jeanine Leane, Seeds of Hope, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, 2025.

Professor Leane is a Wiradjuri poet and academic from south-west New South Wales.

Like it was yesterday. Here's me at the foot of Lenin, eight years after the sculpture's inauguration.

Leninplatz, East Berlin, 1978.