Earlier this year we took a look at Jason Polan's ambitious effort to draw every person in NYC. Well, starting today you can put yourself in front of his pencil and pad and help out his project, but more importantly 826NYC. Polan and fellow artist Jane Mount are teaming up with Jen Bekman and her 20x200 site for Thrilla in Manila; the event is a three-day draw-a-thon where the public is invited to draw, be......

For a little inspiration, look no further than the Staten Island Advance's feature on 94-year-old Margaret Ricciardi. Ricciardi, who used to run the Ricciardi Shoe Service at the St. George Ferry Terminal with her late husband, has been taking one or two art classes every semester at the College of Staten Island since 1981 (she finished her B.S. in art at age 72). Oh, and, "She doesn't have time for much more, what with her......

The expansive six story atrium at the Museum of Modern Art, which the NY Times notes has been a "space more suited to corporate functions than to art," has had its second floor taken over by a new Pipilotti Rist installation titled Pour Your Body Out. The press release points out that the museum commissioned the artist to reinvent the space and reenvision its architecture. At 7,354 cubic meters, the result "is a lush, immersive......

The MTA may soon be adding digital advertising to the subways that will be very similar to Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope. What's that, you say? The Creative Time-supported project "was installed in the abandoned Myrtle Avenue subway station in Brooklyn, New York in September 1980. It has been seen by millions of commuters for over twenty-five years. The 228 hand-painted panels are viewed through a series of vertical slits set into a specially constructed housing. The......

The Brooklynite Gallery has emailed us a sneak peek snapshot of their latest sculpture, "created by the wild British artists that go by the name of Kuildoosh" (who are allegedly Victorian England's answer to graffiti...you know, if that were possible and all). No, it's not Mr. Hanky, it's an inflatable sausage that's been forked. Hungry for more? The troupe's "Smoking Jackets for Jerry" exhibit opens at the gallery this Saturday...and yes, the sausage will......

Photographer Tom Mason has put together a series called the Fabric of Brooklyn, in which he captured some corners of the borough in about half hour time increments and around 100 snapshots. Digitally compositing the images, he compressed time "in informationally rich ways," and created bustling scenes while focusing in on the finer details and unique population. And hey, DUMBO never looked so crowded! [via Kottke]......

On Friday a new Public Art Fund-organized group show opened at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn, which will remain open through September of next year. Titled Trapdoor, the outdoor installation "features new commissions by Ethan Breckenridge, Martha Friedman and Sara Greenberger Rafferty, and recent works by Francis Cape. By using or making reference to recognizable objects whose properties are exaggerated or altered in one way or another, these artists convey an overarching sense of transition......

Today the New Museum will unveil a painting "in tribute to incoming First Lady Michelle Obama." The portrait, titled "Michelle and Sasha Obama Listening to Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention August 2008," will be a new component to the exhibition Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton. Stop by the 4th floor to see it for yourself!......

Nightlife impresarios Cornelis Craane and Paul Coleman Drohan, whose pedigree extends to old school clubs like Palladium, The Roxy, and China Club, have just opened this new venue that hearkens back to the messier '80s era of NYC nightlife, before the hedge fund bros took over with their $1,000 bottles of Absolut. Located in the Flatiron District, the duo hopes The Imperial will "recreate a fantasy playground reminiscent of the Warhol-Basquiat club days where art......

On Tuesday night, a reader emailed us about the FBI swarming out of a building on West 75th Street near Riverside, with many agents taking out works of art. It turns out the works were taken from the "alleged ringleader of a multistate con game"! The NY Post explains that Dina Wein and others would buy products from "Balance Bar, Bausch & Lomb, Campbell's, Bic, Eastman Kodak, Gillette, Kraft, Nestlé, Sara Lee and Unilever" at......

The big Pop Burger location that opened on East 58th Street last winter has gotten a threatening letter from lawyers because of a wall-length mural depicting Andy Warhol's famed Campbell's soup cans. What's funny is that it's not the Warhol estate who sent the C&D, but the Campbell corporation, who contend that customers will think that the burger mecca is "affiliated with or sponsored by Campbell in some way." Speaking to the Post, a Pop......

Just the kind of thing you'd expect a Warhol superstar to craft up: NY Post and Daily News needlepoint pillows! (Just like grandma used to make.) Brigid Berlin is opening her homespun exhibit at John McWhinnie and Glenn Horowitz Bookseller/Gallery later this month, and Animal reports that "the sixty-nine year old artist is showcasing 10 years of her fantastic embroidery works, including this 'Breaking News' series of New York Post pillows that feature some of......

With The Waterfalls ending, it's nice to know something will fill the void. Both Williamsburg and LIC have some new illegal artwork adorning their waterfront. Momo has announced that his latest projects are finished and they're "funny, big, wet, dangerous, illegal, & moving." The project is called PLAF (combined it includes seven outdoor and one indoor installation), and here's a cute video on the Williamsburg one. Does it seem like more and more artists are......

Last night (on what would have been his 68th birthday), the Openhouse Gallery in SoHo opened their exhibit "Imagine Peace," displaying over 100 of John Lennon's drawings. The installation will be around through the weekend, and it'll cost you $2 to get in, with the money going towards City Meals-on-Wheels. Featuring "Lennon’s characteristic drawings in hand-signed pieces and limited edition prints, as well as serigraphs, lithographs, copper etchings and aqua tints," some of the collection......

Rendering courtesty of the Madison Square Park Conservancy. With the Tree Huts still in place, the Madison Square Park Conservancy will add another element to the outdoor space: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Park. The interactive light installation will be on view starting October 24th and run through November 17th, only visible from dusk to 10 p.m. Here's how it works: visitors’ heart rates will be monitored by two heart rate sensor sculptures, and will activate......

Looks like some of the local NYC graffiti artists have begun to object to Banksy's massive billboard project. When we walked by this morning, the piece on Howard and Broadway had been hit with this big "damn rats!!!" piece. Can the fire-extinguisher tags be far behind?......

Internationally acclaimed British artists Gilbert & George are getting their first American retrospective in more than two decades with an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that opens tomorrow. On view are more than ninety pictures produced since 1970, including more than a dozen that will be seen only in the Brooklyn. The exhibit will be on view through January 11th and is the final stop an acclaimed international tour organized by the Tate Modern. Since......

The Haven Arts Gallery in the Bronx has adorned their walls with reimagined MTA subway maps. The exhibition, titled Men on Maps, ends on October 10th and presents "the unique aesthetic responses of over 40 male artists when presented with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s map of the New York Cities subway system as a base upon which to create." NYMag says that it's definitely the show for "those of us who have ever felt the......

If you happen to see a young Asian woman sitting in a display window basking in a pink neon light sign that reads: "All Your Nut Needs," don't be too alarmed. The girl is Annamarie Ho, and she's the artist behind the display, which is located on the west side of Cleveland Place, south of Kenmare Street. Boing Boing clarifies, noting that "Betelnut is a popular stimulant sold by scantily-clad young girls in streetside......

Photos by Jen Carlson/Gothamist. Artist Kylin O'Brien is painting giant monsters around town for the NYC public school kids in a collaborative effort titled The Monster Project. "Still in its early stages, the monster project is launching its first huge public creatures at the 12th Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival" this weekend. Two of the monsters in the DUMBO area are pictured above, and before you start grading--keep in mind that the creatures......

Rendering courtesy of Madison Square Park Conservancy. Starting next week artist Tadashi Kawamata will make the above rendering a reality in Madison Square Park. His "tree huts" represent his "interest in the architecture of shelter and of the insertion of private objects into public spaces as a method of renegotiating the meaning of both." But how long do you think it will take until someone tries to climb into or inhabit one? Stay tuned......

For a good six years, the mysterious Swoon has been pasting her evocative and eye-catching cut-outs on walls around town, slowly and steadily establishing herself as one of the more intriguing street artists in the game. The work eventually won her gallery showings at prominent venues like Deitch Projects, where she returns Sunday with a solo show at the gallery's Long Island City satellite. The installation is part of a bigger, collective project called......

The four waterfalls installed by artist Olafur Eliasson and the Public Art fund at various spots on the East River are supposed be taken down on October 13th, but some Brooklyn residents fear that could be too late. In response to mounting concerns that spray from the salty, semi-polluted East River is blowing onto trees and slowly killing them, Judy Stanton, head of the Brooklyn Heights Association, is calling for the falls to be stopped......

Reports are coming in that NYC street artist and Graffiti Research Lab founder, James Powderly, has been detained in Beijing for planning a pro-Tibet protest via a L.A.S.E.R. Stencil art piece. When Boing Boing reported the news at nearly 8 this morning, he had been held for around 19 hours already. They were tipped off by Students for a Free Tibet, who learned of it via a Twitter message that read "held since 3am." There's......

Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea officially set sail last Friday, and the fleet is slowly making their way to the final destination of LIC--where the artist will have an exhibit set up at Deitch. The NY Times checked in on Swoon and the collective joining her on the floating art adventure, consisting of "artists, carpenters, musicians, filmmakers, seafarers and hangers-on." She told the paper that the boats were built with the environment in mind,......

File this one under: Fun! Artist Mina Karimi is looking to pull together "a large performance art piece that requires 6-8 hundred people recreating the parade scene from Ferris Bueller [video] at the Deitch Art Parade in Soho." She says she is "recruiting secret agents in the audience of the parade to mimic the extras in the movie as my Ferris float approaches. In order to fully reproduce the spirit of the scene I will......

There's an update on the intriguing story of William Milliken Vanderbilt Kingsland, "a threadbare eccentric and an amateur genealogist of the Upper East Side" who died in 2006, only to leave behind a world of confusion. To sum up this UES Man of Mystery, the NY Times explains upon his death "it was discovered that his birth name was Melvyn Kohn, that he resided not on Fifth Avenue but in a small apartment on East......

The Montauk Monster is still in the news (and on the Colbert Report), with the East Hampton Star now reporting that the mystery carcass is missing! More disturbing than that and the fact that the nation has been staring at a dead, bloated dog for a week, is the fact that the two locals holding the remains were planning to profit from the dead body. The duo were planning on reducing it to bones, creating......

Swoon has a new installation coming up that will take her work to the sea, or at least the Hudson River. Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea "is a flotilla of seven intricately hand crafted vessels that will navigate the stretch of the Hudson River between Troy and the New York harbor this August 15th - September 7th." The vessels are powered with alternative energy sources and will be making stops in towns along the way;......

Jen Dunlap, a painter, and Celia Rowlson-Hall, a writer-director-choreographer, decided to combine their many talents for a one-of-a-kind art show. Wanna Come to My Place? will saturate Supreme Trading with their art, performance and everyday life tomorrow night. They even traveled all the way to Coney Island to create a video invite. How did you come up with the idea to combine paintings and performance? We respect each other's work, have a fun time together,......