The artist behind that animatronic Waterboard Thrill Ride on Coney Island finally fulfilled his dream of making the simulation a reality last Friday night. A professional interrogator, Mike Ritz, wearing a black ski mask, black fatigues and combat boots, waterboarded Steve Powers and three lawyers for a small audience of invited guests (photo after the jump). Art Forum reports: "Ritz then stuffed a large black rag into Powers’s mouth, held the artist’s nose with one......

Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials joined artist Olafur Eliasson and Susan K. Freedman of the Public Art Fund at a press conference this morning at the South Street Seaport, where all four of Eliasson's waterfalls can be seen at once. An aide to the mayor noted that there was more press attending this event than when he announced he was switching his party to become independent. The mayor estimated that the waterfalls, which will......

Groundbreaking postwar artist Robert Rauschenberg died last night at the age of 82. The adventurous painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, set designer and composer was born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, a small refinery town with little cultural stimuli. (In his adult life he took the name Robert.) His father worked for a local utility, and the family’s lifestyle was so financially tight that, according to the Times, Rauschenberg’s mother......

Jason Polan has undertaken a project that seems nearly impossible; on his website he states:I am trying to draw every person in New York. I will be drawing people everyday and posting as frequently as I can. It is possible that I will draw you without you knowing it. I draw in Subway stations and museums and restaurants and on street corners. I try not to be in the way when I am drawing or......

Artwork by Rene Smith as seen on Gossip Girl. Last night as Gossip Girl returned to the airwaves, it brought some real LIC artists with it. In the fictional Bedford Avenue Gallery, as Blair plots to ruin Jenny Humphrey, she pauses in front of some pieces -- one of which belongs to LIC artist Rene Smith, who told us about how her art landed on Rufus Humphrey's walls.I heard that Gossip Girl rented art......

"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......