The Art Of Endangered America

a blue whale that is also a hanging chair is covered in mottled blue fabric that looks like bathmats but the dominant feature is its gaping mouth, the seat/opening, which is screened by a curtain of white beads that represents the whale's baleen. a cursed art object several times over by porky hefer, selling at millea bros in june 2025
Porky Hefer, Endangered Blue Whale Hanging Chair, 2018, ed. 3/3 [so not so endangered then?] for sale on 11 June 2025 at Millea Bros

Look, it was already weird to have one nickel for every hanging endangered sea creature chair sculpture South African white guy Porky Hefer made for the Leo DiCaprio Foundation to show at Design Miami in 2018 auctioned my Millea Bros. that turned out to be from the asset liquidation portion of client funds-spending art adviser Lisa Schiff’s bankruptcy proceedings. So the very possibility that we might be at two nickels now is off the charts.

a dark mushroom colored exhibition space with a suspended light grid and black ceiling that might as well be ikea but is at the design miami basel fair in 2018 is strewn with the misguided greenwashing art furniture creations of porky hefer, made as pr for the leo dicaprio foundation. gargantuan and clumsy furniture in the shape of endangered species include from left: a sloth hammock/sling; a polar bear? rug/tuffett, an orangutan lap dance chair, and blue whale and shark hanging chairs with mouths agape for climbing inside. like that one ikea chair in the kids section. anyway wallpaper magazine ran this image by james harris as part of their uncritical design-forward coverage of whatever. unbelievable that it continues to haunt culture solely because the art adviser who helped organize it ended up spending her client's money on her own lifestyle expenses
remember when wallpaper* ran this photo as part of their exclusive report on our culture’s greatest tastemakers assembling for an astroturf design fair in miami? thanks, james harris, for documenting this

And yet, there it was, hanging right in front of us—and behind the Endangered Orangutan Lounge Chair. Casual observers may think this Endangered Blue Whale Hanging Chair is just an Endagered Shark Hanging Chair with a slipcover. Connoisseurs will see it is covered in recycled t-shirt fabric handwoven to look and feel like your grandma’s bathmat. And conservators will note that the baleen curtain made of strings of beads are, according to the condition report, experiencing “active bead loss.” But honestly, who among us wouldn’t want to just curl up in the mouth of a whale for a few days? It worked great for Jonah. Eventually.

a ghost of the american flag by sterling ruby made of acid washed denim as a 2015 fundraising edition for the chinati foundation, trying to sell again at millea bros auction in june 2025
Sterling Ruby, CHINATI FLAG (DNM), 2015, “treated” denim, 45 x 70 in., ed. 100, trying again at Millea Bros on 11 June 2025

Also at Millea Bros [again] is another lot that I think must have come from Schiff: Sterling Ruby’s acid-washed denim flag, made in 2015 as a benefit edition for the Chinati Foundation. Is there any artwork that captures the moment better than an American flag ghost, with its estimate slashed in half since February, with the proceeds going to pay back some collector who got fleeced on the sale of an Adrian Ghenie painting?

In a way, it’s too bad it’s all being liquidated, because these two pieces—and Schiff’s art collection generally—are the fruit of her life as much as her crimes. They’re superlative examples of the kind of art that piles up along the way when you travel the circuit of art fairs, galas, and opening dinners. Fundraising editions and leftover PR pieces, artworks donated to benefit auctions, gift bag swag, and kickback pieces bought on heavy discount from the galleries where you bring your whales. All accumulated in the service of people with actual wealth—for whom the entire system exists—with their expropriated money.

shelves and platforms stuffed with stuff line three walls of a white cube gallery, the accumulated objects and mementos of the artist martin wong, transformed by the artist danh vo into a single work so they could be preserved together, here in the acquisition photo of the walker art center
Danh Vo, I M U U R 2, 2013, like 4,000 things that belonged to Martin Wong, collection Walker Art Center

Maybe all Schiff’s works could have been kept together as a more significant, cautionary gesamtkunstwerkdokument, like how Danh Vo turned all Martin Wong’s tchotchkes into an installation so it could be preserved—and acquired. A Schiff Study Collection would be a snapshot of this frenzied moment, now obviously over. But that would have required much more adventurousness on the part of her collector/investor/client/creditor/victims, who, never forget, were most interested in flipping Adrian Ghenie paintings.