dc – greg.org

The Only Arch I Want To See

a dense woodblock print tiled together from 36 sheets depicts a comically ornate triumphal arch propagandizing the reign of emperor maximilian. — Albrecht Dürer et al, The Triumph of Maximilian, 1515-17, printed 1799, collection NYPL

Rather than build an actual f’ing arch the Emperor Maximilian commissioned a monumental print arch, which could be reproduced and installed all over. It was the only of his grandiose print projects that was completed during his lifetime. Albrecht Dürer and a workshop of least four other artist/printers spent two years producing 198 woodblocks to print on 36 folio sheets (18 x 24 inches). The assembled image is 12 x 10 feet, and was printed in five editions, beginning in 1517. The first edition of around 700 was distributed to the princes of the Holy Roman Empire. The Fraktur typeface was commissioned for this print.

The New York Public Library says their The Triumph of Maximilian on view at 42nd Street at the moment, printed in 1799, is a third edition. But the third edition was printed in 1559; the edition printed in 1799 was the fourth, which sounds a little rough. [The NYPL item listing has this correct.] Nevertheless, it is on view, and should be seen before it goes into storage in October. [h/t @arthistory.bsky.social for the heads up].

Meanwhile, a few years ago The Met discovered that they had an uncatalogued copy of the print, which they called Arch of Honor, since 1928. After a major conservation project in 2019 it was identified as a proof copy, complete with inset and overlaid corrections and 16th century annotations.

a detail of an intricate woodblock print of a triumphal arch encrusted with decorations and panels illustrating historical moments in the life or genealogy of maximilian the holy roman emperor, and a red line marking the edge of one sheet which includes part of a column and six historical event panels, except the one on the lower right corner is blank, because it was supposed to be a picture of the tomb of the emperor who was yet alive so let's come back to that one, hmm? he said. — Detail of the Met’s proof of Maximilian’s arch, with blank space, and the outline of Folio sheet 28.82.25

[A FEW MINUTES LATER UPDATE] In the three 16th century editions, the 24th panel of historical events was left blank. It was to contain an image of Maximilian’s tomb, which would be created, printed, and distributed for installation after his death.

a fragment of the monumental durer woodblock print of maximilian's arch is the cropped blank panel, with its accompanying scroll label and a decorative border from an adjacent sheet, that was cut out of the larger arch assemblage and replaced with another picture. via the national gallery of victoria — Albrecht Dürer [sic], The blank 24th historical panel (1559) [sic] from the 1st edition [sic] of the Triumphal Arch, woodcut with traces of gilding and hand colouring, 258 x 159 mm, upside down at NGV

In the Met’s proof, that folio sheet includes the thick column at the center of the detail above, and two rows of scenes. The National Gallery of Victoria, meanwhile, has a 3rd edition of the Arch, printed in 1559, with the 24th panel replaced. But they also have the blank 24th panel [from a 1st edition?] The inclusion of a border likely means it was cut out of an assembled Arch, not from the sheet, and not, it seems, from their Arch, whose decorative border looks intact. Also, they show it upside down.

It would be my new favorite Dürer print, but the Met says only the column and the first two scenes on that sheet are by Dürer; the rest is by Hans Springinklee. So I guess it is my favorite Springinklee.

I would hang it next to my favorite Titian woodcut.

Previously, related: Titianic: Titian Woodcut Print was almost the same mometn

George Catlin, Floyd’s Grave, 1832

a small landscape painting dominated by a large green hill in the right foreground, a river behind it, anda pale blue sky. two figures climb the grassy hill toward a post at the top, a grave market for sergeant charles floyd, who died in 1804 — George Catlin, Floyd’s Grave, Where Lewis & Clark Buried Sergeant Floyd in 1804, 1932, oil on canvas, 11 1/4 x 14 3/8 in., collection SAAM

Had a fascinating conversation with a scholar working on early 19th century American painting, and we talked some about George Catlin. Though I’ve long been interested in Catlin’s unusual and sometimes problematic career, I did not know about this painting.

Catlin spent the 1830s exploring and painting Native American culture up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. His first trip was with William Clark, of Lewis & Clark. Which might be how he came to know this site, on the top of a hill above the Missouri, 1,200 miles north of St Louis, where Lewis & Clark buried Charles Floyd, who died just four months into their 1804 expedition. Catlin returned to it multiple times.

George Catlin, Floyd’s Grave, Where Lewis & Clark Buried Sergeant Floyd in 1804, 1832 [americanart.si.edu]

SNOW SURRENDER DOROTHY, 2026

the unpainted plywood letters to spell surrender dorothy are affixed to an aluminum stud frame and braced on the roof of a brooklyn townhouse, blue sky and sunlight in the background, caroline snow tried to sell this work she didn't own or have authorization to sell — Surrender Dorothy, an artwork Banks Violette also said was not an artwork, 2026, painted plywood and aluminum, 70 x 93 x 48 in., via IG/banks_violette_616

Texting “Hi Banks! I hope you are well. Is that ‘Surrender Dorothy’ sign your piece? The owner of the property has asked me to help her sell it.” is a helluva way to try to simultaneously authenticate an artwork and get an OK to sell it. Especially when you know full well whose it is, and what it’s doing on the roof of the Williamsburg townhouse where your gallery partner’s staging a show in his other side hustle gallery with his other partner.

The texter is Caroline Snow, of the Dash Snows and Thurmans and de Menils, whose Snow Gallery was not formally involved in Beginning of (The End), the Banks Violette show Frank Haines organized at New Dracula Theater, an exhibition space and recording studio in Brooklyn he opened last year with fellow artist Chip Kolpen. Violette collages on aluminum hung inside; a video projection filled the garden shed out back, and a giant sign of aluminum and painted wood reading SURRENDER DOROTHY was perched on the roof.

The Arch Is Done

Everyone is talking about Trump’s mock up arch at the Great American State Fair, so I filmed it from top to bottom and front to back for everyone who can’t see it in person.
— amanda moore 🐢 (@noturtlesoup17.bsky.social) 2026-06-28T21:11:48.282Z

I have never changed my mind so quickly and thoroughly as I have about the f’ing arch. Now that I’ve seen it, I support it completely. It is the perfect monument to the man and the moment, an authentic marker for all he and his movement have achieved so far, and it is indicative, even prophetic, of the things to come every day he remains in power.

I admit I was under the impression it was going to go on the traffic circle at the cemetery, but I expect they’ll just put it on a flatbed truck after this Mall thing wraps up. The pool guy probably has one.

Jacob Kassay Flags

a collage on paper torn from a sketchbook is comprised of stickers of four us flags with the cantons of stars all in the center, creating a blue rectangle of stars surrounded by an elongated vertical rectangle of red and white stripes. jacob kassay made this in 2007, and now it's at von ammon gallery in dc — Jacob Kassay, Untitled, 2007, vinyl on paper, 13 3/4 x 11 in., on view at Von Ammon in DC

Focus Group 5, a new group show at Von Ammon in Washington includes works of the moment, some of which are also throwbacks.

There are works by six artists: Liz Craft, Catharine Czudej, Ignacio Gatica, Tony Matelli, and Banks Violette, and three early works on paper by Jacob Kassay.

These small compositions are vinyl stickers of the US flag in various mirrored configurations. They remind me of the incredible little stack of flags on plastic that Jasper Johns loaned to the recent show of flag works at Craig Starr.

a tiny painting of three flags, or rather three paintings of gradually smaller us flags stacked on top of one another, made of acrylic paint on plastic, and attached to the top half of a roughly a4-sized sheet of plastic, and then matted and framed with a thin maple frame, a 2000 work by jasper johns, from the artist's collection, on view in spring 2026 at craig starr gallery in nyc — Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 2000, 11 x 7 1/2 in., acrylic and graphite on four sheets of plastic, collection the artist, on view at Craig Starr

Like Johns, Kassay was working with the flag as an image and an object for several years before he got massive art world attention. Unlike Johns’s, Kassay’s flags have been much less widely seen. Also, it’s not clear whether he’s left the motif behind.

Though it’s been lost in a hall of silvered mirrors since, when Kassay popped in 2009, a flag-related installation was like his only Google image. That massive textile work, draped like an awning, was made by sewing together four flags, minus the cantons, So where there were stars, there was a large, rectangular void.

I’d thought of this work recently, and tried to find an image of it. [I’d been reminded of it while seeing the extraordinary, striped tarp, with two cutouts for doors, that covers the repaired signage on the Kennedy Center.] While searching, I found another early Kassay on perforated paper, which upended what I understood and wrote about the incredible sculpture/painting from his breakout show at Eleven Rivington. So I have updated that post.

Focus Group 5 at Von Ammon, by appt, 16 June-31 Aug 2026 [vonammon.net]
Previously, from 2020/2021/2026: Ur-Kassay

Newman The Monument, 2026

screenshot of an aeral view of the national mall and lincoln memorial reflecting pool, a long rectangle of algae green with darker blue water around the edges where trump lackey dumped hydrogen peroxide. alleys of trees recede similarly in the distance, with grass and another smaller lake on either side. posted by derek guy, aka dieworkwear on june 16 2026 — a painterly screenshot via @dieworkwear

Last night Derek @dieworkwear compared the hydrogen peroxide-filled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to a Rothko, and the uneven edges of blue and the center of algae green did feel Rothkovian.

Then @rabihalameddine said it looked more like a Barnett Newman to him, and I couldn’t unsee it. Or ignore it, especially when I knew just the Newman, and just what to do with it:

In Gropius-Bau What’d Andy Do? A Speer Lichtdom Erect

thomas hoepker photo of andy warhol from 1981, with andy in jeans, a white shirt and green and blue rep tie, standing sheepishly, as if andy had any other posing mode, next to a stuffed great dane mounted on a pedestal, and with a stacked diptych in red above white of a black silkscreened image of albert speer's lichtdom, the cathedral of light the nazi architect created for a nazi party rally in nuremberg in 1934. the screenprinting process abstracts the beams of light, which are inverted and painted black, and form a slightly conical structure that would have been visible in the cloudy night sky. — 1981 pic by Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker of Andy Warhol at 860 Broadway with the caption identifying the stuffed dog, but not the Albert Speer-related paintings behind him, via @twixnmix via @voorwerk

I swear, until this morning I was just going to like and reblog this photo of Warhol and move on. And then the Angel of History started piling rubble on top of rubble on the White House lawn.

Albert Speer was Hitler’s favorite architect, and Andy Warhol loved him. In the early 80s he made multiple paintings of Speer’s Lichtdom, and they seem to exist only in the backgrounds of snapshots of Warhol himself. Though they appeared in a major international exhibition in 1982, they seem to have been ignored by dealers and curators and historians then and since.

Museums Will Not Save Us, Annotated

“The Ultimate Fight ring had not yet been erected on the White House lawn.”

The first line of the survey I did for Art in America of museums’ America 250 shows already locks it into a slightly less bleak past, April, when this stupid UFC thing did not yet stand. And reading the piece for the first time in over a month, I gotta say, it goes downhill from there.

The headline is, “As the Country Turns 250, Why Won’t Its Museums Meet The Moment?” My editor’s working title for the piece was “Picturing Independence”; mine was “Museums Will Not Save Us.” It started bleak, and it got bleaker, but I am grateful for the opportunity and the insights and all the folks who helped along the way.

For reasons beyond me that perhaps relate to the article appearing first in print, the links I used for reference do not appear in the Art in America published version. So I’ve gathered them here, like bonus content for a DVD. [Ask your parents.]

“As the Country Turns 250, Why Won’t Its Museums Meet The Moment?” [art in america, summer 2026]

A YouTube video of the bonkers CG history of America projected on the Washington Monument beginning on New Years, 2026:

The OG No Kings At The NY Historical

an 1852 painting of a crowd of white colonists pulling on ropes to topple an equestrian statue of king george iii, while a black american is about to get trampled underfoot or crushed, and a native american family turns away in the corner, at the ny historical — Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, Pulling Down The Statue of King George III, New York City, 1852-53, oil on canvas, 32 x 41 in., collection NYHistorical

I have a piece in the Summer 2026 issue of Art in America, buy it wherever print magazines are sold! I’d say I’m psyched, but it was lowkey depressing as hell. Though it’s in the reviews section, it’s more a preview, of what US museums are showing for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, at a moment when the country’s facing an ongoing fascist existential attack. tl;dr, museums are not going to save us.

But one museum is doing the most, and it’s honestly not who I’d have expected. The NY Historical has had Johannes Adam Simon Oertel’s 1852-53 painting of New Yorkers pulling down the gilded lead statue of King George III after a public reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776, since 1925. And the online text goes deep on the symbolism of the Native American family turned away on the left, and the Black figure on the ground at the center, about to get crushed. But they don’t say why Oertel painted this when he did.

What the Historical also has, though, are pieces of the statue itself.

A Slice of Augustus Vincent Tack

a tall vertically oriented painting of an oval abstract painting is surrounded by gold. the abstraction is mostly dark blue, purple, brown, and seems like a steep cliff face running diagonally from the upper right. other sections in lighter colors might reference the sky or vegetation, part of a series of paintings by augustus vincent tack in the 1930s — Augustus Vincent Tack, *Untitled Oval (Golden Morning)*, 1930, oil on canvas on board, 69 x 43 in., the Phillips Collection

I’ve been a fan of Augustus Vincent Hack’s landscape-based abstract paintings from the 1930s ever since I saw them at the Phillips Collection. To be frank, it’s hard to see them anywhere else. Duncan Phillips was a close friend and longtime supporter of Tack’s work, which, in the 1930s, looked like it could be as important to the American abstract avant-garde as anyone. It mostly was not, but the paintings are still nice, and sometimes a little strange.

The first time I noticed the strangeness apart from the niceness was in 2014, when I realized that Tack had painted a trompe l’oeil frame around an abstracted view of the sky, essentially a representational painting of an abstract painting.

While his extremely conventional, even boring, portraits have sold at auction for nearly nothing, Tack’s abstractions do great. So I was very interested to see what happened to this wild painting that just came up for sale this morning:

a portrait of a young white lady with the beginnings of grey hair, seated, with her arm on a table, wearing a black dress with white polka dots and frills on the shoulders. on the cream wall behind her, a segment of an oval-shaped abstract painting with a gold frame peeks into the upper left corner, augustus vincent tack's portrait of lotte lehmann — Augustus Vincent Tack, Portrait of Lotte Lehmann, 30 3/4 x 25 3/4 in., sold at Copake’s, via Invaluable

Unlike all the judges or bank vice presidents whose names are lost, this Tack portrait is already rare for having an identifiable subject—and one who has a wikipedia page. Lotte Lehmann was an internationally famous soprano who discovered the Von Trapp Family Singers. She helped launch the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, and there’s a theater at UC Santa Barbara that still bears her name. But most importantly, this painting has a slice of another painting in the corner.

I haven’t been able to identify a specific picture Tack reproduced here. And it’s also not clear when Tack painted this. Lehmann was born in 1888, so she was in her 40s when Tack started painting his abstracts. In 1939 her husband died—is that his urn behind her?—and Lehmann she moved in with Frances Holden, a “psychologist who specialized in the study of genius.” So that puts her on the ground in Santa Barbara. Tack died in 1949, so that’s the window.

In any case, I love it, and I put a bid in so I wouldn’t forget to watch it. And then I completely forgot. And it ended up selling for just $300. Whoops. The greatest bargain ever–on a square inch basis—for one of Augustus Vincent Tack’s most important paintings. Or part of one, anyway.

Speaking of Fresh Widows

Marcel Duchamp was in the throes of completing and framing his Large Glass when he made Fresh Widow in 1920, a French window-shaped sculpture that evoked, it was said, the widows of World War I.

marcel duchamp's fresh widow is a freestanding miniature replica of an eight-pane set of french doors, painted sort of a turquoise, with black leather over the glass panes and push pins for the knobs. it is set on a thin matching turquoise plinth, which is then mounted on a thin dark wood plinth. the title and rose selavy 1920 copyright notice painted on the turquoise base in black block letters are not very legible from this angle. this 1964 edition of the 1920 original was offered for sale by levy gorvy at some point, and the marcel duchamp estate run by his step grandchildren claim copyright over it all — Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Widow, 1920, Schwarz Edition, 1964, as offered at some point by Levy Gorvy

By the time Duchamp agreed to Arturo Schwarz’s proposal to fabricate Fresh Widow and other early works in editions in the summer of 1964, Col. D. Harold Byrd, who owned the Texas School Book Depository, had already removed the sixth floor window from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK.

the black painted six-over-six casement window with a worn surface from which jfk was shot in 1963 is mounted in a freestanding white and honey oak finished frame, with unfinished wood shims or brackets holding it open in a way that evokes the shooting i guess. two cursive printed bronze colored plaques are affixed to either side of the base that read, the window, jfk was assassinated from this window on november 22, 1963, this image was prepared by heritage auctions which put this window up for sale in june 2026

The convoluted authenticity and ownership disputes over the window displayed for many years as The Window or The Sniper’s Perch are described briefly in the Heritage Auctions listing for the window. The auction includes all the documentation, court transcripts, and original museum plaques, that establish “conclusively and without ambiguity the identity, provenance, and legal ownership of this historic artifact.”

18 June 2026, Lot 47079: President John F. Kennedy Assassination: The Texas School Book Depository “Sniper’s Perch” Window [heritageauctions]

Vindicatrix, The Refusal of Beauty, The Disfiguring Myth

I’ll let Horace D. Ballard’s positively vibrating review of MONUMENTS and his description of filmmaker Cauleen Smith’s installation, The Warden (2025) speak for itself. Just google him and Vindicatrix.

Vindicatrix, which slipped right by me when I read Carolina Miranda’s earlier piece in the NY Review of Books, maybe because my brain was overloaded by her take on Kara Walker’s “aberrant chimera” of a de-reconstructed Stonewall Jackson sculpture at The Brick. Miranda’s description of the Lost Cause, though, it sticks with me as I think about Smith, and about Vindicatrix: “Walker’s surgical reimagination of the Jackson statue instead dismantles the pleasing aesthetics of white supremacy to reveal the ugliness within: the disfiguring myth of the Lost Cause, which has papered over the racist cornerstones of the Confederacy with romanticized stories about sacrifice and bravery.”

I can’t find a video of her whole conversation, but the student paper at Occidental gives an account of Smith’s explanation of The Warden, made with and around Vindicatrix, a decommissioned idealized female allegorical statue from Richmond symbolizing confederate vengeance: “I really had problems with the way her beauty was always discussed in the description of the statue…and I thought that we should be denied some kind of access to her, or that she should be denied the power to project that beauty.”

From both Miranda and Ballard’s accounts, I think The Warden succeeds most fully as an in-person experience—I haven’t seen the show irl. But it’s Smith’s attunement to the weaponization of beauty and how it resonates with the disfiguring myth that haunts me right now.

Back At It Again At Politics & Prose

a screenshot of the politics and prose website with headshots of two smithsonian curators, a white lady with brown hair and a latinx guy in a dark cap, and the cover of the felix gonzalez torres exhibition catalogue they published, with a blue mirror work by the artist on the cover

RESCHEDULED:
SUNDAY
APRIL 26, 3PM

OK, neither snow nor rain or war of night…

Smithsonian curators Charlotte Ickes and Josh T. Franco will be talking with me—and you?—about their extraordinary exhibition catalogue, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Always To Return), this coming Sunday, April 26 at 3:00, at Politics & Prose on Connecticut Avenue. Come get your questions asked and your books signed, it’s a ravishing, thoughtful, beauty.

[Post-game update] This was a great conversation with inspiring people and big, engaged audience. It was awesome. Thanks to the folks who read about it here and came to listen; you’re heroes. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Josh both have huge fanbases, so I am now on board with hanging with famous people—as long as they’re famous for something amazing like this book or this show.

Meanwhile, there is an unsurprisingly excellent review of the catalogue by Julia Bryan-Wilson at Burlington Contemporary. Check that out.

Country Over Party Cup

THE
DAYS
OF
THIS
SOCIETY
IS NUMBERED

and unless we do something about it, that number is 250.

holy shit where to even start? the trademark he filed for trump 250? this is a screenshot on a phone of red party cups with the trump name in white logotype, being tapped together by two white nationalist hands at some kind of home nazi rally. the caption says 250 years in the making, which is as close to his 1000 year reich declaration as we've gotten so far, and there is another caption underneath it about celebrating with patriotic essentials, which, it's important to remember that we'll be celebrating the renunciation of a fucking king, and then they pulled down his statue and melted it into bullets for the revolution. so maybe we could melt all these red party cups—which are from a koch brothers company in the first place, the uline of party cups—recycle them into zipties for detaining fleeing former ice agents — “A milestone 250 years in the making”: screenshot via @davelee.me at bluesky, via @chrisrusak.com

Der Schwerbelastungskörper und Die Schwerbelastungskörperaussichtsplattform

a 21-meter diameter cylinder of solid concrete rises 14 meters among trees in berlin, built by fucking nazis to test the soil's capacity to hold their stupid bombastic architecture. it couldn't. via ted grunewald — view of the heavy load-bearing structure from the viewing platform, via @tedgrunewald.bsky.social

So a nazi-aping fascist’s monomaniacal proposal to build an arch on swampy riverfront is in the news. In 1941 Hitler’s architect Albert Speer got approval to build a giant triumphal arch on a main axis of a redesigned Berlin, and quickly built the Schwerbelastungskörper, or heavy load-bearing structure, to test the ability of the marshy soil to support such a ridiculously large structure. It was built with forced labor from captured French soldiers.

The Heavy Load-Bearing Structure is a cylindrical pressure body made of solid concrete 14 meters high, with a diameter of 21 meters. Its 11-meter diameter concrete base extends 18 meters deep. The 12,650 ton weight was calculated to approximate one of the arch’s four base legs.

The war diverted resources and attention from the arch and the redesign of Berlin, and the HLBS was left behind. Scientists and soil management technicians used the structure for data collection until 1983—postwar analysis showed the ground was too soft to have supported Hitler’s arch without major intervention, btw. And it became a historical monument in 1995, “the only tangible example of National Socialist urban planning.”

a screenshot from google streetview of a small information kiosk with a four-story staircase on the outside that winds up to a viewing platform, all wrapped in a metal cage of steel bars, all to view a heavy load bearing structure made of 12000 tons of solid concrete left behind by the nazis — heavy load-bearing structure visitor information center and viewing platform via google streetview

Now there is a visitor information center, monthly tours, and a Schwerbelastungskörperaussichtsplattform, a Heavy Load-Bearing Structure Viewing Platform, which looks exactly like what a visitor center for a useless nazi concrete plug should look like.