Cooper Union. (Photo by David Shankbone)

Cooper Union’s spring semester may have ended last week, but some students are still in school—specifically, in President Jamshed Bharucha’s office. The students, who began occupying the seventh floor of the brownstone Foundation Building on May 8, oppose the board of trustees’ recent decision to charge tuition for the first time in 150 years. Administrators state that the school’s longstanding financial problems leave them no choice.

“We do it only because the institution was hurtling toward bankruptcy,” said Dr. Bharucha, seated in an empty classroom on the second floor of the school’s controversial 41 Cooper Square building, a $166 million, Thom Mayne-designed structure that went up in 2009. “There’s a misconception that there are other ways that are less draconian.” Currently, Cooper covers the $38,500 tuition cost for all students. Starting with the class entering in 2014, 25 to 30 percent of students will pay about $19,250, while 25 to 30 percent will continue to receive a full scholarship. The rest will pay on a need-based sliding scale.

Students who oppose the new policy say that it will undermine the school’s meritocractic tradition. “The moment you do that you have two lists—one for the people you really want to get in and one for the people you know can afford it,” said one architecture student who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The occupied Foundation Building is off-limits to non-Cooper folk, but on May 20, fourth-year student Victoria Sobel, one of the sit-in organizers, told Gallerist by phone that about 14 students were occupying Dr. Bharucha’s office that day. This isn’t your parents’ 1968-style academic occupation. Videos recorded in Dr. Bharucha’s office document students talking, working on computers and cleaning—one Vine shows a Dustbuster inhaling crumbs off the carpet. “At night everyone gets work done,” said one student. “The guards play ukulele.”

Though there are fewer protestors than there were before classes ended, Ms. Sobel said she and other students will stay put until their demands, which include Dr. Bharucha’s resignation and student representation on the board of trustees, are met.

“I know that when you’re in a protest, you want to see the change now, but boards are deliberative bodies,” said Dr. Bharucha, who does not intend to step down. “The committee on trustees has been gathering data on what the models are for student representation on boards and looking at the pros and cons.”

Ms. Sobel said she felt it was inappropriate to compare Cooper to other schools. “I don’t want them to research other models,” she said. “We want something new.” A vote of no confidence in Dr. Bharucha and board chairman Mark Epstein had attracted 2,192 online signatures as of press time.

“The financial crisis predates me,” said Dr. Bharucha. “It’s part of leadership that you’re going to get people wanting to pin something on an individual … but I feel at peace with the fact that I told the truth very fast as I saw the numbers being added up.”

“The fundamental reason for our financial problem—it’s not the building,” he said, referring to the costly construction of 41 Cooper Square, which critics like Reuters blogger Felix Salmon have repeatedly cited as an example of financial mismanagement. “It is the simple but unsexy fact that our revenues have not kept pace with inflation. This goes back 45 years.”

Tensions between student protestors and the administration spiked on May 9, when the Cooper Union Emergency Management Team, which includes Dr. Bharucha and other administrators, sent students an ultimatum via e-mail, asking that they leave the office by 6:30 p.m. or face “disciplinary action, which may include dismissal and/or denial of their degree.” Security guards hired for the occasion—the president later said he did not know they were armed—manned the stairwells.

“They also bolted shut the bathroom doors on the seventh floor and turned the water fountains off so that the people occupying the office wouldn’t have access to water or hygiene,” said one architecture student.

The administration has not taken further steps to remove the protestors, though it has not ruled out withholding diplomas. “I’ll just say that we’re not looking to be vindictive,” said Dr. Bharucha. “We have every hope that we can resolve this in a way where it isn’t necessary to impose penalties like that.”

Ms. Sobel says she and other protestors are not particularly concerned, given the pushback such penalties would elicit from supporters of the occupation. She said these supporters are what make her optimistic that the sit-in could result in changes at the school. “This is the first time I’ve seen the Cooper community rally like this,” she said, noting the outcry from parents, alumni, faculty and prospective students, among other groups. On May 13, Dr. Bharucha met with the student occupiers in his office for the first time—a conversation both parties described as somewhat strained.

To restore free tuition, Dr. Bharucha said, “would take a new endowment of $300 million over and above the capital campaign goals we have judged to be realistic.” The administration projects it will raise about $13 million per year going forward.

“It’s impossible to understand the way they’re deriving these numbers because they won’t allow us to see the books,” said Ms. Sobel.

“It’s so complicated that for some it seems more like something opaque is happening,” said Dr. Bharucha. “Unless you’re willing to actually sit and learn that complexity, it’s quite natural to just get angry and assume something untoward is going on.”

Both students and administrators indicated that communication is critical but presently nonexistent.

“We’re speaking different languages,” said Ms. Sobel.

Glafira Rosales. (Courtesy Art Market Monitor)

Glafira Rosales, the Long Island-based art dealer who has been under investigation for allegedly selling counterfeit artworks by 20th-century masters including Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko through the now-defunct Knoedler & Company and other galleries, was arrested today and charged with filing false tax returns for the years 2006 through 2008 and deliberately failing to disclose an offshore bank account from 2007 through 2011, allegedly hiding $12.5 million she received from sales, according to Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and officials from the IRS and FBI.

“As alleged, Glafira Rosales gave new meaning to the phrase ‘artful dodger’ by avoiding taxes on millions of dollars in income from dealing in fake artworks for fake clients," stated Mr. Bharaha in the announcement.

According to an article in Vanity Fair, Ms. Rosales, 56, sold around 20 paintings to the once-venerable Knoedler, which closed abruptly in late 2011 after a client threatened to sue when forensic tests suggested that a Pollock painting he purchased for $17 million was fake.

Ms. Rosales faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of $100,000 for each of the three false-tax-return charges and a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each of the five charges that she failed to disclose offshore bank accounts.

Benefit: Fire Island Pines Performance Series Benefit Party
A benefit that includes performances by Tyler Ashley, Megha Barnabas and Ryan McNamara, plus music by Thinner, Lauren Dillard and JD Samson. Hosted by John Early and Ladyfag. —Michael H. Miller
209 Elizabeth Street, New York, VIP 6-8 p.m., after party at 8 p.m. Tickets $25 to $100, available at iheartfireisland.org

Inaugural Hyperallergic ArtTalk: Klaus Biesenbach
Want to hear Klaus talk about "Expo 1?" Want to drink some Pernod? Want to high five Hrag Vartanian? Sure you do! —Dan Duray
The Bedford, 110 Bedford Avenue, entrance on North 11th Street, Brooklyn, 7–9 p.m., tickets cost money and are sold out but you never know

TUESDAY, MAY 21

Party: Cousin George, "Coming Out," at Santos
Art collector George Haddad re-invents himself as Cousin George with this party for his debut album Coming Out. Videos by Luis Gispert, Kalup Linzy and Nate Lowman. Open bar from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. —D.D.
Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette Street, New York, 8–11 p.m.

Talk: Matthew Barney in Conversation with Paul Holdengräber at the Public Library
Matthew Barney at the NYPL, pegged to his new show at the Morgan Library and a new book by Rizzoli. —D.D.
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, Celeste Bartos Forum, New York, $25

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22

Panel Discussion: “62 Years Later” at Robert Miller
In conjunction with its "Untitled (Hybrid)" exhibition about Lee Krasner, which is curated by Kate McNamara, Anne Pasternak, Heather Watts, Lauren Flanigan, Laurie Simmons and RoseLee Goldberg will discuss gender politics in the arts. —M.H.M.
Robert Miller Gallery, 524 West 26th Street, New York, 6-8 p.m.

Opening: Amy Yao, "Skeletons on a Bender," at 47 Canal
Amy Yao, who may be familiar to riot grrrl aficionados for her work in the very catchy 1990s group Emily's Sassy Lime (their records are still available through Kill Rock Stars website), makes unabashedly elegant, beautiful art out of things like umbrellas, chairs, sticks and pearls. The title alone suggests this will be a strong show. —Andrew Russeth
47 Canal Street, New York, 6–8 p.m.

Screening and Conversation: Dennis Oppenheim at EAI
Curator Jenny Jaskey will introduce early films and videos by Dennis Oppenheim, which will be screened as he meant them to be shown, as multiple projections, and then lead a discussion with an exciting bunch of young artists— A.K. Burns, Ajay Kurian and Yve Laris-Cohen—about Oppenheim's work, and its connection to their own. —A.R.
Electronic Arts Intermix, 535 West 22nd Street, Fifth Floor, New York, 6:30 p.m., $7/$5 students, RSVP to rsvp@eai.org

THURSDAY, MAY 23

Opening: Takuma Nakahira, "Circulation: Date, Place, Events" at Yossi Milo
Japanese photographer Takuma Nakahira generated his work for the 1971 Seventh Paris Biennale over the course of a week during the exposition itself, spending seven consecutive days documenting everything he encountered, from breakfast to bouquinistes, and seven nights developing the photographs, which were exhibited the following day. We're eager to see the show, which will include 75 pictures (and to learn his secrets for staying up all week). —Zoë Lescaze
Yossi Milo Gallery, 245 10th Avenue, New York, 6-8 p.m.

Panel: "Where Is Jack Goldstein?" at the Jewish Museum
Art historian Douglas Crimp, who included Jack Goldstein in his seminal 1977 "Pictures" show at Artists Space, and Jens Hoffmann, the deputy director of the Jewish Museum, which is hosting a Goldstein retrospective through Sept. 29, will "discuss Jack Goldstein as a pioneer of conceptual art practices." —A.R.
Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, 6:30 p.m., free with pay-what-you-wish admission, RSVP required

SATURDAY, MAY 25

Opening: "Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series" at MoMA
Ellsworth Kelly spent 1971 creating L-shaped works, each composed of two monochrome canvases, in his Chatham, N.Y., studio, but barely anyone has seen the complete series since. In celebration of the artist's 90th birthday (coming up on May 31), MoMA is reuniting the 14 paintings in its fourth-floor galleries. —Z.L.
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West  53rd Street, New York, 10:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Update, May 21: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the dates for the events at Electronic Arts Intermix and 47 Canal. They take place Wednesday. We apologize for the error.

Tate Americas Foundation

A few blocks uptown, as the Vito Schnabel/David Rimanelli affair was getting underway in a disused space on the south end of the James A. Farley Post Office, guests for the Tate Americas Foundation’s triennial artists dinner—Anne Hathaway, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bravo’s Andy Cohen and an array of artists (Lawrence Weiner, Julie Mehretu, Frances Stark and Charline von Heyl) and their dealers—were streaming into the Skylight event space on the north end for cocktails.

“Art matters—art changes lives, it changes opinions, it changes points of view—and you all have changed Tate and all of us for the better,” the foundation’s chair, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, told the hundreds of guests. Nicholas Serota, Tate’s director, credited Ms. Fisher with insisting, “even in the middle of what in Europe we continue to regard as a recession, to do an evening of this kind.” And then Simon de Pury, perhaps missing his days as an auctioneer, put in what was, even for him, a positively relentless performance for the charity auction, selling off a variety of experienced-based lots.

The chance to have Nathan Carter assist with Christmas decorating sold for $11,000. A “career-guidance lunch” with the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Glenda Bailey (“that’s something I’m particularly keen on having!” Mr. de Pury crowed), made $15,000.

The next lot was a day of shopping with Sarah Jessica Parker, plus a $5,000 gift certificate for Dior, a big Tate sponsor. “Sarah Jessica Parker is a person oooozing, oozing, oozing unbelievable charm," Mr. de Pury offered. "I mean, it's incredible. I once had the privilege in my previous life…to spend a split second with Sarah Jessica Parker in a reality TV show, Bravo, which changed my life.” (The two were on Work of Art together.) That topped out at $45,000, with Ms. Parker agreeing to two shopping trips.

For the last of the six lots, Mr. de Pury turned to Greek collector Dakis Joannou and his wife Lietta: “You know what's good, you know what's important, you know what's beautiful, and you know it long before anyone else! What you have done over the years is nothing short of amazing. And, amongst other things, you have an incredible yacht, the 115-foot yacht Guilty. Now, you know, there are one or two people who have even longer or bigger yachts than yours, but nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody else in the world has a yacht that was designed by Jeff Koons!” A week aboard the boat sold for $170,000. “The Phelans and the Rachofskys are going to have a divine, unforgettable time all aboard the Guilty!"

Curatorial travel donations were hammered off at $20,000 one by one. Suddenly R. H. Quaytman was out of her seat and making a donation, bringing the whole artist theme of the dinner full circle. Using Mr. de Pury’s mike, she dedicated her donation to Tate curator Mark Godfrey. “But I don’t think you should auction off curators!” she said, completely deadpan.

“No, no, we’re not auctioning off curators, we’re auctioning off tickets for curators,” Mr. de Pury said. He brought his hammer down on Ms. Quaytman’s table and then bounded away.

“Thank you so, so much, Madam. Another $20,000. Thank you!”

A Second Anniversary for Artspace

On Thursday, Frieze opened at 11 a.m. to torrential downpours that quickly cleared, and by mid-afternoon the sun was shining over the East River, as the first groups began decamping by ferry and car from Randall's Island for openings and celebrations around town. Mr. Koons's show at Gagosian's West 24th Street space opened right on time, a line stretching down by the block by half past 6.

In the stately James Burden Mansion on East 91st Street, the newly minted strategic director of Artspace, collector and patron Maria Baibakova, hosted a dinner in honor of the art-commerce site's second anniversary. At the risk of sounding naive—I've seen lots of beautiful things!—it was easily one of the most beautiful spaces I have ever been in in New York. Warren and Westmore, the architects of Grand Central Station, designed the building in 1901, which is now home to the Sacred Heart school.

Ms. Baibakova toasted the crowd of dealers (Marc Glimcher, Thaddaeus Ropac, Dominique Lévy), museum directors (Thelma Golden, Chris Dercon, Philippe Vergne) artists (Wangechi Mutu, Angel Otero, Ryan McNamara) and investors. Husband-and-wife artists Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian had made a special print for the occasion. Artspace is all about collaboration, Ms. Baibakova said, "and what’s a better collaboration than a marriage?" Artspace, she added, "combines the good will we want to create with a viable business." And after two years at Harvard Business School, she said she's excited to be "coming back to the art world."

The crowd lingered over chocolates. There were still four more days of Frieze. No doubt there would be more reunions to come.

Artists Space Toasts Douglas Crimp

The Artists Space gala honoring Douglas Crimp on Saturday night was broken into two parts, the first held at the nonprofit's storefront space at 55 Walker Street, where multiple copies of multiple volumes of In Search of Lost Time sat just behind the bartender's heads.

After a performance by Suzanne Sachsse and Marc Siegel, Cindy Sherman, Gabriel Orozco and Lawrence Weiner mingled at the back of an exhibition on André Cadere. Up by the front was Michael Stipe, who wanted to talk about the sculptures he's been making, but was clearly trying not to ruin some kind of exclusive he had with Vanity Fair, or wherever.

"It's just something that happened," he said. Recently? "No, seven years ago." Big or small? "Big." Had he ever shown them? "No." Was he going to? "I can't tell you that now, but I will be able to tell you where I'm going to show them in November of this year."

Then it was time to go two doors down, where we were to eat. This required everyone to head out to the sidewalk. Some weren't sure it was time to leave yet, they thought there would be some kind of signal. "Maybe Irving Sandler heading over there is the signal," a colleague speculated.

"Is this where we go?" asked Clarissa Dalrymple, near a door.

"No, those are the steps to the basement," said Stefan Kalmár.

Everyone had to cluster outside at the second door as they waited for admission, and seemed equally obliged to smoke a cigarette as they did so. Inside the second space they ate duck and carrots and drank red wine.

The artist, writer and AIDS activist Gregg Bordowitz then gave a passionate introduction for Mr. Crimp which began, in part, "I am who I am today because of Douglas Crimp."  He'd introduced Mr. Crimp to those fighting the spread of HIV in the city, and Mr. Crimp taught him how to be passionate about art.

"This is a man who once reported that he desired to lick the surface of a Brice Marden painting," Mr. Bordowitz said.

Mr. Crimp gave his speech afterward, which mostly thanked people like Mr. Bordowitz and Helene Winer, a former director of Artists Space. "I've been extremely lucky in my life with my friendships," he said.

Mr. Crimp curated the "Pictures" show at Artists Space in 1977, which featured Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo and Philip Smith, and led to the development of the term "Pictures Generation." The show's legacy still surprises him, he said at his table, especially since most people didn't even see the show, but only read his catalogue essay for it in October.

"It was a time when there wasn't really a sense of direction in the art world and there had been up to that point, this movement followed that movement," he said. "I guess it was my  understanding of the task of criticism at the time, which was to say, 'this follows this,' so I guess I gave it some kind of coherence. But also the artists were doing something legitimately new."

"To tell you the truth I wouldn't even presume to answer what the role of art criticism is anymore," he added. "I'm working on a memoir so I'm more interested in how I became a critic. Plus the art world is way, way, way, way, way bigger and there's way, way, way, way more money. I don't think there is such a thing as an art world. I think we can say at that time it felt like there was, but now there are hundreds of art worlds."

It was certainly the week for that sentiment. Robert Longo gave the evening high marks, saying he normally avoided Frieze-related events, and had only gone to one other one in the past week. What did he think of the fair itself?

He looked at me over his tinted lenses and said, "Artists don't go to art fairs, bro."

'Expo 1' Arrives

The main room of the Museum of Modern Art looked like it was underwater Saturday night, illuminated by cyan lights and studded with round tables that glowed like bioluminescent jelly fish. Perhaps the effect was intentional, given the ecological slant of "Expo 1," for which the dinner was being thrown by Klaus Biesenbach, Glenn Lowry and Volkswagen's Hans Dieter Pötsch and Jonathan Browning.

A series of speeches began after the guests—James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Adrian Villar Rojas and Doug Aitken—took their seats. Mr. Biesenbach discussed the urgency of the exhibition. "CO2 levels are at an all-time high in three million years," he said, eliciting an ironic cheer from artist Meg Webster. It wasn't until the end of his speech that he explained why a bright yellow plastic flower was dangling around his neck, which earned giggles from the crowd whenever the half-dozen flat screens installed around the room showed  it close up. It turned out to be a solar-powered Little Sun designed by artist Olafur Eliasson, who is distributing them in off-grid areas of the world (and to MoMA's dinner guests as party favors). Mr. Eliasson's work in "Expo 1" consists of 850-year-old chunks of Icelandic glacier. "I like to call them our little ice cubes," said Mr. Biesenbach.

Once the crowd worked its way through dinner, Martha Wainwright took the stage in cat-eye makeup and a black jacket bedecked with sparkly orange birds. "We tried to find three songs that fit with the theme of the show, which was hard because most singers tend to sing about themselves," she said. Not even the wonky acoustics of the space could detract from her voice as she belted "Country Roads" for her final number.

Dessert was paired with another performance, this one from an artist who more than a few people thought was Mr. Biesenbach's niece after his slightly accented introduction. Her name, in fact, was Mileece, and she sang ethereal vowel sounds while controlling loops by stroking fake flowers equipped with sensors. "I hope this exhibition is as fantastic as it's expected to be," she said in conclusion.

By the time dinner ended, a crowd was already swirling around the sculpture garden for the after-party. Volkswagen logos were visible everywhere, even at the bottom of the shallow pool leading to Aristide Maillol's sculpture of a falling woman.  "It's like Gatsby," said one guest, of the highly visible sponsorship. As the hour grew late, party-goers slipped out one by one to visit the Rain Room, before heading off into the night.

'That Girl T.G. Awake' (2012–13) by McCarthy. (Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth)

An hour before Paul McCarthy’s “Life Cast” exhibition opened last week at Hauser & Wirth’s Upper East Side townhouse, actress Elyse Poppers, a brunette in a blue dress, stood surrounded by three unnervingly realistic replicas of herself in the nude. Each painstakingly hand-painted silicone cast is so lifelike that, she said, “people who come from outside think that they’re real before they get all the way in. Delivery guys especially are really freaked out.”

It’s easy to see why. The casts are perfect copies of Ms. Poppers’s body, down to her peachy skin tone,  fingerprints, fine creases, tan lines and tiny moles. They sit, legs outstretched, in a bare room on clinical white boards topped with glass. Ms. Poppers, who in a pair of wedge-heeled ankle boots was barely taller than her seated sculptural counterparts, said that she enjoys watching people look at them. “It feels really liberating.”

Ms. Poppers met Paul McCarthy a couple years ago when she auditioned for the role of Natalie Wood in Rebel Dabble Babble (2012), a video by Mr. McCarthy and his son Damon. The piece, which co-stars James Franco and explores the rumored, quasi-incestuous relationships between Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray and his young cast, will open at Hauser & Wirth’s downtown location on June 20. (WS, another project involving Ms. Poppers, will open the day before at the Park Avenue Armory.) Mr. McCarthy is ubiquitous in New York these days, with his enormous Snow White sculptures in the downtown space, a sizable bronze at the edge of the Hudson River at West 17th Street and his monumental Balloon Dog (2013), which towered over Frieze New York. The life casts, though, are the most viscerally affecting.

“It’s a new level of figurative sculpture,” said Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, in the gallery the day after the opening. He found That Girl T.G. Awake (2012-2013), the trio of seated sculptures, particularly impressive. “To take the oldest art form—figurative sculpture, nude sculpture—and do something that’s so fresh ... I’m just knocked out. I’m amazed at this level where reality and the reality of art, where the border is almost imperceptible.”

The life casts engage not only sculpture (from the ancient Greeks to John De Andrea and Duane Hanson), but iconic 2D works like Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde (1866), the famous obstetrician’s-eye view of a woman’s anatomy, and Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face) (1981). “I think part of the interest in doing this was subverting that history of the female nude and being the object,” said Ms. Poppers. “And having a little more agency.”

A Los Angeles native, Ms. Poppers auditioned for Rebel Dabble Babble shortly after moving back home to pursue acting, following stints working as an art appraiser and a private investigator. Standing in the gallery wearing a black mesh trucker hat, Mr. McCarthy said he was struck by her ability to connect with his perverse portrayal of Ray. After freaking out a few hopefuls with lascivious questions about their boyfriends, Mr. McCarthy said he would begin laughing maniacally. “What happened with Elyse is she immediately went into it and twisted it back and kind of laughed with me, and there was a laughing moment. Elyse understood something that the others didn’t.”

He decided to work with Ms. Poppers again on the “Life Cast” project partly because of her interest in cyborgs. “The reality of what it took to make these was way beyond what any of those other people would have done,” he said. “They would have been gone weeks ago.” Next, the artist and his muse plan to embark on robotics—a video upstairs at Hauser & Wirth records Ms. Poppers, nude, making subtle movements that they will use to inform the motions of mechanized pieces. “There’s something to do with the body at this moment and the time that we live in,” said Mr. McCarthy. “For me, these things have something to do with the digital and the virtual and what’s happening to the body. And I can’t help but make them. I will make more. They’re part of what I do now.”

To make the casts, Ms. Poppers was covered with goopy blue silicone and then encased in plaster, an elaborate process executed by Kazuhiro Tsuji, one of Hollywood’s premier special effects artists, and his team. “The position was probably the most challenging,” she said, crooking her knee to match that of the cast beside her. “The plaster becomes extremely hot and actually steams. It becomes so hot it could actually burn you if you didn’t have a layer of silicone underneath.”

People who see Ms. Poppers next to the casts don't always realize that they're of her. One day in the gallery, a couple of girls mistook her for an employee. When she told them she didn’t work there, they asked, “Oh, are you just here styling the bush?” referring to the sculptures’ pubic hair. “Actually,” she told them, “that’s my bush.”

In the end, Mr. McCarthy decided to remove that particular anatomical detail, after grappling with some rather intimate complexities of realism. “In the video she’s shaved and the crotch is shaved, and that’s not naturally her,” he said, “but in the moment of making the piece, that’s who she was. Were we making a portrait of Elyse as she is? Or are we making a portrait of Elyse at the moment of the process? We fought with it for months.”

At the opening, a man could be seen extending his smartphone between each sculpture’s legs to make his own Courbet. “There’s a violation,” said Mr. McCarthy. “You know, she’s about as real as you’re going to get physically the outside of her body, but you think it’s fucking okay to make 100 photographs of her?”

Ms. Poppers didn’t seem to mind. “It’s flattering that people want to photograph them,” she said.

Jessica Morgan, who will act as president of the International Jury. (Courtesy the Venice Biennale)

Venice Biennale officials have announced the five members of the International Jury, which will determine the recipients of the coveted Golden and Silver Lion prizes at this year's exposition. The jury, which will be led by Jessica Morgan, the Daskalopoulos Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, will also include Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, the chief curator of the 9a. Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil and curator for contemporary art at the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in New York and Caracas, Francesco Manacorda, who was recently appointed artistic director of Tate Liverpool, Bisi Silva, founder and director of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, Nigeria, and Ali Subotnick, curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. 

The jury, whose members were proposed by Massimiliano Gioni and approved by the Biennale board of directors, will award the Gold Lion for best national participation, the Gold Lion for best artist in the international exhibition "The Encyclopedic Palace" and the Silver Lion for a promising young artist in the exhibition on opening day—June 1—at 11 a.m. at the Giardini of la Biennale.

Opening: Dena Yago at Malraux's Place
I have never been to an opening at Sebastian Black's studio, but cannot fault his taste. I have to miss this one tonight because of the Leonardo DiCaprio auction, but if I didn't have that I'd go in a second. Photo courtesy of Art Observed. —Dan Duray
Malraux's Place, 253 36th Street (Sixth floor), Brooklyn, 7–9 p.m.

TUESDAY, MAY 14

Memorial: "Daniel Reich: Believer" at Abrons Arts Center
NADA hosts a gathering in honor of the late art dealer Daniel Reich, who passed away in December. —Michael H. Miller
Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, New York, 4-7 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15

Opening: Dan Colen, "The spirits that I called," at Oko
There's not exactly a shortage of Disney-related art in town, what with Paul McCarthy's immense Snow White sculptures at Hauser & Wirth, but a little more can't hurt. According to the gallery's announcement, Dan Colen's new Fantasia-inspired oil paintings depict "non-figurative and relatively empty landscapes that quote the movie's overwrought visual elements of magic and fantasy. —Zoë Lescaze
Oko, 22 East 10th Street, New York, 8-10 p.m. 

Reading: "A Guerilla Reading by Alex Ross" at the Museum of Modern Art
Every Wednesday, writers have been reading pieces they wrote in response to work in MoMA at the invitation of Kenneth Goldsmith, the museum's first poet laureate. This week it's New Yorker music critic Alex Ross. What, we wonder, did the The Rest Is Noise author choose to write about? A Kandinsky composition? Picasso's Three Musicians (1921)? Something a little less obvious, perhaps? Looking forward to finding out. —Z.L.
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, 12:30 p.m.

THURSDAY, MAY 16

Opening: "Rebind" at Eyebeam
Portland, Oreg.'s enterprising Publication Studio imprint is setting up camp in Eyebeam's bookstore for one week and organizing a variety of projects. For its "Rebind" exhibition, Publication Studio asked 42 artists to design unique covers for "iconic paperback books." It's a nice lineup of people! Among the participants are Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Amy Yao, B. Wurtz, Zak Kitnick, Ruby Sky Stiler and Oscar Tuazon. —Andrew Russeth
Eyebeam, 540 West 21st Street, New York, 6–9 p.m.

FRIDAY, MAY 17

Talk: Suhail Malik at Artists Space Books & Talks
Mr. Malik presents the next installment in his talk series at Artists Space, "On the Necessity of Art's Exit from Contemporary Art." This one concerns: "The problem with contemporary art is not the contemporary." —D.D.
Artists Space Books & Talks, 55 Walker Street, New York, 7 p.m. $5

Talk: Call & Response III: The Political Aesthetic
Part of a series of talks for the 20th anniversary of the Vera List Center. This is an all-day thing, but the talk I selected seems like it might interest our readers. Participants: Simon Critchley, Professor of Philosophy, The New School; Julie Mehretu, artist, New York; Joao Ribas, Curator, MIT List Center; Martha Rosler, artist, Vera List Center Advisory Committee member, New York. Moderated by David Joselit, Professor, Art History, Yale University. —D.D.
Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, New York, 2:30-4 p.m.

Opening: Joe Bradley, "Lotus Eaters," at Gavin Brown's Enterprise
Wondering what Joe Bradley has cooked up this time? Let's find out together. —A.R.
Gavin Brown's Enterprise, 620 Greenwich Street, New York, 6–8 p.m.

SATURDAY, MAY 18

Screening: Stan Brakhage at AFA
Anthology will screen six of Brakhage's early films from the 1950s, including Reflections on Black (1955) and Flesh of Morning (1956). Additional Brakhage screenings are scheduled through the month. —A.R.
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, New York, 3:45 p.m., $10

Benefit: 2013 White Columns Benefit + Auction
White Columns will hold its annual benefit, featuring work by more than 90 contemporary artists, including Alex Katz, Amanda Ross-Ho, Andrea Bowers, Elizabeth Peyton, Ryan Foerster and Wade Guyton. —M.H.M.
White Columns, 320 West 13th Street, New York, 7 p.m., tickets required, to purchase call 212-924-4212 

A copy of Andrea Bowers's letter on the wall at Kaufmann Repetto's booth. (The New York Observer)

When the staff of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects arrived at their Frieze New York booth this morning, they found a string stretched across the entrance and certain items missing. Artist Andrea Bowers, who became uncomfortable participating in the art fair after learning that certain unions were protesting its labor policies, asked the two galleries showing her work to display a letter alongside the pieces explaining her position. 

"Both of the letters were taken down at some point during the night," said Director of Sales Kevin Scholl. "When we got to the booth, they had been removed from the wall." The copy of the letter mounted on the wall in Milan-based gallery Kaufmann Repetto's booth was not touched.

Mr. Scholl said that the letter's mysterious disappearance and string could have resulted from a miscommunication with the cleaners, but that no one knows exactly what happened. "We're not too worried," he said. "We've printed it out again and it's back up on the wall."

"If it happens again tonight we'll definitely talk to the fair, but at the moment, we're thinking positively and assuming it was an accident," he said.

[UPDATE 4/10 5:18 p.m.] Mystery solved. "One of the fair managers came by the booth and explained that the security guards took the papers down last night," said Mr. Scholl. "They thought it was propaganda left behind." The string had been taped across the entrance to the booth because the gallery had designated that it did not want the space to be cleaned at night.

Merkx & Gwynne's corner of NADA. (The New York Observer)

The northeastern corner of Basketball City is looking more like Camelot than a court thanks to artists Andrea Merkx and Nathan Gwynne, who collaborated on what is perhaps the most ambitious installation at the second edition of the New Art Dealers Alliance's New York fair.

"This is like a royal tournament viewing tower," said Mr. Gwynne, gesturing to a scissor lift draped in black and white cloth that nearly touched the ceiling (no small feat in the vaulted space). "We wanted to do something that felt somewhat specific to being in the context of an art fair, which is like a jousting tournament in a lot of ways. Everybody's kind of prancing around in their best outfits, and there's some competition going on. It's also bit like a horse auction, so we kind of wanted to make a bit of a joke about that."

In front of the tower stood a life-size, saddled plastic horse wearing a red blindfold. "It belongs to my studio mate [Zerek Kempf]'s grandfather who lives in Ohio," said Mr. Gwynne, who happened upon the creature by chance a few weeks ago and decided to incorporate it into the piece. The pair will be using the various props to perform and film an opera with a "rough narrative arc" and nine songs that explores the courtly love affair between Arthurian icons Sir Lancelot and Queen Gwynevere.

"Later today, I'm going to be shaving and another friend is coming to wax my chest," said Mr. Gwynne, who was still heavily bearded at press time. "I'll be fitted for this gown and this wig over here and I'll become Gwynnevere, which is also just kind of a pun and a joke on my last name, and my collaborator Merkx is going to be Lancelot, or Sir Merkx-A-Lot."

The medieval props were punctuated by the occasional, anachronistic item, like a red riding jacket being steamed next to the stallion and a stuffed black panther clutching a giant red rose. Like the horse, it also had a story. Merkx & Gwynne got it from their friend Elizabeth Jaeger, who helped sew the fabric covering the scissor lift and has a sculpture on view at the nearby booth belonging to Brooklyn-based gallery 247365, but it originally belonged to Ryan McGinley. The stuffed cat lounged under a wall painted with dramatic black and red triangles divided by a white stripe that evoked heraldic flags and Russian Constructivism in equal measure.

The pair will be staging and filming their opera "sometime in the afternoon" on Saturday. Chances are, the piece won't get performed on the final day of the fair. "Sunday we'll probably all just have hangovers," said Mr. Gwynne.

See the slide show above for a glimpse into what's on view.

All photos by The New York Observer.