Wrapped Up in Work
Elisabeth Franck Dumas is a freelance journalist. She was a reporter for
Translated by Jeffrey Stuker for
Wrapped Up in Work
Wrapped Up in Work
Wrapped Up in Work
Wrapped Up in Work
Wrapped Up in Work
Wrapped Up in Work
Elisabeth Franck Dumas is a freelance journalist. She was a reporter for
Translated by Jeffrey Stuker for
Wrapped Up in Work
Elisabeth Franck Dumas is a freelance journalist. She was a reporter for
Translated by Jeffrey Stuker for
Handing Down
In Conversation
Tuesday
NADA and Frieze, NY: Installation, Deinstallation
What Does the Art Handler Know?
The Piano Mover
The Overqualified
Fingers
Form Ever Follows
Fragile
Art In Transit: “Carrying Case for Andy Warhol Pillow”
Walead Beshty: Work Ethics and Object Aesthetics
Art Handling in Hungary
Installator: An Interview with Britton Bertran
Who Are the Art Handlers Alliance of New York, and What Do They Want?
The Art Handler’s Bill of Rights
Béatrice Balcou, In Praise of Gesture
Sleeper
Re-exhibition
Extremely Mello
Cowboy Grub
Harvey Opgenorth’s Art Crates
UP
Day of the Art Trucker
The Artist Mover
10th Annual New York Art Book Fair: Installation in Drawings and Pictures
Preparation, Art Handling and Collections Care Information Network (PACCIN)
Handling Occupied Art: Methods of Art Handling, Documentation and Preservation by the Nazis During World War II
Interview with Shane Caffrey
Interview with Cristina Covucci
ABMB: Art Basel Miami Beach, 2014
The First Conference on Art Handling
The Ideology of the Immaterial Oeuvre
Backstage Or How a Particular Artwork Came to be Handled
Review of Chicago: The Very Best of Judy Chicago, by an Art Handler
Shooting the Delaware Freeport
The Delaware Freeport Offers an Opportunity for Divestment
In Storage
In Situ
Interview with Marshall Didier
Interview with Lindsay Barfield
Interview with Tony Matelli
Sitting for Seth Price
The Blue Hoist Project
The Dialectics of a Service Relationship
Handle With Special Care
“What Does the Boss Want?” Jimmie Durham in the Haus Wittgenstein
Wrapped Up in Work
What is an Image?
The D.H.
This End Up
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Art
Writing in Common
Interview with Colin and Alex of Sotheby’s
Ghost Money
Fifteen Notes on New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter, 2016
In and Out of Fashion Week
Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 and Frieze New York 2016
Interview with Dushko Petrovich
Work Space
In Favor of the Collective: “Just Cause : Bad Faith”
The Bright Void
What Can Art Tell Us About Art Handling?
Editor-in-Chief Clynton Lowry
Editor Kyle Proehl
Copy Editor Steven Witkowski
“I think eventually certain actors that aren’t upfront will gradually make themselves known.” Richard Prince
Shooting the Delaware Freeport
Now everything is hidden in plain sight.
The Delaware Freeport Offers an Opportunity for Divestment
When I walked into his office his first words as we shook hands were, ‘So who punched you in the head?’
In Storage
These are environments that consist predominantly of only the highest and lowest art strata—super rich collectors and the manual laborers who move their riches around.
In Situ
Savash Erenler takes photos of install and deinstall scenes to explore the privileged situation in which art handlers often find themselves.
Interview with Marshall Didier
It wasn’t cutthroat. Things changed, but the world has changed. It’s not just the art-moving business.
Interview with Lindsay Barfield
We were thirty minutes in when we called it off, because it was simply too dangerous for us.
Interview with Tony Matelli
We would hear rumors—our checks would bounce occasionally—that Jeff’s going bankrupt, then all of a sudden we would hear Mercedes Benz is going to infuse five million dollars into production again, this sort of thing.
Sitting for Seth Price
The first morning before meeting, Seth scheduled an appointment for me to have my leg and arm waxed hairless at a local spa.
The Blue Hoist Project
Not surprisingly, once it became clear we had this new method, work around large paintings seemed to increase significantly.
The Dialectics of a Service Relationship
So the conditions Watteau painted on his shop sign become relevant once more: a rich social class keeps subordinate servants.
Handle With Special Care
Yet even the security locks weren’t immune to being picked.
“What Does the Boss Want?” Jimmie Durham in the Haus Wittgenstein
That language should be exact is a value which is forcibly agreed to under the whip.
Wrapped Up in Work
According to one bemused connoisseur at the Louvre ‘there are ten people in white gloves to unhang a painting that only two people will touch.’
What is an Image?
There is no breeze to agitate a flower here.
The D.H.
A few years ago, I hung a David Hammons show that nobody saw but me.
This End Up
Any art handler knows that most paintings are only good for putting holes in walls. These scrawled instructions for hanging and other chores show how skepticism and a ragged line come to aid the task of seeing.
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Art
It’s like finding a body part.
Writing in Common
Not a singular I or identifiable We but something between, the polyvocality of a chorus.
Interview with Colin and Alex of Sotheby’s
And you have to have respect for what you do in order to earn what you’re asking for, because they have to respect what you do in order for them to give you the things that you’re asking for.
Ghost Money
In these works the art handler’s demystifying project is held up as if to ridicule; and yet the flames that burn pencil and knife and measuring tape show not only that these objects are not what they pretend to be, but that the suggested provocation is not held within the frame. The functional trap of human tools goes up like an undeciphered smoke signal.
Fifteen Notes on New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter, 2016
In the middle of winter, three teenage girls were having a beach party on the sidewalk.
In and Out of Fashion Week
Maybe pranced isn’t the word, but maybe there isn’t a word for the way he ran, haltingly, on his toes, in a tiny cloud of attendants, like he was terribly late to an important place whose doors were closed and he couldn’t be happier.
Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 and Frieze New York 2016
Photographer Irina Arellano-Weiss shoots the fair installs and deinstalls while working as an art handler.
Interview with Dushko Petrovich
I don’t think academia looks particularly inclusive, idealistic, fair, any of that.
Work Space
There is nothing on the island, save locally produced materials, that has not been packed and transported thousands of miles across the vast Pacific Ocean to one of the most isolated land masses in the world.
In Favor of the Collective: “Just Cause : Bad Faith”
The prescription offered by ‘Just Cause’ is clear—we need to start thinking of art handling as a skilled profession and a career path like any other trade, rather than as a temporary position one holds until they make it or drop out.
The Bright Void
Here, the ink within the tool most directly associated with reading as a labor—even if that ink appears an interface designer’s metaphor—emerges as pure accumulation.
What Can Art Tell Us About Art Handling?
But here the bodies are like two revealed backends of a carnival donkey.
Editor-in-Chief Clynton Lowry
Managing Editor Maayan Strauss
Copy Editor Steven Witkowski
“Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described.” Susan Sontag
Handing Down
In Conversation
If you’re having trouble making a decision, then do something outrageous and get fired.
Tuesday
An artwork is a focal point within a network of social relations; it is becoming increasingly difficult for the art industry to ignore the fact that this network includes the diverse segment of people who safe-guard its physical wellbeing and build the environments that expand its social potential and dollar value.
NADA and Frieze, NY: Installation, Deinstallation
What Does the Art Handler Know?
The Piano Mover
A video made by Russian pianists/movers in Tel Aviv goofing around; one of them crosses the street and plays a romantic tune on an upright piano, while carrying another one on his back.
The Overqualified
Fingers
I was an art handler for a few different galleries in the late seventies and early eighties. I remember sneering with artist co-workers at the cheesy effects of the then-unknown Gerhard Richter’s gestural paintings we were lazily installing at Marian Goodman.
Form Ever Follows
Fragile
The art handler’s toolbox is an appropriated, or “recruited” one, not containing enough designated designs that may perform required functions even more efficiently.
Art In Transit: “Carrying Case for Andy Warhol Pillow”
Walead Beshty: Work Ethics and Object Aesthetics
Art Handling in Hungary
When I was younger, I always wanted to do art handling. Luckily, I was born into it.
Installator: An Interview with Britton Bertran
I don’t understand exactly who my audience is, but I know that there are a lot of younger people checking it out.
Who Are the Art Handlers Alliance of New York, and What Do They Want?
The Art Handler’s Bill of Rights
Béatrice Balcou, In Praise of Gesture
Sleeper
In the readymade, the artist’s handling of the object is off-limits, and despite this initial radicalism, preserves a conservative convention of representation. In art handling, value is expressed in the relationships between touching and looking.
Re-exhibition
Extremely Mello
Cowboy Grub
Harvey Opgenorth’s Art Crates
UP
Day of the Art Trucker
But short days or days off rarely come when they’re most needed, like during a hangover, and they usually happen when cash is tight.
The Artist Mover
We know where your address is; we know all your stuff; we know how to open up the doors.
10th Annual New York Art Book Fair: Installation in Drawings and Pictures
Preparation, Art Handling and Collections Care Information Network (PACCIN)
Handling Occupied Art: Methods of Art Handling, Documentation and Preservation by the Nazis During World War II
Interview with Shane Caffrey
So many rules are made up on the spot, like a bunch of people get together and they’re like, “I don’t know, yeah, I’ve never sold a balloon before.”
Interview with Cristina Covucci
ABMB: Art Basel Miami Beach, 2014
The First Conference on Art Handling
The Ideology of the Immaterial Oeuvre
Backstage Or How a Particular Artwork Came to be Handled
Review of Chicago: The Very Best of Judy Chicago, by an Art Handler