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Year End Issue
Art Handler

Year End Issue

Art Handler
December 22, 2020
Feature

Year End Issue

Art Handler
December 22, 2020 / Special Issue
Feature

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Year End Issue

Art Handler
December 22, 2020 / Special Issue
Feature

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Contents
Module

Year End Issue

Art Handler
+

Shooting the Delaware Freeport

Gil Lavi
+

The Delaware Freeport Offers an Opportunity for Divestment

Kyle Proehl
+

In Storage

Kyra Kordoski
+

In Situ

Savash Erenler
+

Interview with Marshall Didier

Clynton Lowry
+

Interview with Lindsay Barfield

Olivia Manno
+

Interview with Tony Matelli

Daniel Smyth
+

Sitting for Seth Price

Daniel Smyth
+

The Blue Hoist Project

Patrick O’Sullivan
+

The Dialectics of a Service Relationship

Wolfgang Ullrich
+

Handle With Special Care

Monika Dommann
+

“What Does the Boss Want?” Jimmie Durham in the *Haus Wittgenstein*

Miriam Atkin
+

Wrapped Up in Work

Elisabeth Franck-Dumas
+

What is an Image?

Christopher Carlton
+

The D.H.

William McMillan
+

This End Up

Hector Serna
+

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Art

Marcello Elisei
+

Writing in Common

Kyle Proehl
+

Interview with Colin and Alex of Sotheby’s

James Whitman
+

Ghost Money

Jonathan Peck
+

Fifteen Notes on New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter, 2016

Christopher Carlton
+

In and Out of Fashion Week

Kyle Proehl
+

Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 and Frieze New York 2016

Irina Arellano-Weiss
+

Interview with Dushko Petrovich

Amy Beecher
+

Work Space

Drew Broderick
+

In Favor of the Collective: “Just Cause : Bad Faith”

Amanda Ryan
+

The Bright Void

Jeffrey Stuker
+

What Can Art Tell Us About Art Handling?

Orlando Reade
+

Handing Down

Matthew Monteith
+

Interview with Chuck Close, Manolo Bustamante, and Robert Storr

Chuck Close, Manolo Bustamante, and Robert Storr
+

Tuesday

Kyra Kordoski
+

NADA and Frieze, NY: Installation, Deinstallation

Maayan Strauss
+

What Does the Art Handler Know?

Orlando Reade
+

The Piano Mover

Joshua Simon
+

The Overqualified

Joshua Simon
+

Fingers

David Humphrey
+

Form Ever Follows

Marie Lorenz
+

Fragile

Inbal Strauss
+

Art In Transit: “Carrying Case for Andy Warhol Pillow”

Adam Lauder
+

Walead Beshty: Work Ethics and Object Aesthetics

Rory O’Dea
+

Art Handling in Hungary

Art Handler
+

Installator: An Interview with Britton Bertran

Kyra Kordoski
+

Who Are the Art Handlers Alliance of New York, and What Do They Want?

Art Handlers Alliance of New York
+

The Art Handler’s Bill of Rights

Art Handlers Alliance of New York
+

Béatrice Balcou, In Praise of Gesture

Rozenn Canevet
+

Sleeper

Clynton Lowry
+

Re-exhibition

Victor Hugo
+

Extremely Mello

Bryce Wilner and Kit Rosenberg
+

Cowboy Grub

Cecilia Busick
+

Harvey Opgenorth’s *Art Crates*

Ben Critton
+

UP

Ben Critton
+

Day of the Art Trucker

Ben Ferguson
+

The Artist Mover

Erik Gonzalez
+

10th Annual New York Art Book Fair: Installation in Drawings and Pictures

Clynton Lowry and Virginia Lee Montgomery
+

Preparation, Art Handling and Collections Care Information Network (PACCIN)

Mark Wamaling and Ashley McGrew
+

Handling Occupied Art: Methods of Art Handling, Documentation and Preservation by the Nazis During World War II

Rob van Leijsen
+

Interview with Shane Caffrey

Clynton Lowry
+

Interview with Cristina Covucci

Maayan Strauss
+

ABMB: Art Basel Miami Beach, 2014

Gideon Barnett
+

The First Conference on Art Handling

Christoph Lang
+

The Ideology of the Immaterial Oeuvre

Pascal Gielen
+

Backstage Or How a Particular Artwork Came to be Handled

Adam Aboulafia and Eden Bannet
+

Review of Chicago: The Very Best of Judy Chicago, by an Art Handler

Jarrod Shanahan
+
Search
Special Issue, December 2020

Editor-in-Chief Clynton Lowry
Managing Editor Lucy Hunter
Copy Editor Beth Williams

At the close of 2020, Art Handler invited our beloved community of art workers to imagine a better future and cast off a fucked-up past. Click the article below to read their compiled responses in our year end mini-issue.

Year End Issue
Art Handler
Dec '20 (Special Issue)
Feature

I am an art worker, which also means I am a masochist.

Feature
Dec '20
Issue 2, November 2016

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
Gil Lavi
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Feature

Now everything is hidden in plain sight.

Feature
Nov '16
The Delaware Freeport Offers an Opportunity for Divestment
Kyle Proehl
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Feature

When I walked into his office his first words as we shook hands were, ‘So who punched you in the head?’

Feature
Nov '16
In Storage
Kyra Kordoski
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Feature

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.

Feature
Nov '16
In Situ
Savash Erenler
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Project

Savash Erenler takes photos of install and deinstall scenes to explore the privileged situation in which art handlers often find themselves.

Project
Nov '16
Interview with Marshall Didier
Clynton Lowry
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Practice

It wasn’t cutthroat. Things changed, but the world has changed. It’s not just the art-moving business.

Practice
Nov '16
Interview with Lindsay Barfield
Olivia Manno
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Practice

We were thirty minutes in when we called it off, because it was simply too dangerous for us.

Practice
Nov '16
Interview with Tony Matelli
Daniel Smyth
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Practice

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.

Practice
Nov '16
Sitting for Seth Price
Daniel Smyth
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Practice

The first morning before meeting, Seth scheduled an appointment for me to have my leg and arm waxed hairless at a local spa.

Practice
Nov '16
The Blue Hoist Project
Patrick O’Sullivan
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Practice

Not surprisingly, once it became clear we had this new method, work around large paintings seemed to increase significantly.

Practice
Nov '16
The Dialectics of a Service Relationship
Wolfgang Ullrich
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Annotation

So the conditions Watteau painted on his shop sign become relevant once more: a rich social class keeps subordinate servants.

Annotation
Nov '16
Handle With Special Care
Monika Dommann
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Annotation

Yet even the security locks weren’t immune to being picked.

Annotation
Nov '16
“What Does the Boss Want?” Jimmie Durham in the *Haus Wittgenstein*
Miriam Atkin
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Annotation

That language should be exact is a value which is forcibly agreed to under the whip.

Annotation
Nov '16
Wrapped Up in Work
Elisabeth Franck-Dumas
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Annotation

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.’

Annotation
Nov '16
What is an Image?
Christopher Carlton
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Annotation

There is no breeze to agitate a flower here.

Annotation
Nov '16
The D.H.
William McMillan
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Annotation

A few years ago, I hung a David Hammons show that nobody saw but me.

Annotation
Nov '16
This End Up
Hector Serna
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Project

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.

Project
Nov '16
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Art
Marcello Elisei
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Labor

It’s like finding a body part.

Labor
Nov '16
Writing in Common
Kyle Proehl
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Labor

Not a singular I or identifiable We but something between, the polyvocality of a chorus.

Labor
Nov '16
Interview with Colin and Alex of Sotheby’s
James Whitman
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Labor

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.

Labor
Nov '16
Ghost Money
Jonathan Peck
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Project

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.

Project
Nov '16
Fifteen Notes on New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter, 2016
Christopher Carlton
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Fashion

In the middle of winter, three teenage girls were having a beach party on the sidewalk.

Fashion
Nov '16
In and Out of Fashion Week
Kyle Proehl
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Fashion

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.

Fashion
Nov '16
Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 and Frieze New York 2016
Irina Arellano-Weiss
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Project

Photographer Irina Arellano-Weiss shoots the fair installs and deinstalls while working as an art handler.

Project
Nov '16
Interview with Dushko Petrovich
Amy Beecher
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Education

I don’t think academia looks particularly inclusive, idealistic, fair, any of that.

Education
Nov '16
Work Space
Drew Broderick
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Review

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.

Review
Nov '16
In Favor of the Collective: “Just Cause : Bad Faith”
Amanda Ryan
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Review

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.

Review
Nov '16
The Bright Void
Jeffrey Stuker
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Review

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.

Review
Nov '16
What Can Art Tell Us About Art Handling?
Orlando Reade
Nov '16 (Issue 2)
Review

But here the bodies are like two revealed backends of a carnival donkey.

Review
Nov '16
Issue 1, July 2015

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
Matthew Monteith
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Feature

Feature
Jul '15
Interview with Chuck Close, Manolo Bustamante, and Robert Storr
Chuck Close, Manolo Bustamante, and Robert Storr
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Feature

If you’re having trouble making a decision, then do something outrageous and get fired.

Feature
Jul '15
Tuesday
Kyra Kordoski
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Review

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.

Review
Jul '15
NADA and Frieze, NY: Installation, Deinstallation
Maayan Strauss
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Project

Project
Jul '15
What Does the Art Handler Know?
Orlando Reade
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Annotation

Annotation
Jul '15
The Piano Mover
Joshua Simon
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Annotation

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. 

Annotation
Jul '15
The Overqualified
Joshua Simon
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Labor

Labor
Jul '15
Fingers
David Humphrey
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Annotation

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.

Annotation
Jul '15
Form Ever Follows
Marie Lorenz
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

Practice
Jul '15
Fragile
Inbal Strauss
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

The art handler’s toolbox is an appropriated, or “recruited” one, not containing enough designated designs that may perform required functions even more efficiently.

Practice
Jul '15
Art In Transit: “Carrying Case for Andy Warhol Pillow”
Adam Lauder
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

Practice
Jul '15
Walead Beshty: Work Ethics and Object Aesthetics
Rory O’Dea
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Review

Review
Jul '15
Art Handling in Hungary
Art Handler
Jul '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

When I was younger, I always wanted to do art handling. Luckily, I was born into it.

Practice
Jul '15
Installator: An Interview with Britton Bertran
Kyra Kordoski
Aug '15 (Issue 1)
Review

I don’t understand exactly who my audience is, but I know that there are a lot of younger people checking it out.

Review
Aug '15
Who Are the Art Handlers Alliance of New York, and What Do They Want?
Art Handlers Alliance of New York
Aug '15 (Issue 1)
Labor

Labor
Aug '15
The Art Handler’s Bill of Rights
Art Handlers Alliance of New York
Aug '15 (Issue 1)
Labor

Labor
Aug '15
Béatrice Balcou, In Praise of Gesture
Rozenn Canevet
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Review

Review
Sep '15
Sleeper
Clynton Lowry
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Fashion

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.

Fashion
Sep '15
Re-exhibition
Victor Hugo
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Project

Project
Sep '15
Extremely Mello
Bryce Wilner and Kit Rosenberg
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Annotation

Annotation
Sep '15
Cowboy Grub
Cecilia Busick
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Food

Food
Sep '15
Harvey Opgenorth’s *Art Crates*
Ben Critton
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Review

Review
Sep '15
UP
Ben Critton
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Project

Project
Sep '15
Day of the Art Trucker
Ben Ferguson
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Labor

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.

Labor
Sep '15
The Artist Mover
Erik Gonzalez
Sep '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

We know where your address is; we know all your stuff; we know how to open up the doors.

Practice
Sep '15
10th Annual New York Art Book Fair: Installation in Drawings and Pictures
Clynton Lowry and Virginia Lee Montgomery
(Issue 1)
Project

Project
Preparation, Art Handling and Collections Care Information Network (PACCIN)
Mark Wamaling and Ashley McGrew
Oct '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

Practice
Oct '15
Handling Occupied Art: Methods of Art Handling, Documentation and Preservation by the Nazis During World War II
Rob van Leijsen
Oct '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

Practice
Oct '15
Interview with Shane Caffrey
Clynton Lowry
Nov '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

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.”

Practice
Nov '15
Interview with Cristina Covucci
Maayan Strauss
Nov '15 (Issue 1)
Practice

Practice
Nov '15
ABMB: Art Basel Miami Beach, 2014
Gideon Barnett
Dec '15 (Issue 1)
Project

Project
Dec '15
The First Conference on Art Handling
Christoph Lang
(Issue 1)
Practice

Practice
The Ideology of the Immaterial Oeuvre
Pascal Gielen
Jan '16 (Issue 1)
Practice

Practice
Jan '16
Backstage Or How a Particular Artwork Came to be Handled
Adam Aboulafia and Eden Bannet
Jan '16 (Issue 1)
Practice

Practice
Jan '16
Review of Chicago: The Very Best of Judy Chicago, by an Art Handler
Jarrod Shanahan
Feb '16 (Issue 1)
Review

Review
Feb '16
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