The Rake’s progress: last week in gossip

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.

To Colorado, where artist Lee Mulcahy has been charged with littering after dumping an esoteric array of items outside the Aspen Art Museum. According to a police report, Mulcahy was caught on CCTV offloading objects including ‘multiple springs, a large plastic planter, a washer/dryer silver tube and a small bicycle’. The artist, who was banned from the institution in 2011 after placing ‘for sale’ signs around its premises, says that far from fly-tipping, he was actually presenting the museum with an art installation. ‘I think it’s very sad the art museum would consider my art trash,’ he says. ‘I would like to have a debate with the CEO of the art museum as to what actually constitutes art.’ Reader, judge for yourself…

Lee Mulcahy sculpture in front of @aspenartmuseum on public property @pahc @cityofaspen @aspenskico pic.twitter.com/eVSPdJLsva

— Lee Mulcahy, artist (@artistinaspen) October 15, 2017

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Ken Loach is up in arms about ungainly new developments and imitation Georgian architecture in his hometown of Bath. Speaking to the Guardian ahead of an appearance at the Festival of the Future City last week, the film director complained that Bath had become sanitised in recent years. ‘It’s too clean’, he told the paper. ‘It’s like an old person with Botox’.

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If proof were needed that the V&A is going through a purple patch, the institution has just announced that it has acquired a pair of custom-made shoes once owned by Prince. The late musician’s decidedly fancy footwear includes special metal braces, fitted to aid his legendarily athletic stage performances, as well as zip tags designed in the shape of his unpronounceable ‘love symbol #2’ logo. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea just got a lot more regal…

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Amongst the stranger missives Rakewell received last week was an invitation to the Virtual International Fine Art Fair, an online exhibition billed as an ‘art event of diversity, and intellect’. VIFAF will be accessible via digital event platform Posterus 360, and will apparently extend ‘over more than 12000M² exhibition space with as well two most extraordinary locations such as the Moon and Mars [sic]’. Blast off!

Got a story for Rakewell? Get in touch at rakewell@apollomag.com or via @Rakewelltweets.