When You’ve Done Everything Else, Project Your Logo on a Museum

New Yorkers may not be able to reel off the top of our heads what's going on at the major museums, but aesthetically, the major museums of New York make sure to carve out footprints in the skyline, too, demanding that we visually check in with them every time we pass: there's the Guggenheim's space-age Beyblade, there's the Whitney's whole thing.

So what better place for a giant, free advertisement?

On Thursday, ad copy for "COWBOY CARTER," an upcoming album from Beyoncé, was projected on the facades of the Guggenheim and the Whitney, as well as the New Museum and the Museum of Art and Design.

The messages the ads were sending were muddled. It wasn't immediately clear how the ads, which displayed the "COWBOY CARTER" cover art and release date (March 29), as well as the quote, "This ain’t a country album. This is a 'Beyoncé' album" relate to the institutions they were projected on, if they do at all: The museums typically feature visual art rather than albums of any kind.

Art museums serve as a kind of cultural town square. Perhaps because they're a nexus where both the elevated ideal of artistic accomplishment and the inescapable financial realities that constrict art are forced to co-exist: a Sackler wing for feminist art here, a Bank of America partnership there. They're thus the sites of sometimes paradigm-shifting acts of protest that even become their own kind of performance art. 

The Guggenheim, in a statement to ArtNews, said that the museum "was not informed about and did not authorize this activation."

As if the spokesperson writing the statement began to hear buzzing in the distance, gulped and then tugged on their collar, the statement then continued: "However, we invite the public—including Beyoncé and her devoted fans—to visit the museum May 16–20 when we present projections by artist Jenny Holzer on the facade of our iconic building to celebrate the opening of her major exhibition."

So, apparently Beyoncé's team was able to secure the presumably high-powered projectors required to legibly present giant text on all these buildings, and that's all it took to run an ad campaign on New York's most famous facades. That's… interesting. You're telling me, hypothetically, all that's between the Hell Gate logo and an ad on the face of the Guggenheim is a presumably very expensive piece of equipment or someone willing to loan it to us?

Fascinating.

These links are fascinating too:

• Does Billy Joel actually ride the LIRR to his Madison Square Garden concerts?
• Why is a Mary Poppins-themed Twitter account obsessed with a Republican lawmaker? The answer may, or honestly may not, surprise you.
• One Texas bus company that's being sued by the City for busing in asylum seekers is halting the practice.
• Will Attorney General Tish James seize Donald Trump's Westchester mansion?
• Notoriously negligent landlord Daniel Ohebshalom turned himself in to begin a two month prison sentence for refusing to address conditions in two of his Manhattan apartments. Hell Gate published a story last year about how Ohebshalom's tenants were fighting back.
• A worker at an Amazon warehouse in East New York was awarded more than $4 million after the facility's ceiling collapsed under him in 2018, leaving him with a debilitating head injury.
• An owner and manager of Grimaldi's Pizzeria's Manhattan branch were arrested for over $20,000 in wage theft. 
• At a City Council hearing Wednesday, police officials continued to excuse encroaching radio encryption by saying "bad guys" are listening in.
• The plot of an alleged Queens squatter thickens: Were the home's owners in on the squatting?! And that's not even the extent of the morning's Queens squatter drama: a new challenger appeared at a spot in Flushing!
• Meanwhile, these Manhattan squatters may have murdered someone!
• Despite high-profile campaigns against the shops, the City has been hesitant to fine the landlords of illegal cannabis dispensaries.
• Might Bob Menendez still run for New Jersey senator as an independent? He's leaving his options open.
• Is this bagel boss sabotaging leftover bagels to keep them from going to the needy?