MNUCHIN WON'T RELEASE THE HARRIET TUBMAN $20, BUT ARTIST DANO WALL'S 3D STAMP FIXES THAT...

The redesigned Harriet Tubman $20 bill was supposed to debut in 2020 but it may not come out for nearly a decade according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Tubman, who was born into slavery and became a noted abolitionist and political activist, was to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. She would be the first woman, black or otherwise, to have her face on U.S. currency. The new bill was scheduled to be released in 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Mnuchin said yesterday that it won’t be happening under the Trump administration. Mnuchin told the House Financial Services Committee. 

“It’s not a decision that is likely to come until way past my term, even if I serve the second term for the president. So I’m not focused on that for the moment.”

Mnuchin said changing how the bill looks “most likely” won’t come up again until 2026, he said, and the new $20 bill won’t be printed until 2028. Mnuchin did not explain why the Tubman bill won’t be produced on his watch and wouldn’t say whether he personally supports seeing Tubman on the money. 

“I’ve made no decision as it relates to that.” 

In 2017, Trump pushed back on the decision, saying, 

“Well, Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill.”

(Btw, Jackson was an anti-abolitionist, slave owner, and responsible for the Indian Removal Act. The Act, also known as the Trail of Tears, was a forced relocation and mass genocide of Native American nations, in part carried out to make room for plantations and expand slave ownership in the young country. Arguably our worst President, if you don’t count the current one.)

But Artist Dano Wall has made a proactive step toward getting Tubman’s likeness onto the $20 bill NOW. Wall created a 3-D printed stamp to DIY your 20s.

Wall said,

“I was inspired by the news that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, and subsequently saddened by the news that the Trump administration was walking back that plan. So I created a stamp to convert Jacksons into Tubmans myself. I have been stamping $20 bills and entering them into circulation for the last year, and gifting stamps to friends to do the same.

This country, and its government, have a serious problem with representation. Who we choose to honor as a society affects the moral attitudes that are baked into us as we grow up. The impact that seeing the face of Harriet Tubman staring back at you from a $20 bill should not be underestimated. This sort of representation can subtly but deeply affect someone’s conception of themselves and their place in society.”

In her book, Omarosa alleges that Trump, when shown an image of Tubman, said: 

“You want me to put that face on the twenty-dollar bill?”

Wall says he hopes to make 100-200 additional stamps to circulate as gifts, museum donations, or prizes. He says he may raise money for the Southern Poverty Law Center through auctions or raffles, or mail them anonymously to public officials.

Wall invites those interested to download and print their own versionsof the stamp on Thingiverse. He says, 

“I would like to see Tubman $20s entering circulation is sufficient numbers to generate conversation about the proposed, now abandoned, plan to replace Andrew Jackson with her.” 

Wall told Hyperallergic,

“I’ve gotten about 400 stamps out into the world in the last year, but would like to get more into people’s hands, especially now that I feel totally confident about the product. It might sound wildly unrealistic but my ultimate goal has become to hit 5%–10% of the $20s in circulation, at which point it would be difficult to ignore.”

Wall also provides a wealth of information about the project and Tubman’s legacy on the website tumbmanstamp.com for those interested.

In the Women on 20s grassroots campaign, which inspired bills in the House and the Senate, Harriet Tubman came out the frontrunner to replace President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, after more than 600,000 people cast ballots.

(Photos, Dano Wall; via CBS News, Hyperallergic)

THE WHITE HORSE TAVERN JUST CLOSED (DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO CHANGE...?)

The West Village’s White Horse Tavern is one of those local places you take for granted because it was ALWAYS there. I lived in the neighborhood for some 13 years until 2016, but when I first arrived in 1980, the apartment I stayed in was around the corner. At the time, I was still a meat-eater and a burger, fries and a beer there, at one of the outdoor tables, was a right-of-passage that I had, but I was unaware of. Possibly until now.

The White Horse just closed and a former waitress there and writer, Kelly Dobkin, wrote an interesting piece for New York magazine’s food website, Grub Street, which sums up what’s been happening in NYC of late. But it’s been going on since the Dutch purchased Manhattan in 1626 from the Lenape Indians for 60 guilders. Change.

Read what Dobkin writes, 

“I was 24 years old the first time I walked into the White Horse Tavern. I’d decided to become a writer, and as the cliché dictated, I needed a waitressing job. A friend worked at the bar and offered to get me a few shifts during the summer. The pay was solid, and the hours were excellent, but what I would later come to realize was that it was also the Platonic ideal of a New York pub, and a legendary neighborhood’s beating heart. Now, it may never again be the same.

Jim Munson, from Rockaway, Queens, was the boss. He co-owned the bar with the Brennan family, who originally purchased it in the late ’60s. Eddie Brennan and Jimmy’s father, Jim Sr., were longshoremen together. Jimmy, as we called him, was always good to us. He was old-school, and his very presence commanded respect. 

Recently, he grew tired of running the bar and decided to sell, which he did earlier this year. You’ve probably read about the new landlord, Steve Croman, and the bar’s new proprietor, restaurateur Eytan Sugarman, who owns Times Square’s ritzy Hunt & Fish Club and has been under fire by locals about his plans to revamp the Horse. At a recent community board meeting, he pledged that he had 

‘No intention of making any dramatic changes.‘ 

promising to keep the bar mostly as it is, but what else can you say when you take over such a beloved institution?

Maybe he won’t change it, or maybe he’ll turn it into a place that serves $19 bespoke cocktails and $85 seafood towers. Nobody seems to really know, but the bar officially closed this week and the word either way is that Sugarman has no plans to employ any of the existing kitchen or service staff. That doesn’t feel like a sign that he’s dedicated to preserving the Horse’s legacy, and the regulars who held a rally and an Irish wake for the Horse earlier this year don’t seem to trust Sugarman, either.

In New York City, the only assurance we have is that everything will get more expensive and less authentic over time. And we have a culture that has become increasingly obsessed with improvement and optimization, coupled with an ongoing decimation of communal spaces. The White Horse Tavern was never a pinnacle of food, drink, or service. Instead, it was a ramshackle place for regular folks (and, when I worked there, the occasional Gossip Girl actor). But there’s value in the idea of leaving things as they are. Not everything needs to be perfected. Not everything needs to be Instagrammable. Just knowing the old White Horse was there meant something to me, and to everyone who loved it. Some things just simply can, and should, stay the same.”

Yes. What she said.

But, like it or not, it’s NYC, and there are harsh realities with buying and running a restaurant there. More harsh than most places, with the exception of London. There are vacant storefronts all over the city and the closings and losses of beloved places are piling up, year after year.

Anything set to change in the city, immediately has opposition, which is good, but not if you want to change something.

But institutions and landmarks, like the Ziegfield Theater which was one of the last big movie palaces that THE place to see a movie that was an event, are now gone. Along with the Roseland Ballroom and countless other places, the city swallows them up in the name of progress and capitalism.

Demolishing the old Penn Station still makes me sad at the thought and it’s the most dramatic example of losing something great and replacing it with something truly awful. They wanted to do the same to Grand Central Station, but Jackie O and others fought and won. In the glitzy 80s, Trump gutted covered the old Commodore Hotel next door and covered it in mirrors and tore down the beautiful dept. store Bonwit Teller on Fifth Ave to build the now infamous Trump Tower. (In NYC, we’ve had Trump’s m.o. for DECADES and tried to warn the country. If he keeps up what he’s been doing to the country, they’ll be fracking Yosemite and chopping down the Giant Redwoods.)

Go to the underground Penn Station NOW and then look at old photos, below, of what once was, and what now sits on the site and tell me THAT was progress.

I see both sides. Here’s a perfect example of ugly vs beautiful, tradition vs progress. See the beautiful marble staircase at the entrance of Penn Station? They added an escalator at some point to people move, and I think, hideous. Use the stairs! What if you’re 80? It’s hard to see, but it doesn’t seem to have wheel-chair access, so, you might as well have a sign outside that says, 

“Disabled? Go Away!” 

The physically handicapped have the right to enter the building same as anyone, but they didn’t in 1920, when it was built. Progress.

At the same time, in an ever-changing world, it’s nice to preserve some of the past. If “they” ever decide to remodel Radio City Music Hall or sell off chunks of Central Park to build 150-story apartment buildings, I say, that’s the end. But they might. And it won’t be.

Penn Station circa, 1920

he 8th Ave entry hall of the demolished Pennsylvania Station.
RIP, 1920-1963

Built in 1920, workers started tearing down Pennsylvania Station in October of 1963. 
(Read the red signage and then the text on the Chase ad, below.)

This is the view from 8th Ave, the back of what was the old Penn Station, 
now Madison Square Garden. (The slogan on the blue Chase bank sign says it all)

(Photos, Wikimedia Commons; via Grub Street)

ARTISTS, LED BY RON ENGLISH, ARE BUILDING A "WELCOME WALL (& MEXICO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT!)

A thousand artists are lined up to build the Welcome Wall, an art installation wall running the length of the US/Mexico border. The first section of the Wall was unveiled in Mission, Texas, at the National Butterfly Center, painted by eight artists, including organizer/creator and artist Ron English. (A fellow New York -based Texas native, like myself) 

“The wall is being built NOW, but not by Trump, and Mexico is paying for it, not American taxpayers. And it really is beautiful. 

It’s environmentally neutral, and we hope it becomes a global tourist attraction and national treasure. Our wall is a welcome, not a rebuff. Our wall has doors and climbing rocks!”

The first section of the wall was funded by an indiegogo campaign raising some $20,000+. But other sections will be funded by the Mexican government, which has agreed to provide contractors and construction support for the installation to run from Texas to California along the US/ Mexico border.

OBAMA’s WH PHOTOGRAPHER, PETE SOUZA, THROWS EXCELLENT “SHADE” AT TRUMP IN HIS NEW BOOK

My old pal, THE go-to book designer for photographers for the past 25+ years, Yolanda Cuomohad a fun holiday book-signing party at her studio in Chelsea. Besides having a blast seeing her grow kids, Luca and Gianni, husband Joe and artist Dad, John, and some old work pals, I got a couple of great signed books. Yolanda has designed over 130, and after she left Vanity Fair, where we met, and started her own studio I helped her on a few, one for The Met, The Waking Dream, which is practically the history of photography.

I got a great out of print book, Sylvia Plachy’s Unguided Tour (Aperture, 1991) photographer extrordinaré (who also gave birth to Oscar-winning actor, Adrien Brody) and Barack Obama‘s photographer Pete Souza. Yo (nickname for Yolanda) has designed books for both of them but it’s Mr. Souza’s new one, Shade, that is particularly relevant as we roll into 2019. 

As Chief Official White House Photographer, Souza spent more time alongside President Barack Obama than almost anyone else. He had an intimate behind-the-scenes view of the unique gravity of the Office of the Presidency —and the responsibility that comes with it.

Now, as a private citizen observing the Trump administration as we all are, he’s throwing EXCELLENT shade on his Instagram (a must-follow) and in this book. As his website says,

“Shade is a portrait in Presidential contrasts, telling the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions. Here, more than one hundred of Souza’s unforgettable images of President Obama deliver new power and meaning when framed by the tweets, news headlines, and quotes that defined the first 500 days of the Trump White House.

What began with Souza’s Instagram posts soon after President Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 has become a potent commentary on the state of the Presidency, and our country. Some call this “throwing shade.” Souza calls it telling the truth.

In Shade, Souza’s photographs are more than a rejoinder to the chaos, abuses of power, and destructive policies that now define our nation’s highest office. They are a reminder of a President we could believe in, and a courageous defense of American values.“

The holidays are over, so buy a copy for yourself. If you’re lucky, like me, you might even get yours signed, a picture and to share a drink with the man and hear a few juicy tales, that I can’t repeat here.

With Pete & Yo in her studio, looking a bit stoned. I wasn’t.

Pete, Yo and son, Luca in her studio, Dec. ‘18

Also, check his first one Obama: An Intimate Portrait.

ARTIST JIM CARREY TROLLS TRUMP & THE COMPLICIT GOP WITH (VERY) UNFLATTERING PORTRAITS

Actor turned artist, Jim Carrey, has a muse. Trump.

The comedian’s latest creation is a colorful portrait of a screaming Trump in a bathrobe eating two scoops of ice cream, which Carrey jokingly pitched to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Carrey tweeted on Thursday.

“Dear Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery @NPG, I know it’s early but I’d like to submit this as the official portrait of our 45th President, Donald J. Trump. It’s called, ‘You Scream. I Scream. Will We Ever Stop Screaming?”

Carrey has also slammed Marco Rubio after the Florida senator would not commit to declining donations from the NRA during a CNN town hall, dissed House Speaker Paul Ryan, shaded Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November ahead of the bill’s passage. He’s also taken on Roy Moore, Trump’s ex-bf, Steve Bannon, and made Deven Nunes, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee see his trademark “Nothing Burger.”

Carrey got into some hot water (for some reason?) over his portrait of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Carrey responded by saying,

“I am so gratified by the reaction to my little drawings. It is the job of a political cartoon to vex those who abuse power or enable those abuses. This administration has been lying to the American people from day one while plundering the country and debasing our values. And those who cover for this shameful mobster of a President are putting makeup on a melanoma and telling the cancer patient that everything’s fine. Monstrous? You bet!”

#WhatHeSaid

(Images, Jim Carrey; via CNN)

#GRAVENEWORLD: ART COLLECTIVE "INDECLINE" INSTALLED GRAVESTONES AT A TRUMP GOLF COURSE

Last Friday night, on the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, people wearing ski masks pulled up in a Time Warner Cable van (aren’t they Spectrum now?) at a golf course in New Jersey and proceeded to install six gravestones and after the sun came up, they came back to document the scene

An anonymous representative of the guerrilla street art group Indecline (who installed naked Trump statues in public parks throughout the country in 2016) told told Hyperallergic they decided to create a sort of 

“political report card, in essence, a year in review.”

It’s titled Grave New World, and the project’s 6 gravestones mark the end of things. Indecline’s rep noted that they really had to narrow down the gravestones from “a diverse selection of things Trump fucked up” in the last year. 

“We would have needed a much larger budget to cover everything.”

They are:

• Decency – died with Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017. As the stone says, “We ‘moved on her like a bitch’” 

• The Last Snowman, which died the day Trump decided to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement. “Rest assured he was giving a scientist the finger as he went” 

• The Death of the American Dream which went with the immigration ban

• Our Future, gone with the end of DACA

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the arrival of Mick Mulvaney

• Those Bootstraps They Keep Talking About, went with the latest tax bill 

For the placement of the gravestones, the group fittingly chose the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, where a Washington Post article from last March said that Trump wants to be buried. 

The source didn’t know whether or not “Grave New World” was already taken down and even the mayor of the town didn’t seem to be that concerned. The Indecline rep told Hyperallergic: 

“It’s January. No one’s golfing.”

(Photos, Indecline; via Hyperallergic)

TRUMP BACKS OUT OF KENNEDY CENTER HONORS, AFTER ARTS RESIGNATION LETTER TELLS HIM TO RESIGN

Trump just backed out of attending the Kennedy Center Honors just after members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities send a letter denouncing his comments on Charlottesville.

The White House just announced this morning that Trump and Melania will not attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors in December. Norman Lear, Lionel Richie and others have said they would skip the party, if not the awards altogether. A statement from the White House read,

“The President and First Lady have decided not to participate in this year’s activities to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.“

This after a letter from the 16 prominent artists, authors, performers and architects resign with an extra bit of style. It gets right to the point.

“Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.“

If you read just the first letter of each paragraph, it spells out RESIST.

In other words,

FUCK YOU, TRUMP.

(via CNN, ArtNet)

TRUMP IS AN INSPIRATION! (TO ARTISTS & DESIGNERS, ANYWAY...)

We know that Trump collects magazine covers –real and fake– but chances are this week he’s not sending anyone to the newsstand to buy multiple copies of  Time, The New Yorker, The Economist and Germany’s Time magazine, Der Spiegel who all had takes on America’s Fascist in Chief.

The Economist shows the POTUS bellowing into a white megaphone with eye holes that make it double as a Ku Klux Klanhood, implying Trump has turned up the volume of white supremacists by his “both sides” justification of Charlottesville. The Economist’s illustrator Jon Berkeley told HuffPost,

“The KKK hood is a gift in graphic terms. It’s simple, and its menace is instantly recognizable. It’s been used to great visual effect by many illustrators and cartoonists… I do think that cartoons and illustration can have a strong effect on people’s perception of particular people or events over time ― maybe even more so as the credibility of the printed word is dented…. We live in interesting times… The supply of weapons-grade lunacy in every corner of the globe seems to have ramped up considerably in the past year, which just gives more to push against.”

The New Yorker illustrates Trump in a sailboat with a sail that resembles a KKK hood and their editor in chief David Remnick said of it,

“It’s a moment. Look, there’s been a Klan in this country and white supremacists in this country for hundreds of years. But the very idea that the president of the United States in 2017 would signal sympathy with that movement, and would do so with a kind of defiant insistence, is more than just a moment.”

Time‘s new cover image features a man behind an American flag at a 45-degree angle with a Nazi salute and he cover of Der Spiegel features Trump wearing a Klu Klux Klan hood, both by Edel Rodriguez, a Cuban immigrant. Rodriguez felt compelled to warn people about the danger of electing a man like Trump, in whom Rodriguez saw the qualities of a dictator. (Rodriguez produced the magazine’s iconic melting-Trump covers too.) 

Another drawing by Rodriguez, made during the campaign, illustrates a debate between Clinton and Trump, with Trump a white hood. Rodriguez told the Huffington Post,

“At this point, putting him in a KKK hood is liberating. There’s no leap to make. He has stood up for White Supremacists, Nazis and the KKK like no president has before. It’s shameful and disgusting. Thousands of American soldiers lost their lives to bring down Nazism.”

Other graphics have been making the rounds like this illustration of Trump in the Oval Office with KKK hooded window shades and the gold T logos which forms a swastika in negative space by designers Mark Fox & Angie Wang. (I did a similar design back in December of 2015, when the idea of Nazi Trump in the White House was still a ridiculous joke… no one is LOLing anymore.)

And then there are the animated gifs that make the point even more cinematic, like the transforming “45” by L.A. based Joe Merrell and the swinging swastika by who, I’m not sure? Both chilling.

Trump can try to ignore these images but the reality is that we know that he considers them important, but only when they are positive. Magazine covers featuring HIM are status symbols. Swastika gifs with your face and Hitler’s, not so much. What is the old cliché?

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity?“

Lately, with this President, it’s the only kind he can get.

David Plunkert

Jon Berkeley

Edel Rodriguez

Edel Rodriguez

Edel Rodriguez

Unknown

Mark Fox & Angie Wang

Trey Speegle, December 2015

(via Washington Post, Daily Beast)

BEFORE THE TRUMPS, NEW YORK CITY HAD THE WACKY WENDELS

New York has had plenty of crazy-rich families (yes, we’re looking at you Donald) but few were as mysterious as the Wendels. The siblings were born in the 19th century, never married, rarely went out in public, and grew old together behind brick walls inside the last private mansion on Fifth Avenue.

Their father made a fortune in fur and real estate and in the 1850s he built himself a big ol’ mansion on the fashionable, once-residential Fifth Avenue, at 39th Street. With all their money, you would expect the Wendel siblings—brother John and his six (some sources say seven) sisters—to live it up in high society. Wrong.

The all kept to themselves, rumors spread and John, who collected rent from his father’s vast real-estate holdings, became known as the “recluse of Fifth Avenue.” A newspaper story back in the day said,

“[John] frowned on marriage for his sisters and decreed they should stay out of society, live in the simplest possible style and wear the fashions of their youth.

All of the siblings lived “in an antiquated house of mystery amid the cacophonous commerce of midtown Manhattan.

There, starved of society by a tyrannical brother, the sisters cuddled lapdogs instead of sweethearts. With stingy allowances and shabby clothes, they slipped into spinsterhood—and perhaps, it was whispered, insanity.” ”

As the 20th century arrived and Fifth Avenue’s mansions were replaced by office buildings, the Wendel home—without electricity, telephones, or other conveniences—and its occupants fueled more rumors. The article goes on

“Spouses meant dispersal of the family fortune, so gossiped the gossips, and thus the seven Wendel sisters were kept moldering in the upper stories of their mansion, as brother John pinched their pennies.”

John died in 1914 in his 70s. Over the next decades the sisters began dying off as well (one did get married—in her 60s!). By the 30s, only Ella was left, seen only at night to give her poodle a chance to run around the backyard (Btw, a backyard that faced Fifth Avenue that was worth millions that she constantly turned down huge sums of money for!)

Ella died in her sleep at age 80 in 1931 and the public finally learned where at least part of the Wendel’s $100 million fortune would go: Drew University in New Jersey. Drew inherited the Fifth Avenue property and it was razed in 1934.

The University put up a plaque there in the family’s memory and you can see below that a Staples and a Panera Bread stands in the very spot where the family once lived.

The Wendel mansion in the 1930s

The site of the Wendel mansion today, at 39th & Fifth

A plaque commemorates the family