Jamian Juliano-Villani Wants to Make the Art World Fun

On a recent Wednesday night, O’Flaherty’s, a new art gallery named for an imaginary Irish pub, had an opening. The storefront space, which has a neon sign in the window reading “What’s wrong?,” shares its block on Avenue C with a community garden, a dentist’s office, and a Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall, far from the decorous, museumlike megagalleries of West Chelsea. In the most overheated, self-serious, and asset-hungry contemporary-art market the world has likely ever known, O’Flaherty’s has so far sold nothing; it’s hard to say if that’s on purpose. By a little after 7 p.m., the gallery had filled with casually tattered, unmasked young people, and everything was bathed in a radioactive glow. “Black light is very important,” said Jamian Juliano-Villani, a rising-star artist herself who is one of the gallery’s three founders. “Taste is out the door.”

Apple has confirmed it will release Bad Blood, the drama about the rise and fall of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, with Adam McKay directing and Jennifer Lawrence starring. Billionaire surrenders $70M of stolen art, faces no real legal consequences. Nice to see that these two writers of very long songs get along. In Eastern Europe, it’s still 1999. And most important: new Mitski!

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