The liberta awards

Best retirement news. Ed Sozanski retires from the Inquirer
Worst retirement news. Ed Sozanski retires from the Inquirer

Artblog trifecta award. Zoe Strauss gets arrested, delivers feminine hygiene products to the ladies on the Gulf Coast post-Katrina, and gets into the Whitney Biennial 2006. We don’t think the three events are connected but are connecting them here.

Artblog stalking victims:
Zoe Strauss
Hermann Nitsch
Rob Matthews

Hump the column award: Andrea Fraser critiques Bilbao in “Frank’s Big Fish.”

Damp hankie award: Saga of Chuck and Iris, our own New Orleans Katrina victims

Damp hankie art junkie award: Kisses to Brent Burket, artblog New York correspondent, who’s unafraid to weep at the sight of beauty, and who tells us all about it. Here’s one of his great posts.

The reaches-the-edge-of-the-paper award: Randall Sellers for the first time expands beyond one inch of dead center and makes another stunning jewel.

Sink or swim award: Sink magazine which sank as far as we can tell.

The whazzup award:City Paper seems to drop the ball on visual arts coverage.

Whazzup award runner-up: Inquirer limits Friday Weekend section art reviews to two shorties.

We don’t get it award. Friends of Barnes who keep sending us press releases about ways to keep the Barnes in Lower Merion.

New talent we like:
Ianthe Jackson
Althea Murphy-Price
Nick Lenker
Sarah Stolfa
Alex da Corte
Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon
Andrew Prayzner
Walter Benjamin Smith 2
Matt Bollinger

Best performance by a painter in a gallery: Rah Crawford saws up a painting he didn’t sell, at Qbix Gallery.

Best transformation of a mountain into a boulder: Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon’s Everest which became the grafitti boulder in the Ben Franklin 300th anniversary show at Nexus.

Best Santa look-alike making Satanic cult art: Hermann Nitsch. Yuck.

Best curatorial conceit: The Riley show– Daniel Dalseth’s pairing of Sean Riley and Enrico Riley in “Polar/Solar” at Pageant Gallery.

Snowbird award: Seraphin Gallery sells nine drawings from its off-season show, “Out of Line,” and then Tony Seraphin tells Artblog he’s giving up on Philadelphia and might move his gallery to Florida.

Best bee show: Aaron Levy’s disquisition on the archive, which sticks like honey to our brains. (In case you’re wondering, we heard that Slought will not fold its tent after five years, as originally planned by the gang of three, Levy, Oswaldo Romberg and Jean-Pierre Rabate.)