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So It’s Like Wine-of-the-Month Club for Art?


January 22, 2013 | Marina Galperina

Hey, suave art buyer. Do you miss privacy, secrecy and surprise? Here’s a gimmick just for you: At the Lower East Side Oliphaunt, for an annual fee of $1,200, you get a piece of art shipped to your house four times a year and you won’t know what it is until it gets there! You will, however, get a series of “clues” in the mail that will “tease” you with “regular newsletters with tantalizing bits of information that allude to what masterpiece might be arriving.” Isn’t it wonderful?

Creative director Derrick Cruz explains:

Secrecy is a high-priced commodity. Privacy doesn’t exist anymore. Secrecy is almost out the window, too… Everyone knows everything before it happens. Something is going to go up in a gallery, and people go on the website to see the work. They judge it before they even go there.

You will “instantly have a connection” and feel be a “part of the club” and your club “badge” is a little skull-thing!

Ok, that gilded jaw thing Cruz made is pretty sweet.

And yet…

Sigh.