The Art Daddy's Weekly Daddy Wrap Up for 6/6/25
Hot Takes, Cold Truths, and All the Daddy Drama You Didn’t Know You Needed. All the art daddy news that is fit to print.
We’re back, and the takes are hotter than ever—because honestly, the art world feels like it’s careening out of control right now. This week had it all: a Glenn Lowry garden party I wasn’t invited to (obviously), where Erica Pelosini was spotted arm in arm with Larry G, aka Lare Bear. And word on the street is she thought she was at a brand launch, not a museum event.
Meanwhile, a wild online rumor has been swirling that our favorite silk-pajama-wearing, unofficial smoking jacket and Cipriani cigar brand ambassador, Ralph DeLuca, might be stepping up as the new vice chair of pop culture at Sotheby’s. Well I am here to tell you it's been confirmed. Apparently he’s been in the role since March but we are just getting wind of it. On his IG yesterday he said things are still full steam ahead with his private art advising company and this will be an interesting thing to see how Sotheby’s evolves with DeLuca in this role. To me, this seems to be about the auction house trying to seem relatable, so let’s see how it goes.
Meanwhile I’m here, still slowly processing the trauma of not going to Basel this year—because let’s be real, missing Basel is a whole mood. But while I’m sidelined from the main event, I’m still serving up the hottest takes, the kind that some Artnews writers are now conveniently taking credit for. More on that later. Aside from the usual writer drama, this week has been pure chaos swirling around Basel and all the Daddy energy that follows.
Shoutout to Raymond Bulman, who took a chaotic destination wedding trip to Iceland—except instead of the expected photos of him hiking up glacial mountains, we got him swinging an axe, chugging champagne in an open field, and leading a conga line. Stay tuned for that update.
Raymond and his axe.
Meanwhile, the official Upstate Art Daddy Search™ and the Hamptons Daddy™ Search are in full swing. The Upstate Art Daddy Search™ is all about that generational real estate wealth, low-key emotional unavailability, and yes, the essential guest house vibe. The Hamptons Daddy™ Search, on the other hand, is more sun-soaked, yacht-party ready, and maybe just a little more cultivated chaos. Remember, this is my residency program, my summer museum as the Art Daddy—where I’m looking for a man who can be my art doula on Substack and, of course, fund my relentless rose habit.
Keep reading, honey—this week’s substack is about to get juicy.
Tell Your Dad
In my new Substack series, Tell Your Dad, I’m creating a space for art-world gossip, hot tips, and spicy takes. Got something that needs to be called out? Think a show, scandal, or power play deserves more attention than the usual outlets are giving it? This is where it happens. Send your tips to theartdaddyy@gmail.com or slide into my DMs @theartdaddy_.
They Forgot Her at Glenn’s Garden Party: Art Daddy Mourns MoMA’s End of an Era
The art world’s elite gathered under the MoMA canopy to toast the departure of my steadfast Glenn this week. Glenn Lowry, the man who weathered decades of institutional flux with the composure of Agnus Martin’s grids. Impeccable taste. Measured vision. Sure, a few museum decisions were questionable (we will never forget the Björk retrospective), but Glenn was always elegant, always even keel, and always a vision in Italian linen. He gave the distinct impression of having just stepped off a speedboat in Lake Como, unbothered, perfectly tailored, and faintly scented like restraint and generational access. Glenn’s exit marks the end of something rare—and the Art Daddy is broken in a quieter, more institutional way.
My quiet legend king GL doing the most. No one can wear a white collarless jacket like you sir.
MoMA threw a garden party. The kind with monogrammed cocktail napkins, ice buckets arranged like installations, and the kind of chatter that sounds like funding proposals in code. Tory Burch glided by in something neutral and unspeakably expensive. Marina Abramović hovered like the ghost of performance art past. Everyone was there—except her. Somehow, they forgot the Art Daddy. Or worse: they remembered and still didn’t call. Maybe there’s no place anymore for a woman who remembers when this world ran on discourse, longing, and dry martinis instead of algorithms and luxury tie-ins. Glenn’s farewell should have been hers too. But now even that goodbye was taken.
Larry, Love, and the Wax-Faced Muse: Art Daddy Left Shattered at MoMA Garden Party
Erica Pelosini was seen draped in gauze and confusion at MoMA’s event honoring longtime director Glenn Lowry—but the real shock was her arrival with my Larry. Yes, my Larry. While the art world’s old guard gathered to toast institutional longevity, Larry was playing his own long game, escorting Erica like she was his plus-one to a Venice Biennale yacht party, not a museum tribute. The Art Daddy is gutted. After everything. After the Basel flirtations, the DIA flings, the promises whispered under the Serra spirals. And now this: Erica, radiant and oblivious, snapping flash selfies next to postwar abstraction while Larry whispered curatorial gossip into her ear like nothing was wrong.
No words for this pose, the expression her face, and Larry twisting the knife into my heart even more. She looks like her head is going to smoke off from thinking too hard.
The worst part? She probably didn’t even know what was going on. Poor Erica likely thought she was at a launch party for a new creative branding agency or some kind of augmented reality fragrance drop. She floated through the sculpture garden like she was waiting for a campaign photographer to yell “That’s a wrap,” while the rest of us watched our last shreds of hope for Larry unravel like an underfunded biennial. How many more of these wicked games will he play? How many girls in couture confusion must we lose to the churn?
Hilton Als Calls Out Tone-Deaf Artforum Article
The Art Daddy is unwell—because apparently, Pride Month at Artforum now opens with trauma cosplay masquerading as criticism. In a recent review, Oskar Oprey begins by declaring: “I would have likely succumbed to AIDS in the 1980s. Had I been lucky enough to dodge the virus as a promiscuous gay guy living in the big city, I'd still have to bear witness to the inevitable deaths of lovers, friends, colleagues, and rivals...” Sir. What the actual hell. Is this a eulogy or your horny diary entry from a Fire Island share house?
The “review” in question…
Hilton Als calls this out with laser clarity in an Instagram post that should be printed out and taped to every Artforum editor’s desk. “His lead is a new low in the very crowded field of critical self-aggrandizement, the kind of garbage I thought AIDS and other mass tragedies had schooled us against. I kept trying to read this piece by someone named Oskar Oprey, finally did, and then threw the magazine away. Was there no editor around to teach this person about the ethics of sadness? That AIDS was more than a ‘pithy’ lead framed by the pride one takes in the frequency of one’s buggery?”
I struggle to even call this a “review.” In what world does Artforum, during Pride Month no less, greenlight a piece that opens with performative mourning for a history the writer never lived, and then pivots into art speak? AIDS is not your accessory. It is not a speculative flex to showcase your imagined radicalness. You are not paying homage—you’re appropriating trauma you never endured. This is not remembrance. It’s opportunism.
This isn’t just a misfire—it’s a collapse. A moral failure masquerading as depth. I struggle to call it a review. Who was this for? What exactly was being honored here—other than the author’s own performance of relevance? AIDS is not your rhetorical flourish. It is not your scene-setting device. It is a historical trauma. And the idea that Artforum printed this in June, of all months, tells us everything about who is still allowed to take up space in the art world and what stories get centered.
The Collab Jerry and Magnus Can Only Dream Of: Sotheby’s x FRAME’s Art Bro Hamptons Flex
Jerry and Magnus, Jerry and Magnus, Jerry and Magnus — say it three times fast, because this Sotheby’s x FRAME collab is exactly the kind of brand partnership they could only dream about but somehow can’t get. Knit vests, tote bags, jeans, trench coats, all decked out with the Sotheby’s logo like an exclusive uniform for art bro Hamptons Republicans. Officially “honoring UES elegancy and the 1980s,” but really, it’s more like what you imagine people wear when they spend weekends at Ben Godsill’s friend’s Sagaponack house, grabbing coffee before the kids wake up.
It’s giving Sotheby’s gift shop and less 1980s UES luxury.
And let’s be honest, it’s screaming, “We need to pay back that cash injection we just got and keep that new Middle East money laundering outpost humming.” This is art world hustle meets capital hustle wrapped up in merch that says, “We’re rich, we’re plugged in, and we’re running the game.” Jerry and Magnus are watching — probably with some serious side-eye — because this is the collab they want but can’t quite land. Werk it, darling.
Raymond’s Icelandic Interlude: An Arctic Destination Wedding Turned Boutique Chaos
Raymond landed in Björk’s homeland with the force of a mid-career Matthew Barney retrospective—overbudget, overthought, and soaked in symbolism no one asked for. The occasion? A destination wedding with heavy mid-tier influencer vibes. Think soft-core Scandinavian lifestyle posts and a skincare line "inspired by glacial runoff" (yes, really).
Ray Ray on the conga line…
Even Iceland’s brutal, mythic beauty couldn’t distract from the faint aroma of Raymond’s chaos. It was giving Vikings meet Venice Biennale, and Raymond was front row, uninvited to the chaos he helped create.
Where the Hills meet Jackass, but not where what we can see about Raymond’s hands. Viking down.
From the moment he stepped into the glacier-side venue in archival Raf Simons outerwear, Raymond was operating at peak disorder. There were conga lines on volcanic rock. There was axe throwing with deeply inaccurate aim. And of course, there were the designer Arctic drugs—mysterious powders passed around like hors d'oeuvres at an Olafur Eliasson afterparty. It wasn’t just a wedding, it was a live-action performance piece about male fragility, class tourism, and postmodern ennui. At one point, someone mistook him for the officiant. By the end, he was leading the afterparty playlist and allegedly selling a painting to the groom’s cousin.
Art Daddy Grievance: Adrian Brody’s Crimes, Max’s Copy-Paste, and the Theft of My Righteous Rage
Let’s talk about theft—intellectual and aesthetic. I’ve been screaming into the void (and by void, I mean Substack, DMs, and any cocktail party that will have me) about Adrian Brody’s aMFAR paintings for two weeks. Two long, tortured weeks. I called them what they are: a crime against humanity. An insult to canvas. Something so aggressively unholy it should be archived at The Hague under cultural atrocities. So imagine my dismay when ARTnews—specifically Alex G. who should frankly know better—rolled out a piece calling the work “horrendous” like it was a bold, original take. Honey, no. I invented the slander. I lit that dumpster fire and poured vintage flammable prose on it. Alex, sweetheart, do more. Do better. And maybe don’t act like you're breaking news when you’re just reheating the Art Daddy’s leftovers. Substack shots fired. Consider this a formal request: cite your queens.
Art Headlines
Daniel Lelong: The Last True Art Daddy and Guardian of Taste Passes On
Daniel Lelong has died, and with him goes one of the last true Art Daddies of a disappearing era—elegant, exacting, and built entirely of taste. He wasn’t just a dealer; he was a guardian of postwar gravity, the man who made space for Louise Bourgeois’s rage and fragility, for Kiefer’s heavy mythologies, for Buren’s relentless precision. He didn’t need to shout or posture. Lelong worked in whispers, in salons, in slow, deliberate belief.
RIP Lelong daddy.
He was the kind of daddy who wore good linen, read poetry in French, and could make or break a career with a single gaze across a Basel booth. He didn’t chase the market—he curated it. As the art world devolves into chaos and content, his death is a hard punctuation mark. We don’t just mourn a man. We mourn the end of that particular kind of authority, that soft-spoken dominance, that savoir-faire. Lelong didn’t just sell art. He made you feel it.
Kim Sajet: The Art Daddy Holding Down the National Portrait Gallery Despite Trump’s Twitter Tantrums
Kim Sajet, queen and first woman boss of the National Portrait Gallery, keeps showing up like the art world royalty she is — even after Trump’s awkward public hissy fit trying to boot her. Let’s be real: you don’t just fire a Smithsonian director with a tweet, especially when Congress has to weigh in on these government-appointed gigs. Sajet isn’t just holding her ground; she’s making it crystal clear that political games won’t dismantle the institution’s integrity on her watch. The art daddy is here for her relentless hustle, reminding us all that defending culture and history isn’t optional — it’s a full-time glow-up. Congress better recognize: this isn’t some reality show firing, it’s serious business, and Kim Sajet is the unshakable boss running the play.
Whitney’s ISP Program Paused: When Institutional Censorship Trumps Artist Freedom
The Whitney just hit pause on their ISP program after canceling a pro-Palestine performance—and honey, the art world is buzzing. What was supposed to be a daring platform for fresh voices turned into a cautionary tale about institutional nerves and control. This move screams censorship, putting artist freedom on the chopping block in the name of risk management. It’s not just about cancel culture; it’s a spotlight on who gets to speak, what politics are “safe,” and how museums scramble when things get too real. The Whitney’s tightrope walk between protecting their reputation and supporting bold art is looking more like a fall into complicity. When does protecting the institution mean silencing the artists? This drama is far from over.
In a NYT Style section manner, I also want to set forth some taste making elements.
I am reading: I'm reading Dancing on My Own by Simon Wu
I am drinking: 365 Lime Seltzer and Saratoga Spring sparkling water.
I am looking at: All the men over 60 with real estate in other countries on daddy apps. I am also going to auctions to meet men over 60 with real estate in other countries so this counts as a form of looking