Doll House by Julia San Martin

It's been turbulent times at El Museo del Barrio, where they recently cut back on hours and staff and are facing charges of gender discrimination brought by former director Margarita Aguilar. But with their major biennial opening today, all that is put aside to make room for what matters most: the work. La Bienal 2013, titled "Here Is Where We Jump," brings together 37 emerging Latino and Latin American artists who live and work in the New York City area.More »

"Starving artists" may be an affectionate term for the city's legions of struggling creatives, but it belies a more disturbing trend. Art market prices have shot up faster than the GDP, and the globalization of the marketplace prompted NPR's Adam Davidson to conclude last year that the "art market, in other words, is a proxy for the fate of the superrich themselves."

Meanwhile, MFAs have become both increasingly expensive and necessary for any career in the arts, says Tal Beery, one of the organizers behind Debtfair, a radical remodeling of the art market taking over the city this summer. Nationally, student debt has topped $1 trillion, and defaults have increased 36 percent in 2012 alone. "The debt that artists have to accrue in order to start playing the game, the barrier for entry, is much greater," Beery said.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is slightly loosening up its tie with their latest Costume Institute exhibition "PUNK: Chaos to Couture," which opens Thursday and is on view through August 14.

"Punk began as an impulse, as a feeling," curator Andrew Bolton said during a press preview this morning. And it was Television's Richard Hell that first had the spontaneous impulse, in the mid-'70s, to shred his T-shirt, holding it together with safety pins, spike his hair, ultimately influencing the Sex Pistols, and introducing punk wear to the world.

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"This is Brooklyn's park. This is America's park. But specifically, this is the Adam Yauch Park," Ad-Rock told the New York City Department of Parks and Rec. The site will go down in city history as one more public space dedicated to a legend who made lasting art in the '80s and died far too young.

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Damien Hirst's Shark

Last weekend brought fresh news for art world titan Larry Gagosian, all of it terrible. Not only have rumors of a planned May Jeff Koons' exhibition at rival David Zwirner gallery turned out to be true, but two of Gagosian's major artists have decamped from the famous powerhouse gallery at a time when the New York dealer may need their earning ability the most.

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As we have pointed out before, the Department of Parks and Recreation is totally down with traffic-blocking art installations but not cool with unregulated artist-vendors because said vendors allegedly block traffic and mess with public spaces' aesthetic.

Yea, we are confused by the Department's approach, too.

And we're learning that another aesthetic-altering art installation is planned for the High Line.

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Leanne Stella, Founder of Art In Flux

When Leanne Stella moved to Harlem last fall, she was on a personal quest to discover the area's art scene. She quickly realized that her neighborhood was filled with local artists and performers with no space to showcase their work. Enter Art in FLUX, a pop-up gallery that began this spring that gives local artists a chance to introduce themselves to the community without gallery fees.

Art in FLUX opened in the Morellino Building on Adam Clayton Powell for the second time this summer to take advantage of the bustling corner of 118th Street. We stopped by this month's exhibit, "Small," on opening night to chat with Leanne Stella about the pop-up art gallery business, upcoming exhibitions, and what makes the Harlem art scene unique.

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Yesterday, the Voice reported on several developments in the ongoing park artist controversy: namely, that the Department of Parks and Recreation doesn't seem to have a problem with street creatives in public spaces as long as they're picked by the City.

This is confusing, of course, because one of the City's main arguments against unregulated park artist-vendors is that they mess up an area's aesthetic and foster congestion. So, we wanted to know: How can the Department make this claim while simultaneously greenlighting, say, an above-ground living room around the Columbus Circle monument?

Well, we got an answer from the City's legal team.

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Though the Department of Parks and Recreation isn't facing any additional legal drama today, several news items have recently surfaced that put to question some of the city's main claims against artists.

So what's going on now?

Well, when we attended a hearing on this issue in July, City Attorney Sheryl Neufeld said that the Department has the right to regulate park artists.

She argued that the City is acting constitutionally, claiming that municipalities can make rules to preserve the aesthetic of parks, control crowds, and make sure everybody can enjoy public spaces.

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Another day, another report of legal drama between New York artists and City admins, it seems.

Here's what's going on today: as we reported just yesterday, there are currently two lawsuits -- one filed at the state level, the other filed at the federal level -- which will basically decide whether New York's artist vendors have a right to freely sell their wares in the City's parks.

It's a convoluted topic -- with significant Constitutional implications -- and it's been debated off and on in court pretty much since the Giuliani administration.

(Read all the Voice's past coverage here.)

Anyway, today brings a THIRD lawsuit to the table.

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