Even if you haven’t wandered up to 86th Street recently, chances are you’ve heard whispers of something unusual afoot. That something is courtesy of performance artist Tino Sehgal, whose ephemeral pieces rely on empty space and spectator involvement. One such piece in his current solo show at the Guggenheim, titled “The Kiss,” involves a couple embracing on the floor of the rotunda in a “changing, slow-motion, amorous” entanglement. We at Flavorpill love staging elaborate photo shoots in museums and decided to reinterpret Sehgal’s performance piece in five New York City art institutions: The Metropolitan Museum, New Museum, Rubin Museum, P.S.1, and the Brooklyn Museum. Could we choreograph the same magic?

Play voyeur and peep our exclusive slideshow after the jump.

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Yep, that’s a real title. A real title for a fictional shipwreck from which Damien Hirst plans to “excavate” “objects” and then paint them in “still lifes.” The Era of Formaldehyde (two decades, to be precise, starting with the Charles Saatchi-commissioned shark in 1991) is declared dead in the water, according to a Bloomberg interview with the artist on the eve of his latest Gagosian exhibition. That show, aptly titled End of an Era, includes a pickled bull’s head with gilded horns and blinged-out wunderkabinet filled with 27,888 manufactured diamonds.

Peep the undercover Babelgum video of the Gagosian opening after the jump, plus some priceless quotes from the Hirster himself.

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Magnum Photos, the cooperative photography agency established in 1947, has a blue-chip pedigree (founders included Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson) and a gigantic scope (a photojournalism collection amassed from across the globe in the 20th century). The archive comprises more than 180,000 images known as press prints, physical copies once circulated to newspapers and magazines before the digital age. Now the organization is moving forward with a one-two punch: after selling its entire photo archive to a collector, Magnum is recreating itself as an authoritative media entity online. After the jump, view an exclusive slideshow of eight photos from the archive.

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Brooklyn-based artist Nick van Woert’s warped work kicks classical sculpture off its pedestal, subverting familiar visages with the help of insulation foam, plexiglass, and sculpted polyurethane adhesive. The resulting busts remind us of what would happen if you slapped a sculpture in the face with a pie full of Nickelodeon-style slime or gak — and held it there. More images after the jump.

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Last night at the Sotheby’s London evening sale, a mystery telephone buyer placed the winning bid for Alberto Giacometti’s 1961 Walking Man I for a record-setting $104.3 million. That’s a whole $200K higher than the previous record holder, Picasso’s Boy With a Pipe, which sold at the Sotheby’s New York branch in 2004.* What’s even wilder about a bronze sculpture with Existentialist themes setting the new benchmark for absurdly priced artwork is that the estimate on the piece was only (ha) $19.2 million to $28.8 million.

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What do you get when you mix an architect, a photographer, a deep freeze, and the leading foreclosure rate in the nation? A web project called Ice House Detroit. Gregory Holm (aforementioned photographer) has teamed up with Matthew Radune (the architect in question) to document an architectural installation they’ve undertaken in the city of Detroit, a quickly fading urban center with approximately 80,000 abandoned houses. Their focus is social change: in exchange for the use of an abandoned house for the Ice House Detroit art project, the pair raised enough money on Kickstarter to pay back taxes on a different foreclosed house, allowing a local family to move in. And oh, the pictures.

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Yes, it looks a lot like Mars. But what you’re actually seeing is 12 pounds of paprika, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, and charcoal. Strange Worlds, a new series by artist Matthew Albanese, features photographs of small-scale models made from unlikely, everyday ingredients. Think a diorama you would have made back in elementary school, but you know, totally amazing. “Every aspect from the construction to the lighting of the final model is painstakingly pre-planned using methods which force the viewers perspective when photographed from a specific angle,” he explains. “Using a mixture of photographic techniques such as scale, depth of field, white balance and lighting I am able to drastically alter the appearance of my materials.”

More images after the jump.

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Ever wanted to learn the art of mushroom foraging but running your own LLC has left you strapped for cash? Trade School is a pop-up workshop concept run by OurGoods.org from the Lower East Side revolving storefront Grand Opening. The community-fueled programming capitalizes on skill sets, bartering tutorials (composting, swing dancing, feltmaking, staging a play) instead of currency. From now until February 28, the choices are limitless.

Just don’t call them hipsters.

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Gallery exhibitions may be sexier, and museum patrons may be wealthier, but the government-backed National Endowment for the Arts is still alive and begging for your arts attention. The 2011 budget for the NEA was just proposed by President Obama at $161.3 million for the fiscal year, the same goal he set for 2010, which was ultimately increased by Congress to $167.5 million. (Some perspective: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is slotted for $470 million, international disaster assistance for $860 million, and proposed military construction will net a staggering $18.18 billion.) What else is new?

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Continuing on the paper art trend, we can’t help but take note of Charles Clary’s awe-inspiring installations made from scrapbooking paper. His hand-cut paper works consist of colorful swirls that resemble sound waves or images under a microscope, and envelop rooms without the restriction of a frame. As he recently explained to Wired, “It’s all intuitive. It’s just one layer playing off another, playing off another. But I do try to make the viewer wonder whether they’re handmade or if industrial equipment is used, so I have to be very clean with my cuts.”

More images after the jump.

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