Art Show intrigue!

[mike chamness]

This is pretty wild. Was just released today re: the other 99% art show happening next Sat at the Ace Museum. 

Dear Artists and Members of the 99%,

Ace Museum does not stand with the 99%. So why are Russell Simmons, MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream, SEIU and the Courage Campaign holding the event “All in for the 99%” there?

We found that Russell Simmons is clearly tied to Douglas Chrismas, the CEO of Ace Museum, yet MoveOn has claimed that the Ace Museum is “just an address” and that no one knew it was a museum when they rented it (even though there are 9ft by 50ft letters reading ACE MUSEUM on the front of the building).  We are concerned that people attending the event will have no way of knowing that the space is being rented, and will believe that the Ace Museum stands with the 99%, when that is the furthest thing from the truth.  We believe the connections to Russell Simmons are only the beginning—it appears to go much deeper. Douglas Chrismas and board member Bruce Karatz are big donors to the Democratic Party.  And as Natasha Lennard mentioned in her article “How Not To Stage An Occupy Music Festival” (http://www.salon.com/2012/03/15/how_not_to_stage_an_occupy_music_festival/) there are strong ties between the organizers of this event and the Democratic Party.

Things aren’t adding up.  The Ace Museum is technically a non-profit, “renting” a space to another non-profit who’s members have close ties with the organizers.  Not to mention, how to do you rent a space for an art event without anyone bothering to mention that the place is currently an art museum that has other exhibitions currently open in the building.  Realistically, the museum should be paying them for the publicity. Considering the history of fraud coming from the Ace Museum’s board (both Karatz and Chrismas have been convicted), we really think there is something more being covered up that needs to be investigated.

Today, we are releasing two new videos.  One of them details some of the most obvious connections between Russell Simmons and the Ace Museum CEO, Douglas Chrismas.  The other video is about Ace Museum’s board member, Bruce Karatz being found guilty for backdating stock options and how that is directly related to the financial collapse that lead to Occupy Wall Street and the 99% movement in the first place. Here are links to our new videos:

Russell Simmons: All in for the 1%:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceCU778-5Qs&feature=channel

Bruce Karatz: All in for the 1%:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qslnY0tC-Jw&feature=channel

If you have a personal experience with Douglas Chrismas, Ace Gallery or Ace Museum, we encourage you to visit ArtLeaks (http://art-leaks.org/) and to leave your story. 

Finally, please sign our petition asking these organizations to not support Ace Museum and to actually stand with the 99%: http://www.change.org/petitions/ace-museum-all-in-for-the-1 

 

Sincerely,

Unknown Artists