Calvin Klein, the New Museum, a hot pink painted billboard and scandalous religious art

Just got off the phone with a reporter re the fusion of for-profits and charity. Here's one in Nolita, via Gothamist and Page Six:

CALVIN Klein is destroying his own ad in the name of art. To help promote the Dec. 1 opening of the New Museum on the Bowery, Klein allowed the institution's advertisers to drip oozing pink paint over his Houston Street billboard of Lara Stone and Jamie Burke wearing his jeans. The label, along with Julianne Moore andMaggie Gyllenhaal, will host an intimate soiree tonight at the museum, and the hot pink ooze will drip down the billboard until Monday.

One thing that gets me every time I'm asked about this sort of thing is the assumption that this sort of thing is new, that it never happened before. Nahhhh. Five hundred years ago, a wealthy merchant would pay for vestments, sponsor religious artwork and get himself (or his mistress!) drawn into the pictures. Now it's a museum integrated with two half-dressed people pretending to make out, but those are just incidental details.

And it's not as if the religious wasn't replete with naughty bits.