Baby on board musician/provocateur Amanda Palmer and hubby did in waiting Neil Gaiman staged a pretty spectacular event at the New York Public Library yesterday, as the eight months pregnant Palmer recreated Damien Hirst’s statue Verity with body paint. The event was well captured in social media.

https://twitter.com/amandapalmer/status/634581457210576896


The event was announced on Palmer’s Patreon page as part of the NYPL’s drive for children’s book donations, a goal which seems to have been met with success. On her page she wrote:

PLEASE bring a children’s book (or more than one!) to donate to the NYPL’s early literacy program. the performance is in part a book-drive to get books to kids (and their parents) who don’t have access. please make sure the books are new (they can’t accept used books due to mold, etc).

A study of 3- to 5-year-olds who had been read to at least three times per week found the children were:

• Two times more likely to recognize all letters.

• Two times more likely to have word-sight recognitions

• Two times more likely to understand words in context.

The original Hirst statue is 66 feet tall and stands on the beach at Devon, UK, depicting a pregnant woman with a cutaway of the fetus inside. Palmer recreated this with body paint for dramatic effect. She’s is no stranger to performing as a living statue, as she did it frequently in her early days as a street performer around Boston. The event also came at a time when topless by body painted women who pose for photos in Times Square have been coming under fire. It is not illegal for a woman to go topless in New York City.

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3 COMMENTS

  3. I tediously combed through Amanda Palmer’s blog entry about this and found naught about Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman being there, though she gushed about the presence of Neil Gaiman & John Cameron Mitchell & included photos of them- WTF?!? Is she just intimidated by the presence of these awesome women? There’s mention of many, many men who are hanging around and taking photographs or filming her, but the only woman mentioned is her “assistant”. I don’t know much about her and am not a fan; she sounds pretty bad to be around.

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