The Art Handling Olympics

#class will end this Saturday (so if you haven't stopped in yet, you have a few more days and some really awesome upcoming events to catch), but that doesn't mean the mayhem ends. Sunday sees the launch of what promises to be, well, if not the most hysterical event of the season, certainly the most rowdy. Via artnet.com, It's the Art Handling Olympics:

Art Handlers are the unrecognized backbone of the art industry. We are the life blood of galleries, art shipping companies, museums, art storage warehouses, artist’s studios, and cultural institutions. For most of us, the hours are long, risking life and limb without health insurance or job security. There are more of us than anyone realizes and we’ve never had the chance to throw down together.

The Art Handling Olympics (AHO) is the first event of its kind. It is equal parts olympic competition, three ring circus, and foreign TV game show. The day’s events will be rowdy, fast paced and ending with a monster party.

Art Handler teams will compete in a series of physically and mentally excruciating events that spotlight the absurdity and seriousness of our jobs. Picture the worst install you’ve ever worked on. Now add a psychotic art director frothing at the mouth, the world’s most indecisive client, a frantic truck dispatcher, an audience, a timer, and beer. Art will be destroyed and egos shattered. There will be glory to the winners, but nothing is sacred and no one is safe from humiliation in the olympic arena.

The insanity begins about 3:00 pm on Sunday, March 21, 2010, at Ramiken Crucible, 221 East Broadway, New York, NY 10002. (Seriously, you'll want to navigate around their website for the photos alone.)