0 Written by THEPAPERBAGWRITER

It’s been a weird year. The stock market collapsed, the art bubble burst, Montebello stepped down as director of the Met and Kren finally got booted from the Guggenheim, Christie’s isn’t meeting their marks and Sotheby’s is going under and yet Damien Hirst still made two-hundred million dollars and the sixty-eight year old Mary Heilmann was finally acknowledged by an actual museum. The art world is a funny place, a kind of parallel universe where the laws of physics only partially apply, where there’s always a chance that your step next step won’t hit the ground.

We expect, despite the doom and gloom of the spectator market, that 2009 will be full of surprises. So, just for fun, we’ve outlined a few possibilities because….who knows what will happen in the months ahead….

January
After the stunning success of Sheppard Fairley’s HOPE poster for Barack Obama, the “OBEY” artist will be commissioned to paint the official presidential portrait of Obama and get permission to paint over the other forty-three, renaming the portrait wing in his honor.

February
With the profits from his sale at Sotheby’s Damien Hirst will buy the fledgling nation of Iceland from the government and employ the disparaged population as studio assistants.

March
Philanthropist, Eli Broad will threaten to withdraw his $35 million dollar offer to save The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art unless the name is changed to The Broad Center and he is allowed to build a reservoir for oil in the basement.

April
In response to the growing Chinese market, Mega-gallerist Larry Gagosian opens a space in Beijing, Barbara Gladstone, Paula Cooper and Jeffrey Deitch follow and the Dashanzi Art District is renamed New Chelsea.

May
Installation artists, Christo and Jean-Claude abandon the expensive fabrics they had planned to use for their Over The River project and decide instead to use American currency.

June
This year’s Venice Biennial curated by Daniel Birnbaum will be an enormous success with the addition of several Middle Eastern countries and the lost city of Atlantis.

July
Under pressure from the Board of Directors, Met Director Thomas Campbell will disappear in the middle of the night leaving behind only a trail of baroque tapestries.

August
Alexander Calder will, for the first time in almost two years, not be the subject of a major museum retrospect and his wares will finally be returned to the permanent collection libraries where they belong.

September
In spite of last year’s cancellation, Deitch Projects’ annual Art Parade will be bigger than ever. With Assume Vivid Astro Focus employing an army of Brazilian nationals to jump out of an enormous purple rectum.

October
In response to last year’s dismal sales, exhibitors will pull out of The Frieze Art Fair and The Frieze Foundation will have to commission Urs Fischer to dig a giant crater out of the former site.

November
After the surprisingly successful The Prospect 1 Biennial’s ability to get people to the Gulf Coast, New Orleans Mayer Ray Nagin will write emergency art fairs into the city’s evacuation plans.

December
PETA will commission the artist Banksy to restage his “Village Pet Shop” in storefronts throughout the country. Banksy will substitute the rubber animatronics foodstuffs he used in the original for the real thing and serve hot dogs at the opening.