Writer Hilton Als, fresh off an impressive curatorial outing with his show of Alice Neel paintings at David Zwirner, will embark on a new series of projects curating at the Yale Center for British Art, featuring shows on Celia Paul, Peter Doig and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. “I became interested in British art when I got tired of American art,” Als joked during a press announcement.
Robert Longo, Untitled (Bodyhammer: 9mm) (2008), via Art Observed
Few writers have walked such a fine line between coy observations of modernity and the possible dystopian future that lay just under the surface of daily life in the way that writer J.G. Ballard had over the course of his more than fifty years of writing. Mixing a playful sense of imagination with dark and disturbing meditations on the state of the world, the writer’s work continues to serve as a major inspiration for artists and philosophers in the 21st century, just as some of the futuristic conditions he so often described have begun to manifest themselves in the real world. (more…)
MoMA has promoted Michelle Elligott to serve as chief of archives, library, and research collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a position that sees Elligott continue a long and prestigious career as an archivist at the museum. “The breadth of the extraordinary research collections that document the history of modern art and diverse artistic practices [at MoMA] are a vital resource for museum staff and researchers from around the world,” she said in a statement. “It is my great privilege to lead the efforts to promote this unique content and cultivate scholarship, while at the same time working collaboratively to dramatically increase access to these resources for the general public alike.” (more…)
Despite strong auction outings and a major record auction for Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sotheby’s posted quarterly earnings for Q2 that were down 14% from last year. “Overall, the quarter was solid and I’m confident more growth will come both as the market improves and as our investments begin to yield returns,” Sotheby’s CEO Tad Smith said in a call to investors. (more…)
Continuing a string of defaced works and thefts at Skulptur Project Münster, technical equipment related to the work of artist Koki Tanaka was stolen from a building housing his work in the city. “As soon as new technology can be installed, the location will be reopened,” the organizers said in a statement. (more…)
Harold Williams, who served as founding president of J. Paul Getty Trust, has passed away at the age of 89. Williams was instrumental in the Trust’s growth over its first 17 years, and remained an instrumental force in the Los Angeles arts community for years after leaving his post. “The Getty today — its global reach and its Southern California presence — is a legacy of Harold M. Williams,” says Maria Hummer-Tuttle, chairwoman of the Getty Trust’s board of directors. (more…)
The Met Museum has turned over an ancient bull’s head that was on loan to the museum, after prosecutors alleged that the work may have been looted from a Lebanese storage area in the 1980’s during the country’s civil war. “Upon a Met curator’s discovery that this item on loan may have been stolen from government storage during the Lebanese civil war, the museum took immediate action,” the museum said in a statement. “We contacted the Lebanese government and the lender, we took the item off display, and we have been working with federal and state authorities, which recently involved delivering the head of the bull to the Manhattan D.A. upon its request.” (more…)
Satoshi Kojima, Last Dance (2016), via Art Observed
Now through August 4, Bridget Donahue in New York presents an exhibition by painter Satoshi Kojima, his first ever North American show. The artist’s pastel-hued paintings offer a view into alternative histories, realities, and even other planets, executed with an updated Surrealist sensibility. Kojima’s paintings invite the viewer into multiple different worlds of unfolding weirdness and intrigue, all through the softness of his color palette, in conjunction with the bizarre worlds he envisions. (more…)
The Indonesian-Chinese collector Budi Tek has been awarded with France’s highest honor, the Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, for serving as a vital cultural link between France and China. Tek’s Yuz Museum has frequently worked as an advocate of Asian art in French institutions, and sponsored Zeng Fanzhi’s solo exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2013. (more…)
As the Crystal Bridges Museum turns five, Art News speaks to its staff, and profiles the museum’s plans for the coming years, especially that of Lauren Haynes, a former curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and specialist in African-American modern art. “We’re definitely in a growth mode, and I think we’ll develop an innovative interplay between these projects and those in the new industrial facility. It’s understood in all of this that I’m very committed to artists of color, and to telling a broader story of America as seen through the visual arts,” she says of her work. (more…)
The Bass Museum in Miami Beach has acquired a fossilized gas pump by American-Cuban artist duo Allora & Calzadilla, the first major installation by the group in a Miami art museum. “I saw one of their petrol pumps a few years ago and was struck by how timely the work was. It discusses issues that the whole world is going through,” says Silvia Karman Cubiña, the director and chief curator of the Bass. (more…)
Leo Villareal, Ellipse (2017), via Art Observed
Marking his first exhibition with Pace since joining the gallery this past year, artist Leo Villareal has opened a show of new works at the gallery’s 24th Street exhibition space. Villareal, whose twinkling, shifting LED light installations are iconic parts of the urban landscape from New York to San Francisco and around the globe, has built a reputation for his nuanced understanding of public space, and the capacity for simple light arrays to transform its environment, and brings a series of new installations, light panels and video to the gallery. (more…)
Christie’s is holding its first Modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art sale in London this fall, as it looks to expand the market for Middle Eastern work on a global scale. “Moving to London will help engage a wider audience, particularly on the contemporary side,” says Michael Jeha, managing director and deputy chairman, Middle East. “Stylistically, Modern art tends to appeal more to regional collectors.” (more…)
Adam Lindemann is planning a massive development in Los Angeles’s Arts District, a 12-story mixed use building with live-work spaces and street-level retail and art spaces. The space, located at 641 South Imperial Street, will continue Lindemann’s engagement with Los Angeles’s East Side. (more…)
Painting the wall at Watermill Center, via Art Observed
The 24th Annual Watermill Center Summer Benefit & Auction took place this past Saturday evening, returning to Robert Wilson’s expansive performing and interdisciplinary arts campus with a new selection of performances and installations laid out across the grounds. Honoring performer Laurie Anderson and actress Isabelle Huppert this year, the event also served as a tribute to the late artist and musician Lou Reed, while also serving to benefit the Watermill Center’s continued residency and research projects. Anderson and Reed previously performed a work together, The Wildebeests, at the event in 1997, reprised this year as a culmination of the evening’s proceedings.
Mark Grotjahn’s work is profiled in the New York Times this week, and the artist’s aggressive business strategies that have kept his works consistently in-demand. “He’s probably an artist who’s in more demand today than any other,” says Alberto Mugrabi. “He’s so good that he controls everything. He controls when galleries make shows, he controls who they sell a painting to — he’s on top.” (more…)
Musa Mayer, daughter of painter Philip Guston, is interviewed in The Telegraph this week, as she reflects on her father’s expansive and innovative body of work, and the toll it occasionally took on her family. “My father was never overtly cruel,” she says. “He was just largely absent, working. From an early age, I was given to understand that I was not to disturb his important work.” (more…)
The New York Times profiles the growing trend in New York condo developments to incorporate monumental pieces of art into the project’s building plans, as new buildings commission pieces from Yayoi Kusama and other artists. “10 years ago, I thought we were pioneers to incorporate an artist into the design,” says developer Izak Senbahar. “But since then, it has become a little more common.” (more…)
The Art Newspaper reflects on recent reviews of federally-protected land ordered by the Trump administration, and how reclassification of land in Nevada may harm artist Michael Heizer’s City installation in Basin and Range. “Monuments have been adjusted… 18 times before,” Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said in an interview. “So I don’t think there’s too much question that a monument can be adjusted. Whether a monument can be rescinded or not, that is a question for the courts.” (more…)
John Graham, Mascara (1950), via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed
Divided into two opposite galleries inside the Parrish Art Museum’s sleek architecture, John Graham: Maverick Modernist, a comprehensive survey of the 20th century Ukrainian-American painter, offers a breakdown of the artist’s ever-evolving four-decade long career from 1920s and onward. Curated by Alicia G. Longwell, the show recaps Graham’s defiant approach to Modernism, considering his sharp divergence from his dedication to modern art for the sake of figurative portraiture of female sitters in the 1940’s. Even then, at the height of his career, referring to Graham as a maverick would not be misguided: his models’ cross-eyed expressions, excessive make-ups, and mathematical details on their faces clash with easy readings as representational, and offer an intriguing historical context for much later practice in contemporary painting. (more…)
Taryn Simon, Charles Irvin Fain, Scene of the crime, the Snake River, Melba, Idaho, Served 18 years of a Death sentence for Murder, Rape and Kidnapping; The Innocents (2002), courtesy Taryn Simon Studio and Guild Hall
Since Taryn Simon first delivered her seminal The Innocents series in 2002, the New York-based artist’s work has continued to revisit and re-examine the concepts of power, identity and their interrelated social effects, examining how varied political conditions render real human effects on the body, and on space. This summer, East Hampton’s historic art and culture center, The Guild Hall re-contextualizes Simon’s compelling photography series about misconceptions of guilt and impossibility of rewinding time on its 15th anniversary, serving as a backdrop for ongoing discussions around prejudice, injustice, and empathy. Organized by Guild Hall Chief Curator Christina Mossaides Strassfield, the exhibition reiterates a selection of photographs and video from the overall series that had its debut at MoMA PS1 in 2003. (more…)
Gerry Bibby & Henrik Olesen, Fernseher (2016), via Queer Thoughts
Hosting the Munich-based Deborah Schamoni for its entry in the CONDO New York exhibition, downtown space Queer Thoughts presented a group show featuring artists from both gallery rosters. Comprising works by Gerry Bibby (including a collaboration with Henrik Olesen), Siera Hyte, David Rappeneau, and Davide Stucchi, the exhibition centered around the body, and its suspension in broader informational or social networks. (more…)
A group of South Korean officials have been sentenced to prison terms for their roles in maintaining a black list of artists opposing former president Park Geun-hye. “It’s against the Constitution to exclude artists from government support programs according to the taste of political power,” presiding judge, Hwang Byeong-heon, said in his ruling. (more…)
Critic Jerry Saltz takes a tour of MoMA this week with architect Liz Diller of Diller Scofido + Renfro, and examines the prospects for the museum’s new expansion project. “This next version of the museum is going to be the best version we’ll get for a while,” he writes. “Which is okay. I can’t live without this museum. I love it. It’s where we all come from — and need to return in order to spawn new ideas of modernism.” (more…)
