The Cooper Hewitt’s ouster of director Caroline Baumann is profiled in the NYT this week, as some point to controversy behind her wedding and a perceived conflict of interest in her work with a wedding dress designer. “I know the circumstances of the investigation that led to Caroline’s dismissal and I must say I am appalled that this was its conclusion,” says philanthropist and Cooper Hewitt Board Secretary Judy Francis Zankel. “I have been working with her long enough to know without a doubt that she has been unfairly accused and unjustly judged.”
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Artist Dawoud Bey gets a profile in The Guardian this week, as he opens a retrospective at SFMoMA. “What I hope to create is work that makes it apparent that black people exist not only in a social world,” Beys says at the press preview for the SF Moma opening, “but they also have rich interior lives as human beings.”
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Artist Pyotr Pavlensky is once again facing possible imprisonment over his recent stunt leaking a politician’s sex tape. “[Candidate Benjamin Griveaux] despises his constituents,” the artist says in a statement. “He was the only candidate to use his family to promote a political image. He told a big lie; he began his campaign with a big lie.”
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