Art News reports on a clash between art handling company The British Shop and Chicago’s Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, after the company lost a work by artist Clotilde Jimenez. “Where we are now is in a moment of a fight,” Ibrahim says. “I’m not going to let this go and pass by. It’s not something I or the artist should accept.” (more…)
The Met has settled long-running negotiations with its HVAC workers, agreeing to a 63% pay hike for all licensed professionals after reports of overwork and underpay. “For about a year the Met Engineering Dept. had only 15 engineers, down from 35,” says Council Rep Dan McCabe. “They frequently worked double shifts and at times triple shifts, six or seven days a week. Because the museum paid significantly lower wages, no one applied for the HVAC postings or they’d only stay a year and leave for better pay elsewhere.”
Mary Abbott, an abstractionist whose works filled the canvas with color and energy, has passed away at age 98. The artist’s work was known for its fervent energy and her evolving approach to her compositions. “They change as you paint them,” she said of her works. “They are alive and they vibrate.” (more…)
Critic William Feaver has published a portion of his biography of Lucian Freud in The Guardian this week, a book that reflects on the artist’s work and the pair’s long friendship. “With him on the line, how blurred at any hour of day or night were the distinctions between personal and impersonal, between the private and the renowned,” he writes. (more…)
Sotheby’s and Ugo Rondinone are working together this fall to sell a selection of works to benefit bladder cancer research. (more…)
For the fifth edition of Made in L.A., the Hammer Museum will partner with the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California to share the exhibition between the various venues. “We’re really looking at the legacy of our founders, Henry and Arabella Huntington,” says Christina Nielsen, the Huntington Museum’s director. (more…)
Wangechi Mutu gets a profile in the NYT this month, as the artist prepares to place her new sculpture commissions for the Met on view, and reflects on her life growing up in Kenya after the end of British colonial rule. “The one thing that’s always missing — I think it’s part of the trauma — is the personal element,” she says. “My parents don’t often talk about their experiences in terms of how it made them feel.” (more…)
Christie’s will sell the collection of renowned architect I.M. Pei over a series of sales in the coming months. “The Pei name is one that resonates around the world, integrated into the landscape of the dozens of cities that feature a Pei-designed art museum, concert hall, university, hospital, office tower or civic building,” says Marc Porter, Chairman for Christie’s Americas. (more…)
P.P.O.W will move to Tribeca in the fall of 2020. “There are things we could get [in Tribeca] that we just couldn’t get in Chelsea anymore,” says Wendy Olsoff, the gallery’s cofounder. “We’re able to gain a beautiful space in a neighborhood we felt comfortable in…. Chelsea just got to be too corporate for us and our identity. It just didn’t match anymore.” (more…)
Artist Tavares Strachan will give part of the proceeds from his upcoming shows to fund disaster relief in the Bahamas. “These things are more organic than we would like to admit,” he says. “I think the issues will be different in a week as people get evacuated and then it’s rebuilding effort. At this time, people on the ground need to be sheltered and fed.” (more…)
London’s Victoria & Albert Museum headTristram Hunt said he sees no problem with receiving support from fossil fuel firms such as BP. “I think that the pre-history of fossil fuel companies in muddying the science about climate change, in lobbying, in their political acts, have been pretty criminal and they will be judged on that,” he says. “But, I also think they will be part of the solution to dealing with climate change and they are engaged with it. It’s their technological reach, it is their facilities that will also be part of the solution and I think they’re getting there.” (more…)
The UK Government will increase its culture budget by 4.1% in real terms to £1.6bn, after inflation is taken into account, Art Newspaper reports. This announcement follows several years with no increase in budget. (more…)
The LA Times reports on the recent discovery of a series of works stolen from homes on the West Side of the city during the 1990’s, and the LAPD’s efforts to catalog the works. “We are in the process of identifying the specific art, artists and how much it might be worth,” says Capt. Lillian Carranza. (more…)
The New Yorker has a piece on Georgia O’Keefe’s sister, Ida, and the artists’ impacts on each other. “She was the queen. . . . and we all loved her,” another sister, Catherine, said of Georgia. (more…)
Filmmaker and painter Rosalind Nashashibi will become the first artist in residence at the National Gallery in London . “Over the course of the year [beginning this month], she will work in the National Gallery’s on-site artist’s studio, benefitting from the close proximity to the gallery’s collection, research and teams,” a statement says. (more…)
Marina Abramovic will re-create her famed performance Imponderabilia at London’s Royal Academy of Arts next year, Art Newspaper reports. The work requires visitors to a show to squeeze between the naked bodies of performers to see the rest of the work on view. “If there were no artists, there would be no museums, so we are living doors,” the original project statement said. (more…)
Artist Betye Saar gets a profile in the NYT this week, as she prepares to open a pair of major museum shows this fall, and reflects on her career. “I consider myself a recycler,” she says “I’ve been that way since I was a kid, going through trash to see what people left behind. Good stuff.” (more…)
A piece in the NYT looks at storage conditions at Humboldt Forum in Berlin, and asks if long argued claims about African artifacts being safer in European collections really holds water. “They complain that they do not have enough money to do research on these objects to take proper care of them,” said Tahir Della, a postcolonial activist based in Berlin, “but they had enough money to build a castle in the middle of Berlin.” (more…)
Michael Rakowitz is the winner of the 2020 Nasher Prize for Sculpture for his incisive critiques of current social and political landscapes. “Michael’s work deals with migrant populations and homeless populations, and some of it deals with works of art and books that have been destroyed, in Germany, Afghanistan and Iraq, where his family is from,” says Nasher director Jeremy Strick. “As a result, he harbors an intense interest “in people who have suffered through wars or genocide or political violence.” (more…)
Hong Kong artists speak with Art News this week, as protests continue to roil the city. “In the last couple of years, we have witnessed a systemic erosion of the values that make this city unique,” says artist Samson Young. (more…)
Pace Gallery will represent artist Nina Katchadourian, as it prepares to open its new flagship in Chelsea. “I’m incredibly happy,” Katchadourian says. “I’ve never worked with a gallery that operates on this scale, and there are going to be great things about their reach.” (more…)
Mariner Kemper, CEO and chairman of UMB Financial Corp (UMB Bank) and a trustee of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri is facing pressure to resign over connections to President Trump’s controversial immigration policies. UMB Bank represents the bondholders for the publicly owned and privately operated Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, Rhode Island, which houses detained immigrants. (more…)
Alex Prager’s new work is profiled in the New Yorker, as the artist turns her camera lens on the landscapes and people of Los Angeles. The works explore new perspectives and frames for the artist, expanding on her intriguing body of crowd-based photography. (more…)