A piece in Art News looks at the continued push for an arts museum in Las Vegas, and the players involved. “Vegas has been the entertainment capital of the world, and it has been daunting to introduce a bona fide cultural institution into this energized mix,” says David Walker, director of the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. (more…)
Two Sotheby’s shareholders have sued in NY to block the planned $2.7 billion purchase of the auction house by French collector and telecom magnate Patrick Drahi’s BidFair USA, claiming that Drahi has not disclosed enough information. “As the vast majority of all public company mergers over $100 million are the subject of shareholder litigation, the lawsuits filed were expected and routine,” Sotheby’s said in an emailed statement. “We do not expect the suits to have any impact on our targeted closing timing of the fourth quarter of this year.” (more…)
Judy Chicago will open a major retrospective next year at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. “I’ve been working for a long time,” Chicago says. “I used to say I hope lived to long enough to come out from behind the shadow of The Dinner Party.” (more…)
More artists have withdrawn from the Whitney Biennial over Warren Kanders’s ownership in several defense companies, with collective Forensic Architecture withdrawing after finding ties between Kanders and bullets used by the Israeli Military in Gaza. (more…)
Collector Jean Pigozzi has donated 45 works to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with a focus on his substantial holdings of contemporary works from Africa. The gify includes work by Bodys Isek Kingelez, Jean Depara, and more. “I hope that this donation will help open the eyes of millions of art lovers from all over the world to the amazing, and not yet well-enough known, art from the oldest—and now the youngest—continent on our planet,” Pigozzi said in a statement. (more…)
The government of South Korea has pledged to open 186 new museums as part of a massive building boom. The plan also features expanded resources for institutions around the country.
Pioneering painter Ed Clark has joined Hauser & Wirth, and will open his first show with the gallery in New York this September.“The recent work is incredibly free and radical,” says partner Marc Payot. “With the show in New York we want to really activate the museums, the curators, the critical thinking, to work toward a strong institutional presence.” (more…)
Russian film director and current Venice Biennale Russian pavilion artist Alexander Sokurov (Faust, Russian Ark) will shut down his independent film foundation, Primer Inotnatsii after ongoing pressure by the Russian government. The artist claims that “unfriendliness and aggressiveness” from the state’s culture ministry prevented him from continuing in his work with the foundation. (more…)
The nation of Benin is building a new space in the city of Abomey for 26 objects of art and cultural heritage looted by French troops in 1894 pledged by the Macron government back to the West African country. “They will allow us to build a new museum and make the royal palaces more economically sustainable,” Gabin Djimass, Abomey’s tourism chief, says of the artifacts. (more…)
Artist Cary Leibowitz and the creative director Simon Lince give the NYT a tour of the upstate home, and the collection they have built. “When I first met Simon, I was already in Harlem,” Leibowitz says. “But I had been a hoarder for years, and it was impossible for someone to just move in and feel comfortable. So that’s when we started looking up here.” (more…)
A piece in the NYT this week charts the recent removal of the Sackler name from the galleries at the Louvre, and forecasts the likelihood that more museums will follow suit. “We are not a partisan organization, we are not a political organization, so we don’t have a litmus test for whom we take gifts from based on policies or politics,” said Daniel H. Weiss of the Met’s removal of the family name, noting the extreme circumstances at play. “If there are people who want to support us, for the most part we are delighted.” (more…)
Four participants in the Whitney Biennial have withdrawn their work following the museum’s continued involvement with Warren B. Kanders, its vice-chair. “We were angry when we learned of Kanders’ role as CEO of Safariland, a company that manufactures teargas and other weapons of repression,” Korakrit Arunanondchai, Meriem Bennani, Nicole Eisenman, and Nicholas Galanin. (more…)
Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union have expressed solidarity with Ahdaf Soueif over the author’s resignation from the British Museum board of trustees over its BP funding and other issues. The letter claims that BP “is allowed to propagate the myth that, without its existence, we would not have access to the collections of our publicly funded museums and galleries.” (more…)
The David Smith Estate has named Jennifer Field its new executive director, as it continues to expand and work on the artist’s catalogue raisonné. “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to join the Estate of David Smith in a capacity that draws upon my range of professional and scholarly experiences,” she said in a statement, “yet allows me to focus in a sustained way upon Smith’s remarkable artistic contributions.” (more…)
A group of artists and curators, including Hannah Black, have written a powerful piece in Artforum this week, challenging the artists in this year’s Whitney Biennial regarding their refusal to protest the show over the Whitney’s tacit support of board member Warren Kanders. “A boycott would boost the force of every one of these statements and actions,” the piece reads. “But the art world imagines itself as a limited sphere of intellectual and aesthetic inquiry, where what matters, first and foremost, are inclusion, representation, and discussion. ” (more…)
Artist Leo Villareal has launched the first phase of his Illuminated River Project, which will install lights on the bridges spanning the Thames in London. “It was important for me to make something that felt appropriate and inspired by the life and history of the river, rather than using the bridges as a pedestal for my own ego,” Villareal says. (more…)
Directors at the Tate in London have declared a “climate emergency,” and will immediately set to work reducing the museum’s carbon footprint by 10 percent within the coming four years. “We will interrogate our systems, our values and our programs, and look for ways to become more adaptive and responsible,” the directors said in the announcement. “As an organization that works with living artists, we should respond to and amplify their concerns. And, as our audiences and communities across the world confront climate extinction, so we must shine a spotlight on this critical issue through art.” (more…)
Beijing’s Long March Space will stop participating in art fairs. The gallery plans to “innovate business models and enter a new stage of art market work,” according to an announcement. (more…)
A piece in the NYT this week charts the damage caused by the fire at Notre Dame, and just how close the cathedral came to collapsing. “There was a feeling that there was something bigger than life at stake,” says Ariel Weil, mayor of the city’s Fourth Arrondissement, “and that Notre-Dame could be lost.” (more…)
“Wolf of Wall Street” producer Joey McFarland has agreed to give up items he says he received as gifts from Low Taek Jho, the man behind the theft of billions of dollars from the Malaysian 1MDB fund, including a work by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The Louvre has removed the Sackler name from all of its galleries following protests this month, claiming that the statue of limitations on the donor name rights had expired. “We protest against this attempt to rewrite history and call on [Director] Jean-Luc Martinez to rectify his statements as soon as possible in order to make official the removal of the Sackler name from the Louvre,” the P.A.I.N. activist group said of the news. (more…)
The Andy Warhol Foundation has given $3.81 million to 41 arts organizations in the United States and Canada for its spring 2019 grant cycle, which will go to support exhibitions, publications, and institutional programming. Awards include a Barbara Kruger show at the Art Institute of Chicago and shows at the The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. (more…)
The NYT has a piece this week on 25 art works that defined the contemporary era, from Hans Haacke’s MoMA Poll to Kara Walker’s A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby. The piece features interviews and comments on the work from a range of artists and critics. (more…)