Alex Da Corte is profiled in the Washington Post this week, as he prepares new work and gives the paper a tour of his massive studio in Philadelphia. “The studio is bubbling,” he says. “I am currently in the midst of making a large Gesamtkunstwerk, made of many moving threads — video, kinetic sculpture, textile, furniture, neon and sound. At the moment, though, I am boiling shampoo for a painting.” (more…)
Artist Dawoud Bey’s photos of David Hammons gets a profile in NYT this week, as the artist’s work goes on view at Frieze. “Between David and I there’s always been an agreement: don’t talk about it,” he says. “That’s part of the aura of the work. And because David still probably doesn’t have a telephone, and probably wouldn’t answer it if he did, it’s up to me to at least put that much out there, to be accountable to and for that history.” (more…)
Jean Cooney, the current deputy director of Creative Time in New York, has been appointed director of the Times Square Arts. “I am thrilled to take on the unique opportunity of presenting public art in one of New York City’s most iconic, history-rich, kinetic, and complicated spaces with Times Square Arts,” Cooney said in a statement. (more…)
Phillips’s worldwide head of design and deputy chairman in Europe, Alexander Payne, has stepped down. “I am immensely grateful for the loyalty and friendship of my wonderful colleagues, and for their dedication to, and belief in, the Design team,” he says. “I will look back on my time at Phillips with much gratitude, and enormous pride in what my team has achieved.” (more…)
Phillips has hired David Norman from Sotheby’s, as chairman of the Americas. “While consulting for Phillips during the past few years, I realized that I love being part of a team—and this is the team I’d love to be a part of,” Norman says. “Phillips is a 220-year-old company with the spirit of a start-up, and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the next chapter in the company’s growth story.” (more…)
Venice Biennale curator Ralph Rugoff is interviewed in Art Newspaper this month, discussing his perspectives on the show he has organized, and which he will open next week. “It seemed open-ended in what it might mean and might be a way to frame an exhibition that hopefully is reflecting on this time, but also offered the possibility that you might find a perspective of living in this time where you could see it as an interesting time, rather than a dangerous, hair-raising, horrific period of human history,” he says. (more…)
Art News profiles a group of Whitney Biennial Artists calling for Warren Kanders’s departure from the Whitney Board. “The stakes of the demand to remove Kanders are high and extend far beyond the art world,” an open letter reads. “Alongside universities, cultural institutions like the Whitney are among the few spaces in public life today that claim to be devoted to ideals of education, creativity, and dissent beyond the dictates of the market. Yet, these institutions have been historically entwined with the power structures of settler colonialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism.” (more…)
The Guardian interviews Robert Longo this week, as the artist prepares a show of new work around the current American political environment. “America is oppressed through a dream. The dream is anyone can become as rich as Donald Trump,” he says. “It’s problematic, for sure.” (more…)
The New York Times looks at the evolving role of Berlin in Europe’s arts ecosystem, and how the city’s rising rents and greater wealth have changed a notoriously scrappy arts community. “Berlin is an über-cool city. The economics of the city allow dealers to have really great spaces,” says collector Danny Goldberg. (more…)
Two Italian scientists are preparing a DNA test on a lock of hair they think may belong to Leonardo Da Vinci. “We found, across the Atlantic, a lock of hair historically tagged ‘Les Cheveux de Leonardo da Vinci’ and this extraordinary relic will allow us to proceed in the quest to carry out research on Da Vinci’s DNA,” says Alessandro Vezzosi, the director of the museum and Agnese Sabato, president of the Leonardo da Vinci Heritage Foundation in a statement. (more…)
Frieze New York is presenting an entire section devoted to Augmented and Virtual Reality projects this year, raising the question of how ready the market is for tech-based works like those at the fair. “There’s a new generation of artists who can actually write code,” says art critic and director of Acute Art Daniel Birnbaum, the curator of the program. “But there are others who want to translate their traditional artistic and intellectual abilities to this new world.” (more…)
French newspaper Le Figaro has published an open letter signed by 1,169 academics and curators urging President Emmauel Macron avoid rushing a difficult process of restoration for Notre Dame Cathedral. “Let’s take the time to diagnose,” the letter reads. “A number of [experts] can be found in your administration, in the Ministry of Culture. Let us remind you of their expertise, take the right path to find them, and then, yes, set an ambitious deadline for an exemplary restoration not only for the present but also for generations to come.”
The Asia Society is opening its own arts triennial, with the first edition, titled “We Do Not Dream Alone,” scheduled to open on June 5, 2020. “We must value art because it not only allows us to dream without fear, but also because it is one of the few spaces where we can disagree without explicit conflict,” says Museum Director Boon Hui Tan. (more…)
Los Angeles’s David Kordansky Gallery now represents Linda Stark, Art News reports. “We’re thrilled to represent Linda. Her singular approach to paint as a sculptural medium fascinates me,” Kordansky said in an email. “Since the early 1990s, she has created precise, sincere, tactile pictures that are immediately spellbinding but also slow-burning: their material inventiveness builds into a critical inquisitiveness of the political, the mystical, and the personal.” (more…)
A piece in the New York Times this week traces the increased tendencies of artists towards collective practice, a response to rising rents and other challenges to the solitary contemporary artist. “Sectie-C is a different kind of factory,” artist Sander Wassink says of the studio he started in the Netherlands with a group of fellow artists, “a human-scale laboratory that is adaptable and flexible.” (more…)
Artist Derek Fordjour has joined the roster of Petzel, Art News reports. “After a series of visits and conversations, it was very clear after a while that Petzel was a good fit,” the artist says. “I knew several people at the gallery independently, and I just found them to be really committed to art and very honest. I’m glad to have a home now in New York.” (more…)
Adrien Meyer has been named chairman of global private sales at Christie’s and will also continue working as co-chairman of Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department. “While Christie’s private sales have regularly increased since 2017, we wanted to appoint a well-respected and versatile specialist to spearhead our team’s efforts and improve our communication to our clients,” Guillaume Cerutti, CEO of Christie’s, said in a statement. “Adrien Meyer has all the qualities to reinforce our focus on private sales, and to help Christie’s increase both the volume and contribution of this channel.” (more…)
A Bowery loft that once served as the studio of artist Mark Rothko is up for rent in the neighborhood, carrying a monthly rent of $15,000. (more…)
An Italian prosecutor is claiming that an 11th-century missal in the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York was stolen in 1925 from a parish church in the Italian town of Apiro, Art Newspaper reports. “Written proof of the legitimate change of ownership of the missal to [owner William S.] Glazier by the seller is missing, and the seller in turns claims to have purchased it in Switzerland (without written documentation in this regard).” (more…)
Protestors have called on the Museum of Modern Art and Larry Fink, one of its trustees and the CEO of the investment firm BlackRock, to divest from companies involved in private prisons, Art News reports. “These prisons think of immigrants as a market. This is just the beginning,” a written statement reads. “They are seeking to expand into other markets.” (more…)
Urs Fischer has a piece in Interview this month, showing the magazine his camera roll, including shots of his pets. “We have two pet rats. They’re really smart. They’re such awesome creatures. They hang with us on the couch and they watch TV,” he says. (more…)
This summer, at its School location in Kinderhook, New York, Jack Shainman Gallery will host a show exploring the collaborative works of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “I think the collaborative paintings are so interesting to see 30 years later,” Shainman says. “They’re so strong and so fresh.” (more…)