The Chinese nation’s persecution of its Uyghur peoples has led to a number of artists being imprisoned. “So many have been taken away,” says Tahir Hamut, a Uyghur poet and film-maker who escaped to the US. “Most of the more famous cultural figures have all been arrested. Their families won’t say for certain, because their families are afraid.” (more…)
The latest victim of the US Government shutdown, the National Gallery of Art has shuttered, one day after the Smithsonian network of musuems, which includes the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden closed due to lack of funds. (more…)
The Municipality of Amsterdam has appointed four new supervisors to the board of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, including Carla Aalse, Henriëtte Prast, Maarten Doorman, and Homme ten Have. “In the best interests of the museum, it is time to bring the recent turmoil to an end and start afresh,” interim board chair Madeleine de Cock Buning and Jos van Rooijen said in a letter, referring to the departure of former director Beatrix Ruf. (more…)
A long-running legal battle in France over artist resale royalties has been decided in favor of Christie’s efforts to shift responsibility for payments to the buyer, after the Supreme Court allowed the auction house to charge the buyer of paintings at auction for the royalty rates. “The Cour de Cassation handed down its decision on 9 November 2018 regarding the SNA case,” says a Christie’s spokesperson. “It agrees with the Christie’s France reasoning and overturns the judgments of the Court of Appeal of Versailles in this case.” (more…)
The New York Times has a piece on the collection of Harlan and Olivia Fischer, which focuses heavily on the use of glass in sculpture. “When Olivia and I started collecting glass, the feeling was similar to how I felt in high school when I discovered jazz,” Harlan says. (more…)
Seth Price, Hell Has Everything (2018), via Petzel
In the past several months, artist Seth Price has taken to making and posting mixtapes on his personal SoundCloud page. Described in a recent Art News post as “soundtracks for painters,” his mixes (and the article itself), underscore Price as an inveterate consumer of media and information, embracing a constant stream of data that he often delves into or twists up into the language and production of his works. This compilation of information sits at the core of Hell Has Everything, the artist’s first show of work at Petzel Gallery in New York in six years.
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Chiharu Shiota, Me Somewhere Else (2018), via Blain Southern
Japanese-born, Berlin-based artist Chiharu Shiota brings her signature techniques in environmental installation to bear at Blain|Southern this fall for her first exhibition at the gallery’s London space. Compiling a selection of new works that include a new site-specific installation, along with sculpture and works on canvas, the artist’s show, Me Somewhere Else, underscores her practice in attempting to connect and reframe the operations of her own memory in exchange with the world around her. (more…)
The New York Times profiles Italy’s new, nationalist Government and its aggressive stance on promoting and defending its culture. “Being from the League, it’s our way of seeing the country, the society and the world,” Lucia Borgonzoni, Italy’s under secretary for culture, says. (more…)
The Art Newspaper profiles Hermitage Museum head Mikhail Piotrovsky and his efforts to spearhead cultural diplomacy through his museum. “The last bridge to be blown up should be a cultural one,” he says. (more…)
Sister Wendy Beckett, the formerly cloistered Roman Catholic nun who became an international star for her BBC documentary series on art and art criticism, has passed away at the age of 88.“Nothing is more humiliating than being on television,” she said of herself, underscoring her humility and charm even in the face of her widespread recognition. “You make such a fool of yourself.” (more…)
Ellsworth Kelly, Color Panels for a Large Wall II (1978), via Matthew Marks
In 1978, Ellsworth Kelly was commissioned to create a painting for the lobby of a new building in Cincinnati. His piece, Color Panels for a Large Wall, was the resulting work, a 30-by-125-foot painting that clocked in as his largest ever made. Yet the artist’s work in this vein would live well beyond this specific installation, reprised in several iterations of shows and installs in Amsterdam, New York, and Munich. In 2003, Kelly reconfigured the painting’s eighteen panels — from two rows of nine to three rows of six — when it was installed in its permanent home at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. (more…)
One of Louise Bourgeois’s first large-scale Spider sculptures will leave its home in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo for a tour of Brazilian art museums. The tour is designed as an effort to “democratize” the museum’s holdings, according to Eduardo Saron, the institute’s cultural director. (more…)
Bruce Nauman, Disappearing Acts (Installation View), via Art Observed
The long-awaited career retrospective of artist Bruce Nauman is now open in New York City, filling both MoMA PS1 and the sixth floor of MoMA’s main exhibition building in Midtown with the artist’s challenging, often outrageous body of work in sculpture, video, light works, and other formats. The show, which is on view through February, is an intriguing and in-depth look at the work an artist always looking to push the boundaries of his craft, and often the viewer’s comfort level. (more…)
A group of four independent art dealers are opening a collaborative space in Brussels, Art News reports. La Maison de Rendez-Vous, as it is called, will be operated by LambdaLambdaLambda, Lulu, Misako & Rosen and Park View/Paul Soto. “The project began with Paul [Soto, owner of Park View/Paul Soto] wanting to open a second space in Brussels, and then just developed momentum out of our time together in Buenos Aires and other cities,” the group said in a statement. “We also have similar approaches to programming which tends to be more curatorial than commercial. The fact that we all inhabit such different geographies and times zones is a bonus in terms of the diversity that we’ll naturally bring to the table.” (more…)
Patrick Charpenel, executive director of El Museo del Barrio in New York, and Franklin Sirmans, director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, will curate two new themed sections at its 2019 New York Frieze fair. “It is an honor to collaborate with these institutional leaders who are at the forefront of shaping the art and ideas of today,” says fair creative director Loring Randolph. With their contribution, Frieze New York 2019 will offer an experience that is both dynamic and challenging—pushing the boundaries of what an art fair can be.” (more…)
The Rijksmuseum’s 24-hour branch at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is due to reopen in late January, Art Newspaper reports. The branch had previously been closed over fears of leaking water that may damage works. (more…)
Moscow citizens are calling for the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art to end its sponsorship agreement with the Russian real estate developer the PIK Group over unsavory business practices and corruption. An open letter alleges the developer “does not aim at improving the environment and people’s lives, but rather at obtaining super profits and enhancing its own image through the patronage of cultural projects.” (more…)
Brazil’s Ministry of Culture, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo have selected Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca to represent the nation at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, who curated this year’s edition of the Bienal de São Paulo, will curate the pavilion. (more…)
Hannah Wilke, Untitled (1974-77), via Alison Jacques
Bringing together works from the early 1960s through to 1987, Alison Jacques Gallery in London is currently presenting an exhibition spanning three decades of the American painter, sculptor, photographer, video and performance artist Hannah Wilke’s work, in partnership with The Hannah Wilke Collection and Archive, Los Angeles. This is the first time since Wilke’s death in 1993 that her paintings on canvas from the 60s have been exhibited.
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A partnership with the Smithsonian Institution and Fulbright Commission will allow researchers from Brazil’s destroyed National Museum to continue their research. “We have lost part of our collection but not our ability to produce knowledge,” the museum’s director, Alexander Kellner, said in a statement. (more…)
New York Magazine profiles 15 Orient, the living room gallery opened by Michel Gondry’s son Paul in their Brooklyn home. The space has already hosted a number of exhibitions in the past year. (more…)
The New York Times spotlights a push for a museum dedicated to Judy Chicago in her home city of Belen, New Mexico, and the controversy her work has raised in the city. “If Judy Chicago wants to be successful in a museum, well bless her little heart,” says John K. Thompson, a resident and retired stockbroker. “But not in a sleepy little town in the middle of New Mexico. A lot of her art is very sexual, more fitting for some liberal city far from here.” (more…)
Stanley Whitney, In the Color (2018), via Lisson Gallery
Color inspires and informs the work of Stanley Whitney, whose paintings explore the many possibilities for juxtaposition and movement across the canvas, each drawing on irregular rectangles in varying shades of strength and subtlety. His work creates fluctuating series of intensities and reliefs, draw on the composition of adjacent nodes, a structure that seems to welcome exchanges between freedom and constraint, open space and riding control, all bound together by the evolving exchanges in color. He returns to New York this fall for his fourth exhibition with Lisson Gallery, marking the first solo show of the artist to occupy both of New York gallery spaces. Investigating his profound and nuanced relationship to color and its spatial effects throughout his career, the show includes paintings and drawings dating back to the 1990s in one gallery, and a suite of brand new works in the other. (more…)