A group of protests occurred at the Harvard Art Museum this weekend, continuing a string of actions calling for the Sackler Family to dedicate resources to the war against opioid addiction.  “From our vantage point, being in medical school in the thick of the opioid crisis has been a defining experience,” says one organizer, medical student Leo Eisenstein. “We’re trying to end the stigma that surround opioid abuse disorder, and to promote the interventions that we know work at saving lives.” (more…)

The New York Times has a piece on Susan Unterberg, a donor who has advocated anonymously for women artists over the past four decades, and is now stepping publicly into her role. “It’s a great time for women to speak up,” she says. “I feel I can be a better advocate having my own voice.” (more…)

Fred Wilson, Afro Kismet (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Pace Gallery’s New York location, artist Fred Wilson has mounted his powerful exhibition Afro Kismet, reprising a work from the Istanbul Biennial that sought shared cultural threads and a refreshed cultural understanding of shared relationships between Africa and the Middle East. Continuing Wilson’s nuanced dialogues with both historical and cultural framing in conjunction with a studied view of both modern and deep history, the show’s trip to New York offers a second chance for viewers to see a challenging and important piece of work by the artist. (more…)

Voice of America (Installation View), via Gladstone

In 1975, Vito Acconci installed his now classic piece Voice of America at Portland Center for Contemporary Arts.  The piece was a love letter by way of a music lesson, according to the artist, an attempt at getting under the skin of the nation, and to speak to the inner spirit of the nation. “One kind of American music drifts into another: America presented in a music lesson, a geography lesson: from Ozark fiddle to California harmonica to New Orleans piano,” Acconci says. “My voice is the voice of a mythical Mr. America talking to Mrs. America: we’re giving voice to an American dream… There is a voice calling out from the wilderness, jabs of voice…here’s the response from the children of America.” (more…)

Julie Mehretu, A Love Supreme (2018), via Art Observed

Long time friends Tacita Dean and Julie Mehretu have teamed up for a unique exhibition concept at Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris month, a show that winds through a broad range of varied techniques in abstraction. Dean and Mehretu are presenting two new works emblematic of their respective practices: Suite of Nine, a series of chalk drawings on slate depicting a solar eclipse and A Love Supreme, a large painting in ink and acrylic on canvas. On the occasion of the exhibition, the two artists decided to create in parallel 45 monotypes each. Composed of 90 works covering the walls of the gallery’s lower level, the installation Monotype Melody (ninety works for Marian Goodman) reflects a unique bond shared by the artists.

Julie Mehretu and Tacita Dean (Installation View), via Art Observed

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The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis will commission a Native artist to do a public artwork for the museum’s sculpture garden, a response to the controversy over artist Sam Durant’s Scaffold work. “We are extremely fortunate to be working with the expertise, knowledge, and creative thinking of this committee, who collectively will help bring an important new work of art to the Walker Art Center collection and to the Twin Cities,” says Siri Engberg, the Walker’s senior curator and director of exhibitions. (more…)

The Royal Academy in London will mount a show of works by Bill Viola alongside works by Michelangelo, The Guardian reports. “I got out the Michelangelos for him, thinking they had much more connection with the themes that Bill had been exploring throughout his career,” Martin Clayton, the head of prints and drawings at the Royal Collection, says of a meeting years ago between Viola and himself, “and he was blown away by them.” (more…)

Pace Gallery has appointed Whitney Ferrare senior director of its Hong Kong location, bringing her over from Gagosian’s Hong Kong space. “Pace is distinct for its long-held and dedicated engagement with the artists and collectors across Asia—having partnered with legendary dealer Leng Lin to be the first major Western gallery to open a space in Asia, launching Pace in Beijing in 2008,” Ferrare says. “It feels particularly momentous to join Pace as the gallery celebrates its 10th anniversary in Asia, now with galleries in Hong Kong and Seoul, as well as Beijing.” (more…)

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has announced the recipients of its Spring 2018 Curatorial Research Fellowships, with $295,000 split between six recipients. “These six curators are engaging with urgent cultural issues including income inequality, how we represent resistance, and how dominant narratives are shaped, and most importantly, by whom,” says Joel Wachs, the Warhol Foundation’s president. (more…)

The House of Representatives has voted down a proposal to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by 15%, Variety reports. “One of the largest vote margins in support of the NEA and NEH ever, this bipartisan showing and resounding vote is a testament to the good work of the federal agencies and the power of the arts in our communities, schools, lives, and work,” says Robert Lynch, the president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports on the legacy of Robert Indiana, and the current lawsuits that could determine the fate of the late artist’s estate. A filing in Maine has sought to discover if some parties working with Indiana “may have been conveyed away or otherwise misappropriated or sold without due compensation.” (more…)

A new entrance at the V&A Museum in London has led to a spike in attendance, moving against wider trends in the UK. “All the data we have shows that it is much more attractive to non-traditional museum-goers,” says museum director Tristram Hunt. “It is less, frankly, scary.” (more…)

Creative Time has announced the lineup for the eleventh edition of the Creative Time Summit, which will set up shop in Miami this year from November 1-3.  “Fifty years after the upheavals of 1968, we continue to grapple with a host of pressing issues, from the ongoing legacies of colonialism to climate change and xenophobia,” says Creative Time executive director Justine Ludwig.  “There’s no better place for this conversation than Miami, a home to so many incredible artists, activists, and thinkers. We couldn’t be prouder to host the summit here, or of the participants and the invaluable insights they’ll be bringing to bear on some of the most critical issues of our time.” (more…)

A new initiative by New York’s library systems will grant free access to a range of NYC institutions with a library card, the New York Times reports. “Some people are intimidated by museums,” says Linda Johnson, president of the Brooklyn Public Library, said in a phone interview. “They shouldn’t be shut out of all the wonderful cultural offerings that are available to New York City dwellers.” (more…)

Liberté Nuti has joined Hauser & Wirth as International Senior Director of Impressionist & Modern Art, leaving her former post as International Director of Impressionist & Modern at Christie’s. “We are thrilled to welcome Liberté Nuti as a Senior Director in London,” Iwan Wirth says. “We look forward to this next chapter in Hauser & Wirth’s evolution as the gallery’s secondary market activity comes into sharper focus.” (more…)

A Robert Motherwell painting that disappeared from a New York warehouse in 1978 has been found, the New York Times reports. The painting was found in a garage upstate by the son of a mover who had worked for Motherwell. (more…)

Adrian Piper, A Synthesis of Intuitions (Installation View), via Art Observed

Considering the canon of the conceptual movement over the course of the 20th Century, the work of artist Adrian Piper figures in a particularly resonant and explosive way.  Working at the forefront of the conceptual project from the late 1960’s onwards, Piper’s work has long confronted and framed questions of race, identity and discrimination in ways that push the viewer into a deep, lasting engagement with concepts and structures of institutionalized racism. This mode of practice, and the artist’s gradual movements towards it over the course of her career sits at the core of her current career retrospective at MoMA, an exhibition that manages to frame the artist’s work historically and socially, while using its conceptual payload to push the viewer into that same sense of identification.

Adrian Piper, A Synthesis of Intuitions (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Eric Shiner is leaving his place as senior vice president of contemporary art at Sotheby’s to serve as artistic director of White Cube gallery in New York. “This new role allows me to return to making sure the most relevant voices of our age are heard and celebrated,” he said in a statement. (more…)

The Venice Biennale has announced its opening dates for its 2019 edition, with the title May You Live in Interesting Times, an allusion to periods of uncertainty, crisis, and turmoil.  “At a moment when the digital dissemination of fake news and ‘alternative facts’ is corroding political discourse and the trust on which it depends, it is worth pausing whenever possible to reassess our terms of reference,” says curator Ralph Rugoff. (more…)

The next iteration of Documenta will be held in 2022, with a selection committee for the next edition’s artistic director just announced. “Documenta is an essential forum for contemporary art and, as the legacy of Arnold Bode, a treasure that enhances the image of the city of Kassel,” says Kassel’s mayor, Christian Geselle. “I am very pleased to note that an international finding commission composed of outstanding experts has been chosen to find an artistic director for Documenta 15. And we are right on schedule.” (more…)

The LA Times has a piece on the Pablo Picasso pieces that once hung in a special room at the paper, alongside a range of other works from the newspaper’s collection. “They gave us this gift of thinking highly enough of us to surround us with beautiful things,” says former bureau chief Geraldine Baum. (more…)

Math Bass, Newz! (2018), via Mary Boone

Currently on view at Mary Boone Gallery’s 745 Fifth Ave space, artist Math Bass has brought together a range of new sculptures and paintings that continue her equally meticulous and playful interpretations of the art object, twisting vaguely familiar forms and figures into foreign landscapes and minimalistic constructions. (more…)

Installation view. All images via Galerie Neu.

Rose Painting, the second solo show of Norwegian-German artist Yngve Holen, was recently on view at Galerie Neu in Berlin through July 14. This exhibition presented a series of rims, ‘gutted’ from five different sports utility vehicles and then 3D-scanned, scaled to a diameter of two meters, and optimized to be milled in CLT (cross-laminated timber). The resulting objects are flower-like wooden constructions that feature symmetrical lines organized around a center point. Rose Painting addresses the formal design languages of a utility object, questioning the fetish object and psychosocial design that punctuate the objects that clutter wealth distribution.

The role of ornamentation in the above questions is central to this exhibition, which emphasized the process of creating the art object as much as the art object itself. The press release states, “Rims are typically made of aluminum, a material whose ambivalent value bears, on the one hand, the symbolic aura of modernity, while on the other, the ‘stain’ of a cheap substitute.” The artist’s choice to reproduce these rims in cross-laminated timber, this form is exaggerated in a form that is typically understood to be more valuable, traditional, and environmentally sustainable. In this way, these forms point to the symbolic and economic conditions of their proliferation, since the crisis of functionalism in the 1960s, and seek to “ride out the increasing aerodynamics of the contemporary chassis.”

The reimagined rims are products of technical woodcarving, a process that expose the milling traces, tears, and cracks of an industrially prefabricated resource sculpted by a machine. With their rescaled form, the rims present these blemishes as a ‘natural’ byproduct, pointing to the current schizophrenic relationship to automobiles that strives for optimized car use and reduced emissions, while continuing to fetishize and covet the SUV. In a sense, the SUV epitomizes the frenzied materialistic collecting of ornaments and materials behind car culture. The large-scale vehicles are extremely popular despite their high consumption of gas and the danger they pose to other drives and pedestrians, as well as their inutility in the suburban or residential contexts in which they are frequently found.

The design and possession of the SUV, like that of rims, illustrates the complex mechanisms of ornamentation, style, and economics motivating the circulation and production of automotive accessories. The title of this exhibition points to the function of the ornament to embellish an object, as well as invest it with value and suggestions of worth. The craftmanship implied in the title and objects of the exhibition stand in interesting and not entirely opposing relationship to the industrial processes of mechanical production implied by the rim.

-A. Corrigan

Related Links:

Exhibition Page [Galerie Neu]

Jacolby Satterwhite is joining Mitchell-Innes and Nash, Art News reports. “I was first introduced to the work at the Studio Museum in 2012 and was drawn to the rigorous and subversive nature of his practice, both aesthetically and conceptually,”says Lucy Mitchell-Innes.  (more…)