The Canadian government has increased its arts and culture funding by $1.8 billion, including a sizable commitment to indigenous language programming. “This investment will be delivered through the second phase of social infrastructure funding,” the budget reads. (more…)
To cope with demand for David Hockney’s exhibition at the Tate Britain, the museum will remain open until midnight during the final weekend run in May. “David is without a doubt one of Britain’s greatest living artists – his impact on art and culture is immeasurable. We anticipate this will be one of the most visited exhibitions in Tate’s history,” director Alex Farquharson says. (more…)
Forbes takes a look at the contrasting views, and valuations, on the global art market between TEFAF and Art Basel’s annual reports. Claire McAndrew, who presented her findings at Art Basel last week, noted her figures tracing ann 11% contraction in the market, which contrasted from TEFAF’s report, authored by Rachel Pownall, which showed growth figure of 2%. “I’m surprised Rachel did something so similar to my report,” McAndrew said during Art Basel Hong Kong. “The best thing would be if people were doing research into new sectors or going more in-depth into one sector, such as Old Masters.” (more…)
Rachel Whiteread is interviewed in The Guardian this week, where she critiques the YBA movement for its tacit approval of young artists seeking fame and fortune. “Artists now live a very different life to the ones we lived,” she says. “We had no expectations, we played hard and worked hard. Now they expect a career, they expect fame. “I stopped teaching because of that. It seemed students were only interested in being famous.” (more…)
The Guardian spotlights Damien Hirst’s new exhibition at the the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana in Venice this spring, which opens in April. The hotly-anticipated show, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, has earned early praise, and “taps into a desire for belief, for a connection with the past,” Hirst says. “What’s unknown is how it will be perceived, but maybe I am worrying more than is necessary, really, because people are willing to believe. I think they want to believe.” (more…)
Sterling Ruby’s collaborations with Calvin Klein are featured in New York Times this month, with the artist redesigning the brand’s New York headquarters floor to ceiling with his own works and installations. “If we’re talking about gender, sexuality, highs, lows, politics — all of those things can be played within the context of this massive corporate American brand, too,” he says. “Maybe these spaces could be a platform for the hypocrisies of both the art and fashion worlds.” (more…)
The Art Newspaper profiles Thread, an arts and culture hub built in Sinthian, Senegal by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa, and funded by the sale of a single painting by the artist in 2014. “Part of what we always come back to is the notion of minimal means for maximum effect. Josef and Anni believed in the value of starting at zero in any process,” says Director Nick Murphy. “From there, you can go anywhere.” (more…)
The Economist profiles Miguel Falomir, the new director of Spain’s Prado Museum, as he begins his work at the helm of the museum this month. Falomir succeeds Miguel Zugaza, who helped move the Prado forward once it broke ranks with the country’s civil service. “It was very introverted,” Falomir says of the museum. “Not any more.” (more…)
Artist Tracey Moffat is profiled in The Guardian this week, as the artist prepares for her new work to open at the Venice Biennale this summer. “I’m real strict when I go to work,” she says. “When you enter the studio, it’s like a temple and you have to respect my silence. Just because I’m not talking doesn’t mean I’m a grump. It means I’m concentrating.” (more…)
Ron Nagle, Glorious Assemblage (2016), via Art Observed
Ron Nagle’s miniature sculptures function in part as narrative fragments, scenes and situations held in time and added a certain sense of life and energy by their imaginative, curving forms or remarkably evocative relations of space. Some conjure the effect of domestic scenes, others a moment of geological rupture, while others present themselves as somewhere between the two, always emphasizing the artist’s patient craft and attention to detail that has made his connections with fellow West Coast artists like Ken Price all the more apparent. Nagle returns to Los Angeles this spring for a show with Matthew Marks Gallery, bringing a new body of sculptures and drawings created over the course of 2016, once again illustrating these elements in play with his ever-growing body of work. (more…)
Jonas Mekas will show a series of photographs at Documenta this summer cataloguing his experience as a refugee fleeing the aftermath of WWII. “It was a dark, bleak postwar period,” he writes. “These are images out of darkness.” (more…)
Anselm Kiefer will be honored this year with a J. Paul Getty Medal alongside writer Mario Vargas, honoring his exceptional contributions to the arts. “We shall honor two of the world’s great artists,” says Maria Hummer-Tuttle, chair of the board of trustees. “Anselm Kiefer and Mario Vargas Llosa are both engaged in big ideas and historic moments, and they share with the Getty a passionate commitment to global culture.” (more…)
Bjarne Melgaard, The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, 2017. Photography by Andre Herrero. Courtesy of Red Bull Arts New York.
For its inaugural exhibition as Red Bull Arts, the multi-purpose art venue in Chelsea has opened its doors for Bjarne Melgaard’s immersive reenactment of a clothing store, titled The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, and furthering the artist’s already well-documented engagements with pop culture, fashion and personal subjectivities over the course of his body of multimedia works. The Norwegian artist, who has enjoyed tremendous recognition in the U.S. in recent years, especially his psychedelic installation at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, has brought his own fashion line, which had its European debut at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo last November, to New York. (more…)
Dinh Q. Le in the fair’s Encounters section courtesy 10 Chancery Lane, via Vivienne Shi for Art Observed
The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center opened its doors this morning on the first hours of Art Basel Hong Kong, signaling the launch of Hong Kong Art Week in the city, and bringing crowds of collectors, dealers and other art world professionals to bear on the lengthy hallways and aisles of the event. Marking a distinct focus on the Asian market, the fair boasted an impressive look at the continent’s contemporary arts circuit, with a burst of early sales that hinted at an ongoing willingness to spend at major events. True to form, the event managed to bring out an impressive list of international VIP’s. Hans Ulrich Obrist, Melissa Chiu, and Uli Sigg could all be seen wandering the aisles of the fair, as well as Ryan Gander, Rashid Johnson, and Christo, who was presenting a survey of his work at Galerie Gmurzynska.
Francis Picabia at Hauser & Wirth, via Vivienne Shi for Art Observed
The Art Newspaper looks at market health in France, and the possible impacts the coming election could have on its strength in the coming months. “Within a complicated global context, Paris is doing better than expected, and is gaining strength against other components of the international art market,”says Nicolas Orlowski of Artcurial auction house. (more…)
Stephanie D’Alessandro has been named The Met’s new Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art. D’Alessandro previously worked in a similar position at the Art Institute of Chicago. She will take over for Rebecca Rabinow, who left for Houston’s Menil Collection. (more…)
The global art market has fallen to its lowest point since the financial crisis, with global sales dropping 11% this past year, Bloomberg reports. “It was quite a challenging year for the art market,” economist Clare McAndrew said. (more…)
The Whitney Biennial is facing criticism from a group of black artists in the U.S. and abroad for the inclusion of a piece by Dana Schutz, featuring a depiction of the dead body of Emmett Till, the young boy brutally murdered after a white woman claimed he whistled at her. “The subject matter is not Schutz’s,” artist Hannah Black writes of the work. “White free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.” (more…)
Pace Gallery has announced that it will open its second gallery in Hong Kong, located at 80 Queen’s Road in the Central district. “We hope to create more connection between the contemporary art scene in Asia and the West,” says Pace president Marc Glimcher. (more…)
Ibrahim Mahama, Non-Orientable Nkansa (2017), via White Cube
Since his step onto the world stage at the 2015 Venice Biennale, artist Ibrahim Mahama has garnered impressive critical attention for his use of reclaimed jute sacks and other cast-off materials. Drawing on the intersections of capitalist exchange, material decay, and commercial detritus, Mahama’s work uses structure and use as indicators of failed and fluctuating economic systems. This practice takes on new elements and variations in the artist’s current exhibition at White Cube in London, his first solo exhibition in the UK, and a powerful introduction to the artist’s attentive, challenging body of work.
Ibrahim Mahama, Issaka Tob (2016), via White Cube
Whitney Museum Director Adam D. Weinberg has issued a statement on Donald Trump’s proposed de-funding of the NEA, calling for its preservation and a recognition of its vital role in the continuation of the country’s health. “As an institution specifically dedicated to presenting and discussing contemporary American culture, the Whitney Museum of American Art feels a special responsibility to speak as an advocate for the continuing importance of the NEA and NEH,” he writes. “For institutions large and small, historic and contemporary, throughout the fifty states, and for the public they serve, the NEA and NEH are irreplaceable and must be preserved.” (more…)
London’s Fourth Plinth Commission project has announced works for both 2018 and 2020, the BBC reports. The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist by Michael Rakowitz, featuring a re-creation of a work looted from the Iraq Museum, will go on view next year, while THE END by Heather Phillipson will feature a massive heap of ice cream topped by a fly, and a hovering drone broadcasting from above the work. “The new commissions will proudly continue the legacy of the Fourth Plinth in putting world-class contemporary sculpture at the heart of London,” says Ekow Eshun, Chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group. (more…)
The Centre Pompidou is planning a pop-up exhibition space in Shanghai’s West Bund cultural district, the Art Newspaper reports. The potential opening would be part of an ongoing development project aimed at transforming a former industrial section of the city into a “cultural corridor.” (more…)
Miami Beach’s Bass Art Museum has set its opening date for October 2017, marking the latest target date after a series of delays and set-backs in the museum’s ambitious renovation. The show’s original opening exhibition of works by Ugo Rondinone is still set to feature as its first show in the new space. (more…)