Mernet Larsen, Astronaut: Sunrise (after El Lissitzky), (2020), via James Cohan

For over six decades, artist Mernet Larsen has created narrative paintings depicting hard-edged, enigmatic characters that inhabit an uncanny parallel world filled with tension and wry humor.  Employing a wry approach towards constructing spatial systems and relations between objects and bodies on the canvas, her pieces combine reverse, isometric, and conventional perspectives to pose everyday scenarios in a vertigo-inducing version of reality akin to our own. For her new exhibition at James Cohan Gallery in New York, the artist returns to her diverse array of graphical influences, drawing on the languages of art of the past as springboards for uniquely spatial figure-paintings that speak to the anxieties of the present. (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum will install Nick Cave’s piece Truth Be Told outside the museum, which generated controversy last during its installation at the Jack Shainman space in Kinderhook, NY.  “Museums are being called on to tell the truth, from the painful to the celebratory,” says museum director Anne Pasternak. “We can invite a constructive conversation.” (more…)

The Guggenheim has appointed Naomi Beckwith, formerly senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago as deputy director and chief curator. “If you look out over the cultural landscape — particularly in the U.S. — she is quite obviously one of the outstanding leaders of today with a huge potential as well,” says museum director Richard Armstrong. “She’s very adept at issues of identity and, particularly, multidisciplinary art. We have to think about the Guggenheim’s growth over the next few years, so it needs to be a person with enormous capacity.” (more…)

A piece in Bloomberg charts the rush by galleries to move works out of the UK before Brexit goes into effect. “The higher up the market, the more global it is,” says Anthony Browne, chairman of the British Art Market Federation, regarding the challenges posed by shipping more works outside of the UK borders. “It’s the smaller galleries and dealers and mid-market ones that have buyers in the EU that will be mostly affected.” (more…)

Hank Willis Thomas’s 22-foot-high bronze memorial honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King’s commitment to racial equity will go on view in Boston Commons. “At this moment in 2021 we are asking: What would it be for Boston to be the epicenter of civil rights? And of economic and racial justice?” says Imari Paris Jeffries, executive director of King Boston. “We want to imagine that and do that.” (more…)

Curator Chris Sharp, part of the team behind Mexico City’s Lulu has opened his own space in Los Angeles. The space opens Jan. 23rd with a show of work by Emma McIntyre. (more…)

Teresita Fernandez, Rising (Lynched Land) (2020), via Lehmann Maupin

Taking over Lehmann Maupin’s New York exhibition space, artist Teresita Fernández’s new show, Maelstrom, focuses on a new series of monumental sculptures and installations that unapologetically visualize the enduring violence and devastation ignited by colonization.  Turning particular attention to the Caribbean archipelago, the first point of colonial contact in the Americas, Fernández challenges the viewer to consider nuanced readings of people and place, looking beyond dominant, continental narratives to instead consider the region as emblematic of an expansive and decentralized state of mind. (more…)

A collection of drawings, collages and studies held for years in Kara Walker’s personal archives will go on view thus summer at Kunstmuseum Basel.  “I invited Kara Walker to do an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel and proposed a focus on her drawings rather than her cutouts,” says curator Anita Haldemann. “She has hidden these drawings from the public and sometimes also from herself because they were either too intimate and too painful or too shocking to face them herself or to confront the audience with them.” (more…)

Rachel Eulena Williams, Tracing Memory (Installation View), via Canada

Currently on view at Canada Gallery in New York, Tracing Memory, the debut exhibition by artist Rachel Eulena Williams sees the artist striking a balance between painting and sculpture, reveling in the structure and propositional space of painting while working freely against easy classifications or limitations.  Discarding a reliance on stretchers in favor of works that roam freely across the walls and set up unique geometric conversations in space, the artist’s work is a fascinating first offering at the gallery. (more…)

A piece by Jason Farago in the New York Times this week calls for a New Deal for the Arts as a way to rehabilitate the currently struggling arts sector during the pandemic. “Not since 1945 has the United States required catharsis like it does in 2021,” he writes. (more…)

Germany has returned the last of the 14 works from the Gurlitt Collection that could be authenticated as looted, DW reports. “We cannot make up for this severe suffering, but we are trying with the appraisal of Nazi art looting to make a contribution to historical justice and fulfill our moral responsibility,” says Culture Minister Monika Grütters. (more…)

Jannis Kounellis will receive the first major retrospective of his work in the US in 35 years, opening a major show at the Walker Art Center in 2022. “Jannis is an artist that moved all his life from one country to another to fulfill his dream of being an artist,” says curator Vincenzo de Bellis. “His works speak to memory, history, and migration—things which are very important today.” (more…)

The Smithsonian will partner with PBS this year to launch a series of online education programs, the Washington Post reports.  “The Smithsonian has so many resources, but even we don’t have broad enough shoulders to do all of this,” says Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III. “The pandemic has given us the opportunity to fill a void. It has accelerated where we wanted to go. [PBS] gives us a great portal to do that.” (more…)

Kamel Mennour has ceased its relationship with artist Claude Lévêque over a string of allegations of sexual abuse of minors.  The gallery stated its decision was made “in order to allow the judicial authority to carry out the necessary investigations.” (more…)

Raphaela Simon, Model mit Dresserin (2020), via Max Hetzler

Walking into Galerie Max Hetzler in Paris, one is presented with a particularly intriguing scene, more akin to the interiors of a luxe fashion shop than a gallery: walls are covered with minimal, cool paintings depicting various designer goods and signifiers of upper class recreation and lifestyle, while a series of mannequins snake throughout the gallery, bearing aloof facial expressions and clothed in handmade fashions.  The show, fittingly titled The Fashion Show, is a presentation of new work by the artist Raphaela Simon, a coy commentary on consumer goods made for the center of the fashion world, Paris.

Raphaela Simon, Fleischwurst (2020), via Max Hetzler

(more…)

Following the third suicide at its site, The Vessel in Hudson Yards has been closed until new safety measures can be put in place. “Because the Vessel’s chest-high barrier is all that separates the platform from the edge, the likelihood of a similar, terribly sad loss of life cannot be ignored,” says Related Companies board chairman, Lowell Kern. (more…)

Jack Whitten, My Argiroula: For Argiro Galeraki 1981-1995 (1995), via Hauser & Wirth

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth New York, the gallery is presenting a dynamic show of rarely seen works by American artist Jack Whitte, focusing in particular on the artist’s practice from 1991 through 2000, a period of intense experimentation during which, deeply affected by tumultuous world events, he strove to incorporate a full emotional spectrum into his work. Blurring the boundaries between sculpture and painting, and between the studio and the world, the multidimensional works on view combine geometric abstraction and found objects to mine spiritual and metaphysical thematic veins. (more…)

A string of new art spaces are set to open in Australia this year, Artforum reports, including a series of new renovations and new non-profit centers opened country-wide. (more…)

Artist El Anatsui gets a profile in the New Yorker this week, as he discusses his career and his modes of working. “If you feel attached to your work, it means you have a feeling you have gotten to the end,” says. (more…)

(more…)

The Hirshhorn is facing pressure over the proposed redesign to its sculpture garden by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which some say threatens the geometries and concepts of the original design. “It’s a process of negotiating and talking and I have no answer yet,” said the artist. “My opinion is just 10% or 20%. I tell people what I want to make.” (more…)

A new project by the Getty has launched a new online project allowing visitors to explore the  photographs Ed Ruscha shot of the Sunset Strip over several decades. (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper notes a new set of challenges and “teething problems” for art handlers and shippers moving works in and out of the UK as Brexit goes into place.  The increased paperwork is “actually proving to be quite a painful process” says Joe Kennedy, the co-founder of the London gallery, Unit London, leading to “a significant amount of additional red tape and delays at customs”. (more…)

Immersive museums and experiential art centers are expanding even in the face of the Pandemic, the NYT reports. “Art is a risky enterprise, and in a period of distress, it’s exactly the wrong time to expect more investment,” says  William Goetzmann, a professor of finance and management studies at Yale University. “If you are a nonprofit, you can appeal to donors to safeguard cultural heritage. If you are a for-profit company, an investor expects a return that’s commensurate with the risk.” (more…)