A piece in The Guardian this week remembers curator and museum head Okwui Enwezor, featuring a range of stories and profiles celebrating his life and work. “I have never met in all my life such a brilliant man. He had a goal and a purpose and he never swayed from the path,” says artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen. (more…)
A piece in The Guardian this week recaps the recent family dispute over Botticelli’s Madonna and Child (1485), as Tanya Dick-Stock, daughter of Canadian businessman John Dick alleges her father used an offshore company to purchase the painting under her name. “No we don’t know what happened to it or who owns the painting,” says the spokesperson for Dick-Stock. “But we intend to commit resource and energy to finding out.” (more…)
The Bronx Museum of the Arts has tapped Klaudio Rodriguez as its new executive director. Rodriguez had been working as the museum’s interim director for several months. “Klaudio’s leadership really brought out the best of the entire staff,” said Joseph Mizzi, chairman of the museum board. (more…)
A piece in the Art Newspaper details criticism of UNESCO for allegedly exaggerating a $10bn figure as the scale of the illegal art trade worldwide.“The landscape has changed enormously, says Clinton Howell, president of the international association of dealers’ unions CINOA. “Ethical practice is not an abstract concept but an essential business tool.” (more…)
The Hammer Museum’s latest iteration of the Made in LA Biennial is open, but its run is in question over the surging cases of coronavirus, the LA Times reports. “When can we reopen is not a question I can answer, except to say we hope it’s soon,” says museum rep Scott Tennent. “We’re following the lead of the state and the county. We really want to share this exhibition with everyone — it’s ready — but until we’re actually told we can reopen, we’re in stasis.” (more…)
Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Wind Rider (Installation View), via Company
Hyper-loaded with material and imagery that spans a range of cultural signifiers so often ascribed to the American cowboy as a standard of heterosexual, white heroism, painter Jonathan Lyndon Chase has opened a powerful new show at Company Gallery, titled Wind Rider. Rich subject matter and made all the more nuanced and powerful by the artist’s own experiences and history, the show is a fluid, charged affair, mixing memory and iconography into a series of pieces that open new lines of discourse and awareness. (more…)
Nicole Eisenman, Where I Was, It Shall Be (Installation View), via Hauser & Wirth
Having established herself as a central figure in American painting throughout the 1990s, Nicole Eisenman has only continued to grow and expand her impact and practice over the following decades, building her practice outwards into a range of media formats and frameworks that explore her particular experience of the construction of 2-dimensional, and now 3-dimensional space. Marking her first show with Hauser & Wirth in the gallery’s picturesque Somerset compound, the artist showcases a diverse multidisciplinary language through mixed media works on paper, sculpture and painting. (more…)
John Waters has donated his collection of 372 contemporary art works to the Baltimore Museum of Art. “I’ve always said you have to know good taste to have good bad taste,” Waters says. (more…)
Sun & Sea (Marina), the Venice Biennale performance that earned the Lithuanian Pavilion its Golden Lion last year, will go on view next year at E-Werk Luckenwalde outside of Berlin. “The Luckenwalde presentation will be essentially the same work as Venice, except for the qualities that the venue brings to the piece when experiencing it—an empty swimming pool comes with a whole different kind of underlying catastrophe, at least for me,” says curator Lucia Pietroiusti. (more…)
An outdoor installation by Nick Cave at Jack Shainman’s Kinderhook, NY space is causing controversy in the town, as residents rally to have the work removed, claiming it’s signage and therefore not legally displayed. “It’s an artwork,” Cave says. “It’s freedom of expression. It’s not complicated.” (more…)
The Met will have two joint chairs for the first time, with Hamilton E. James and Candace K. Beinecke taking over at the museum. “These are exceptionally challenging times,” says former chair Daniel Brodsky, “and the opportunity to have two leaders with strong yet different experiences is a win-win for the museum.” (more…)
Uffizi Galleries director Eike Schmidt has tested positive for Coronavirus. Schmidt is asymptomatic and working from home. “I can dedicate all my time and energy to the Uffizi as usual,” he said. (more…)
Tracey Emin has an interview in The Guardian this week, opening her show at the Royal Academy just as the UK descends back into COVID-10 lockdown. “They sold 16,000 advance tickets but when Boris announced the second lockdown, we knew we couldn’t open,” she says. (more…)
Artist Glenn Kaino has an interview this week in the LA Times, as he prepares to open a show of new work at MOCA Los Angeles, and looks back at his career. “They’re intended to create moments of visibility for things that are invisible around us. Most people don’t feel seen, understood. Making things visible is a form of empathy,” Kaino says of his new works. (more…)
Artist Senga Nengudi has an interview in the NYT This week, discussing several decades of work and its intersections with her life.“I felt that you could live forever and still be an artist,” she says. “You can live to 100 and still have the ability to express yourself.” (more…)
The art world’s attention has turned to Shanghai as the city holds its annual art week, even as positive COVID-19 tests are popping back up in the city. “I think that at this point any display of normalcy is a good sign and an ‘in-real-life’ fair is one manifestation,” says Mathieu Borysevicz, founder of Shanghai gallery Bank. (more…)
An end is in sight in the lawsuit over the estate of Robert Indiana, Art Newspaper reports, after the late artist’s lawyer James Brannan settled with with Morgan Art Foundation. “I think this is a great deal for the Star of Hope Foundation [established by the artist before he died] and Bob’s legacy,” Brannan says. (more…)
Brian Calvin, Minor Difference (2020), via Anton Kern
Artist Brian Calvin returns to Anton Kern this fall for his seventh solo show with the gallery, continuing his unique approach to portraiture and figuration that twists cartoonish color and form into a nuanced depiction of the human visage. (more…)
Sotheby’s has been sued by the State of New York over its role in allowing a collector to escape taxes on works purchases. The company sold $27 million tax-free to Porsal Equities, although the auction house allegedly knew the client a dealer buying tax free. “Millionaires and billionaires cannot be allowed to evade taxes while every day Americans pay their fair share,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “Sotheby’s violated the law and fleeced New York taxpayers out of millions just to boost its own sales.” (more…)
Helio Oiticica (Installation View), via Lisson
Taking over both New York City Lisson Gallery spaces this fall, the Brazilian master Hélio Oiticica has a set of works on view documenting his engaging and expansive practice, underscoring his luminary role in the pioneering development of Brazilian contemporary art. An influential and all-consuming vision, Oiticica’s work ranged across visual art, music, theater, literature and more, each of which is explored here in this pair of exhibitions. (more…)
A piece in the Art Newspaper catalogs artists’ response to Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump in the presidential election last week, with a selection of works and images circulating online.“We still must come to terms with the extent to which the structures of governance have been damaged and the government itself delegitimated—wantonly and steadily—by Donald Trump and the third-rate bottom feeders whom he empowered as his wrecking crew,” says artist Martha Rosler. (more…)
Senga Nengudi, Sandmining B (detail) (2020), via Sprüth Magers
Always deeply connected to the human body, Senga Nengudi’s work invokes ritual, narrative and connections between cultures disparate in geography and time. For her newest show, on view now at Sprüth Magers’s Los Angeles exhibition space on the Miracle Mile, the artist has erected a series of large-scale installation works, offering profound insights into her way of thinking and working.
Senga Nengudi, Sandmining B (2020), via Sprüth Magers (more…)
A new database of Vincent Van Gogh works has gone live courtesy several Dutch arts agencies, featuring an impressive collection of data on each work. (more…)