Piotr Uklanski is profiled in the NYT this week, as he opens a show of works at the Istanbul Biennial, which rework paintings of European men dressed up as Ottomans. “I have a long history of appropriation in my practice, and reinventing it in my own way,” he says. (more…)
A classic Josef Albers mural originally commissioned for 200 Park Ave (currently referred to as the MetLife Building) has been restored and placed back on view. “It’s all centered on a vantage point of the Albers piece,” says Rob Speyer, the president and chief executive of Tishman Speyer. “We were able to take a piece of the building’s history, which could’ve been forgotten, and instead restored it as the centerpiece of the building.” (more…)
Art collectors Lynda and Stewart Resnick will give $750 million to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena as part of an effort to combat climate change. “In order to comprehensively manage the climate crisis, we need breakthrough innovations, the kind that will only be possible through significant investment in university research,” Stewart Resnick says. “Science and bold creativity must unite to address the most pressing challenges facing energy, water, and sustainability.” (more…)
After a long negotiation, da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man will show at the Louvre this October. The loan from the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice was announced this week. (more…)
Vox Media will acquire New York Media, the company behind New York Magazine and a series of other publications, in an all-stock transaction. “No one had to do this,” says Pamela Wasserstein, CEO of New York Media, said on Tuesday. “It’s a brilliant, in our view, opportunity, so that’s why we leaned into it. It’s not out of need. It’s out of ambition.” (more…)
Artist Cameron Rowland, Mel Chin and Jeffrey Gibson have been awarded MacArthur Genius Grants. “I finished the call and sat there dumbfounded,” Gibson says. “I’m familiar with MacArthur, but I never even knew how it worked.” (more…)
Amy Sherald, Sometimes the King is a Woman (2019), via Hauser & Wirth
This fall in New York, artist Amy Sherald, the artist tapped for First Lady Michelle Obama’s commanding, cool portrait for the National Archives, opens a show of new works at Hauser & Wirth, her first with the gallery. Titled ‘the heart of the matter…,’ the show debuts two paintings that reach a new, monumental scale for the artist, with monochromatic backgrounds that evolve into fully realized scenes referencing quintessential Americana, as well as a series of portraits that continue her iconic exploration of the contemporary black experience. (more…)
The NYT reports on the work of artist Ben Enwonwu, the Nigerian artist who is among the nation, and the continent’s most famous, as the market for his work continues to appreciate. “I’m very happy that my father is getting his due, but there’s still a long way to go,” said the artist’s son Oliver Enwonwu. (more…)
Kara Walker gets a profile in the Guardian this week, as she prepares to open her Tate Modern Turbine Hall Commission. “The Turbine Hall is like a grand prize,” she says. “You’ve been offered this gargantuan space and it’s all yours. It’s irresistible.” (more…)
After 13 years as director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Lawrence Rinder will step down. “For more than a decade, Lawrence Rinder has been an outstanding leader of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, amplifying the museum’s international reputation and deepening its public impact through programming that advances the highest creative and intellectual aspirations of UC Berkeley,” says Carol Christ, the chancellor of the University of California Berkeley. (more…)
Bruce W. Ferguson, the first director of SITE Santa Fe, has died at 73. A groundbreaking curator, he pioneered a unique approach to art and exhibition-making that established SITE as a major force in the American Southwest. (more…)
A Renaissance masterwork by Cimabue has been discovered in a small kitchen outside Paris, The Gaurdian reports. “I had a week to give an expert view on the house contents and empty it,” consultant Philomène Wolf says of discovering the work. “I had to make room in my schedule … if I didn’t, then everything was due to go to the dump.” (more…)
Gagosian is appealing a lawsuit against collector Steven A. Tananbaum over an alleged failure to deliver three works by Jeff Koons. In its statement on an appeal, the gallery argued Tananbaum was “well aware of Koons’ perfectionism.” (more…)
Gary Hume, Curtains (2019), via Matthew Marks
Gary Hume returns to Matthew Marks Gallery this fall with a show of new works, including paintings and sculptures, a selection of works pulling from scenes of destruction and violence in the Middle East and turning these images towards a strange, abstracted state. (more…)
Liz Glynn, To Write (2016/2017), via Paula Cooper
Over the course of the last few years, artist Liz Glynn has explored techniques in the production and presentation of technological objects and tools, seeking to explore and understand how disparate pieces and parts of a cultural milieu, particularly the tools used to construct, them, might provide a richer understanding of the culture itself. A sort of self-styled archaeological proposition, Technological Tools, as Glynn calls them, take center-stage at her current exhibition at Paula Cooper in New York, now on view through October 12th. (more…)
A piece in Daily Beast looks at the new Pace Gallery space, and asks how the art world might evolve in the years to come. “We do not believe that the big galleries have the capacity to edge out all these small and medium-size galleries,” Marc Glimcher said. “They may have the economic power to do it. But they don’t have the capacity to replace what those galleries are doing. So we know that something can happen. The market is very imperfect. So our answer is that we’re very collaborative, we are very dedicated to working with medium and small galleries.” (more…)
The Independent NY Fair has announced the 63 galleries that will show work in its 2020 edition at Spring Studios, including twenty-one of the exhibitors are first-time participants. (more…)
Pope.L’s performance Conquest took place this weekend at Corporal John A. Seravalli Playground, with over a hundred participants crawling across the ground. “I just want to introduce some controversy,” the artist said. “This is not my crawl. Yeah, I know it’s what it says on the sign. But today, I’m giving it away. I want to share the pain.” (more…)
Olafur Eliasson has been named a Goodwill Ambassador of the UN’s Development Program. “Life on Earth is about co-existence—among people, non-human animals, ecosystems, and the environment,” he says. “Co-existence is beautiful and generative, chaotic and challenging. The fact is, we’re in it together. That’s why we all have to take the climate emergency seriously.” (more…)
The New York Times profiles Trevor Paglen’s recent project ImageNet Roulette, and its critiques of AI-driven data analysis. “We want to show how layers of bias and racism and misogyny move from one system to the next,” Paglen says. “The point is to let people see the work that is being done behind the scenes, to see how we are being processed and categorized all the time.” (more…)
Graphzine Exhibit, via Art Observed
The leaves are slowly beginning to change in New York City, the fall equinox is on its way, and like clockwork, the time has once again come for the New York Art Book Fair to set up shop inside the halls and yards of MoMA PS1, kicking off its fourteenth annual edition of a unique and energetic exhibition of young artists, publishers, writers and thinkers, each representing a small part of the national and international art publishing community. Always free and open to the public, the event draws more than 35,000 individuals including book lovers, collectors, artists, and art world professionals each year. (more…)
The Sao Paulo Bienal has announced its first round of projects, focused around a range of solo shows opening months before the main exhibition. Projects include a show of work by Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Clara Ianni, Deana Lawson, and a never-before-realized Hélio Oiticica performance to be staged at the opening of the main group show. (more…)
Art News profiles recent work by LaToya Ruby Frazier documenting the closure of a GM plant in Ohio and the resulting protests. “When I saw the news, I was moved because I understood the calamity that this was going to create,” she says. “I knew they were going to reduce these workers to statistics based on shares and stocks, and no one was going to pay attention to their livelihood.” (more…)