Kim Gordon is interviewed in Art News this week, talking about her career and the development of her work. “I was writing, but I didn’t really think of myself as an art writer. I felt more like an anti-art writer,” she says. (more…)
Barbara Hunt McLanahan, who headed a number of New York arts institutions, including Artist’s Space and the Judd Foundation, has died at the age of 55 after a battle with cancer. “Barbara was a remarkable leader, truly a force of nature: dynamic, brilliant, passionate and above all deeply devoted to her family, of which she considered CMA to be a part—and we, her,” says Children’s Museum of the Arts president William Floyd. “She has left an indelible mark that can be seen in every aspect of the museum.” (more…)
A piece in the NYT asks a group of artists to reflect on the Stonewall riots, and its legacy in the current American landscape. “The freedom to look how I look and to act how I act are forms of progress hard-won by queer people who fought, at Stonewall and elsewhere, for years,” says artist Rindon Johnson. “The stones thrown, the bones broken and the lives lost are with me now as I pursue my practice.” (more…)
Germany will return a Jan van Huysum painting stolen by the Nazis the Uffizi Gallery in 1943 to the museum, the BBC reports. The painting was rediscovered in 1991 following the reunification of Germany, but efforts to return it then failed. (more…)
The Italian government is moving to merge the Gallerie degli Uffizi with the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Art Newspaper reports. The merging has drawn criticisms over a perceived lack of autonomy for the respective institutions. (more…)
Writer Lee Rosenbaum pens a think piece this week on Sotheby’s move to a private company, and what it means for the art world. “No longer subject to the fiscal discipline imposed by the disclosure requirements for publicly traded companies,” she writes, “Sotheby’s would not only have greater freedom to assume such risks; it would also have more freedom to fail without public embarrassment.” (more…)
Piero Manzoni, Achrome (1961-62), via Hauser & Wirth
In 1960, at the height of his artistic maturity and of his awareness on the gradual path and progression of his work, artist Piero Manzoni would branch out into a series of material experimentations and evolutions that would mark one of the most prolific stages in his career, and also one of the most conceptually fruitful. The artist, utilizing diverse natural and synthetic materials, such as cotton wool, canvas, polystyrene, phosphorescent paint, and even bread, stones, and straw, would ultimately create a broad range of his Achromes, arrangements of material that both draw on their compositional elements and on their sheer mass to create a new awareness of the object and the space around it, a new manner of seeing branching directly out from the piece itself. Simultaneously, the artist would explore a range of other practices and performative works, focusing in particular on the realization and execution of extensive “lines,” traced across papers, photos, and even across the gallery space. Delving into this important period in the artist’s career, Hauser & Wirth New York has brought together two concurrent exhibitions devoted to the artist’s work, unfolding over two floors and focusing on Manzoni’s most significant bodies of work.
Piero Manzoni, Linea lunga 7200 metri (1960), via Hauser & Wirth
The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court ruled has dismissed a court case against the family of art dealer and collector Yris Rabenou Solomon over ownership of four works from the collection of the late art historian, critic, and collector Paul Westheim, the onetime publisher of the German art magazine Das Kunstblatt. (more…)
Guggenheim Museum workers in New York voted to unionize at a meeting last night, the latest in a string of museums to see their employees join a union. “We feel really good,” an unidentified worker said. “It’s rewarding to know that we’re finally on relatively equal footing with management at the museum.” (more…)
Cindy Sherman sits down with Apollo this month, as she opens her retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery in London. “I’m trying to erase myself more than identify myself or reveal myself,” she says. “That’s a big, confusing thing that people have with my work: they think I’m trying to reveal these secret fantasies or something. It’s really about obliterating myself within these characters.’” (more…)
American billionaire J. Tomilson Hill has been identified as the buyer of an early 17th-century work labeled a rediscovered Caravaggio. “I think it was begun by Caravaggio and finished by another artist,” says Fabrizio Moretti, a leading old masters dealer in London. “It’s the most important painting associated with Caravaggio to have appeared on the market for 20 years.” (more…)
Timothy Taylor Gallery is moving to an expanded headquarters in London’s Mayfair district. “Having programmed that [previous] space for 15 years, I wanted a change,” Taylors ays. “Quite frankly, I think many of the artists wanted a change as well.” (more…)
Christian Rattemeyer a longtime associate curator in the department of drawings and prints at the Museum of Modern Art will take over as SculptureCenter’s next director. (more…)
Roy Lichtenstein, The Conductor (1975), Final Price: £4,977,000 via Phillips
With minimal fanfare and a steady hand, Phillips Auctions rounded out a well-managed evening sale of Contemporary and 20th Century works yesterday evening, closing a 36 lot sale to a final sales total of £35.9 million with 5 lots going unsold. The evening marks another strong and reliable outing for the auction house, making itself felt in the blue-chip market with increasingly strong results. (more…)
Rem Koolhaas’s firm OMA has revealed a brand new design for the New Museum annex, which will house additional gallery space and room for other initiatives. “We wanted it to be complementary but not competitive,” Koolhaas says, “to be independently appealing but also make sure the coexistence of these two buildings gives something fresh.” (more…)
Creative Time has appointed Natasha Logan as its next deputy director. “One priority for me is the Creative Time Summit—considering where this platform and this mechanism for dialogue is most useful and will have the most impact,” she says. (more…)
The LA Times has a piece this week on the continued protests and opposition over LACMA‘s proposed expansion, as groups organized to take further action against the museum. “The [protest] group members all feel that public input has been discounted and curtailed, and they’re seeking to express the public voice, in the public interest,” says local Richard Schave. (more…)
A piece in the New York Times looks at how some art fairs are making an effort to appeal to children, including events and projects that invite them to take part in pieces and workshops. “Education is incredibly important and part of the ethos of our fair,” says Philip Hewat-Jaboor, chairman of the Masterpiece London Art Fair. “We have a sort of duty to do this, apart from the fact that this is tremendous fun and tremendously exciting to see people of any age group, particularly young ones, get thrilled and interested in something they may not have looked at before.” (more…)
Philip Guston Now, the first retrospective for the artist in over 15 years has been announced by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and will will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston for an opening in October 2020, and then on to Tate Modern in London in February 2021 and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in July 2021. (more…)
The $50.1 million sale of Mark Rothko’s Untitled (1960) from the SFMoMA collection at Sotheby’s last month has been used to buy 11 works by 10 artists as part of an initiative to diversify its holdings, with works by Leonora Carrington, Lygia Clark, and Mickalene Thomas, among others. “This is just the beginning of what we will be able to accomplish with this fund, which allows us to broaden the scope of the stories we are able to tell in our galleries,” says Neal Benezra, director of SFMOMA. (more…)
Julia Scher, Glückshaube (2006), via Ortuzar Projects
For over three decades, artist Julia Scher has explored the relationship between surveillance, authority, and exhibitionism, orchestrating complex and intimate explorations of the way human and non-human parts of the modern technological apparatus function, both in the creation of and the limitations of personal expression and individual freedom in the modern world. Delving into how technology creates new and divergent relationships to the existing structures of power, Scher investigates just how these relationships bound and inform our place in the world. (more…)
Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait (1975), Final Price: £16,542,650 via Sotheby’s
Following up on a steady, reliable auction last night at Christie’s, Sotheby’s came out swinging this evening, marking a £69,720,050 sale in London that showcased a relatively strong market and ample interest for works at the highest levels of the blue-chip market. The evening’s sale, which saw 4 of the 43 lots on offer go unsold, marked a strong closing for the first half of the year at Sotheby’s, and brings the season one step closer to conclusion. (more…)
Hauser & Wirth now represents the work of artist Nicolas Party, the New York– and Brussels-based artist whose colorful paintings and sculptures have commanded attention in past years. “When I found out [Party] was Swiss, I of course paid attention,” said partner Marc Payot. “When you look at Party, there are very strong references to Swiss painting.” (more…)