News

  • April 25, 2018 at 10:02am

    Knight Foundation Grants $970,000 to Eight US Museums

    The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded eight US museums a total of $970,000 for the hiring of tech-savvy staff to enhance the museumgoing experience, reports Claire Selvin of Artnews. Victoria Rogers, the Knight Foundation’s vice president for the arts, said, “Our hope is that these dedicated digital staffers will help art institutions better reach and engage audiences by meeting them where they are: on the technological devices they use every day.”

    The institutions receiving grants are:

    Charlotte, North Carolina: The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture:

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  • April 25, 2018 at 9:13am

    Angelos Delivorias (1937–2018)

    Angelos Delivorias, the director of Greece’s renowned Benaki Museum for forty-one years, died on April 24, according to Ekathimerini. He was eighty-one years old.

    Delivorias was born in Athens. He was a student of history and archeology at the University of Thessaloniki and the University of Athens. He then traveled to Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany to continue his postgraduate studies. In 1972 he received his PhD, and did his postdoctoral work at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the Sorbonne in Paris.

    He came to the Benaki Museum in 1974. There, he participated in and organized 130

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  • April 25, 2018 at 7:30am

    First US Museum Dedicated to Palestinian Art Opens

    The first US museum of Palestinian art and culture has opened in Woodbridge, Connecticut. The small 4,000-square-foot space, located on the ground floor of an office building on Litchfield Turnpike, is just the start for founder Faisal Saleh, a sixty-six-year-old Palestinian entrepreneur who was born in the West Bank city of El Bireh, outside of Ramallah. He already has plans to move the institution to a bigger facility in a major city, but first he needs to secure financial backers. In the meantime, he will organize exhibitions, featuring contemporary as well as historical works, that celebrate

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  • April 24, 2018 at 6:14pm

    Richard Oldenburg (1933–2018)

    Richard Sandomir of the Boston Globe reports that Richard Oldenburg, the former director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art from 1972 to 1995, who oversaw important exhibitions of work by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso—in addition to spearheading a major $55 million expansion for the museum, among other significant achievements—has died. He was eighty-four years old and passed away at his home in Manhattan.

    Oldenburg, the brother of Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, came to MoMA in 1969. He was initially hired by the museum to run its publications division. He was a well-liked

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  • April 24, 2018 at 5:23pm

    Tisch Fund to Give $10 Million to Arts Programs that Address Mental Health Issues

    The Laurie M. Tisch Imagination Fund has pledged $10 million for a new multiyear initiative that will support New York City organizations that use the arts to address mental health–related issues ranging from Alzheimer’s to the stigma of mental illness.

    “Decades of scientific study show that engagement in the arts provides cognitive, emotional, and physical health benefits for people from youth to old age, but there are great disparities in access to services in New York City,” said Laurie M. Tisch, the president and founder of the Laurie M. Tisch Imagination Fund. “This initiative will help

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  • April 24, 2018 at 5:09pm

    Brooklyn’s Real Fine Arts Closes

    The gallery Real Fine Arts in Brooklyn, founded by the artists Ben Morgan-Cleveland and Tyler Dobson in 2008, has closed, reports Andrew Russeth of Artnews. The space hosted more than one hundred shows and events during its lifetime and exhibited the work of Maggie Lee, Georgia Sagri, Stefan Tcherepnin, Jon Pestoni, Lena Henke, and Jana Euler, among many other artists.

    “At a time when so many galleries—whether fledgling or established—build rosters that seem most concerned with having a little something for everyone, RFA instead opted for a program that felt focused and selective,”

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  • April 24, 2018 at 3:30pm

    Havana’s Alternative Biennial Announces Participating Artists

    The #00Bienal de La Habana—an independent exhibition that was launched after the thirteenth edition of Cuba’s state-sponsored biennial was canceled due to a lack of funds following Hurricane Irma—has named the majority of the participating artists. Note: Many international artists traveling to the island for the event were omitted from the artist list as a precautionary measure. There is concern that they could be refused entry into Cuba.

    Organized by José Ernesto Alonso, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Yanelys Nuñez Leyva, Iris Ruiz, Yuri Obregon, and Amaury Pacheco, the exhibition will

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  • April 24, 2018 at 10:52am

    Getty Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies Announce Inaugural Postdoctoral Fellowships in Art History

    The Getty Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) have announced the first ten recipients of the Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art. According to the ACLS, “The fellowships mark the first time the foundation has supported postdoctoral grants since 2009. The new program is non-residential and it builds on the foundation’s earlier fellowship program by encouraging diverse, international perspectives. The program is administered by ACLS, a preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences.”

    Each yearlong

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  • April 24, 2018 at 10:24am

    Polixeni Papapetrou (1960–2018)

    The Melbourne, Australia–based photographer Polixeni Papapetrou has died, writes Debbie Cuthbertson of the Sydney Morning Herald. For more than ten years, the artist had struggled with several bouts of cancer. She was fifty-seven when she passed.

    Papapetrou “lived an important and magnificent life as an artist, as a feminist, as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, and a very significant member of the Australian arts community,” said the director of Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Photography, Naomi Cass. “She was intellectually very robust and clear to the very end . . . she had both an

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  • April 24, 2018 at 9:35am

    LACMA Adds Ten New Works to Its Collection

    The Los Angeles Country Museum of Art has acquired ten new works, including major pieces by women artists, during its Thirty-Second annual Collectors Committee fundraiser last weekend. The two-day affair involved curator-led presentations, private dinners, and a gala where ninety-six members of the committee voted on artworks to add to the institution’s collection. The museum raised more than $3.1 million over the course of the event.

    “Collectors Committee’s legacy is built on strengthening and diversifying the museum’s permanent collection,” said LACMA CEO and director Michael Govan. “It was

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  • April 24, 2018 at 9:32am

    London’s Parliament Square Unveils Its First Sculpture Honoring a Woman

    Louisa Buck of the Art Newspaper writes that British artist Gillian Wearing is the first woman to create a sculpture honoring a woman for London’s Parliament Square. Wearing’s statue pays tribute to the preeminent UK suffragist Millicent Fawcett. The work was made to celebrate the hundred-year anniversary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which gave women who were thirty years and older the right to vote. Fawcett is depicted holding a sign that reads “Courage calls to courage everywhere.” The plinth also features portraits of fifty-two women and men who were integral in the fight

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  • April 24, 2018 at 8:41am

    Eva Rothschild to Represent Ireland at 2019 Venice Biennale

    Ireland’s minister for culture, heritage, and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan, announced that artist Eva Rothschild has been selected to represent the country at the Fifty-Eighth Venice Biennale, which will kick off on May 11, 2019. The Dublin-based curator and art historian Mary Cremin—who is also the director of Void gallery in Derry, a city in Northern Island—will curate the pavilion.

    According to Culture Ireland, the state agency dedicated to promoting Irish art internationally, the pavilion will be transformed into an immersive environment that “asks the audience to question what

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