News

  • Aimée Chan-Lindquist. Courtesy of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation.
    November 15, 2019 at 1:14pm

    Aimée Chan-Lindquist Appointed Executive Director of Rema Hort Mann Foundation

    The Rema Hort Mann Foundation announced today that Aimée Chan-Lindquist has been named the foundation’s next executive director. Chan-Lindquist comes to the foundation from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, where she served as director of advancement. Previously, she held senior positions at the Museum of Design Atlanta as well as at Art in General and Exit Art, which are both in New York, and was director of the Christopher Grimes Gallery in Santa Monica, California.

    Chan-Lindquist will oversee the foundation’s mission of honoring the legacy of Rema Hort Mann by directly

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  • A bronze head from the Kingdom of Benin, now Nigeria, from the collection of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. Photo: MKG Hamburg.
    November 15, 2019 at 12:10pm

    Open Society Pledges $15 Million in Support of Restituting African Artifacts

    The Open Society Foundations, the grantmaking organization founded by financier-philanthropist George Soros, has pledged $15 million over four years towards grassroots, institutional, and governmental efforts to return looted cultural artifacts to African nations.

    “The legacy of colonial violence has deep implications for the ways that racism and imbalances of power are perpetuated today,” said Open Society president Patrick Gaspard. “This isn’t just about returning pieces of art, but about restoring the very essence of these cultures. We are proud to support this movement towards reconciling

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  • Michelle Müntefering at the 2019 Wikimedia Summit in Berlin. Photo: Jason Krüger/Wikipedia.
    November 15, 2019 at 11:50am

    German Politician Calls for Public Monument Honoring Migrant Workers

    To commemorate the migrant workers who came to Germany in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s as so called Gastarbeiter (guest workers), the German Minister of State for International Cultural Politics, Michelle Müntefering, has demanded that a monument be erected in their honor, reports Monopol. 

    In a speech given during the KulturInvest! Kongress, an annual European cultural forum which addresses topics ranging from cultural policy and management to tourism, in Essen on November 7, Müntefering emphasized the achievements of migrants and their contributions to Germany’s economic growth and

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  • Rembrandt van Rijn, A Woman Bathing in a Stream, 1654.
    November 15, 2019 at 11:50am

    Police Thwart Theft of Two Rembrandts in London Exhibition

    An unidentified suspect targeted two Rembrandt paintings in an attempted theft at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery on Wednesday night, reports the Guardian.

    The police said the intruder forced their way into the “Rembrandt’s Light” exhibition galleries half an hour to midnight on November 13. A new state-of-the-art alarm system installed for the exhibition notified security, reports Artnet, and the authorities arrived quickly to the scene. The suspect sprayed a canister of an unknown substance into an officer’s face and was able to get away, though no one suffered serious injuries and both

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  • Donna De Salvo. Photo: Matthew Carasella Photography.
    November 15, 2019 at 10:40am

    Dia Art Foundation Names Donna De Salvo Senior Adjunct Curator

    Dia Art Foundation has appointed Donna De Salvo senior adjunct curator of special projects. De Salvo most recently served as deputy director of international initiatives and senior curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she worked for over fifteen years and helped the institution prepare for its move to its new home in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

    Prior to joining the Whitney in 2004, De Salvo was senior curator at the Tate Modern in London. She also served as curator-at-large at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus; curator at the Parrish Art

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  • Shoji Sadao.
    November 14, 2019 at 5:24pm

    Shoji Sadao (1926–2019)

    Architect Shoji Sadao, a longtime collaborator of polymaths Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi and former director of the Noguchi Foundation from 1988 to 2003, died on November 3 in Tokyo. He was ninety-two years old.

    Sadao began his creative partnership with Fuller while at Cornell University’s school of architecture in the early 1950s, and for decades henceforth brought Fuller’s ideas to practical fruition, including a twenty-story, 250-foot-diameter geodesic dome for the United States pavilion at Montreal’s 1967 International and Universal Exposition. In the November 2008 issue of Artforum

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  • Ashley James. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
    November 14, 2019 at 4:36pm

    Guggenheim Museum Appoints Ashley James Associate Curator of Contemporary Art

    The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York has named Ashley James as its new associate curator of contemporary art. James most recently served as assistant curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she was the lead curator for “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” (2018–19) and organized “Eric N. Mack: Lemme Walk Across the Room” (2019). She is currently cocurating the forthcoming exhibition “John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance.”

    “Ashley is a curator who has demonstrated incisive and intersectional thinking about contemporary artistic practice,” Nancy Spector, artistic

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  • Joana Choumali, Ça va aller (it will be ok), 2019. Photo: Prix Pictet.
    November 14, 2019 at 2:27pm

    Joana Choumali Wins Eighth Prix Pictet

    Ivorian photographer Joana Choumali has been named the eighth winner of the Prix Pictet, a global award for photography that was established by the Prix Pictet group in 2008 to draw attention to issues of sustainability. The theme of this year’s award was Hope. Choumali, the first African artist to win the award, was presented with the prize at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on Wednesday night. The ceremony marked the opening of an exhibition of works by all twelve of the shortlisted artists.

    Choumali was selected for her series “Ça va aller (it will be ok),” which was taken three

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  • The 2019 Awards for Artists recipients. Photo: Emile Holba. Courtesy of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
    November 14, 2019 at 1:20pm

    Paul Hamlyn Foundation Names 2019 Recipients of Awards for Artists

    The Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF), one of the largest independent grantmakers in the UK, has announced this year’s recipients of its Awards for Artists, which provide financial assistance to visual artists and composers. Each awardee will be given a total of $77,000 over the course of three years.

    “A lot has changed since we set up Awards for Artists twenty-five years ago, but one thing hasn't changed—the environment for artists is tough,” said Jane Hamlyn, chair of the foundation and chair of the visual arts judging panel. “The PHF awards give exceptional artists and composers an invaluable space

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  • John Edmonds, Tête d’Homme, 2018. Photo: John Edmonds.
    November 14, 2019 at 12:00pm

    Whitney Museum Announces Recent Acquisitions

    The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has added more than 250 works of art to its collection since last April, including eighty-eight works by forty artists who participated in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Among the artists whose works will join the institution’s holdings for the first time are Laura Aguilar, Maria Berrio, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, ektor garcia, Ajay Kurian, Wendy Red Star, and Wallace & Donahue.

    “Through the biennial and our emerging artist program, the Whitney is committed to adding new voices to our collection, but we’re also deepening our relationships with artists already

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  • Ed Ruscha’s Hurting the Word Radio #2, 1964. Courtesy of Christie's.
    November 14, 2019 at 10:31am

    Ed Ruscha Leads $325.3 Million Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Art Sale

    Christie’s postwar and contemporary art evening sale fetched $325.3 million at Rockefeller Center in New York Wednesday night. While it raked in significantly less than the auction house’s spring sale, which totaled $539 million, only six of the fifty-four lots failed to sell and four artists achieved record sums for their works.

    The auction began with the sale of Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Audience, 2018, which far surpassed its estimated purchase price of between $200,000 and $300,000 and netted $879,000, and Dana Schutz’s Shooting on the Air, 2016, which sold for $1.1 million, also

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  • Torkwase Dyson. Photo: Gabe Souza. Courtesy of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
    November 14, 2019 at 7:00am

    Torkwase Dyson Wins Studio Museum’s $50,000 Wein Prize

    At the Studio Museum in Harlem’s gala at the Javits Center on Wednesday night, Torkwase Dyson, at Brooklyn-based artist painter who creates abstract compositions that explore the relationships between subjects as varied as the continuity of movement, climate change, architecture, and black spatial justice, was named the winner of the 2019 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize. The annual $50,000 award recognizes the artistic achievements of African American artists who demonstrate great innovation, promise, and creativity.

    Through her interdisciplinary practice, Dyson examines the ways in which space

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