News

  • Benon Lutaaya.
    April 19, 2019 at 1:30pm

    Benon Lutaaya (1985–2019)

    Benon Lutaaya, a Ugandan-born, South Africa–based artist, activist, and arts patron, died on Saturday from cancer at age thirty-four. After earning a BFA in education from Kyambogo University in Kampala, Uganda, he moved to Johannesburg for a residency at the Bag Factory in 2011. Lutaaya often sourced found and recycled paper materials from the street to create collaged portraits, which were collected in South Africa’s Absa Museum, Ellerman’s Contemporary Art Collection, Southern African Foundation for Contemporary Art, and elsewhere.

    In 2016, Lutaaya founded the nonprofit arts organization

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  • Installation view of “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future.” Photo: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
    April 19, 2019 at 11:39am

    Guggenheim Museum’s Hilma af Klint Exhibition Draws Record Number of Visitors

    The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has announced that the exhibition “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future”—the United States’ first major solo show of the Swedish artist—is the most popular show in its history. The exhibition has attracted more than 600,000 visitors since its opening in October 2018.

    The museum also reported that membership has increased 34 percent since the exhibition opened and more than 30,000 copies of the exhibition catalogue have been sold, surpassing the previous record set by the 2009 catalogue Kandinsky. Hilma af Klint-inspired merchandise has also been

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  • View of “Canadian and Indigenous Art: From Time Immemorial to 1967,” at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, in 2017. Photo: NGC.
    April 19, 2019 at 11:24am

    Canadian Museums Association Receives $1 Million to Promote and Preserve Indigenous Culture

    On Tuesday, the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) announced that more than $1 million will go toward an initiative aimed at amplifying the voices of First Nations communities in 2,600 museums and cultural institutions across the country. Funding is being provided by the government’s Museums Assistance Program (MAP), which supports Canadian museums and cultural professionals in the preservation of heritage collections. 

    The CMA Reconciliation Project will receive $680,948 to conduct a national review of museum policies in collaboration with indigenous peoples across Canada and an additional $

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  • Beverly Adams.
    April 19, 2019 at 11:03am

    MoMA Names Beverly Adams Curator of Latin American Art

    The Museum of Modern Art in New York announced today that it has appointed Beverly Adams as its new curator of Latin American art. Adams comes to the institution from the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. In her new role, she will work closely with curator Inés Katzenstein, the director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America.

    “Beverly Adams brings to MoMA a distinguished record as a scholar and curator of Latin American art,” said chief curator of painting and sculpture Ann Temkin. “She also brings an enthusiastic

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  • The new location of the Biennale de Lyon, the Les Usines Fagor. Photo: Blaise Adilon.
    April 19, 2019 at 9:30am

    Biennale de Lyon Reveals Artist List for 2019 Edition

    The fifteenth edition of the Biennale de Lyon, which takes place from September 18 to January 5, 2020, has named the artists participating in the event. Titled “Là où les eaux se mêlent,” which translates to “Where the Waters Mix”—a reference to a Raymond Carver poem—the exhibition will be led by artistic director Isabelle Bertolotti and curated by Jean de Loisy, the director of the Palais de Tokyo, and the museum’s curatorial team.

    For the first time, the biennial will be staged at the former factory Usines Fagor as well as at its usual location, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon.

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  • Exterior of Gagosian’s 20 Grosvenor Hill, London, location. Photo: Gagosian.
    April 19, 2019 at 8:05am

    Gagosian Launches Advisory Firm, New York’s Lubov Gallery Relocates, and More

    Veteran gallerist Rebecca Camacho is opening a new San Francisco gallery called Rebecca Camacho Presents. An exhibition of work by Oakland-based artist Sahar Khoury will inaugurate the 928-square-foot space on May 16. Previously, Camacho worked at the Bay Area’s Anthony Meier Fine Arts for nearly two decades. In 2018, she left to launch the consulting firm Rebecca Camacho Fine Art Projects & Commissions.

    Commenting on the new space, Camacho said: “Founding my own gallery gives me the ability to create a multi-faceted platform for the artists in my program. I see the space as expansive and

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  • Detail of Waka Poem by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Shōkadō Shōjō, and Tawaraya Sōtatsu, early seventeenth century.
    April 18, 2019 at 12:07pm

    The Met, Freer|Sackler, and Portland Art Museum to Receive 550 Japanese Artworks

    Mary and Cheney Cowles, Seattle-based collectors who have amassed one of the largest private collections of Japanese paintings and calligraphy in the West, announced they are donating more than 550 works to three institutions: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Freer|Sackler, the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art, in Washington, DC; and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.

    “The Met is deeply grateful to Mary and Cheney Cowles for this remarkable gift,” said museum director Max Hollein. “These works add great strength to our collection by filling gaps or complementing our renowned holdings.

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  • Devin N. Morris, All In, 2018, and Hadi Fallahpisheh, America, 2018.
    April 18, 2019 at 10:44am

    Hadi Fallahpisheh and Devin N. Morris Win New York Artadia Awards

    Artadia announced today that Hadi Fallahpisheh and Devin N. Morris have been selected as the winners of the 2019 New York Artadia Awards, which recognize artists who have lived or worked in the city for a period of at least two years. The artists will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds as well as access to the nonprofit’s resources and network.

    Born in Tehran in 1987, Fallahpisheh works primarily with photography, as well as performance and installation. A Bard College graduate, his work often comments on conditions of displacement and the difference between personal experience and public

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  • Kazue Kobata.
    April 17, 2019 at 6:13pm

    Kazue Kobata (1946–2019)

    Kazue Kobata—a Japanese curator, professor, translator, and former Artforum contributing editor whose interests spanned film, architecture, avant-garde music, and dance improvisation—has died. She was seventy-three years old.

    Kobata was a long-time adjunct curator and producer at De Appel, Amsterdam, and New York’s MoMA PS1, where she produced exhibitions including “Buzz Club: News From Japan” (2001). Among her many collaborators in a far-flung career were musicians Laurie Anderson and Derek Bailey, art director Eiko Ishioka, and Susan Sontag, whose writing she translated into Japanese.

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  • Otto Piene, Sketchbook: Groton, 2012. Photo: Charles Sternaimolo.
    April 17, 2019 at 4:30pm

    Harvard Art Museums Gifted Seventy of Otto Piene’s Sketchbooks

    The Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has received a gift of seventy sketchbooks by German artist Otto Piene, a founder of the Zero Group. The works were donated by Piene’s widow, the poet and author Elizabeth Goldring. Dating from 1935 to 2014, the largely unpublished sketchbooks span the entirety of Piene’s career.

    Piene began keeping sketchbooks when he was just a child and continued when he was conscripted as a Kindersoldat (child soldier) during World War II. According to the artist, “Even during the last weeks of the war, I constantly had a sketchbook and box of watercolors

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  • Squeak Carnwath, Baby, 2016. Photo: M. Lee Fatherre.
    April 17, 2019 at 2:00pm

    Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards More Than $3 Million in Grants

    The Pollock-Krasner Foundation announced today that it has awarded $3.17 million to 111 artists and twelve organizations for its 2018–19 grant cycle. This year’s grantees hail from eighteen states, Puerto Rico, and seventeen countries. Founded in 1985, the organization launched its grant program in order to provide critical support to artists around the globe by giving them financial support to create new works, prepare for exhibitions, and cover living expenses.

    The foundation also revealed that its Lee Krasner Award, which recognizes lifetime achievement, will go to Squeak Carnwath and Blane

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  • Michelle Millar Fisher.
    April 17, 2019 at 12:14pm

    MFA Boston Names Michelle Millar Fisher Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts

    The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, has appointed Michelle Millar Fisher curator of contemporary decorative arts. Fisher currently serves as assistant curator of European decorative arts and design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she is working on the upcoming exhibition “Designs for Different Futures,” opening in October. Fisher will take up the post on July 1.

    “Michelle is a brilliant curator, a dedicated teacher and scholar, and an emphatic community builder,” said Reto Thüring, the MFA’s department of contemporary art chair. “She will bring the vision, energy, and collaborative

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