News

  • Udo Kittelmann at the Nationalgalerie. Photo: Juliane Eirich. Courtesy of the National Museums Berlin.
    August 22, 2019 at 11:34am

    Veteran Museum Director Udo Kittelmann to Step Down from Helm of Berlin’s Nationalgalerie

    Udo Kittelmann, the longtime director of Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, an umbrella organization which comprises five top institutions—the Alter and Neue Nationalgaleries, the Berggruen Museum, the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection, and the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art—will resign from his post when his contract expires in October 2020.

    Credited with raising the international profile of the city’s state museum galleries, Kittelmann also maintained an active curatorial practice during his twelve-year tenure, organizing group shows such as “The Black Years: Stories of a Collection, 1933–1945”

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  • Ed Henry. Courtesy of United States Artists.
    August 22, 2019 at 10:23am

    United States Artists Names Ed Henry Board Chair

    United States Artists (USA), the national arts funding organization based in Chicago, announced today that Ed Henry has been appointed its new board chair. Henry is currently president and CEO of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and has been a USA board member since 2014. He succeeds Steven H. Oliver, who will remain a trustee.

    “It’s been an honor to serve as USA’s board chair, and I’m proud to hand the torch to Ed, who has already given our organization years of his expert guidance,” said Oliver. USA president and CEO Deana Haggag added: “Ed’s accomplishments, along with his long-standing

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  • The Noguchi Museum. Photo: Lauren Cavalli.
    August 22, 2019 at 9:47am

    Noguchi Museum Elects Four New Trustees

    The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in New York has welcomed four new members to its board of trustees: financier Maximilian Coreth, cofounder of the investment firm Timberlane Partners; Sarah Wendell Sherrill, a former Christie’s executive and a CEO of Lobus, a tech company serving the art industry; art historian, gallerist, and filmmaker Sundaram Tagore, who directed Pace Wildenstein Gallery before opening up his own in 2000; and the Bangkok-born architect Kulapat Yantrasast, a founding partner and creative director of the Los Angeles and New York-based firm wHY Architecture

    “With

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  • Joi Ito.
    August 21, 2019 at 1:30pm

    MIT Media Lab Director Apologizes for Accepting Funding from Jeffrey Epstein

    On August 15, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito published a public apology for the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based organization’s business affiliations with Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier who was charged with sex trafficking last month and who was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell on August 10, at the age of sixty-eight.

    “I met Epstein in 2013 at a conference through a trusted business friend,” Ito wrote on the Media Lab’s website. “I was never involved in, never heard him talk about, and never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that he was accused of.”

    Epstein’s foundation, Epstein

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  • Keb Cerda, a recipient of the Ateneo Art Award’s visual art prize.
    August 21, 2019 at 1:19pm

    Ateneo Art Award Recipients Announced

    The recipients of the 2019 Ateneo Art Awards, which recognize young artists and critics in the Philippines, were announced on Sunday.

    The visual art prizes were awarded to Costantino Zicarelli, Keb Cerda, and Archie Oclos, who will each receive an international residency grant endowed by Ateneo Art Gallery in partnership with La Trobe University in Bendigo, Australia; Artesan Gallery + Studio, Singapore; and Liverpool Hope University, the UK. In addition, Doktor Karayom received the Embassy of Italy Purchase Prize, awarded in partnership with the Ateneo Art Gallery.

    The winners were selected from

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  • Rendering of Kai Art Center. Photo: KAOS Architects, 2019. Courtesy of the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center.
    August 21, 2019 at 10:06am

    New Contemporary Arts Center Will Open in Estonia Next Month

    The Kai Art Center, a new cultural hub that will present four main exhibitions a year, boast a 100-seat theater, and serve as an education center, will open on the waterfront in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, next month. Spearheaded by the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center, the arts space will be housed in a century-old building in Port Noblessner, a former submarine production plant, and will host an international residency program, dubbed 7+7, that will invite up to fourteen artists to Tallinn each year. The center will also provide studio and event space for artists and other

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  • Victoria Ramirez. Courtesy of the city of El Paso.
    August 21, 2019 at 9:07am

    Arkansas Arts Center Appoints Victoria Ramirez Executive Director

    The Arkansas Arts Center has named Victoria Ramirez its new executive director. Ramirez comes to the institution from the El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) where she served as director since January 2017. Previously, she was deputy director of the the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin and the education director at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

    With more than twenty years of museum administration experience, Ramirez has spearheaded renovation projects, led fundraising campaigns, developed exhibitions and education programs, and launched digital initiatives to increase museum attendance.

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  • The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art. Courtesy of the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art.
    August 21, 2019 at 6:55am

    Arts Professionals Denounce di Rosa Foundation’s Plan to Sell Famed Collection

    More than 120 artists, dealers, and curators have signed an open letter protesting the Rene and Veronica di Rosa Foundation’s decision to deaccession the majority of the works in its 1,600-work collection in order to boost its endowment. The signees are urging the foundation to find an alternative institution that will house and maintain the collection as a whole. “Failing to do so,” they claim, will be an “irretrievable loss to the international art community.”

    The letter, which was first published by Artnews, calls the collection a “significant achievement in and of itself,” which provides a

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  • Eric Golo Stone. Photo: Sidonie Loiseleux.
    August 20, 2019 at 12:35pm

    Künstlerhaus Stuttgart Names Eric Golo Stone Artistic Director

    Eric Golo Stone has been appointed artistic director of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, a contemporary arts institution in Stuttgart, Germany, that was founded by artists in 1978. The artist, writer, and former curator of LAXART in Los Angeles will succeed Fatima Hellberg, whose five-year term will be up at the end of this year, and will take up the new post on January 1, 2020. Previous artistic directors of the Künstlerhaus include Adnan Yildiz, Axel John Wieder, and Ute Meta Bauer.

    Among Stone’s curatorial projects are “Contractual Situations We Live By” (2018) at the Kunsthalle Bern and “US Code:

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  • Rebecca Wei. Courtesy of Christie’s.
    August 20, 2019 at 12:09pm

    Rebecca Wei, Chair of Christie’s Asia, Steps Down

    After eight months of holding a top position at the auction house, Rebecca Wei, chairman of Christie’s Asia, has resigned. Wei was hired as general manager, Asia, in 2012 and came from the firm McKinsey & Company, where she worked for a decade as a management consultant. She became managing director, Asia, shortly after and was then promoted to president, Asia, in 2016 and to chair in December. Francis Belin, the former global managing director of Christie’s Asia who also previously served as a senior vice president in consumer goods for Swarovski, will succeed her as president.

    Wei’s leadership

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  • Jin Shiu and Yi Joungmin of artist group Okin Collective. Photo: MMCA.
    August 20, 2019 at 11:15am

    Artists Jin Shiu and Yi Joungmin, Members of the Okin Collective, Found Dead

    Jin Shiu and Yi Joungmin—two members of the Okin Collective, a South Korean artist group founded in 2009 to address forced evictions in Seoul’s Jongno District—were found dead on Saturday, August 17, from an apparent double suicide. That same day, several friends and colleagues of the artists received an email from them, which was shared with Artforum and in part reads: “We are both physically and mentally exhausted, but hereby summon our last remaining strength to bid farewell for the last time.” Jin was forty-four years old, and Yi was forty-eight.

    A decade ago, following the government’s

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  • Nora Burnett Abrams. Photo: Josie Skinner.
    August 20, 2019 at 10:54am

    Nora Burnett Abrams to Lead the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver

    The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver) announced today that Nora Burnett Abrams has been named its next director. Abrams previously served in various roles at the museum, including as associate curator for nine years and, most recently, as curator and director of planning. She will assume her new responsibilities on August 20.

    “After an extensive international search, the board was unanimous in selecting Nora,” said board chair Mike Fries. “Over the last ten years, she has been instrumental in bringing MCA Denver to where it stands today as one of the most important cultural institutions

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