News

  • MoCA Cleveland.
    July 08, 2020 at 7:20pm

    Cleveland Activists Counter Shaun Leonardo’s Censorship Allegations

    Following the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland’s decision last month to cancel Shaun Leonardo’s exhibition “The Breath of Empty Space,” two activists have shared their account of the controversy. The show, which premiered in January at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, was to include charcoal drawings of police killing Black and Latino men, including depictions of Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott, and the park where twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by the Cleveland police in 2014. Samaria Rice has since served Leonardo with a cease and desist order to stop

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  • View of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s Dream House.
    July 08, 2020 at 2:45pm

    MELA Foundation Launches Campaign to Save La Monte Young’s New York Dream House

    La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s Dream House, a landmark conceptual artwork and performance venue currently located on the third floor of 275 Church Street in Manhattan, is facing an uncertain future amid financial troubles exacerbated by the pandemic. First conceptualized by the artists in the early-’60s and open to the public for free, this iteration of the immersive sonic and light environment was installed in 1993 and is maintained by the MELA Foundation, whose longtime backer for Dream House pulled its funding in 2015, and which now owes over $150,000 in back rent.

    A legendary avant-garde

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  • Sohrab Mohebbi. Photo: Sabrina Santiago.
    July 08, 2020 at 1:40pm

    Sohrab Mohebbi to Curate 2022 Carnegie International

    Writer and curator Sohrab Mohebbi has been named curator of the Carnegie International’s 58th edition, set to open in 2022. Mohebbi, who is thirty-nine and grew up in Iran, is the first Western Asian person to helm the contemporary art survey in its 124-year history. Prior to his appointment, he served as curator at SculptureCenter in Queens, New York, and associate curator at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in Los Angeles.

    According to Artnews, Mohebbi will focus his research around conceptions of “reconstitution” and “decentralization”; he names Chicana theorist Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s

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  • Sotheby’s.
    July 08, 2020 at 10:56am

    Sotheby’s Awarded $2 million in Dispute Over Keith Haring Sale

    The New York state court in Manhattan has ordered New York–based art dealer Anatole Shagalov to pay $2 million to Sotheby’s following a legal battle over a ten-foot Keith Haring painting purchased by the dealer at an auction in May 2017, reports The Art Newspaper. Shagalov, who runs Nature Morte gallery in Great Neck, was taken to court by the auction house in an attempt to recoup the difference after the dealer refused to honor a record $6.5 million bid, leading Sotheby’s to resell the work to the guarantor for $4.4 million that October.

    Shagalov’s defense had disputed the charges on the grounds

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  • The Milwaukee Museum of Art.
    July 07, 2020 at 4:33pm

    Amid Rising Infections, Some US Museums Begin to Reopen

    As Covid-19 infection rates climb across the United States following a late-spring letup, some museums are starting to welcome visitors again after months of lockdown. Institutions that are opening their doors include the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Portland Art Museum; and the Berkshires Museums. Buoyed by a substantial $6.7 million government loan, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is also planning on reopening sometime this month, its full staff intact. While some governors move their states into “Phase 3” of reopening, others, like Greg Abbott of Texas,

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  • The National Gallery, London.
    July 07, 2020 at 11:52am

    United Kingdom Plans $2 Billion Relief Package for Cultural Sector

    The United Kingdom will infuse 1.57 billion pounds, the equivalent of almost $2 billion, into the country’s arts and cultural sector, which has been devastated by Covid-19-induced lockdowns since early March. Rishi Sunak, Britain’s chief finance minister, announced the decision on Saturday, following months of calls for relief from the country’s leading cultural figures. While British museums and galleries are now allowed to reopen, ongoing social distancing measures introduce further uncertainty as to the sector’s financial recovery.

    The relief package allocates $1.1 billion in grants for English

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  • Still from Francis Alÿs’s Children’s Games #19: Haram Soccer, Mosul, Iraq, August 2017.
    June 18, 2020 at 12:46pm

    Francis Alÿs to Represent Belgium at 2022 Venice Biennale

    Francis Alÿs has been selected to represent Belgium at the fifty-ninth edition of the Venice Biennale, which has been pushed back to 2022. The pavilion will be curated by Hilde Teerlinck of the Han Nefkens Foundation in Barcelona. Alÿs and Teerlinck’s proposal for the country’s contribution to the biennial centers on new and existing work developed from his 2017 video Children’s Games #19: Haram Soccer, which features young boys playing a game that is banned in areas controlled by the Islamic State.

    The Antwerp-born, Mexico City–based artist’s works have previously been included in the biennial’s

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  • Leelee Chan. Courtesy of Art Basel.
    June 18, 2020 at 11:14am

    Leelee Chan Named Next BMW Art Journey Award Winner

    Art Basel and BMW announced today that Hong Kong–based artist Leelee Chan is the next BMW Art Journey winner. Known for her mixed-media works and sculptures made from dumpster detritus and household ephemera and inspired by her experiences with urbanization in Hong Kong, Leelee Chan was selected for her project “Tokens From Time.” She plans on visiting various destinations in Europe, Japan, and the Americas to learn ancient craftsmanship techniques using copper, silver, and marble, among other materials. She will also consult with scientists to understand how these natural materials may be

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  • Sally Banes, 1985.
    June 17, 2020 at 7:50pm

    Sally Banes (1950–2020)

    Cultural historian Sally Banes, whose pioneering criticism opened new conversations about what she called postmodern dance, has died at age sixty-nine from ovarian cancer. Best known as the author of Terpsichore in Sneakers (1980), Banes often drew connections between mainstream and marginalized dance cultures, championing downtown Manhattan’s Judson Dance Theater and the Bronx’s Rock Steady Crew with equal enthusiasm. Other landmark texts include Democracy’s Body (1983), a foundational account of Judson Dance Theater that emerged from her dissertation, and “To the Beat Y’all: Breaking Is Hard

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  • Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Photo: Wally Gobetz/Flickr.
    June 17, 2020 at 6:28pm

    Asian Art Museum Contends with Racist Legacy of Patron Avery Brundage

    San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum has removed a bust of the institution’s founding patron Avery Brundage that sat prominently in the institution’s foyer for nearly five decades. The twentieth-century sports administrator served as the fifth president of the International Olympic Committee, established an institution to house his eight-thousand-work collection in 1966, and developed a reputation as a Nazi sympathizer and a white supremacist.

    Brundage, who died in 1975, opposed the boycott of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and advocated for the America First movement, which was against the United

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  • Neuer Aachener Kunstverein. Photo: Wikipedia.
    June 17, 2020 at 2:20pm

    Neuer Aachener Kunstverein Damaged by Fire

    The Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (NAK) in Germany is recovering from a blaze that swept through the institution on Friday, June 12. When the fire brigade arrived at the scene at 5 AM, several garbage bins, located at the rear of the building, were burning, and the fire had already spread to NAK’s roof and interior. Police have launched an investigation into the cause of the fire, which is still unknown, and are looking into whether a burning object was thrown into one of the trash receptacles.

    To extinguish the blaze, fire workers had to saw part of the building’s roof open. According to Monopol,

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  • Ronald K. Brown. Photo: Stephen lllflo Edwards. Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow.
    June 17, 2020 at 12:23pm

    Ronald K. Brown Receives $25,000 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award

    Jacob’s Pillow has selected choreographer and founder of the Evidence dance company Ronald K. Brown as the recipient of this year’s $25,000 dance award. Known for incorporating West African, Caribbean, and contemporary genres in his works, Brown has created more than one hundred performances for Evidence, as well as for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, PHILADANCO, Ballet Hispánico, and a number of other companies.

    “I’m honored beyond measure for this recognition from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival,” Brown said in a statement. “I still remember all of

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