News

  • August 17, 2018 at 6:33pm

    After Protests, Months of Negotiations, MoMA Union Reaches Contract Agreement

    After months of negotiations and protests at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the MoMA Local 2110 union has announced that it reached an agreement on a new contract with the museum’s administration. In addition to increasing wages by 3 percent, the new five-year contract updates health care benefits and preserves the seniority step program that provides raises for employees after a certain period of time—an element the museum originally sought to remove. 

    Maida Rosenstein, president of United Auto Workers Local 2110, said in a statement: “We attribute the museum’s retractions in no small

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  • August 17, 2018 at 6:18pm

    New York City Launches Public Art Initiative to Honor Women’s History

    The city of New York has launched a new public art initiative that will commission artworks honoring women’s history. Mayor Bill de Blasio, through the Department of Cultural Affairs, has committed up to $10 million over the next four years to fund new permanent public monuments and other works.

    Called She Built NYC, the initiative kicked off on June 20 with a call for nominations of women or historical events that significantly impacted New York City. Through Women.nyc, members of the public made nearly 2,000 suggestions. The city will now work to narrow the list down to five finalists for

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  • August 17, 2018 at 3:39pm

    German Gallery Severs Ties with Artist over His Stance on Immigration

    Galerie Kleindienst in Leipzig, Germany, has parted ways with painter Axel Krause, who has been represented by the gallery for the last thirteen years, over their differing political views. The end of the professional relationship comes on the heels of several posts Krause published on his Facebook page that expressed support for the country’s conservative AfD party, as well as views that were against immigration.

    In an interview with German broadcaster MDR KULTUR, gallery partner and business director Christian Seyde said, “the gallery does not want to share or support Krause’s political views.”

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  • August 17, 2018 at 2:17pm

    Carnegie Mellon’s Miller Gallery to Relaunch as Miller Institute for Contemporary Art

    The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh announced today that it is being rebranded and will reopen later this month as the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Elizabeth Chodos, the current director of the Miller Gallery, will lead the institute.

    “Under the traditional gallery model, the space was almost exclusively focused on exhibitions, whereas the new model of an institute for contemporary art expands the possibilities for public encounters with art,” Chodos said. “Although exhibitions remain the centerpiece of programming, this new model adds a variety

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  • August 17, 2018 at 12:35pm

    Liverpool Biennial Work Documenting the Refugee Crisis Is Destroyed Again

    The List, a massive installation featuring the names of 34,361 refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers who have died while trying to reach Europe since 2013, has been destroyed for the second time. Currently on view as part of the Liverpool Biennial, the work was first attacked at the end of July and was restored by the exhibition’s organizers only last week.

    After The List, which was erected on hoardings on Great George Street, was torn down again, Banu Cennetoğlu, the Turkish artist behind the project, decided not to reinstall the piece. Instead, she believes that leaving the remnants of the

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  • August 17, 2018 at 10:01am

    Christina Nielsen Named Director of Art Collections at the Huntington

    The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, has appointed Christina Nielsen as the director of its art collections. Nielsen currently serves as curator of the collection and exhibition program at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and will assume her new position on October 15. She replaces Catherine Hess, the Huntington’s chief curator of European art, who has served as interim director since March 2017.

    “The Huntington’s European and American art collections have inspired artists as well as the visiting public over the past century,” said

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  • August 17, 2018 at 9:52am

    MFA Boston Announces Curatorial Appointments and $1 Million Gift

    The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has received a $1 million grant from the Tokyo-based Ishibashi Foundation in support of a new curatorial training opportunity in the field of Japanese art. It will fund five new fellowships at the institution. Each recipient will serve as an assistant curator of Japanese art for a two-year period.

    “Over the next decade, these fellows will bring new ideas to life, broaden our perspectives and strengthen our historic commitment to Japanese art,” the MFA’s director, Matthew Teitelbaum, said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming them, encouraging their curiosity,

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  • August 16, 2018 at 5:32pm

    Dealer Andrew Fabricant Joins Gagosian Gallery as a Director

    Gagosian Gallery announced today that the sixty-three-year-old veteran dealer Andrew Fabricant will join its ranks as a director in September. Fabricant began his career in the art world at Larry Gagosian’s eponymous Los Angeles gallery in 1983 and is returning to work for the dealer after a twenty-two-year tenure at Richard Gray Gallery. He will be based in New York.

    “Gagosian’s global platform and broad embrace of both historical and contemporary artists was inspirational and important to me in this decision,” Fabricant said in a statement. “The gallery’s international profile has influenced

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  • August 16, 2018 at 5:01pm

    Tomás Toledo Named Chief Curator of Museu de Arte de São Paulo

    The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) announced that Tomás Toledo has been promoted to chief curator. Toledo first joined the institution in 2014 and has curated various exhibitions, including “A mão do povo brasileiro” (The Hand of the Brazilian People, 2016), “Miguel Rio Branco: Nada levarei qundo morrer” (Miguel Rio Branco: When I Die I Will Take Nothing, 2017), and most recently, “Histórias afro-atlânticas (Afro-Atlantic Histories, 2018). Toledo is also currently preparing the show “Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat at MASP,” which will open in 2019.

    In addition, the museum appointed Fabio Frayha as

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  • August 16, 2018 at 12:36pm

    Mary Pratt (1935–2018)

    Mary Pratt, a Canadian painter who claimed to see “the secrets of the universe” in a pile of grapes, has died at age eighty-three. Pratt became internationally recognized for her realist still lifes of seemingly mundane household objects, which were infused with a radiant and disquieting verisimilitude and, for some scholars, evinced a subtly feminist perspective.

    Pratt was born Mary West in Fredericton in 1935. Her mother had painted and inspired Pratt to cherish colors and their emotional power; Pratt once said she grew up in a home so “riddled with red” as to have a “belief” in the color. She

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  • August 16, 2018 at 10:22am

    DeCordova Awards Rappaport Prize to Titus Kaphar

    The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, has named Titus Kaphar as the nineteenth recipient of its Rappaport Prize, an annual award of $25,000 that is given to a contemporary artist with “strong connections to New England and a proven record of achievement.”

    Kaphar is a painter and sculptor whose work examines the history of representation in order to illuminate social inequalities and address African American experiences. In his own words, he creates works “that nod to hidden narratives and begin to reveal unspoken truths about the nature of history.”

    Initiated in 2000,

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  • August 16, 2018 at 10:00am

    Cultural Organizations in Washington, DC, and Pittsburgh Selected for Bloomberg Philanthropies’ $43 Million Arts Program

    Bloomberg Philanthropies announced today that forty-seven cultural organizations in Washington, DC, and thirty-eight organizations in Pittsburgh will participate in its $43 million Arts Innovation and Management (AIM) program.

    The multiyear initiative was launched to help small and midsize arts organizations from seven US cities—Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Denver, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC—strengthen their infrastructure and programming by providing unrestricted general operating support and management training in areas that include fundraising, strategic planning,

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