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  • The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Photo: Elon Schoenholz/MOCA.
    October 14, 2021 at 4:23pm

    228 Museums Reported to Have Laid Off 28 Percent of Employees Despite Receiving PPP Loans

    A report released last week by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) shows that 228 pandemic-hit arts and culture institutions who received aid via the United States’ federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) laid off a collective 28 percent of their workers, Hyperallergic reports, amounting to more than 14,400 people. Additionally, these institutions, all large organizations, accounted for half of all PPP funding, which totaled $1.6 billion and was distributed across about 7,500 institutions.

    The funding was approved by the US Congress in March 2020 as the

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  • Christian Rosa in 2013. Photo: Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images.
    October 14, 2021 at 2:04pm

    Fallen Art Star Charged with Peddling Raymond Pettibon Forgeries

    Brazil-born artist Christian Rosa, described just seven years ago in the pages of this publication as “stratospherically successful,” has been charged with wire fraud in relation to the sale of four forgeries attributed to Raymond Pettibon, whom he had in recent years befriended, the New York Times reports. In a federal indictment announced yesterday, Rosa was charged with selling the works, backed by fake certificates of authenticity on which he had forged the noted artist’s signature, to two separate buyers. If convicted, Rosa faces up to twenty years in prison.

    Pettibon—who notoriously created

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  • Pink Stripe, 2021, by North Carolina–based painter Margaret Curtis.
    October 13, 2021 at 1:39pm

    Joan Mitchell Foundation Announces Inaugural Fellows

    The New York–based Joan Mitchell Foundation, which earlier this year refocused its funding model to better provide artists with long-term assistance, today announced the inaugural recipients of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship. Fifteen artists working in the fields of painting or sculpture will each receive an unrestricted $60,000 grant, to be disbursed over a five-year span. During that time, recipients will also be given access to such services as private consultations with arts professionals; networking meetings; and programs focused on personal finance, legacy planning, and critical discourse.

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  • Sarah Suzuki. Photo: Peter Ross.
    October 13, 2021 at 9:54am

    MoMA Names Sarah Suzuki Associate Director, Three Other Leadership Appointees

    The Museum of Modern Art, New York, has announced four new appointees to top positions across departments. Sarah Suzuki has taken on the role of associate director; Beverly Morgan-Welch has been named senior deputy director of external affairs; Christy Thompson is the museum’s new senior deputy director of exhibitions and collections; and Nisa Mackie has been appointed the Edward John Noble Foundation Deputy Director of Learning and Audience Engagement. The four women have already stepped into their roles.

    Suzuki has been with MoMA for twenty-three years, having joined the institution as a research

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  • Catherine Nichols. Photo: Peter Rigaud.
    October 12, 2021 at 2:29pm

    Manifesta Announces Curator, Theme for 2022 Pristina Edition

    Berlin-based curator Catherine Nichols has been named creative mediator of the forthcoming Manifesta 14, to be held in Pristina, Kosovo, in 2022. This edition of the itinerant biennial is to be titled “it matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise” and will investigate and promote collective storytelling, casting it, as the organizers described in a press release, as a “vital strategy of political and social engagement.” A Center for Narrative Practice is to be established at the city’s Hivzi Sylejmani Library, and will serve as the main hub for the biennial, which will

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  • Atta Kwami in 2019. Photo: Serpentine Galleries.
    October 11, 2021 at 2:35pm

    Atta Kwami (1956–2021)

    Ghanian painter and printmaker Atta Kwami, whose brilliant geometric works evoke the architecture and textiles of West Africa and explore themes of migration and assimilation, died October 6 at the age of sixty-five. Long a giant in the Ghanaian art world, he in recent years won international acclaim as his work became more widely known. Kwami was also a noted art historian and curator devoted to preserving Ghana’s art history. His 2013 volume Kumasi Realism, 1951–2007: An African Modernism stood against the notion of “authentically” African art as embodied only by traditional styles and instead

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  • Meg Onli. Photo: Marcus Maddox.
    October 11, 2021 at 11:43am

    Meg Onli Appointed Director and Curator of the Underground Museum

    Meg Onli has been named director and curator of Los Angeles’s Underground Museum. She arrives from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, where she has worked as an associate curator since 2019. The Los Angeles native will co-lead the institution with director and COO Cristina Pacheco. Pacheco has served on the board of the Underground Museum since 2015, and as interim director and COO since 2020.

    The Underground Museum was established across four storefronts in LA’s Arlington Heights neighborhood in 2012 by artists Karon and Noah Davis (Noah died the year after the institution’s

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  • Sandra Mujinga. Photo: Benjamin Pritzkuleit.
    October 08, 2021 at 5:37pm

    Sandra Mujinga Wins 2021 Preis der Nationalgalerie

    Sculptor Sandra Mujinga has won the Preis der Nationalgalerie, Germany’s premier award for young artists. Mujinga, a native of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, who now divides her time between Berlin and Oslo, was recognized for her haunting work often featuring textiles taking the form of spectral figures and evoking a dystopian future. She will receive a solo exhibition at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof next year, which will be accompanied by a publication. Mujinga was chose for the prize, awarded annually to an artist under forty, from among four nominees, the others being musician and

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  • Tania Bruguera. Photo: Romina Santarelli/Flickr.
    October 08, 2021 at 1:49pm

    Tania Bruguera Departing Cuba in Exchange for Government Freeing Prisoners

    Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera is leaving her home country, having agreed to do so if the government released a group of prisoners, Hyperallergic reports. In an interview with Radio Martí broadcast October 5, Bruguera, a member of the artist-activist collective 27N, said that she had been offered a job as a senior lecturer in Harvard University’s media and performance department. Bruguera contended that she told Cuban authorities she would accept the position and leave the country if they would release a number of activists imprisoned in the past few months, as unprecedented protests

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  • Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Phuta o Jakha (Open your eyes) (detail), 2020.*
    October 07, 2021 at 6:02pm

    Małgorzata Mirga-Tas to Represent Poland at Venice Biennale

    Polish-Romani multidisciplinary artist, educator, and activist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas has been selected to represent Poland at the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale. Her “Re-enchanting the World” will occupy the Polish Pavilion during the event’s run, from April 23 to November 27, 2022. Known for a practice comprising sculpture, painting, installation, and large-format textiles, Mirga-Tas challenges discriminatory Romani stereotypes and cultivates a positive image of Roma culture. Her work frequently incorporates clothing belonging to friends and family, which she collages into patchwork screens showing

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  • A view of the Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum. Photo: Carole Raddato/Wikipedia Commons.
    October 07, 2021 at 1:30pm

    UK Government Rejects Unesco Plea to Readdress Ownership of Parthenon Marbles

    The UK government has rejected Unesco’s recommendation that it reconsider the ownership status of the fabled Parthenon Marbles held in the collection of the British Museum. Following a meeting of Unesco’s Intergovernmental Commission for the Return of Cultural Property to Countries of Origin (ICPRCP) in Paris last week, the organization had urged the British government to investigate the conditions under which the marbles were brought to England, and to consider returning them to Greece. Unesco’s recommendation was a victory for Greece, which first brought the matter to the organization in 1984.

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  • Shelley C. Lowe and Maria Rosario Jackson.
    October 06, 2021 at 4:35pm

    Biden Announces Pathbreaking Nominees to Lead Top US Cultural Institutions

    President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced his picks to helm the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), selecting Maria Rosario Jackson to lead the former and Shelley C. Lowe to head the latter. If their nominations are approved by the Senate, Jackson would become the first African American and Mexican American to serve as NEA chief, while Lowe would be the first Native American to steer the NEH.

    Jackson, who holds a doctorate in urban planning from the University of California, is a professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at

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