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November 29, 2022 at 12:31pm

Artists Helping to Power “A4Revolution” in China

Artists across China are playing a major role in the so-called A4Revolution, a nationwide uprising, sparked by Covid-19 measures, that is the largest China has seen since 1989 and the biggest one to date under president Xi Jinping, who has overseen a harsh crackdown on public dissent since his rise in 2012. The flash point of the revolt, which follows months of economic pain caused by China’s attempts to eradicate Covid by imposing severe restrictions, is a November 24 fire in an apartment block in Urumqui, Xinjiang. Ten people died in the blaze after Covid-control measures are said to have

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November 28, 2022 at 1:24pm

Suhanya Raffel Appointed President of CIMAM

Suhanya Raffel, director of Hong Kong’s M+ contemporary art museum, has been announced as the next president of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM). The committee is made up of art museum professionals around the world; its stated goal is to “raise awareness and respond to the evolving needs of modern and contemporary museums, and to take a leadership role on issues of concern.” Raffel will lead the organization for two years beginning in 2023; she succeeds Mami Kataoka, director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, in the role.
Prior to arriving at M+ in 2019 as

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November 28, 2022 at 1:21pm

Philadelphia Home of Henry Ossawa Tanner Imperiled

The North Philadelphia childhood home of painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937), one of the first African American artists to gain international acclaim, is at risk of being destroyed. Tanner lived at the three-story brick rowhouse at 2908 West Diamond Street from 1872, when he was thirteen, to 1888, when he departed as a man of nearly thirty, eventually settling in Paris to escape America’s oppressive racism. The house passed out of the Tanner family’s hands sometime in the twentieth century and was much altered. Despite having been awarded National Landmark Status in 1976, the building has

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November 23, 2022 at 4:08pm

Bernadette Mayer (1945–2022)

Poet, artist, publisher, and scholar Bernadette Mayer died November 22 at the age of seventy-seven at her home in East Nassau, New York. A giant of American poetry who blurred the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary in expansive streams of consciousness, she was most frequently associated with the New York School and with the Language poets. Mayer was widely recognized for her pathbreaking poetry featuring blunt and open musings on the experience of motherhood. She was a central figure of the community surrounding the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York in the 1970s,

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November 23, 2022 at 2:01pm

Frieze Los Angeles Unveils Plans for 2023 Edition

The organizers of Frieze Los Angeles have revealed details of the art fair’s 2023 iteration, its largest to date. The event will take place at the Santa Monica Airport February 16–19 and will feature 124 participating galleries, a 24 percent increase over the previous year. Of note, the fair will feature more twentieth-century art than in years past, in which contemporary art took center stage. The Los Angeles gallery scene, which exploded over the past year, will be prominently represented amid a globe-spanning contingent featuring galleries from twenty-two countries, including South Korea,

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November 23, 2022 at 12:54pm

König Galerie Sees Artist Roster Shrink

König Galerie, the Berlin- and Seoul-based gallery owned by Johann König, has seen a number of artists depart in recent months, as its owner grapples with sexual assault allegations, which he denies. According to both Artnet News and The Art Newspaper, Scandinavian artists Elmgreen & Dragset and German painters Katharina Grosse and Corinne Wasmuht have all severed ties with the gallery in recent weeks. Berlin-based artist Monica Bonvicini departed earlier this month. The feminist artist had “paused” her relationship with the gallery after the abovementioned allegations were made public. Bonvicini

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November 22, 2022 at 5:44pm

Paris Gallerists Get Prison Time for Peddling Purloined Picassos

Husband-and-wife gallerists Anne and Herbert Pfeffer on November 18 were sentenced to two and one years in jail, respectively, for selling stolen Picassos through their gallery Belle and Belle. The court suspended the sentences but additionally dissolved the gallery and ordered the pair to pay roughly €400,000 ($412,000) in fines and indemnities. As well, the couple, who maintained their innocence throughout the October 5–7 trial, are barred from working as art dealers for the next five years.
The sentence brought to a conclusion a decade-long investigation into the theft by of handyman Freddy

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November 22, 2022 at 12:35pm

Strike at New School, Parsons Drags on as Negotiations Stall

The strike begun last week by adjunct faculty at New York’s New School and at the Parsons School of Design, which it encompasses, has entered its sixth day, with no contract in sight. ACT-UAW Local 7902, the union under whose aegis the faculty are organized, announced in a statement that the strike would continue until workers receive a contract that gives them “meaningful wage increases, no cuts to healthcare, and third-party protection from harassment and discrimination.”
At issue beyond these demands is the vast discrepancy between pay for administrative staff and that for adjunct professors,

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November 21, 2022 at 12:48pm

Staff at Storm King Art Center Move to Unionize

Workers at the Storm King Art Center in Windsor, New York, on November 15 announced that they plan to form a union. The push comes as the open-air sculpture park embarks on a $45 million capital project that will result in substantial enhancements to its facility and was driven by a recent surge in attendance, thanks in part to the Covid-19 crisis. The staff of the nonprofit are seeking to organize under the auspices of Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), an affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Like their compatriots at other institutions

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November 21, 2022 at 12:17pm

National Gallery of Canada Abruptly Fires Four Senior Curators

The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in Ottawa on November 18 announced that it had released four senior curators from their positions. Departing suddenly are Greg A. Hill, Audain Senior Curator of Indigenous Art; Kitty Scott, the museum’s deputy director and chief curator; Stephen Gritt, director of conservation and technical research; and Denise Siele, senior manager of communications. Angela Cassie, the institution’s interim director and CEO, wrote in a memo to staff that “restructuring” was behind the shock firings, which she cast as “the result of numerous factors and were made to better

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November 18, 2022 at 3:05pm

Divya Mehra Wins Canada’s Sobey Art Award

Winnipeg-based multidisciplinary artist Divya Mehra has been named the winner of Canada’s top art prize, the Sobey Art Award, presented annually by the National Gallery of Canada. The news was announced November 16 at a ceremony at the institution, where Mehra’s work is on view through March 12, 2023, in a special exhibition alongside that of her fellow shortlisted nominees for the prize. Mehra, who is representing Canada’s Prairies and North region, will receive C$100,000 ($75,000). Runners-up Tyshan Wright (representing the Atlantic region), Stanley Février (Quebec), Azza El Siddique (Ontario)

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November 17, 2022 at 5:16pm

New Art Museum Survey Shows Staff Diversity Increasing

The Mellon Foundation in its third survey of museums across the United States and Canada reported that diversity among staff at arts institutions has increased across the board since it conducted similar studies in 2015 and 2018. The survey—which is conducted in partnership with the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors, and which this year encompassed North American 328 museums and more than 30,000 workers—took place earlier this year, between February and April, and shows that as of that period, 36 percent of museum staff were people of color (POC), compared

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