News

  • April 24, 2018 at 6:14pm

    Richard Oldenburg (1933–2018)

    Richard Sandomir of the Boston Globe reports that Richard Oldenburg, the former director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art from 1972 to 1995, who oversaw important exhibitions of work by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso—in addition to spearheading a major $55 million expansion for the museum, among other significant achievements—has died. He was eighty-four years old and passed away at his home in Manhattan.

    Oldenburg, the brother of Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, came to MoMA in 1969. He was initially hired by the museum to run its publications division. He was a well-liked

    Read more
  • April 24, 2018 at 5:23pm

    Tisch Fund to Give $10 Million to Arts Programs that Address Mental Health Issues

    The Laurie M. Tisch Imagination Fund has pledged $10 million for a new multiyear initiative that supports New York City organizations that use the arts to address mental health issues that range from Alzheimer’s to the stigma of mental illness.

    “Decades of scientific study show that engagement in the arts provides cognitive, emotional, and physical health benefits for people from youth to old age, but there are great disparities in access to services in New York City,” said Laurie M. Tisch, the president and founder of the Laurie M. Tisch Imagination Fund. “This initiative will help organizations

    Read more
  • April 24, 2018 at 5:09pm

    Brooklyn’s Real Fine Arts Closes

    The gallery Real Fine Arts in Brooklyn, founded by the artists Ben Morgan-Cleveland and Tyler Dobson in 2008, has closed, reports Andrew Russeth of Artnews. The space hosted more than one hundred shows and events during its lifetime and exhibited the work of Maggie Lee, Georgia Sagri, Stefan Tcherepnin, Jon Pestoni, Lena Henke, and Jana Euler, among many other artists.

    “At a time when so many galleries—whether fledgling or established—build rosters that seem most concerned with having a little something for everyone, RFA instead opted for a program that felt focused and selective,”

    Read more
  • April 24, 2018 at 3:30pm

    Havana’s Alternative Biennial Announces Participating Artists

    The #00Bienal de La Habana—an independent exhibition that was launched after the thirteenth edition of Cuba’s state-sponsored biennial was canceled due to a lack of funds following Hurricane Irma—has named the majority of the participating artists. Note: Many international artists traveling to the island for the event were omitted from the artist list as a precautionary measure. There is concern that they could be refused entry into Cuba.

    Organized by José Ernesto Alonso, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Yanelys Nuñez Leyva, Iris Ruiz, Yuri Obregon, and Amaury Pacheco, the exhibition will

    Read more
  • April 24, 2018 at 10:52am

    Getty Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies Announce Inaugural Postdoctoral Fellowships in Art History

    The Getty Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) have announced the first ten recipients of the Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art. According to the ACLS, “The fellowships mark the first time the foundation has supported postdoctoral grants since 2009. The new program is non-residential and it builds on the foundation’s earlier fellowship program by encouraging diverse, international perspectives. The program is administered by ACLS, a preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences.”

    Each yearlong

    Read more
  • April 24, 2018 at 10:24am

    Polixeni Papapetrou (1960–2018)

    The Melbourne, Australia–based photographer Polixeni Papapetrou has died, writes Debbie Cuthbertson of the Sydney Morning Herald. For more than ten years, the artist had struggled with several bouts of cancer. She was fifty-seven when she passed.

    Papapetrou “lived an important and magnificent life as an artist, as a feminist, as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, and a very significant member of the Australian arts community,” said the director of Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Photography, Naomi Cass. “She was intellectually very robust and clear to the very end . . . she had both an

    Read more
  • April 24, 2018 at 9:35am

    LACMA Adds Ten New Works to Its Collection

    The Los Angeles Country Museum of Art has acquired ten new works, including major pieces by women artists, during its Thirty-Second annual Collectors Committee fundraiser last weekend. The two-day affair involved curator-led presentations, private dinners, and a gala where ninety-six members of the committee voted on artworks to add to the institution’s collection. The museum raised more than $3.1 million over the course of the event.

    “Collectors Committee’s legacy is built on strengthening and diversifying the museum’s permanent collection,” said LACMA CEO and director Michael Govan. “It was

    Read more
  • April 24, 2018 at 9:32am

    London’s Parliament Square Unveils Its First Sculpture Honoring a Woman

    Louisa Buck of the Art Newspaper writes that British artist Gillian Wearing is the first woman to create a sculpture honoring a woman for London’s Parliament Square. Wearing’s statue pays tribute to the preeminent UK suffragist Millicent Fawcett. The work was made to celebrate the hundred-year anniversary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which gave women who were thirty years and older the right to vote. Fawcett is depicted holding a sign that reads “Courage calls to courage everywhere.” The plinth also features portraits of fifty-two women and men who were integral in the fight

    Read more
  • April 24, 2018 at 8:41am

    Eva Rothschild to Represent Ireland at 2019 Venice Biennale

    Ireland’s minister for culture, heritage, and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan announced that artist Eva Rothschild has been selected to represent the country at the Fifty-Eighth Venice Biennale, which will kick off on May 11, 2019. The Dublin-based curator and art historian Mary Cremin—the director of Void gallery in Derry, a city in Northern Island—will curate the pavilion.

    According to Culture Ireland, the state agency dedicated to promoting Irish art internationally, the pavilion will be transformed into an immersive environment that “asks the audience to question what our role is as

    Read more
  • April 23, 2018 at 5:42pm

    Judge in Mexico Halts Sales of Frida Kahlo Barbie Doll

    Descendants of Frida Kahlo have won a temporary injunction that blocks sales of a Barbie doll depicting the late Mexican artist, according to The Guardian. Mara de Anda Romeo, the painter’s great-niece, claimed in a Mexican court that the toymaker Mattel is not authorized to use Kahlo’s likeness as part of its “Inspiring Women” series of dolls. Mattel says it secured permission to use Kahlo’s image from the Frida Kahlo Corporation, which asserts that it attained the rights from Isolda Pinedo Kahlo, the artist’s niece, over a decade ago. According to a ruling posted last Tuesday, the company is

    Read more
  • April 23, 2018 at 4:05pm

    Ronald Noorman (1951–2018)

    Ronald Noorman, a Danish artist known for humble but commanding drawings that linger between the abstract and the figurative, died last month at the age of sixty-six. Born in 1951 in Hilversum, the Netherlands, Noorman studied painting at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam before becoming a draftsman. He exhibited his work widely, and his drawings—most of which are small and untitled—are in collections across the Netherlands, including those of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Teylers Museum in Haarlem.

    While recognizable things recur in his earlier works of the 1980s—tourniquets

    Read more
  • April 23, 2018 at 2:13pm

    Copenhagen’s David Risley Gallery to Close

    After eighteen years, dealer David Risley has decided to close his eponymous Copenhagen-based gallery in order to focus more on developing Funkisfabriken, an old Swedish furniture factory that the gallerist is transforming into a cross-disciplinary research center.

    Risley describes the Funkisfabriken as “an audacious project to realign art, food, business, and innovation with sustainability.” Located in Gemla, the 120,000-square-foot complex, built in 1929, will include exhibition spaces, restaurants, research kitchens and labs, and sculpture gardens. “It is a place where ideas will be front and

    Read more