News

  • Prada store in New York, with the products that provoked the controversy. Photo: Chinyere Ezie.
    February 15, 2019 at 4:30pm

    Following Backlash, Prada Forms Diversity Council Chaired by Ava DuVernay and Theaster Gates

    In the wake of controversy over products that were criticized as racist, Prada announced that it is establishing a Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council on Wednesday, February 13. Cochaired by writer, director, and producer Ava DuVernay and artist and activist Theaster Gates, the council will work to “elevate voices of color within the company and the fashion industry at large.”

    The fashion house faced backlash in December when civil rights lawyer Chinyere Ezie called out the company for selling keychains of a character in what resembled blackface. She wrote about the “bewildering examples of

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  • Pierre Bonnard, The Brothers Bernheim-Jeune, 1920.
    February 15, 2019 at 1:08pm

    Paris’s Galerie Bernheim-Jeune Closes

    Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, one of Paris’s oldest galleries, which staged pivotal exhibitions of the European avant-garde throughout its 150 years of operation, has closed. The gallery was opened in 1863 by Alexandre Bernheim-Jeune, who organized Vincent Van Gogh’s first retrospective in 1901, a significant 1907 survey on Paul Cézanne, and the Italian Futurists’s groundbreaking 1912 French debut, which featured works by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, and Gino Severini.

    By the turn of the century, Bernheim-Jeune, who was friends with artists such as Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, and

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  • Peter Doig, Two Trees, 2017. Photo: Peter Doig / 2019 Artists Rights Society, New York.
    February 15, 2019 at 12:13pm

    Metropolitan Museum of Art Gifted Monumental Peter Doig Painting

    Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the acquisition of Peter Doig’s large-scale landscape painting Two Trees, 2017. The work, which is about eight feet high and twelve feet wide, was a gift from George Economou in celebration of the Met’s upcoming one hundred and fiftieth anniversary in 2020.

    “Peter Doig is one of the most important figurative painters of our time,” Sheena Wagstaff, the Met’s chair of modern and contemporary art, said. “Two Trees is a masterpiece, as well as a watershed work in the artist’s oeuvre. It poses provocative questions about modern life, even as it sits within

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  • February 15, 2019 at 11:20am

    Artsy Reports Security Breach of One Million Users’ Personal Information

    A hacker has stolen the personal information of 1,070,000 users of Artsy, the art database and sales startup founded by Carter Cleveland in 2009, and is selling the data on the dark web for 0.0289 bitcoin, the equivalent of about $104.

    Earlier this week, The Register, a British science and technology website, reported that 617 million stolen accounts from sixteen sites—including Dubsmash, MyFitnessPal, CoffeeMeetsBagel, BookMate, WhitePages, DataCamp, and Artsy—were listed for sale. The company learned of the data security breach on February 11, and Daniel Doubrovkine, Artsy’s chief

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  • Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1960. Photo: Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
    February 15, 2019 at 9:57am

    SFMoMA Will Auction Rothko Painting to Help Diversify Its Collection

    Sotheby’s New York announced today that its Contemporary Art Evening auction this May will feature an important work from the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA): Mark Rothko’s Untitled, 1960. The institution decided to sell the piece, which is one of only nineteen works completed by the artist that year, as part of an effort to diversify its holdings. The auction house estimates that the canvas will bring in between $35 million and $50 million.

    SFMoMA’s director Neal Benezra said that the institution will use the proceeds from the sale to “address art historical gaps”

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  • Example of an embedded map in a user interface mockup for extracting geospatial information from a photograph of a historical landmark in Brazil by Georges Leuzinger (1813–1892), as part of imagineRio. Photo: Humanities Research Center / Instituto Moreira Salles.
    February 15, 2019 at 9:08am

    Getty Foundation Awards Grants for Digital Mapping of Cultural Heritage Sites

    The Getty Foundation has awarded grants to four universities in support of projects that will use digital mapping tools to document and analyze significant cultural sites around the world. The nearly $1 million in grants will help projects already underway in Pompeii and Florence, Italy; Çatalhöyük, Turkey; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, create or expand a GIS (Geographic Information System) to manage geographic, cultural, and archival data.

    The funds will go to two archaeological sites: Pompeii and Çatalhöyük. The University of Massachusetts Amherst in collaboration with the Institute for the Study

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  • Design rendering of the 2019 Serpentine Pavilion. Photo: Junya Ishigami + Associates.
    February 14, 2019 at 3:34pm

    Japanese Architect Junya Ishigami Will Design 2019 Serpentine Pavilion

    The Tokyo-based architect Junya Ishigami has been selected to design the nineteenth Serpentine Pavilion—the temporary structure erected each year in London’s Hyde Park. Commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries, the work will take the form of a canopy of slate raised above Kensington Gardens.

    “My design for the pavilion plays with our perspectives of the built environment against the backdrop of a natural landscape, emphasizing a natural and organic feel as though it had grown out of the lawn, resembling a hill made out of rocks,” Ishigami said. The inspiration for the structure comes from

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  • Raina Lampkins-Fielder. Photo: Ana Bloom.
    February 14, 2019 at 2:45pm

    Raina Lampkins-Fielder Named Curator of Souls Grown Deep Foundation

    The Souls Grown Deep Foundation announced today that art historian, museum educator, and curator Raina Lampkins-Fielder has been named curator at the organization. A specialist of twentieth-century and contemporary American art, with a particular focus on African American creative expression, Lampkins-Fielder will be based in Paris and will work to extend the foundation’s reach.

    Previously, Lampkins-Fielder worked as artistic director at Paris’s Mona Bismarck American Center for Art from 2015 to 2017; as director, academic advising, for the Paris College of Art (formerly the Parsons Paris School

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  • Mary Boone. Photo: Carly Otness.
    February 14, 2019 at 1:46pm

    New York Dealer Mary Boone Sentenced to Thirty Months in Prison

    Veteran gallerist Mary Boone, a staple of the New York art world who came to prominence in the 1980s, has been sentenced to thirty months in prison for tax fraud, Alex Greenberger of Artnews reports. On Thursday, February 14, a federal judge in the US District Court in Manhattan granted Boone up to one year of supervised release and ordered her to serve 180 hours of community service.

    In September, Boone, whose eponymous gallery has locations in Midtown and Chelsea, pleaded guilty to making false claims on her federal income-tax returns for the years 2009, 2010, and 2011, and agreed to pay $3

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  • J.P. Morgan Library, New York, ca. 1905. Photo: Wurts Bros / Museum of the City of New York.
    February 14, 2019 at 12:02pm

    Morgan Library & Museum to Undergo $12.5 Million Restoration

    The Morgan Library & Museum in New York—the home of the collection of illuminated, literary, and historical manuscripts; early printed books; and old-master drawings and prints assembled by financier and banker John Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913)—announced today that it is planning a $12.5 million renovation.

    The four-year project will focus on restoring the exterior of J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library. The neoclassical building, designed by McKim, Mead & White, was commissioned by Morgan in 1902 as his private library and was completed in 1906. The renovation will focus on enhancing the

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  • A young girl participates in a glass blowing demonstration during an arts festival at Josephine Sculpture Park in Frankfort, Kentucky. Photo: Kelly Morgan.
    February 14, 2019 at 11:14am

    National Endowment for the Arts Awards $27 Million in Grants

    The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will provide more than $27 million to arts organizations in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for its first grant cycle in the 2019 fiscal year. Funds were awarded through three of the agency’s grant programs: Art Works, Challenge America, and Creative Writing Fellowships.

    Art Works, the NEA’s principal grantmaking program, will award 972 grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 and totaling more than $25 million to a variety of art projects. Among the grantees are Mauro, Inc. in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in support of a therapeutic

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  • Laurie Ann Farrell. Photo: Chia Chong.
    February 13, 2019 at 5:48pm

    Dallas Contemporary Names Laurie Ann Farrell Senior Curator

    Dallas Contemporary announced that Laurie Ann Farrell, the curator of contemporary art at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), will join its staff as its new senior curator on April 1. She will fill the position left vacant by Justine Ludwig, who was named director of Creative Time in New York last year.

    During her tenure at DIA, Farrell served as head of modern and contemporary art, advising on new acquisitions by artists such as Rashid Johnson, Annette Messager, Do Ho Suh, and Carrie Mae Weems. She also curated “Ruben & Isabel Toledo: Labor of Love,” an exhibition featuring new works the artistic

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