News

March 19, 2019 at 2:33pm

Mural in Los Angeles’s Koreatown Reignites Debate Over Censorship, Japanese Colonialism

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has postponed its controversial decision to paint over a mural—which depicts American actress Ava Gardner’s profile against a backdrop of blue and orange stripes emanating from her like sunbeams—in Los Angeles’s Koreatown after it sparked a contentious debate over censorship, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Critics and protestors of the mural—which was painted by Brooklyn artist Beau Stanton on the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex two years ago—have petitioned for its removal because of the sun motif’s likeness to the

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March 19, 2019 at 12:23pm

Launch of Giudecca Art District, Featuring Three National Pavilions, to Coincide with Fifty-Eighth Venice Biennale

Eleven galleries—including Studiolacitta, Chiesa delle Zitelle, Starak Foundation, Spazio Bullo, Spazio Raunich, and Spazio Silos—and the national pavilions of Estonia, Iceland, and Nigeria will inaugurate Venice’s Giudecca Art District in May. Five more galleries that will open on Giudecca island will be announced next month. Giudecca Art District is being promoted as the city’s first permanent art quarter and will host more than twenty exhibitions with work by sixty international artists—including Aleksandra Karpowicz and October! Collective—during the Biennale. It will

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March 19, 2019 at 10:54am

Prospect New Orleans Appoints Eight Curators to Artistic Director’s Council

Prospect New Orleans, the city’s contemporary arts triennial, which will open on October 24, 2020 and run through January 24, 2021, has announced a team to advise cocurators Naima J. Keith, newly appointed vice president of education and public programs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and former deputy director and chief curator of the California African American Museum, and Los Angeles–based independent curator Diana Nawi for its fifth edition.
The council will advise on artist selections, public programing, and publication projects for Prospect.5 and will comprise Rita Gonzalez,

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March 19, 2019 at 10:31am

Following Pushback, Sackler Trust and London’s National Portrait Gallery Drop $1.3 Million Grant

London’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has decided not to accept a $1.3 million grant from the Sackler Trust, one of the charitable organizations founded by the Sackler family, which owns the pharmaceutical company that manufactures OxyContin. The much-anticipated announcement comes at a time when arts institutions across the globe are facing mounting pressure to reject funding from controversial donors.
The Sackler Trust pledged to award the gift to the museum in June 2016 to support its “Inspiring People” project, a $47 million initiative to revamp the gallery by constructing a new entrance

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March 18, 2019 at 5:30pm

The Met’s Entry Fees Will Provide $2.8M to Nearly 200 Cultural Organizations

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today that $2.8 million in additional funding will be given to more than 175 cultural organizations across all five boroughs thanks to an agreement the city made with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When the institution sought permission to start charging non–New Yorkers mandatory admission fees, the city approved the policy change. However, it had one condition: The museum has to share a portion of its new revenue stream with the city.
While the terms only apply to the Met’s first year implementing the policy, the Department of Cultural Affairs (DLCA)

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March 18, 2019 at 3:48pm

Trump Tries to Eliminate the NEA and NEH, Again

On Monday, March 11, President Trump released a $4.75 trillion budget proposal for the 2020 fiscal year—the largest in federal history. Titled “A Promise for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First,” the budget includes a 5 percent increase in military funding and $8.6 billion for Trump’s US–Mexico border wall—about $3 billion more than the amount that led to the government shutdown. It also proposes drastic cuts to domestic programs—such as Medicare and Medicaid, education, and environmental protections—and once again targets the National Endowment for the Arts (

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March 18, 2019 at 1:28pm

Professional Development Conference for Artists to Take Place in April

A new annual conference established to help artists and arts professionals develop business skills and learn about financial literacy will take place in New York this April. Called the Art World Conference, the event will address many of the opportunities and challenges faced by visual artists today.
More than forty prominent art-world figures will participate in a series of panels, workshops, and conversations that will aim to provide artists and arts professionals with practical, actionable information that will help them build and sustain careers in the arts. Among the topics that will be

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March 18, 2019 at 12:53pm

Brooklyn Academy of Music to Open New Exhibition Space

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has announced plans to open a new 1,100-square-foot gallery dedicated to visual art this fall. The exhibition space is part of an expansion project that will connect the organization’s three spaces on Fulton Street in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. Called BAM Strong, the initiative, which was made possible with a lead gift from BAM trustee Brigitte Vosse, will also fund building improvements that will allow for greater accessibility.
Designed by Mitchell Giurgola with construction by Hunter-Roberts Construction Group, the Rudin Family Gallery, which

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March 18, 2019 at 12:04pm

Artadia Names 2019 Los Angeles Award Winners

Artadia has announced that three artists have won its 2019 Los Angeles awards: Carmen Argote, Ron Athey, and Diedrick Brackens. Each artist will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds. Brackens, who was named the inaugural recipient of the Marciano Artadia Award, will be given an additional $15,000.
For Artadia’s fifth year of providing unrestricted awards to artists in the city, Pavel Pyś, curator of visual arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Erin Christovale, assistant curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; and the Brooklyn-based artist Zina Saro-Wiwa selected six finalists, who

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March 17, 2019 at 3:00pm

Barbara Hammer (1939–2019)

Barbara Hammer, the treasured lesbian filmmaker and New York–based artist, has passed away from ovarian cancer at seventy-nine. Hammer created more than eighty moving-image works throughout her life, but near the end she began making work about her own death: Last October, she performed a lecture on living with advanced cancer titled The Art of Dying or (Palliative Art Making in the Age of Anxiety) at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Reporting on the event for Artforum, Corrine Fitzpatrick wrote that the performance “offers seven precepts—culled from fifty years of artistic

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March 15, 2019 at 2:11pm

German Culture Ministers Pledge to Return Looted Colonial-Era Artifacts

German culture ministers from all sixteen states met on Wednesday, March 13, and agreed to establish protocols for repatriating colonial-era objects from public collections across the country that were acquired “in ways that are legally or morally unjustifiable today.”
They released an eight-page document that declares their intention to address their colonial history and outlines the first steps they will take to do so. The states will work with museums and institutions to conduct research, digitize and publicize provenance information, and potentially establish a central information and help

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March 15, 2019 at 11:34am

ArtPrize Announces Participating Artists for First Edition of Public Art Biennial

The Michigan-based arts nonprofit ArtPrize has announced the artists participating in its inaugural public art biennial. Amanda Browder, Heather Hart, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Olalekan Jeyifous, and the duo Paul Amenta and Ted Lott will create large-scale public works for the first edition of the biennial, Project 1.
Rick DeVos—son of current US secretary of education Betsy DeVos and grandson of the late billionaire businessman Richard DeVos—established ArtPrize in 2009 as an annual art competition. In 2018 the organization announced its plans to shift to a biennial schedule, with its

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