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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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  November 17, 2022 at 4:25pm

  Adjunct Professors at New School and Parsons School of Design Stage Strike

  Part-time faculty at New York’s New School and at the Parsons School of Design, which it encompasses, on November 16 ceased teaching and took to the streets to protest low wages, job precarity, and insufficient health care after their contract expired November 13. The striking professors have not received raises in four years, according to ACT-UAW Local 7902, under whose auspices they are unionized. In the course of three and a half months of negotiations, the New School offered them a 3.5 percent raise, with 2 percent annual raises for a measure of time thereafter. Citing inflation, which

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  November 16, 2022 at 3:43pm

  Larry Gagosian Forms Board of Directors, Hinting at Succession Plan

  Larry Gagosian today announced a new board of directors for Gagosian, the globe-spanning gallery that bears his name. The board is composed of eight staffers, including Gagosian himself, and twelve external members, all of whom are collectors and a number of whom are trustees of major museums. The board was selected late last year and met for the first time this past May.

  “My goal in assembling a board of directors was to raise the bar on the gallery’s strategic thinking and vision for the future,” said Gagosian in a statement. “I felt it was important to welcome different perspectives and

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  November 16, 2022 at 11:31am

  Anonymous Was a Woman Announces $375,000 in Grants

  New York–based organization Anonymous Was a Woman (AWAW) has named fifteen recipients of its 2022 awards. The awards, unrestricted grants of $25,000 apiece, are made to woman-identifying artists over the age of forty who have made crucial contributions in their respective fields and who continue to make important work. Of note, contributions made to AWAW by two anonymous supporters and the Boston-based Meraki Artist Award allowed the organization this year to expand the winners’ field from the typical ten annual awardees to fifteen. AWAW was established in 1996 by artist Susan Unterberg, who

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