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  • Abbas Zahedi. Photo: Bálint Álovits/Thats So CSM.
    July 06, 2022 at 4:11pm

    Abbas Zahedi Wins 2022 Frieze Artist Award

    London-born installation artist Abbas Zahedi has been named the winner of the 2022 Frieze Artist Award. His Waiting With {Sonic Support} will occupy a spot near the entrance of Frieze London, to be held October 12–16 in Regent’s Park alongside Frieze Masters. The work, a wooden construction recalling a bus shelter, will be home to a series of live activations that will be broadcast via “DIY radio” online and within the fair. Frieze organizers noted that “the commission builds upon Zahedi’s long-standing interest in borders, thresholds and how things can move within systems or networks.”

    The

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  • Wesley Wofford’s traveling Harriet Tubman sculpture. Photo: Albert Lee/City of Philadelphia.
    July 06, 2022 at 4:04pm

    Philadelphia Courts Controversy with Commission of Harriet Tubman Statue

    The City of Philadelphia has come under fire for commissioning a statue of Harriet Tubman from a white sculptor without opening the field of competition to other artists, including those of color. After Wesley Wofford’s Harriet Tubman: The Journey to Freedom, a traveling bronze sculpture depicting the famed abolitionist leading a child by the hand, generated tremendous positive attention during its three-month stay outside Philly’s City Hall earlier this year, the city’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (aka Creative Philadelphia) offered Wofford a $500,000 commission to create

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  • Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu. Photo: Yokohama Triennale.
    July 05, 2022 at 6:09pm

    Yokohama Triennale Reveals Directors for 2023 Edition

    Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu have been named joint artistic directors of Yokohama Triennale 2023. In choosing the pair, both of whom are Chinese, the Triennale’s organizing committee for the second consecutive time awarded directorship of the event to non-Japanese curators, after selecting the New Delhi–based Raqs Media Collective to handle 2020’s “Afterglow.”

    Liu, a curator and artist, explores the intersection between art, culture, and politics in modern and contemporary Chinese history via a practice that incorporates media including text, photography, installation, painting, and performance.

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  • Beginning in 2023, visitors to Venice will have to register in advance. Photo: Juliette Gibert.
    July 05, 2022 at 2:33pm

    Venice to Level Charges on Day-Trippers in Effort to Preserve City

    The city of Venice has revealed plans to charge an entrance fee to day-trippers. Those hoping to visit the historic city for a few hours will soon be required to register in advance and pay between about $3 and $10 for the privilege, in exchange for which they will receive proof that they have a right to be in Venice during their allotted time. The program is still in the planning stages, but officials have said it will be in place by January 2023 and enforced, possibly via QR code, with a team of “controllers” deployed throughout the city streets to check up on people’s right to be there. Those

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  • Iwona Blazwick. Photo: Christa Holka.
    July 05, 2022 at 12:23pm

    Iwona Blazwick to Oversee Saudi Arabia’s Wadi Al Fann

    Iwona Blazwick, the former longtime director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, has been appointed chair of the Royal Commission for AlUla’s Public Art Expert Panel. As part of the Saudi government’s Vision 2030 initiative aimed at diversifying the Saudi economy and establishing a more progressive cultural profile for the country, AlUla, a northwestern Saudi desert region along the historic Silk Road and Incense Route and home to the Hegra UNESCO World Heritage Site, is being remade into an arts hub. In her new role, Blazwick will be responsible for overseeing the installation of a series of

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  • Jenny Moore. Photo: Chinati Foundation.
    July 04, 2022 at 1:58pm

    Chinati Foundation Director Jenny Moore Steps Down

    Jenny Moore is departing the Chinati Foundation after nine years as director of the museum, which was founded in the 1980s by Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas. Marella Consolini, who served as Chinati’s chief operations officer from 2010 to 2014, will take over as interim director on July 31 while the board undertakes a global search for Moore’s replacement.

    Moore sought to professionalize the museum during her tenure, developing a multiyear preservation plan to protect its art, architecture, and environment; cataloging its institutional archive; and upping its annual attendance from 11,300 in 2013

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  • A Benin bronze on display in Berlin’s Ethnological Museum. Photo: Bin im Garten/Wikipedia Commons.
    June 30, 2022 at 4:56pm

    Berlin to Repatriate Artifacts from Cameroon, Namibia, and Nigeria

    The Prussian Heritage Foundation (SPK), the federal body responsible for overseeing Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, has announced that it has agreed to return objects to Cameroon, Namibia, and Nigeria. The revelation follows months of talks between German museum officials and those from the African nations who will receive the items, which were stolen during Germany’s colonial rule of the continent.

    Among the objects being restored to their rightful national owners are twenty-three artefacts, including tools and jewelry, which had been held at the Berlin Ethnological Museum and last month were sent to

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  • Ruth DeYoung Kohler II in 1960. Photo: Ruth Foundation of the Arts.
    June 30, 2022 at 3:00pm

    Ruth Foundation for the Arts Launches $440 Million Philanthropic Effort

    The Milwaukee-based Ruth Foundation of the Arts, established with a $440 million endowment from the late bathroom-fixture heiress Ruth DeYoung Kohler II, has announced its presence with an initial $1.25 million in unrestricted grants to seventy-eight unsuspecting US nonprofit arts organizations. The grantees, each of whom received $10,000, $20,000, or $50,000, were chosen by a diverse panel of nearly fifty artists from around the country representing a variety of practices and career stages. Because the grants are invitation-only, many recipients were shocked to learn they were receiving funding.

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  • A video still depicting Owens Lake from a display at the Culver City–based Center for Land Use Interpretation.
    June 29, 2022 at 4:40pm

    Warhol Foundation Awards Grants Totaling $3.9 Million

    The Warhol Foundation today revealed that it will award $3.9 million in grants to fifty US arts organizations scattered across eighteen states and the District of Columbia. Nineteen of those receiving funding are first-time recipients. In order to assure the long-term recovery and continued stability of the arts, which were hard hit by the Covid-19 crisis, the foundation announced that with this round of funding it would continue its practice, established during the pandemic, of allowing grantees to use up to 50 percent of the award money for administrative expenses.

    Many of the grantees were

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  • Met CEO Daniel Weiss. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
    June 29, 2022 at 11:58am

    Met President and CEO Daniel Weiss to Step Down Next Year

    Daniel Weiss, president New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2015 and its CEO since 2017, will leave the institution in June 2023. Weiss, whose tenure encompassed the global Covid-19 crisis, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the financial restructuring of the museum, was known for his levelheaded handling of fiscal and managerial matters. Under Weiss’s leadership, the museum managed to survive financially despite being forced by the pandemic to shutter and lay off staff; the institution additionally stepped up its commitment to staff diversity and committed increased

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  • Orlando Museum of Art. Photo: Ebyabe/Wikipedia Commons.
    June 29, 2022 at 10:56am

    Orlando Museum of Art Fires Director Following FBI Raid

    Aaron De Groft was dismissed from his post as director and CEO of the Orlando Museum of Art on June 28, just four days after the Federal Bureau of Investigations entered the institution and seized twenty-five works said to have been by Jean-Michel Basquiat over allegations that they are in fact forgeries. The paintings made up the entirety of the exhibition “Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat,” which was to travel to Italy following its slated June 30 closing. According to the New York Times, the firing stemmed from the revelation of a threatening missive from De Groft to an academic involved

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  • The Orlando Museum of Art. Photo: MrX/Wikipedia Commons.
    June 27, 2022 at 4:36pm

    FBI Seizes Basquiat Works from Orlando Museum of Art

    The Federal Bureau of Investigations on June 24 raided the Orlando Museum of Art and carted away twenty-five paintings alleged to have been made by Jean-Michel Basquiat after the works’ authenticity was questioned. The haul comprised the entirety of the works in the show “Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat,” which opened at the Florida museum in February and had been slated to run through June 30. The seizure took place while visitors were in the institution, with the museum closing its doors—and the exhibition—shortly thereafter.

    According to multiple sources, officials were acting on

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