News

  • April 23, 2018 at 5:42pm

    Judge in Mexico Halts Sales of Frida Kahlo Barbie Doll

    Descendents 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 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 to

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  • April 23, 2018 at 4:05pm

    Ronald Noorman (1951–2018)

    Ronald Noorman, a Danish artist known for humble but commanding drawings that lingered between the abstract and 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. Noorman exhibited widely and his drawings, mostly small and untitled, are in collections across the Netherlands, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Teylers Museum in Haarlem.

    While recognizable things recurred in his earlier works of the 1980s—tourniquets and bones, for example—he

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  • 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

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  • April 23, 2018 at 1:02pm

    Lindsay Pollock, Former Art in America Editor, Joins Whitney Museum

    The Whitney Museum of American Art announced today that Lindsay Pollock, a former editor in chief of Art in America, has been named its chief communications and content officer. She will take up the post on May 7.

    “The Whitney is one of the most dynamic and vibrant art institutions in the US, which happens to have been founded by a visionary woman, and whose nearly century-old mission is rooted in the desire to support and engage with American art,” said Pollock. “I am sincerely honored to be part of the talented team helping to shape the Whitney’s next chapter.”

    Pollock served as editor in chief

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  • April 23, 2018 at 12:34pm

    MacDowell Colony Awards Fellowships to Eighty-Four Artists

    The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, announced today that eighty-four artists from eighteen states and six countries were granted fellowships, valued at about $10,000, and will participate in the organization’s summer residency program.

    Among this group of 2018 MacDowell Fellows are Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrew Sean Greer, poet Monica Youn, composers Mark Dresser, Laura Schwendinger, and Kate Soper, performance artist John Kelly, playwrights Brian Selznick and Rebecca Taichman, filmmakers João Rui Guerra da Mata and João Pedro Rodrigues, and visual artists Nayland Blake,

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  • April 23, 2018 at 12:00pm

    Sophia Al-Maria Wins New MCA Chicago Award for Middle Eastern Artists

    The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has launched a new $100,000 prize that will be awarded biennially to midcareer artists from the Middle East or its diaspora. The inaugural winner of the Dunya Contemporary Art Prize is Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria. The museum will also commission a new work from Al-Maria that will be featured in a major upcoming exhibition and catalogue.

    Al-Maria is best known for creating a diverse body of work that addresses contemporary life in Arab nations and for coining the word “Gulf Futurism” to describe the rapid economic and urban development in the region

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  • April 23, 2018 at 10:27am

    Tai Kwun Center for Heritage and Arts to Open in May

    The Tai Kwun Center for Heritage and Arts, a new cultural site that was formerly the Hong Kong Central Police Station—a cluster of low-rise buildings located in the heart of the territory—will open to the public with a soft launch on May 25.

    An opening ceremony and inaugural programming at the cultural hub will serve as a kind of test run for the center. It will only welcome a limited number of visitors until it makes the final adjustments to its operations.

    The converted complex, operated by the nonprofit Jockey Club Limited, comprises sixteen historic buildings, including the Central

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  • April 23, 2018 at 7:01am

    Marko Peljhan to Represent Slovenia at 2019 Venice Biennale

    The Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana has announced that artist Marko Peljhan will represent Slovenia at the Fifty-Eighth Venice Biennale, which runs from May 11 to November 24, 2019.

    Peljhan is best known for creating works that explore the intersection of art and science such as his ten-year project Makrolab—a research and living space, capable of withstanding extreme weather, that the artist eventually wanted to install in Antarctica. First realized at Documenta in Kassel in 1997, the lab is a workstation for artists and scientists exploring telecommunications, migrations, and climate

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  • April 22, 2018 at 12:27pm

    Following Allegations of Fraud, CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles Will Close

    Days after several artists penned an open letter accusing CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles of “systematic” abuse, owners Clyde Beswick and Jason Chang have announced that the arts space will permanently close. Signed by Georganne Deen, Michael Mancari, Brett Reichman, and Amy Yoes, among others, the artists claim that the gallery is guilty of failing to pay artists, consistently writing checks that bounce, breaching contracts, and selling works without informing their creators.

    In a statement provided to the Los Angeles Times, Beswick alleges that the gallery’s recent expansion—it moved from a

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  • April 22, 2018 at 11:00am

    Ethiopia Calls for Restitution of Artifacts from British Museums

    Following the opening of an exhibition of Ethiopian artifacts at the Victoria and Albert Museum earlier this month, director Tristram Hunt pledged to return cultural heritage objects to Ethiopia in a longterm loan agreement. At the time, the Ethiopian ambassador Hailemichael Afework Aberra’s favorable remarks as well as his praise for the institution’s decision to put these items on display was perceived as his acceptance of longterm loans as an adequate compromise. In a recent interview with the Art Newspaper, Hailemichael clarified his position: The items must be fully restituted.

    “My government

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  • April 22, 2018 at 8:00am

    James Yood (1952–2018)

    Chicago-based arts writer and educator James Yood, who once distilled the role of the critic as one that fulfills a responsibility “to look and think as hard as possible,” has died. A committed and eloquent assesser of Chicago artists, Yood was a professor of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he also directed its New Arts Journalism program.

    In addition to being a regional correspondent for art ltd magazine, Yood was a regular contributor to Artforum, Aperture, GLASS quarterly, and visualartsource.com, among other publications. Yood also taught

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  • April 21, 2018 at 10:04am

    Alys Tomlinson Wins $25,000 Sony World Photography Award

    London-based artist Alys Tomlinson has won the top prize of this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. Recognized for “Ex-Votos”—an intimate series of black-and-white portraits, landscapes, and still-life images of pilgrimage sites in France, Ireland, and Poland—Tomlinson was named photographer of the year and will receive $25,000.

    This was the first time that Tomlinson entered the prize competition. She is also the first woman to win what is considered the Oscars of the photography world, since 2014 when the prize went to US photojournalist, Sara Naomi Lewkowicz.

    “Alys Tomlinson is a

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