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May 07, 2021 at 6:44pm

Frank Gehry Renovation of Philadelphia Museum of Art Debuts

The four-year renovation and expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art undertaken by renowned architect Frank Gehry has been completed, and the museum today showed off the results to the public for the first time. Designed by Horace Trumbauer and Julian Abele in 1928, the museum sits atop a hill and, with its massive Ionic columns, resembles a Greek temple. Though Gehry is widely known for his boundary-pushing work, he left the façade of the landmark Beaux Arts structure largely untouched, instead concentrating his efforts instead at the building’s center.
The $233 million renovation, approved

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May 07, 2021 at 3:06pm

Turner Prize 2021 Shortlists Five Artist Collectives

For the first time since the award’s inception in 1984, the organizers of the Turner Prize have announced that the five finalists under consideration are all artist collectives, with no individual artist being nominated. The prize, considered one of the world’s most prestigious, is named for nineteenth-century painter British J. M. W. Turner and awarded annually to a UK visual artist. This year’s prize has been eagerly anticipated, as last year’s was canceled owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“One of the great joys of the Turner Prize is the way it captures and reflects the mood of the moment in

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May 06, 2021 at 1:56pm

Istanbul Biennial Pushed to 2022

The Istanbul Biennial has announced the postponement of the physical edition of its seventeenth iteration, slated to open this fall, to 2022, owing to a spike in Covid-19 cases in Turkey. The new dates for the biennial are September 17–November 20, 2022. The decision was taken by the event’s organizer, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (ISKV), in consultation with its participants and partners, and with the show’s curators, Ute Meta Bauer, Amar Kanwar, and David Teh.
“The 17th Istanbul Biennial, its curators and participants continue to be affected by the pandemic and its life-altering

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May 06, 2021 at 11:10am

Kelly Kivland Named Chief Curator of Wexner Center for the Arts

Kelly Kivland has been announced as chief curator and director of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Kivland was formerly a curator at Dia Art Foundation, New York, where she had worked since 2011, coming to that institution as a curatorial associate. In her new role, Kivland will work closely with Wexner Center director Johanna Burton, helping to conceive and stage exhibitions as well as overseeing commissions and visual arts residencies. Additionally, she will cultivate the institution’s audience and foster collaborations across the university, the central Ohio

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May 05, 2021 at 4:06pm

MoMA Trustee Lonti Ebers to Launch Amant Foundation in Brooklyn

Lonti Ebers, a trustee of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, will inaugurate a nonprofit arts center in Brooklyn this summer with the intent of fostering artistic growth and elevating lesser-seen interdisciplinary work. The 21,000-square-foot Amant Foundation will occupy four buildings in the borough’s East Williamsburg neighborhood, where it is to serve as an arts destination and cultural hub. The campus will include two galleries, a performance space, and studios for four resident artists, as well as offices, a bookstore, and a café.
The foundation has been seven years in the making and is reported

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May 05, 2021 at 3:44pm

Protest over UK Government Plan to Slash Arts Education Funding by Half

The UK arts community is up in arms over the British government’s plan to reduce funding for arts education by 50 percent at higher learning institutions such as colleges and universities for the 2021–22 school year, The Art Newspaper reports. Consultation regarding the scheme, which was first announced in January by education secretary Gavin Williamson, ends May 6. As a result, artists, curators, educators, and musicians are among those making a fierce last effort to prevent the cuts, which are based on the Office for Students’ (OFS) assessment of the arts as “high cost” and of lesser priority

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May 04, 2021 at 3:45pm

Russian Artist Yulia Tsvetkova Begins Hunger Strike

Facing up to six years in prison on charges of distributing pornography over the internet, Russian artist and LGBTQ activist Yulia Tsvetkova declared a hunger strike beginning May 1, The Art Newspaper reports. The 2019 charges are in relation to body-positive feminist drawings, some featuring abstract representations of female genitalia, that Tsvetkova posted to The Vagina Monologues, a feminist social media group. The artist has since spent time under house arrest and in February 2020 was recognized by Russia’s Human Rights Memorial Center as a political prisoner.
On March 31, Tsvetkova’s mother,

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May 04, 2021 at 1:23pm

Japan Reworks Tax Structure in Push to Become Arts Hub

Japan has altered its tax laws to encourage galleries and fairs to expand into the country, and is seeking other paths to becoming competitive in the global art market, Nikkei Asia reports. The effort comes as Hong Kong, a major arts hub on par with New York and London, grapples with increased use of a national security law that could have a chilling effect on artistic expression.
A rising force in the art market in the late 1980s thanks to its economic prosperity, Japan now accounts for just 4 percent of the worldwide art market, compared to China overall, which commands 20 percent, owing to

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May 03, 2021 at 4:46pm

Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection to Open in Paris as Lockdown Ends

With France exiting its third Covid-19-related lockdown May 2, collector and French luxury goods magnate François Pinault’s Bourse de Commerce will open to the public for the first time on May 22, The Art Newspaper reports. The Paris museum, which was originally slated to open in June 2020, had seen its opening pushed back no fewer than four times as the coronavirus crisis ground on. Housing Pinault’s contemporary art collection, the private institution occupies a circular building near the Louvre that was once a corn exchange. Erected in 1767, domed in 1811, and essentially rebuilt in 1889,

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May 03, 2021 at 1:29pm

Dissident Cuban Artist Hospitalized Following Hunger Strike

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a leader of artist-activist group San Isidro Movement (MSI), has been hospitalized in Havana more than a week after embarking on a hunger strike, Al Jazeera reports. Said yesterday by officials at General Calixto Garcia University Hospital to be in stable condition following his arrival there, Otero Alcántara reportedly undertook the hunger strike on April 26 to protest the government’s seizure or destruction of several of his artworks earlier this month. Because police had surrounded his home, no one was allowed in or out during his hunger strike, and the BBC has

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May 03, 2021 at 11:30am

Eli Broad (1933–2021)

Philanthropist and businessman Eli Broad, a devoted and powerful supporter of art and culture in Los Angeles, died in that city on April 30 at the age of eighty-seven. Though he gave generously to numerous causes including education, science, and medicine, Broad, who amassed his $6.9 billion fortune through tract housing and insurance, was best known for his liberal contributions to the Los Angeles Museum County of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Disney Concert Hall, and for establishing the Broad, an institution housing the 2,000-piece collection of postwar contemporary art

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April 30, 2021 at 3:41pm

Germany to Return Benin Bronzes to Nigeria Beginning in 2022

Germany has promised to return its trove of looted artworks known as the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria beginning in 2022. Some five hundred of the more than 90,000 brass, bronze, and ivory objects stolen by British soldiers in 1897 from the Republic of Benin (now Nigeria) are held in the collection of Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum at the Humboldt Forum, with still more in the possession of more than twenty other museums across the country.
“We want to contribute to understanding and reconciliation with the descendants of those whose cultural treasures were stolen during colonization,” German cultural

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