News

  • Wong Ping.
    May 24, 2019 at 6:20pm

    Lisa Schiff Opens New Tribeca Arts Space, Wong Ping Heads to Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, and More

    New York–based art advisor Lisa Schiff is opening a new exhibition space in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan. Schiff launched her firm, SFA Advisory, in 2002 and will continue to run the business in her 1,300-square-foot, two-story building on White Street, which she described to the Financial Times as “more living room than white cube.” Curated by Neville Wakefield, a project by Nicholas Galanin will inaugurate the space on May 29.

    After a three-year hiatus from exhibiting work, the Bruce High Quality Foundation has a show at ACA Galleries in New York. The Brooklyn-based artist group, which

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  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
    May 24, 2019 at 5:25pm

    MFA Boston Comes Under Fire for Mistreating Visitors of Color

    The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, is facing backlash over the treatment of a class of minority middle-school students who visited the institution on May 16. Their teacher cut the field trip short after visitors and employees allegedly made a series of racist comments directed at them. Members of the museum security staff were also accused of racially profiling the group.

    The thirty seventh graders from the Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy in Dorchester, Massachusetts—all of whom are black or Latinx—were greeted by an MFA employee who told them, “No food, no drink, and no watermelon,”

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  • Jan Davidsz de Heem, Still Life with Glass, Glass Stand and Musical Instruments (c. 17th century).
    May 24, 2019 at 4:45pm

    Dutch Restitutions Committee Recommends Return of Two Nazi-Looted Paintings

    The Dutch Restitutions Committee has recommended the return of two paintings—Dirck van Delen and Dirck Francoisz Hals’s Banquet Scene with Musicians and Shuffle Board Players, 1628, and Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Still Life with Glass, Glass Stand and Musical Instruments, ca. seventeenth century—to the heirs of a Jewish collector who was interned in a Nazi concentration camp.

    The two Golden Age paintings were likely acquired by Nazi administrator Hans Posse, who was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to expand his art holdings for the Führermuseum. (Posse acquired more than 2,500 objects in three

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  • Gerry Snyder.
    May 24, 2019 at 4:20pm

    Gerry Snyder Named Executive Director of the University of Arkansas’s School of Art

    Gerry Snyder, the dean of the School of Art at Pratt Institute in New York, is heading to Arkansas, where he will become the first executive director of the University of Arkansas’s School of Art on July 1. Snyder will also serve as distinguished professor of art and special adviser to the chancellor for arts integration.

    “We are excited to have Gerry join our team to lead the School of Art,” said Todd Shields, dean of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. “He is exceptionally qualified for this position, as an internationally recognized artist with experience building facilities

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  • Hermann Göring at the Goudstikker art dealership, Amsterdam. Photo: Nationaal Archief, Amsterdam.
    May 24, 2019 at 11:42am

    Nazi-Looted Artworks to Remain at Pasadena Museum

    The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, will retain ownership of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s paintings Adam and Eve (both ca. 1530)—which a Jewish collector sold to the Nazis under duress during World War II—after the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal, reports the Art Newspaper. The large-scale canvases have an estimated worth of $24 million.

    The paintings once belonged to the Dutch Jewish dealer and collector Jacques Goudstikker, who fled the Netherlands in 1940 after the German invasion. Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Hermann Göring, seized the Cranach works in a forced sale

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  • Seitu Jones and Ta-Coumba Aiken, Shadows of Spirit, 1992, Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis. Courtesy of the artists.
    May 24, 2019 at 11:39am

    Ta-Coumba T. Aiken and Seitu Jones Commissioned to Create Work for Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden

    The Walker Art Center has announced that the Twin City–based artists Ta-Coumba T. Aiken and Seitu Jones were commissioned to create a new work for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Shadows at the Crossroads—a continuation of a project produced for Nicollet Mall in 1992—will consist of seven sculptures celebrating important figures in the state’s history.

    Longtime collaborators Aiken and Jones will embed human silhouettes, cast in bronze, in the park’s sidewalks. The artists worked with the Walker Art Center’s Teen Arts Council—a program that Jones helped launch in the early

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  • Vincent Namatjira, Close Contact, 2018.
    May 24, 2019 at 11:00am

    Vincent Namatjira Awarded $68,800 Ramsay Art Prize

    Indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira has won the second iteration of the Ramsay Art Prize, a $68,800 biennial acquisition award established by the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), Adelaide, in 2017.

    Namatjira’s winning work is Close Contact, 2018, a double-sided acrylic-on-plywood portrait depicting the artist on one side and the eighteenth-century British explorer Captain James Cook on the other. The format riffs on the cutout character boards that tourists can pose their heads in for photos, offering the artist a playful way to allude to the legacy of colonialism and a potential for

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  • The 2018 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Photo: Tom Harris.
    May 23, 2019 at 3:29pm

    Chicago Architecture Biennial Reveals 2019 Contributors

    The Chicago Architecture Biennial announced today the eighty artists, architects, researchers, and cultural institutions that will contribute to its 2019 edition, “. . .and other such stories,” which will take place from September 19 to January 5, 2020. The exhibition will present projects addressing how architecture can address questions related to land, memory, rights, and civic participation.

    “Our 2019 contributors represent the diversity of thinking on architecture and spatial practice globally, each engaged in research and work that explores the potential and challenges of our everyday

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  • The Berlinische Galerie. Photo: Noshe.
    May 23, 2019 at 3:27pm

    Berlinische Galerie Reopens Following Temporary Shutdown due to Structural Problems

    The Berlinische Galerie, the city museum dedicated to modern art, photography, and architecture, has reopened. The institution was forced to close its doors to the public in late April, when it discovered structural problems while planning to refurbish the building’s roof.

    The museum was supposed to reopen on May 15 but had to push the date back so that it could complete the necessary inspections. Following a meeting on Wednesday with the institution’s real estate management corporation BIM, which is in charge of several state-owned buildings, it received the green light to continue operations.

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  • May 23, 2019 at 2:48pm

    Storm King Announces 2019 Artists-in-Residence

    Storm King Art Center, in partnership with Shandaken Projects, has invited fifteen artists to participate in its artist-in-residence program. The selected artists will be allowed to stay on Storm King’s grounds in Cornwall, New York, for periods of up to two, four, or six weeks. They will receive room and board, studio space, and a weekly farm share from the nearby Blooming Hill Farm. The residency begins June 3 and runs through September 22.

    The artists-in-residence were selected by a panel of art professionals from hundreds of applicants who had responded to an open call. The panel comprised

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  • Blair French. Photo: Daniel Boud for MCA, Australia.
    May 23, 2019 at 12:48pm

    Sydney’s Carriageworks Names Blair French Chief Executive Officer

    Carriageworks, a major multidisciplinary arts center in Sydney, has announced that Blair French, the director of curatorial and digital at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Australia, will join the venue as its new chief executive officer. He succeeds Euan Upston and will assume his responsibilities in August.

    Since arriving in Sydney from Aotearoa, New Zealand, in the mid-1990s, French has served as program manager at the Australian Center for Photography, associate director of Performance Space, and executive director of Artspace. During his tenure at the MCA, French curated “Destiny Deacon:

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  • Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Summer Celebration, 1991. Photo: Sotheby's.
    May 23, 2019 at 11:59am

    Sotheby’s to Hold First Major Aboriginal Art Auction in the US

    Sotheby’s has announced that it is moving its annual Aboriginal Art Auction from London to New York. The inaugural New York sale will take place this November, marking the first time that aboriginal art has been offered by an international auction house in the United States. The sales will be led by Tim Klingender, who has overseen all of Sotheby’s Aboriginal Art Auctions since they began in 1996; they have previously been held in Australia, from 1997 to 2009, and London, from 2015 to 2018.

    “Australian Indigenous Art has always been of global interest, with buyers in recent London sales bidding

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