News

  • Joseph Michael’s VOICES FOR THE FUTURE, 2019. Photo: Project Pressure.
    September 20, 2019 at 1:29pm

    Joseph Michael Installation Will Illuminate UN Building Ahead of Climate Action Summits

    As the United Nations prepares to host the Youth Climate Summit and Climate Action Summit on September 21 and September 23, which will introduce government, corporate, and civil initiatives that aim to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next decade and to net zero by 2050, New Zealand–based artist Joseph Michael will light up the UN’s New York headquarters with large-scale projections of a massive iceberg.

    Titled VOICES FOR THE FUTURE, the artwork was produced in collaboration with the environmental charity Project Pressure and the Permanent Mission of New Zealand, and

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  • Ugo Rondinone, Seven Magic Mountains, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2016. Photo by Gianfranco Gorgoni. Courtesy of Art Production Fund and Nevada Museum of Art.
    September 20, 2019 at 1:21pm

    Gianfranco Gorgoni (1941–2019)

    Italian photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni, who was the premiere documenter of major Land Art works—including Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, 1970, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Running Fence, 1976—has died at age seventy-seven. Born in Rome, Gorgoni moved to the US in 1968 to produce a photographic essay and stayed after a chance encounter with Robert Rauschenberg.

    In the 1970s, Gorgoni captured the portraits of artists including Ellsworth Kelly, Claes Oldenburg, Agnes Martin, Andy Warhol, Alfred Leslie, and others, many of which were included in his book The New Avant-Garde: Issues for the Art

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  • Hit Man Gurung and Sheelasha Rajbhandari. Photo: ArTree Nepal.
    September 20, 2019 at 11:36am

    Hit Man Gurung and Sheelasha Rajbhandari Named Curators of Kathmandu Triennale 2020

    The Kathmandu Triennale has appointed Nepalese artists and cultural organizers Hit Man Gurung and Sheelasha Rajbhandari as cocurators of its 2020 edition. They join director Sharareh Bajracharya and artistic director Cosmin Costinas in organizing the festival, which began in 2009 to address questions of climate change and feminism and was reformatted into a triennial in 2017, shifting its focus to further engage trans-Asian voices and the Nepali contemporary art scene. The forthcoming edition is slated to open in December 2020.

    Gurung was born in Nepal in 1986 and studied at Tribhuvan Unversity.

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  • Philippe Pirotte. Photo: Büro Schramm/Gestaltung.
    September 20, 2019 at 11:09am

    Philippe Pirotte Steps Down as Director of Frankfurt’s Städelschule

    Philippe Pirotte, the director of the Städelschule, the prestigious art school located in Frankfurt, Germany, has announced that he will resign from his position on March 31, 2020. According to Monopol, the Belgian art historian and curator will remain at the school in the role of professor of art history and curatorial studies and plans to take on research and curatorial projects. Appointed in 2014, Pirotte has also led the Portikus, an exhibition space for contemporary art connected to the institution.

    During his tenure, Pirotte has overseen the transition of ownership of the Städelschule from

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  • Mami Kataoka. Photo: Biennale of Sydney.
    September 20, 2019 at 10:55am

    Mami Kataoka Appointed Mori Art Museum Director

    Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum announced yesterday that Mami Kataoka, the museum’s chief curator and deputy director, will be the institution’s next director. Fumio Nanjo, who has helmed the institution since 2006, will serve as special advisor to the museum upon his retirement at the end of this year. “Kataoka, as one of the few female museum directors in Japan and the country’s most internationally-active curators, is superbly equipped to guide the Mori Art Museum in the next phase of its development,” Nanjo said.

    Kataoka has served as the chief curator at the Mori, where she has staged exhibitions

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  • Henry Urbach, 2010. Photo: Winni Wintermeyer. Courtesy of SF MoMA.
    September 20, 2019 at 8:00am

    Henry Urbach (1963–2019)

    Architecture and design scholar, curator, and educator Henry Urbach died on September 14, after a years-long struggle with late-onset bipolar disorder, at the age of fifty-six. An advocate and cultivator of experimental architecture projects, Urbach opened a gallery in New York to provide a platform for architects such as LOT-EK, who transformed a cement-mixer into a media cocoon and lounge for his solo exhibition at the arts space in 2000, and Freecell Architecture, which constructed MoistSCAPE, a three-dimensional steel matrix inset with panels of living moss, in the gallery in 2004.

    “The

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  • Joseph Beuys, 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks), inaugurated at Documenta in 1982. © Joseph Beuys/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York. Courtesy of Dia Art Foundation, New York.
    September 19, 2019 at 3:45pm

    Admission to Dia’s New York City Sites Will Soon Be Free

    The Dia Art Foundation announced today that it will offer free admission across its New York City sites starting in September 2020, to coincide with the reopening of Dia:Chelsea, which is currently undergoing a major expansion. The admission policy will extend to all six of Dia’s sites when the new space Dia:SoHo opens in the fall of 2022. Dia’s director, Jessica Morgan, said the organization hopes the move will “increase access, deepen engagement, and encourage repeat visits” to its locations.

    Led by Architecture Research Office (ARO), the overhaul of Dia:Chelsea involves the merging of its

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  • Vanessa Davidson. Courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art.
    September 19, 2019 at 3:02pm

    Blanton Museum Names Vanessa Davidson Curator of Latin American Art

    The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin has appointed Vanessa Davidson as its new curator of Latin American art. She comes to the institution from the Phoenix Art Museum, where she worked as curator of Latin American art for eight years, and succeeds Beverly Adams, who joined the staff of the Museum of Modern Art in New York earlier this month.

    “A leading curator in the field, Vanessa brings a broad view of Latin American art histories, as well as an excellent record of exhibitions, scholarship, and publications to the Blanton,” museum director Simone Wicha said in a

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  • Kent Jones. Courtesy of Philippe Halsman and Cohen Media Group.
    September 19, 2019 at 2:45pm

    New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones to Step Down

    Writer and filmmaker Kent Jones will step down as head of the New York Film Festival (NYFF) and chair of the NYFF selection committee following this year’s edition, which kicks off on September 27 and runs through October 13. Jones has been involved with Film at Lincoln Center, which presents the festival, for more than two decades and has helmed NYFF for the last seven years.

    Under Jones’s leadership, NYFF achieved soaring attendance numbers (last year’s event was the best-attended festival to date); expanded its program to include various sidebars and new sections such as the Spotlight on

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  • Addoley Dzegede, Jessica Ingram, Lavar Munroe, Jaye Rhee. Courtesy of the artists and the Norton Museum of Art.
    September 19, 2019 at 10:30am

    Norton Museum of Art Establishes New Artist-in-Residence Program

    The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, announced today that it is launching a new artist-in-residence program, which will host four artists annually. The six-week residency was established to promote the work of underrecognized, mid- to late-career artists. Two of the spots in the program will be reserved for women; one of those two spots will be given to an African American or Latina artist.

    The program’s inaugural cohort includes Addoley Dzegede, a Ghanaian American interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates notions of belonging, migration, and hybrid identities; Jessica

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  • Lauren Schell Dickens. Photo: Gary Sexton Photography.
    September 19, 2019 at 9:30am

    San José Museum of Art Promotes Lauren Schell Dickens to Senior Curator

    The San José Museum of Art in California has promoted Lauren Schell Dickens to senior curator. Dickens has been a member of the museum’s staff since 2016. During her tenure at the institution, she curated solo exhibitions such as “Undersoul: Jay DeFeo” (2019) and “Diana Al-Hadid: Liquid City” (2017) and co-organized the first major midcareer survey of Rina Banerjee, which is currently on view, with Jodi Throckmorton of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She also spearheaded the acquisition of works by Ian Cheng and Hito Steyerl, among others, and is cofounder of the junior patron group

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  • Steve Dalachinsky. Photo: Andrew Lampert.
    September 18, 2019 at 3:00pm

    Steve Dalachinsky (1946–2019)

    The New York poet Steve Dalachinsky, who drew inspiration from the downtown jazz clubs at which he was a beloved fixture, has died at age seventy-two. The author of poetry books including A Superintendent’s Eyes (2013) and Where Night and Day Become One (2018), Dalachinsky often wrote while listening to jazz. “Music is my main obsession, and in avant-garde jazz the artists are always taking risks,” he explained. “My poems in part follow and try to become part of that rhythm, that movement, that risk.” The nonprofit Blank Forms announced his death, which occurred on Saturday not long after

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