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April 20, 2021 at 4:28pm

Mia Locks Departs LA MOCA, Citing Resistance to Diversity Initiatives

Mia Locks has resigned as senior curator and head of new initiatives at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art after just twenty-one months on the job, the Los Angeles Times reports. Locks, who joined LA MOCA in July 2019, oversaw the institution’s inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) program, which was launched in the fall of 2019. In a March 26 email to coworkers regarding her impending departure, she acknowledged her gratitude for the initiative but said she felt that “MOCA’s leadership is not yet ready to embrace IDEA.”
Before coming to LA MOCA, Locks, with Christopher

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April 19, 2021 at 6:33pm

Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Unveils Extension Plans

Officials at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) have revealed their plans for the institution’s expansion. Estimated to cost $6.6 million, the 32,000-square-foot addition will sit across the Plaza des Angels from the museum’s main Richard Meier–designed building and is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.
The winning design, by Basel architecture firm Chirst and Gantenbein (C&G) in conjunction with Barcelona-based Harquitectes, was submitted in response to an open call last year, and was chosen by a panel of twenty-one jurors. The new building—an open, terraced, brick

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April 19, 2021 at 1:40pm

Wildfire Endangers Anti-Apartheid Archives, African Film Collection at University of Cape Town Library

A tremendous wildfire that began burning on South Africa’s Table Mountain yesterday morning caused severe damage to a library housing a major anti-apartheid archive and one of the world’s largest collections of African films. The reading room of the Jagger Library at the University of Cape Town (UCT), home to the university’s special collections, was described as “gutted” by Ujala Satgoor, the library’s executive director in a Twitter post.
Believed to have been unintentionally started on Sunday morning by a homeless person, the blaze intensified quickly, fueled by high winds and what SANParks,

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April 16, 2021 at 5:46pm

Paula Cooper Reveals Succession Plan for New York Gallery

Gallerist Paula Cooper has announced a succession plan for her storied New York gallery. The dealer, who recently turned eighty-three, revealed that she has promoted four longtime employees, who will run the gallery together. Steve Henry, who has since 1998 served as the gallery’s director, will become senior partner, while Lucas Cooper, the dealer’s son and a gallery employee since 2013, will take on the role of managing partner. Anthony Allen, who joined Paula Cooper Gallery in 2000, and Alexis Johnson, a recently returned staff member who was employed at the gallery from 2010 to 2016, are to

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April 16, 2021 at 5:18pm

French Court Dismisses Gallerists’ Appeal to Remain Open in Lockdown

A French administrative court this week dashed the hopes of gallerists nationwide in dismissing a suit filed by the Comité Professionnel des Galeries d’Art (CPGA) seeking to allow galleries to remain open as France entered its third Covid-19-related lockdown on April 4, according to Le Figaro. The organization, which represents 310 French art dealers, had filed the suit in March, citing unfair competition from auction houses, which are allowed to remain open, and contending that online sales did not comprise a stable business model, as many buyers prefer to see a work in person before committing

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April 15, 2021 at 4:17pm

Louvre Director Fights to Keep His Post

Jean-Luc Martinez, who until Tuesday was director of the Louvre, Paris, has been named interim director as he waits for French officials to inform him of his fate. The decision as to his tenure at the storied museum has been hitherto delayed by culture minister Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin’s battle with Covid-19, which saw her hospitalized for three weeks, returning to work on April 12.
Martinez, an archaeologist who joined the Louvre in 1997 as a curator of Greek sculpture, was named director in 2013 by President Emanuel Macron. His leadership has been fraught in recent years, with supporters

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April 15, 2021 at 3:05pm

Sam Durant Drone Set to Grace New York’s High Line

Sam Durant has been awarded the second High Line Plinth commission, for which the artist plans to create a nearly life-size replica of the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone deployed by the United States, beginning in 1995 and increasingly during the Obama administration, to carry out targeted killings in countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Lacking the craft’s typical weaponry, the spare work will possess a wingspan of forty-eight feet, just a foot shy of that of the actual drone, and will hover twenty-five feet above the Thirtieth Street juncture of the elevated

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April 14, 2021 at 3:14pm

After Strong Start, NFT Prices Sink by 70 Percent

Following a number of high-dollar sales earlier this year—most notably the Christie’s-hosted $69.3 million sale of Beeple’s Everydays—The First 5000 Days, 2021, in early March—the market for NFT (nonfungible token) art has slumped by 70 percent in the past month, Artnet News reports. Sales dipped from $19.3 million during the second week of March (the Christie’s sale notwithstanding, as the auction house was not included in the cited report by market tracker Nonfungible.com) to $5.5 million over the past week.
“It’s whiplash,” Robert Norton, CEO and cofounder of NFT art company Verisart, told

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April 14, 2021 at 1:40pm

Survey Paints Stark Portrait of Museum Workers’ Financial Situation

A report released April 13 by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) reveals that 43 percent of museum workers saw their income decline by an average of 31 percent over the course of the past year, owing to the continuing Covid-19 crisis. The report, based on a survey of 2,266 respondents conducted between March 9 and March 11, showed that independent contractors and consultants were among the hardest hit, losing roughly 50 percent of their income as museums canceled or postponed shows as a result.
Most US arts institutions shut down in March 2020 in response to the pandemic’s first wave; reopenings

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April 13, 2021 at 4:27pm

Denise Gardner Named Board Chief of Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago has appointed philanthropist, art collector, and marketing executive Denise Gardner chairperson of its board. Gardner, who in November will succeed outgoing board chair Robert M. Levy, is first woman, and the first African American, to helm the board of the Art Institute. She is additionally believed to be the first Black woman to lead a major museum board in the United States.
“It’s hard to avoid the historical significance,” Gardner told the New York Times in a telephone interview. “That does add a sense of responsibility and pressure to succeed, and that’s fine

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April 13, 2021 at 3:52pm

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Appoints Eunice Bélidor as Curator

Eunice Bélidor has been named the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator of Quebec and Canadian contemporary art (1945 to today) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, becoming the institution’s first full-time Black curator since it was founded 161 years ago.
“Her experience coupled with her interest in stimulating dialogue and in focusing on themes and discourses that are too often marginalized make her a tremendous asset for the MMFA,” said Mary-Dailey Desmarais, the museum’s chief curator, in a statement.
The Montreal native, a talented curator, critic, and researcher, spoke succinctly of her

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April 13, 2021 at 10:13am

National Museum of Ireland Makes Plans to Return Benin Bronzes

The National Museum of Ireland (NMI), Dublin, is the latest European institution to announce plans to repatriate its share of the renowned Benin Bronzes, part of a trove of more than 90,000 objects looted from what is now Nigeria by British troops in 1897 and scattered across the Continent, The Times reports. The museum joins Scotland’s Aberdeen University, which in March was the first to commit to returning its lone object; the Church of England; and German institutions including Berlin’s Humboldt Forum in doing so.
NMI has said it is working on returning twenty-one of the objects to Nigeria;

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