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  • Rendering of the Newton Enslaved Burial Ground Memorial. Photo: Adjaye Associates.
    December 07, 2021 at 6:05pm

    Barbados, Free of British Rule, Plans Heritage Site Around Slave-Trade History

    The Caribbean island of Barbados, having a little over a week ago officially cut ties with the British monarchy and announced itself as the world’s newest republic, has revealed plans for a major heritage district devoted to the transatlantic slave trade that shaped the region hundreds of years ago. Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye has been named as the designer of the site, with groundbreaking to take place November 30, 2022, coincident with the first anniversary of the Barbadian republic.

    “Barbados is authentically enshrining our history and preserving the past as we reimagine our world

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  • Greg Tate. Photo: Nisha Sondhe/Duke University Press.
    December 07, 2021 at 3:10pm

    Greg Tate (c. 1958–2021)

    Cultural critic Greg Tate, whose incandescent and incisive writing, particularly on topics surrounding Black American culture, influenced a generation, died today of undisclosed causes at the age of sixty-four. The news was confirmed by his publisher, Duke University Press. A tremendously talented guitarist, he was additionally the founder of improv group Burnt Sugar and a cofounder of the Black Rock coalition. In prose that, as Hua Hsu wrote in the New Yorker in 2016 “throbbed like a party and chattered like a salon,” Tate astutely assessed Black art and music not within the framework of the

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  • Christian Rosa in 2013. Photo: Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images.
    December 06, 2021 at 5:25pm

    Accused Pettibon Forger Christian Rosa Said to Be Arrested in Portugal

    Brazil-born painter Christian Rosa, once a darling of the international art scene, has been arrested in Portugal in connection with allegations that he peddled forged works falsely attributed to California artist Raymond Pettibon, according to Vanity Fair. Said to have been snared after his girlfriend posted to Instagram a photo of a water bottle bearing the label of a well-known Portuguese brand, Rosa is reportedly being extradited back to the United States. There he will face charges of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and aggravated identity theft in relation to the sale of four forgeries

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  • Emily Ballew Neff.
    December 06, 2021 at 2:34pm

    San Antonio Museum of Art Names Emily Ballew Neff Director

    The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) today announced Emily Ballew Neff as its next director. Neff earlier this year resigned from the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, where she had served as executive director since 2015. She will assume her new role at SAMA on January 18, 2022.

    “As a native Texan, with deep roots across the state, Emily brings a keen understanding of the region and a vast range of relationships that will support the museum’s vision and work in sustainable ways well into the future,” said SAMA board chair Ed Hart. “Over the course of her career, Emily has proven to be an exceptional

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  • Array Collective, The Druithaib’s Ball, 2021. Photo: David Levene.
    December 02, 2021 at 5:00pm

    Belfast’s Activist Array Collective Wins Britain’s Turner Prize

    Belfast’s eleven-member Array Collective, whose work centers around issues such as abortion rights, queer liberation, and social welfare, was named the winner of Britain’s Turner Prize at a December 1 ceremony taking place at London’s Coventry Cathedral and administered by Tate museums. The prize, awarded annually to a UK visual and considered one of the world’s most prestigious, includes a $33,000 stipend.

    This year marked the first time since the prize’s 1984 founding that all shortlisted nominees were collectives. The other four groups elected—all with a social-activist bent—were London’s

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  • Lawrence Weiner, 1985. Photo: Chris Felver/Getty Images.
    December 02, 2021 at 3:45pm

    Lawrence Weiner (1942–2021)

    Lawrence Weiner, a towering figure in the Conceptual art movement arising in the 1960s and who profoundly altered the landscape of American art, died December 2 at the age of seventy-nine. Known for his text-based installations incorporating evocative or descriptive phrases and sentence fragments, typically presented in bold capital letters accompanied by graphic accents and occupying unusual sites and surfaces, Weiner rose to prominence among a cohort that included Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Sol LeWitt. A firm believer that an idea alone could constitute an artwork, he

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  • Sur, Oman. Photo: Mangostar/Wikipedia Commons.
    December 02, 2021 at 1:03pm

    Oman National Pavilion to Debut at Venice Biennale

    Oman will present its first-ever Venice Biennale national pavilion this spring at the event’s fifty-ninth iteration, taking place April 23–November 27, 2022. Curated by art historian Aisha Stoby, whose area of expertise is the modern art of Oman and the Middle East, the multimedia exhibition will feature the work of five artists spanning three generations: painter Anwar Sonya, known as the godfather of Oman’s contemporary art scene; photographer and abstract artist Hassan Meer, founder of experimental collective the Circle; photographer and videographer Budoor Al Riyami; sculptor and textile

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  • New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: Carlos Delgado/Wikipedia Commons.
    December 01, 2021 at 12:09pm

    Metropolitan Museum of Art to Renovate Modern Wing with $125 Million Gift

    New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced yesterday that it had received a pledge of $125 million from activist collectors Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang. The promised gift is the largest monetary donation in the history of the institution, and is earmarked for the renovation of the museum’s Modern Wing, which will expand to include 80,000 square feet of exhibition and public space and will be rechristened the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing.

    The Met has sought for more than a decade to renovate its Modern Wing. “The reimagining of these galleries will allow the Museum to approach

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  • The recipients of the 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
    December 01, 2021 at 11:14am

    Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Announces 2021 Grantees

    The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant has named the twenty writers who are the recipients of its 2021 grants, which total $695,000. The grantees work across three categories—articles, books, and short-form writing—and each will receive an award of between $15,000 and $50,000. The grants, administered by Creative Capital, are issued in support of contemporary-art writing and are meant to foster critical writing in relation to the visual arts. Work considered ranges from brief reviews in magazines or newspapers to in-depth book-length studies, on topics aimed at both general and special-interest

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  • Leo Xu, the senior director of David Zwirner Hong Kong, and its new director, Lihua Tung. Photo: David Zwirner gallery.
    November 30, 2021 at 11:50am

    David Zwirner Taps Lihua Tung to Lead Hong Kong Outpost

    New York–based gallery David Zwirner has announced Lihua Tung as the new director of its Hong Kong location. Since February 2020 a senior director and senior specialist of twentieth-century and contemporary art at Phillips auction house in Hong Kong, Tung will work in tandem with the outpost’s senior director, Leo Xu. The pair are charged with expanding the gallery’s presence in exhibitions and fairs across Asia. Tung, who prior to her arrival at Phillips spent nearly a dozen years specializing in contemporary art at the Hong Kong and Taiwan outposts of  storied auction house Christie’s, will

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  • Robert Farris Thompson in 2009.
    November 30, 2021 at 11:10am

    Robert Farris Thompson (1932–2021)

    Art historian Robert Farris Thompson, renowned for his extensive and luminous writing on the art of Africa and the Afro-Atlantic and for his lively lecturing on the topic, died November 28 at the age of eighty-eight. The news was confirmed by his daughter, Alicia Thompson Churchill. Thompson, who minted the term “Black Atlantic,” devoted his life to the study of African art history, of which he was one of the world’s foremost scholars. His pathbreaking book Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy, an investigation of the trajectory of the visual arts and philosophies

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  • The new Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco will open in the city’s Dogptach neighborhood next summer. Photo: rosatrieu/Wikipedia Commons.
    November 30, 2021 at 9:08am

    Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco Announces Key Hires, Inaugural Programs

    The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF), a new noncollecting art museum slated to open in summer 2022, has announced four hires to crucial positions and has revealed plans for its inaugural exhibition. Situated in the city’s trendy Dogpatch neighborhood and occupying a refurbished 11,000-square-foot 1940 brick building that was once home to a paint company, the museum will begin welcoming the public in January with a three-month series of pop-up exhibitions by Bay Artists before officially opening in September with a major exhibition of work by Choctaw-Cherokee artist Jeffrey

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