News

  • April 25, 2018 at 4:06pm

    Documenta Appoints Corporate Executive Sabine Schormann as CEO

    Documenta, the quinquennial German exhibition, announced today that it has named executive Sabine Schormann its new CEO. She currently serves as the director of the foundation of Lower Saxony’s Sparkasse bank and the foundation of VGH insurance, both in Northern Germany.

    Schormann succeeds Annette Kulenkampff, who stepped down from her position in November amid controversy after the city of Kassel and the state of Hesse had to rescue Documenta’s parent company from bankruptcy after its fourteenth edition. She will also work with the current interim director Wolfgang Orthmayr—formerly the

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  • April 25, 2018 at 2:07pm

    Laura Aguilar (1959–2018)

    Laura Aguilar, the Mexican-American artist known for her bold and intimate photographs of herself, friends and family, and marginalized groups such as women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community, has died. The artist was fifty-eight years old. “My photography has always provided me with an opportunity to open myself up and see the world around me,” Aguilar wrote. “And most of all, photography makes me look within.”

    Born in San Gabriel, California, in 1959, Aguilar was the daughter of a Mexican-American father and a Mexican-Irish mother. As a woman of color, a lesbian, and an auditory dyslexic,

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  • April 25, 2018 at 12:07pm

    Berlin Biennale Releases Artist List for Tenth Edition

    The Berlin Biennale annoucned today that forty-six artists will be featured in its tenth edition, which will be held at various venues across the city, includng the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Akademie der Künste, and the ZK/U–Center for Art and Urbanistics.

    Curated by Gabi Ngcobo, this year’s biennial, titled “We don’t need another hero,” is named after a Tina Turner song from 1985. The exhibtion invites artists and contributors “to confront the incessant anxieties perpetuated by a willful disregard for complex subjectivities.” It will run from June 9 to September 9.

    The full artist

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  • April 25, 2018 at 10:02am

    Knight Foundation Grants $970,000 to Eight US Museums

    The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded eight US museums a total of $970,000 for the hiring of tech-savvy staff to enhance the museumgoing experience, reports Claire Selvin of Artnews. Victoria Rogers, the Knight Foundation’s vice president for the arts, said, “Our hope is that these dedicated digital staffers will help art institutions better reach and engage audiences by meeting them where they are: on the technological devices they use every day.”

    The institutions receiving grants are:

    Charlotte, North Carolina: The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture:

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  • April 25, 2018 at 9:13am

    Angelos Delivorias (1937–2018)

    Angelos Delivorias, the director of Greece’s renowned Benaki Museum for forty-one years, died on April 24, according to Ekathimerini. He was eighty-one years old.

    Delivorias was born in Athens. He was a student of history and archeology at the University of Thessaloniki and the University of Athens. He then traveled to Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany to continue his postgraduate studies. In 1972 he received his PhD, and did his postdoctoral work at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the Sorbonne in Paris.

    He came to the Benaki Museum in 1974. There, he participated in and organized 130

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  • April 25, 2018 at 8:29am

    UAE Donates $50 Million to UNESCO to Rebuild Cultural Heritage in Mosul

    The United Arab Emirates, UNESCO, and Iraq have signed an agreement that outlines a five-year plan to cleanup and rebuild the devastated city of Mosul, which was liberated from ISIS’s control in July 2017. The UAE is giving $50 million in support of the initiative, which the United Nations says is the largest cultural restoration project in Iraq.

    One of the their main objectives is to reconstruct the ancient city’s iconic Al Nuri Grand Mosque and its famous leaning minaret, dubbed Al Hudba, or the hunchback. The 145-foot-tall structure featured ornamental brickwork that was exemplary of art and

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  • April 25, 2018 at 7:30am

    First US Museum Dedicated to Palestinian Art Opens

    The first US museum of Palestinian art and culture has opened in Woodbridge, Connecticut. The small 4,000-square-foot space, located on the ground floor of an office building on Litchfield Turnpike, is just the start for founder Faisal Saleh, a sixty-six-year-old Palestinian entrepreneur who was born in the West Bank city of El Bireh, outside of Ramallah. He already has plans to move the institution to a bigger facility in a major city, but first he needs to secure financial backers. In the meantime, he will organize exhibitions, featuring contemporary as well as historical works, that celebrate

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  • April 24, 2018 at 6:14pm

    Richard Oldenburg (1933–2018)

    Richard Sandomir of the Boston Globe reports that Richard Oldenburg, the former director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art from 1972 to 1995, who oversaw important exhibitions of work by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso—in addition to spearheading a major $55 million expansion for the museum, among other significant achievements—has died. He was eighty-four years old and passed away at his home in Manhattan.

    Oldenburg, the brother of Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, came to MoMA in 1969. He was initially hired by the museum to run its publications division. He was a well-liked

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  • April 24, 2018 at 5:23pm

    Tisch Fund to Give $10 Million to Arts Programs that Address Mental Health Issues

    The Laurie M. Tisch Imagination Fund has pledged $10 million for a new multiyear initiative that will support New York City organizations that use the arts to address mental health–related issues ranging from Alzheimer’s to the stigma of mental illness.

    “Decades of scientific study show that engagement in the arts provides cognitive, emotional, and physical health benefits for people from youth to old age, but there are great disparities in access to services in New York City,” said Laurie M. Tisch, the president and founder of the Laurie M. Tisch Imagination Fund. “This initiative will help

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  • April 24, 2018 at 5:09pm

    Brooklyn’s Real Fine Arts Closes

    The gallery Real Fine Arts in Brooklyn, founded by the artists Ben Morgan-Cleveland and Tyler Dobson in 2008, has closed, reports Andrew Russeth of Artnews. The space hosted more than one hundred shows and events during its lifetime and exhibited the work of Maggie Lee, Georgia Sagri, Stefan Tcherepnin, Jon Pestoni, Lena Henke, and Jana Euler, among many other artists.

    “At a time when so many galleries—whether fledgling or established—build rosters that seem most concerned with having a little something for everyone, RFA instead opted for a program that felt focused and selective,”

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  • April 24, 2018 at 3:30pm

    Havana’s Alternative Biennial Announces Participating Artists

    The #00Bienal de La Habana—an independent exhibition that was launched after the thirteenth edition of Cuba’s state-sponsored biennial was canceled due to a lack of funds following Hurricane Irma—has named the majority of the participating artists. Note: Many international artists traveling to the island for the event were omitted from the artist list as a precautionary measure. There is concern that they could be refused entry into Cuba.

    Organized by José Ernesto Alonso, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Yanelys Nuñez Leyva, Iris Ruiz, Yuri Obregon, and Amaury Pacheco, the exhibition will

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  • April 24, 2018 at 10:52am

    Getty Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies Announce Inaugural Postdoctoral Fellowships in Art History

    The Getty Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) have announced the first ten recipients of the Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art. According to the ACLS, “The fellowships mark the first time the foundation has supported postdoctoral grants since 2009. The new program is non-residential and it builds on the foundation’s earlier fellowship program by encouraging diverse, international perspectives. The program is administered by ACLS, a preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences.”

    Each yearlong

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