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June 13, 2022 at 3:58pm

Duncan Hannah (1952–2022)

Painter, collagist, and underground film star Duncan Hannah, whose career took him from the sticky floor of CBGB’s to the walls of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, died of a heart attack at his home in West Cornwall, Connecticut, on June 11 at the age of seventy while watching a French film. The news was confirmed by filmmaker Amos Poe, a longtime friend. Hannah—whose piquant chronicle of the Downtown New York scene of the 1970s, fathomed from the pages of his Pernod-soaked journals of the era, was enthusiastically received by audiences and critics alike—was known for his figurative work

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June 13, 2022 at 11:00am

Amy Smith-Stewart Named Chief Curator of Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Amy Smith-Stewart has been named as the new chief curator of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, becoming the first woman to helm the non-collecting institution since its founding in 1964. Smith-Stewart, a curator at the Aldrich since 2013, has an established track record of presenting the work of emerging and underrecognized artists. She replaces Richard Klein, who announced his departure in January after leading the museum for more than three decades.
“For almost ten years Amy Smith-Stewart has been a central voice in the Aldrich’s exhibition programming, partnering

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June 10, 2022 at 9:56pm

Kate Fowle Resigns as Director of MoMA PS1

Kate Fowle revealed on Friday that she was stepping down from her role as director of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York, after three years on the job. Fowle cited no reason for her sudden departure but added that she would continue to organize the institution’s Daniel Lind-Ramos exhibition, slated to open in April of next year. The museum’s interim leadership includes deputy director Jose Ortiz, curatorial affairs director Ruba Katrib, and director of external affairs Molly Kurzius; alongside museum board chair Sarah Arison and Glenn Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art. Fowle’s

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June 10, 2022 at 4:04pm

Uproar as Lecture on Palestine Canceled by Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Mumok

Hundreds of artists, arts writers, and academics are voicing their outrage in the wake of the last-minute cancellation of a planned lecture by Walaa Alqaisiya based on her forthcoming book, The Politics and Aesthetics of Decolonial Queering in Palestine. The lecture was to be part of the Spring Curatorial Program 2022: Art Geographies, a series organized by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Verein K, and had been scheduled to take place May 30 at Mumok Kino, the theater belonging to the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Wien, Vienna (Mumok). Alqaisiya, a Marie Curie Fellow whose work is sponsored

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June 09, 2022 at 1:24pm

Miranda Lash Named Artistic Director of Prospect.6, New Orleans

Miranda Lash will serve as the artistic director for the sixth iteration of the New Orleans triennial Prospect, scheduled to take place in fall 2024. Lash is currently Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (MCA Denver). Her appointment as leader of Prospect.6 marks a return to New Orleans for Lash, who was the founding curator of modern and contemporary art at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).
“I am greatly looking forward to returning to New Orleans for Prospect.6. In many ways this is a homecoming, as New Orleans’ traditions, themes and artists have always

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June 09, 2022 at 12:20pm

Paula Rego (1935–2022)

Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego, known for her uncompromising figurative work portraying the travails of women, died at her home in London June 8 at the age of eighty-seven, following a brief illness. The news was confirmed by London’s Victoria Miro gallery, which represents the artist. In the course of a career spanning eight decades, Rego interwove myths, fairy tales, and modern tropes to create works of deep emotional resonance and frequently devastating societal commentary. Her stark depictions of home abortions, showing women as participants in the painful process rather than as victims,

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June 07, 2022 at 5:53pm

Sasha Suda Will Lead the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Sasha Suda has been named as the next director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). Suda leaves the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, where she has been director and CEO since 2019. She replaces longtime leader Timothy Rub, who shepherded the $500 million Frank Gehry–designed transformation of the PMA but stepped down last summer after apologizing for the museum’s mishandling of harassment complaints made against an assistant director. She is the third woman to hold the post in the museum’s 145-year history, following Jean Sutherland Boggs and Anne d’Harnoncourt.
The

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June 07, 2022 at 5:15pm

Inhotim Founder Bernardo Paz Donates 300+ Works to Institution

Mining magnate and contemporary art collector Bernardo Paz, founder of Brazil’s Inhotim Institute, will donate 330 works to the museum. Paz made headlines in 2013 when, Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry filed a complaint charging him with directing via an overseas account more than $95 million raised for Inhotim into Itaminas, a conglomerate of twenty-nine mining and steel companies that he oversaw. He was found guilty of money laundering in 2017 and sentenced to nearly a decade in prison. In 2020, however, he was unanimously acquitted of the crime.
The gift, which includes works by Matthew Barney,

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June 06, 2022 at 5:56pm

Documenta Artists Condemn “Racist Attacks” Following Vandalism

More than 130 artists and collectives participating in Documenta 15 have released a statement in support of the event’s curators, the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, who have been beset by unfounded allegations of anti-Semitism. The accusations, initially leveled anonymously in January by an obscure local anti-Semitism group and then disseminated, factual inaccuracies intact, by German daily Die Zeit, culminated last week in the May 28 vandalism of a Kassel art space housing work by Palestinian collective The Question of Funding. The space, WH22, sustained damage to its interior walls, on which

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June 06, 2022 at 11:42am

Ousted Whitney Trustee Warren Kanders Reneges on Promise Not to Sell Tear Gas

Warren Kanders, who in 2019 resigned from his position as vice chair of the board of New York’s Whitney American Museum of Art over his ties to defense supplier Safariland, is still selling chemical weapons despite his promise to divest from them, The Intercept reports. Kanders, who remains the chairman and CEO of Safariland, stepped down from the Whitney board in the wake of widespread calls in the art world for his departure. The outcry culminated in a scathing Artfroum.com essay written by Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett in which the authors wondered why participating artists

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June 02, 2022 at 1:42pm

Former OpenSea Exec Arrested over NFT Insider Trading Scheme

Nathaniel Chastain, the former head of product at NFT sales platform OpenSea, has been charged by the FBI with wire fraud and money laundering, his arrest the first in history to involve NFTs in relation to insider trading, itself long the purview of Wall Street white-collar crooks. “NFTs might be new,” said US attorney Damian Williams in a statement, “but this type of criminal scheme is not.”
Chastain, who chose the NFTs showcased on OpenSea’s home page, is accused of purchasing crypto digital assets by soon-to-be-featured artists ahead of their appearance there, knowing their value would soon

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June 01, 2022 at 6:12pm

Hauser & Wirth to Establish Outpost in Paris

Hauser & Wirth have revealed plans for a new gallery in Paris, to open in 2023. Sited at 26 bis rue François 1er in the city’s bustling 8th arrondissement, home to the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe (which was recently wrapped by Christo), the branch will occupy the entirety of a nineteenth-century hôtel particulier, as posh town houses are known in France. Renovation of the four-story, 8,600-square-foot structure is being overseen by Parisian architect Louis Laplace and will include the restoration of the twenty-foot-high ceilings that previously graced the building’s ground floor.

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