News

  • Courtesy of the College Art Association.
    April 01, 2020 at 11:48am

    Isimeme Omogbai Appointed Executive Director of College Art Association

    The College Art Association (CAA) has welcomed Isimeme (Meme) Omogbai as its next executive director. Omogbai, the first American of African descent to chair the American Alliance of Museums, comes to the organization with decades of experience in the corporate, government, higher education, and museum sectors. She succeeds David Raizman, who has served as CAA’s interim executive director since July 2019.

    “I am joining CAA at an unprecedented period in world history as people across the globe are trying to understand what COVID-19 means for their families, communities, and organizations,” Omogbai

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  • Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo.
    April 01, 2020 at 8:46am

    Brazilian Arts Institutions Remain Closed Despite President’s Call for Businesses to Reopen

    Arts institutions in Brazil are pushing back against President Jair Bolsonaro’s call for businesses to reopen and individuals to return to work. The leader has given speeches in which he says that the concerns over the novel coronavirus are overblown and has been harshly criticized by opponents, Brazil’s health authority, and even political allies for adopting such a blasé attitude toward the outbreak in the country, which has claimed more than two hundred lives and infected nearly six thousand people.

    “We will follow scientific rather than politically-influenced guidelines, and we continue to

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  • The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Henrik Kam. Courtesy of SFMOMA.
    April 01, 2020 at 8:00am

    SFMoMA to Lay Off or Furlough More Than Three Hundred Employees

    The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) is the latest major arts institution to cut its workforce in order to reduce payroll expenses as the United States continues to try to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. According to KQED, museum president Neal Benezra said that layoffs were necessary in order to “ensure the long term viability of the museum.”

    The institution will be closed until July, a projection also shared by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and is preparing for a loss of $8 million in revenue. In order to ease the financial hardship, the museum will furlough

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  • Troy Michie’s Los Atravesados/The Skin Of The Earth Is Seamless, 2019, will be one of the works presented by Company gallery on Platform: New York. Photo: Daniel Terna. Courtesy of the artist and Company.
    March 31, 2020 at 6:00pm

    David Zwirner to Share Digital Platform with Smaller Galleries

    As businesses in New York and around the world remain closed and struggle to grapple with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, many small and midsize galleries are seeking to migrate to online marketplaces and virtual showrooms. Such transitions, however, can prove difficult for dealerships that lack the resources or the staff to digitize their inventories. In recognition of the hardships facing smaller galleries, David Zwirner is offering to share its online display rooms with twelve other New York dealers.

    According to the New York Times, David Zwirner conceived of the initiative,

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  • Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage.
    March 31, 2020 at 5:25pm

    Crowdfunding Campaign Rescues Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage

    The artist-led campaign to save Derek Jarman’s beloved Prospect Cottage has successfully raised its goal of approximately $4.5 million in ten weeks. More than seven thousand crowdfunded donations, as well as funds from preservation organizations and a “substantial personal donation” from David Hockney, have helped secure the future of the artist’s home and garden in Dungeness, a coastal hamlet in Kent, England. The Guardian reports that the property will now be purchased by the Art Fund, and maintained by the arts charity Creative Folkestone as a site for public programming, artist residencies,

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  • Felipe Galganni & Company performing as part of Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out Performance Series in 2018. Photo: Christopher Duggan. Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow.
    March 31, 2020 at 2:46pm

    Jacob’s Pillow Cancels Summer Season Due to COVID-19

    For the first time in its eighty-eight-year history, Jacob’s Pillow has called off its summer festival, for which more than fifty national and international dance companies converge in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts every year. The organization’s board of trustees and executive leadership cited the health and safety of its staff, artists, and audiences during the coronavirus pandemic as the reason for the cancelation of the event, which was scheduled to run from June 24 to August 30, as well as its annual gala.

    Jacob’s Pillow, which has expanded from a festival into an arts hub that has

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  • Rendering of the exterior view east from BCAM. Photo: Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary.
    March 31, 2020 at 1:56pm

    LACMA Moves Ahead with Demolition Amid Coronavirus Quarantine

    The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has come under scrutiny for moving forward with the construction of its controversial new $750 million Peter Zumthor–designed building as other museum projects were stalled, the Los Angeles Times reports. Work on the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has come to a halt, but LACMA is planning to go ahead with its plan to raze four existing structures on its campus in April.

    Since construction is considered an essential business in California, LACMA will not face repercussions for attempting to keep the building

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  • Idelle Weber, Jump Rope, 1967–68, plastic and neon lighting, 93 x 48 x 18".
    March 31, 2020 at 11:28am

    Idelle Weber (1932–2020)

    Idelle Weber, who emerged as an important Pop artist in the 1960s with her paintings of anonymous silhouettes in corporate or abstract settings, has died at age eighty-eight in New York City. The news was announced by Hollis Taggart gallery, which has represented the artist since 2018. Weber’s earliest paintings—made on canvas or Plexiglas in the 1960s—would later inform the opening credits of the television series Mad Men (2007–2015). Critic John Yau once wrote that he found in her varied and underrecognized work, inflected by both Pop and Minimalist sensibilities, a “sensuality that is

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  • Suellen Rocca with Curley Head, c. 1966, at the 70th Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago, 1967. Photo: Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.
    March 31, 2020 at 11:07am

    Suellen Rocca (1943–2020)

    Suellen Rocca, a leading Chicago Imagist whose hieroglyphic paintings and drawings irreverently surfaced themes of domesticity, sexuality, and consumer and popular culture, has died at seventy-six years old.

    Born Suellen Krupp in 1943, Rocca attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) from age sixteen, where she studied with painter Ray Yoshida, a significant mentor to Rocca and other artists associated with Chicago Imagism. She graduated from the institution in 1964 and became a founding member of The Hairy Who two years later, alongside fellow SAIC students Jim Falconer, Art

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  • Marina Isgro. Courtesy of Marina Isgro.
    March 31, 2020 at 11:00am

    Hirshhorn Names Marina C. Isgro Associate Curator of Media and Performance Art

    The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, has appointed Marina C. Isgro associate curator of media and performance art. She will be responsible for helping Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu and chief curator Stéphane Aquin shape and expand the institution’s exhibition schedule and public programming related to contemporary new media art. Isgro will also assume the role of secretarial scholar; the position is part of a Smithsonian-wide initiative launched in 2016 to support the “next generation of intellectual leaders.”

    “During a time when new media and performance art is

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  • Lorenzo Fusi. Courtesy of the Yerevan Biennial Art Foundation.
    March 30, 2020 at 10:00am

    Lorenzo Fusi to Curate Inaugural Yerevan Biennial

    Lorenzo Fusi has been named artistic director and chief curator of the inaugural Yerevan Biennial. The first iteration of the exhibition was scheduled to take place later this year in various venues across Armenia’s capital city. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the board of the Yerevan Biennial Art Foundation has postponed the event until next year. The new dates for the biennial are April 15–June 13, 2021.

    “With the Yerevan Biennial, we aim to foster a broader appreciation of contemporary culture in Yerevan and the region, complementing the existing infrastructure and its cultural

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  • The West Bund Museum in Shanghai. Courtesy of the Centre Pompidou, Paris.
    March 30, 2020 at 8:30am

    Centre Pompidou’s Seoul Outpost Delayed Due to COVID-19

    The Centre Pompidou in Paris may be reconsidering plans to open a satellite branch in Seoul due to the novel coronavirus. The Art Newspaper reports that the institution has been engaged in negotiations over the South Korean outpost since 2016 and was on the “point of signing” an agreement that would have moved the project forward. The project will be stalled at least until the global health crisis is over.

    On Monday, South Korea announced that it will require all individuals who enter the country from the United States, the current epicenter of the pandemic, and Europe to quarantine for a period

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