News

  • Shalini Le Gall. Photo: Portland Museum of Art.
    October 07, 2019 at 1:19pm

    Portland Museum of Art Names Shalini Le Gall Curator of European Art and Director of Academic Engagement

    The Portland Museum of Art in Maine has appointed Shalini Le Gall its new curator of European art and director of academic engagement. Le Gall joins the institution from the Colby College Museum of Art, where she worked as curator of academic programs for five years. During her tenure, she helped organize the exhibitions “1968: ‘Sensitive Humanity’ and Black Radicalism” (2018) and “River Works: Whistler and the Industrial Thames,” which is currently on view.

    “Shalini joins vibrant curatorial and educational teams,” said deputy director and chief curator Jessica May. “We are so eager and excited

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  • Rendering of the facade of Faurschou New York. Photo: Faurschou Foundation.
    October 07, 2019 at 1:05pm

    Faurschou Foundation to Open Exhibition Space in New York

    The Faurschou Foundation has announced that it is expanding to New York. Established in 2011 by the Danish collector Jens Faurschou, the foundation, which aims to promote cultural exchange between the East and the West, has permanent exhibition spaces in Copenhagen and Beijing, and runs a biannual pop-up space in Venice.

    On November 3, it will open a newly renovated twelve-thousand-square-foot industrial warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The building will allow the foundation to stage large-scale installations and exhibitions. “The Red Bean Grows in the South,” a group exhibition centering on

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  • Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin. Photo: Bryan Derballa.
    October 07, 2019 at 10:49am

    David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards to Curate 2021 Whitney Biennial

    The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York announced today that David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards will cocurate the eightieth edition of the Whitney Biennial, which will open in the spring of 2021. Breslin has served as curator and head of the Whitney’s collection since 2016 and was recently appointed the museum’s inaugural director of curatorial initiatives. Edwards is the museum’s curator of performance. Prior to joining the curatorial staff in 2018, she worked as a curator of Performa and as curator at large for the Walker Art Center.

    “David and Adrienne truly represent the best spirit

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  • Tim Marlow. Photo: Cat Garcia.
    October 07, 2019 at 9:58am

    Tim Marlow to Lead London’s Design Museum

    Tim Marlow has announced that he is planning to leave the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where he has served as artistic director since 2014, to become the next chief executive and director of the city’s Design Museum. He succeeds codirectors Deyan Sudjic and Alice Black, who helped raise the museum’s profile over their twelve-year tenure, and will take up the post in January.  

    “The museum is riding high following the move to our new premises in Kensington, particularly after a series of successful exhibitions including the latest on Kubrick and with the anticipation of the forthcoming ‘Moving

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  • Victor Wang. Photo: Seth Fluker/M Woods.
    October 04, 2019 at 6:15pm

    Victor Wang Appointed Artistic Director and Chief Curator of M Woods Museum

    The M Woods Museum in Beijing has hired Victor Wang as its new artistic director and chief curator. Wang will oversee the programming for both the institution’s original location in the capital’s 798 Art District and its new space in the Dongcheng District, which opened to the public in August. Dubbed the M Woods Art Community, the satellite space will also host live music, performances, and screenings and will have a restaurant.

    “Wang is part of an exciting generation of curators that are redefining how we think about art from China, and how artists move between geographies and histories,” said

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  • The Rubin Museum of Art. Photo: Ben Hider. Courtesy of the Rubin Museum of Art.
    October 04, 2019 at 5:05pm

    New York’s Rubin Museum to Cut Jobs and Programs in Major Restructuring

    The Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan is planning a massive reorganization that would involve laying off 25 percent of the staff, cutting back the number of exhibitions it organizes from five or six per year to two, and reducing its hours. The Art Newspaper reports that executive director Jorrit Britschgi informed employees of the impending changes on Wednesday and said that they will allow the museum to “chart a course for long-term financial sustainability and success.”

    According to Britschgi, the museum had been able to support its current operations because of a $25 million gift that founders

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  • University of Pretoria’s Old Arts Building in Pretoria, South Africa.
    October 04, 2019 at 3:39pm

    South African Show With Work by Convicted Murderer Zwelethu Mthethwa Sparks Protest

    The Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) is protesting an exhibition at the University of Pretoria’s Javett Art Center that includes work by Zwelethu Mthethwa—a South African photographer convicted of beating twenty-three-year-old sex worker Nokuphila Kumalo to death in April 2013 and sentenced to eighteen years in prison in 2017, the BBC reports. 

    Protesters, including activist Tlaleng Mofokeng and Kenyan poet and human rights activist Shailja Patel, are calling for the removal of his photograph The Wedding Party, 1996, from the show “All in a Day’s Eye: The Politics of Innocence.”

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  • October 04, 2019 at 1:17pm

    Royal Shakespeare Company Ends Partnership with Oil Giant BP

    After British school students and activists signed an open letter threatening to boycott the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) if it did not drop its sponsorship deal with British Petroleum (BP), the theater organization announced it will terminate its partnership at the end of the year. The company said it “could not ignore” the “strength of feeling” against the deal.

    The oil company, which has supported the RSC since 2011, said it was “disappointed and dismayed” that the partnership had reached a “premature” end. “Over the past eight years our sponsorship has enabled 80,000 young people to see

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  • Rendering of Jeff Koons’s Bouquet of Tulips.
    October 04, 2019 at 12:06pm

    Controversial Jeff Koons Tulip Sculpture Inaugurated in Paris

    Jeff Koons dedicated his controversial Bouquet of Tulips sculpture at a ceremony today at the Champs-Élysées gardens in Paris. The forty-one-foot bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel work—depicting a hand holding eleven tulips and conceived as a memorial sculpture to honor the victims of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan theater attacks in Paris—has sparked debate since it was proposed in June 2016 due to its design, cost, and location.

    Many people, including two former French culture ministers, artist Jean-Luc Moulène, and filmmaker Olivier Assayas, condemned the sculpture’s placement

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  • The city of Paris. Photo: Zinneke.
    October 04, 2019 at 12:00pm

    White Cube Expands to Paris, Proyectos Ultravioleta Wins Prize at Frieze London, and More

    The London-based gallery White Cube, which also has a location in Hong Kong, will open a new office and viewing rooms on Avenue Matignon in Paris in the coming months. Other galleries on the street include Maurice Garnier, Taménaga, and Daniel Malingue. “Since the late 1940s, Paris has been a major international art capital,” White Cube’s senior director, Mathieu Paris, told the Art Newspaper. “By opening an office with viewing rooms in a prestigious location of the city, White Cube intends to perpetuate a more classical way of operating in the industry. The idea is to present great masterpieces

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  • Deborah Marrow. Photo: The Getty Foundation.
    October 03, 2019 at 5:00pm

    Deborah Marrow (1948–2019)

    Deborah Marrow, a pillar of the Getty Foundation who dedicated more than three decades of service to the organization, died on October 1. She was seventy years old. The veteran arts administrator served in various leadership roles at the Getty, including two stints as interim president, and oversaw all of the foundation’s grantmaking programs. “No one is trained to be a grantmaker,” Marrow told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “Everyone falls into the field from somewhere else. I fell into it from art history.”

    Born in 1948, Marrow earned her bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in art history from the

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  • Meg Onli. Photo: Marcus Maddox.
    October 03, 2019 at 4:27pm

    Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art Promotes Meg Onli to Associate Curator

    The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania announced today that Meg Onli has been promoted to associate curator, a position endowed by alumna Andrea Berry Laporte, effective immediately. Onli joined the ICA in 2016 as assistant curator. During her tenure at the museum, she curated the exhibition “Speech/Acts” (2017), which explored how black American experiences have been shaped by the social and cultural constructs of language, and an exhibition currently on view, “Banal Presents,” which marks the final chapter of “Colored People Time,” the ICA’s three-part,

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