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  • bell hooks, December 16, 1996. Photo: Karjean Levine.
    December 15, 2021 at 7:24pm

    bell hooks (1952–2021)

    Writer and activist bell hooks, whose lowercase pseudonym belied her towering achievements as an architect of what came to be known as intersectional feminism, died today at age sixty-nine at her home in Berea, Kentucky. The news was announced by her niece, Ebony Motley. hooks, whose work addressed the systems of oppression spawned by the overlapping of race, class, sexuality, and gender, gained wide acclaim for Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981), which explored the impact of racism and sexism on Black women in relation to the feminist and civil rights movements that had recently

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  • Guggenheim Bilbao. Photo: Naotake Murayama/Wikipedia Commons.
    December 14, 2021 at 6:15pm

    Guggenheim Bilbao Cleaners Protest Low Wages

    Workers responsible for cleaning the Guggenheim Bilbao in collaboration with artist Lorenzo Bussi mounted a protest performance aimed at raising awareness about the minimal pay and poor working conditions to which they say they are subjected, Hyperallergic reports. The cleaners, more than three-quarters of whom are female, are contracted through the multinational company Ferrovial Services and are paid about $5.65 an hour to keep the $100 million Frank Gehry–designed museum spotless.

    The performance, which took place this past Sunday, involved workers climbing the monumental staircase that leads

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  • The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Brett Beyer/Diller Scofidio + Renfro/Gensler.
    December 14, 2021 at 5:40pm

    Ford Foundation and MoMA Launch Scholars-in-Residence Initiative

    The Ford Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, today announced that they are joining forces to inaugurate a scholars-in-residence program at MoMA with the goal of opening new views onto art history. The initiative will launch in September 2022, with three scholars concurrently conducting research at the institution over the course of the year. The trio, each of whom will receive a $185,000 annual stipend, are expected to spend nine months of the allotted twelve in residency at the museum. Scholars will share their research through an internal workshop, to be held during their time

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  • Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Blue, 1926.
    December 14, 2021 at 12:55pm

    Mondrian Heirs Sue Philadelphia Museum of Art over Painting Allegedly Stolen by Nazis

    Heirs of Piet Mondrian, who cofounded the De Stijl movement and coined the term neoplasticism, are suing the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) for the return of a 1926 painting by the Dutch artist that they claim was looted by Nazis in 1937. Valued at more than $100,000, Composition with Blue entered the museum’s collection in 1952, after it was bequeathed to the institution by A. E. Gallatin. The collector had purchased it in 1939 from New York’s Buchholz Gallery, a known purveyor of Nazi-seized art. The gallery is alleged to have obtained it following its 1938 seizure from Germany’s Hanover

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  • The Javits Center will host the Armory Show again in 2022. Photo: Javits Center/The Armory Show.
    December 14, 2021 at 11:37am

    Armory Show Reveals 2022 Curatorial Team

    Organizers of New York’s Armory Show have announced the three curators for the annual event’s 2022 iteration, all of whom specialize in Latin American and Latinx art. The trio comprises Carla Acevedo-Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at MCA Chicago, who will curate the show’s “Focus” section; Tobias Ostrander, Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator, Latin American Art at Tate, who will organize  the “Platform” section; and Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, who will lead the fifth annual Curatorial Leadership Summit.

    “We are

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  • Christopher Y. Lew.
    December 12, 2021 at 11:02am

    Former Whitney Curator Christopher Y. Lew to Lead New L.A. Art Foundation

    Christopher Y. Lew, who less than a month ago announced his departure from New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, was today revealed to be the inaugural chief artistic director of Horizon, a new nonprofit foundation and artist residency in Los Angeles. The foundation was established by L.A.–based collectors Jason Li and Harry Hu in collaboration with May Xue, the organization’s chief executive director. Xue was previously general manager and director of educational and institutional relations at Hong Kong’s K11 Art Foundation.

    Horizon aims to elevate the work of underrecognized cutting-edge

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  • Jim Cohan. Photo: ADAA.
    December 09, 2021 at 2:36pm

    ADAA Foundation Announces New President, Grant Winners

    The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) Foundation today announced James Cohan as its next president. Cohan. The founder and partner of his eponymous New York gallery, Cohan has been an ADAA board member for over five years; he joined the association in 2006. He will succeed Michael Findlay, the director of New York’s Acquavella Galleries, who has held the post since 2019 and steered the organization through the Covid-19 crisis.

    “The ADAA Foundation is an important representation of art dealers' roles in the cultural landscape and their dedication to advancing art historical scholarship

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  • The Temple of Dendur, located within the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Sackler Wing. Photo: Erwin Verbruggen/Wikipedia Commons.
    December 09, 2021 at 1:14pm

    Met to Strip Sackler Name from Galleries

    New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Sackler family today jointly announced that the Met will excise the Sackler name from the seven exhibition spaces bearing it. Perhaps most notable among these is the soaring 1978 glass-and-steel Sackler Wing, which houses the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, a visitor favorite. The news is not unexpected, given the pressure the Met and other large institutions have been under to sever ties with the Sackler family owing to members’ involvement with the Purdue Pharma opioid scandal.

    “Our families have always strongly supported The Met believe this to be in

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  • Kimberly Panicek Trueblood. Photo: Ezra Mechaber.
    December 08, 2021 at 6:36pm

    Brooklyn Museum Announces Kimberly Panicek Trueblood as President, COO

    New York’s Brooklyn Museum has appointed Kimberly Panicek Trueblood as its new president and chief operating officer. Trueblood’s wealth of experience lies not in the art world but in the public-service sector. Most recently chief of staff at the American Civil Liberties Union, Trueblood was previously deputy CFO and budget director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. From 2013 to 215, she served the Obama administration as director of White House operations and prior to that was staff sergeant of the Washington Air National Guard, an air reserve component of the US Air Force.

    “From a

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  • Objects surrendered by Michael Steinhardt. Photo: Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
    December 08, 2021 at 5:11pm

    Billionaire Collector Michael Steinhardt Surrenders $70 Million in Looted Antiquities

    New York philanthropist, collector, and hedge fund pioneer Michael Steinhardt, whose name graces a New York University college as well as galleries and conservatories from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Brooklyn Museum, has surrendered to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office 180 looted items together valued at $70 million. “Wall Street’s greatest trader,” as Bloomberg cast in him in 2014, has additionally been barred for life from acquiring antiquities, in a move the DA’s office described as “unprecedented.”

    The forfeiture and punishment followed a four-year investigation conducted by

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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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