News

  • June 15, 2018 at 9:07am

    Manifesta Announces Artists Participating in Its Twelfth Edition

    Manifesta, the roving European biennial of contemporary art, revealed that fifty artists are participating in its twelfth edition, which kicks off in Palermo, Italy, this weekend. Titled “The Planetary Garden. Cultivating Coexistence,” the exhibition will focus on the history of the city as a hub for diversity, migration, and cross-pollination.

    Gardens will play a central role in the event, which takes on the botanical metaphor of the landscape designer and philosopher Gilles Clément, who sees the world we inhabit as a garden to be tended. The biennial also draws inspiration from the Sicilian

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  • June 14, 2018 at 4:31pm

    Court Orders the Getty to Return Iconic Greek Bronze to Italy

    The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was ordered to restitute its famous ancient Greek bronze known as Statue of a Victorious Youth to Italy, reports Deborah Vankin of the Los Angeles Times. Issued by an Italian court on Friday, June 8, the ruling states that the work was illegally exported. However, the institution claims that its acquisition of the work was legitimate.

    The piece, which some scholars have attributed to Lysippus—Alexander the Great’s personal sculptor—was originally found by an Italian fisherman in international waters in 1964. The mariner then sold the work, which

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  • June 14, 2018 at 1:00pm

    Judge Upholds $6.7 Million in Damages to Be Awarded to 5Pointz Artists

    Four months after Judge Frederic Block awarded twenty-one artists $6.7 million in damages after ruling that developer Gerald Wolkhoff had broken the law when he whitewashed New York’s famous 5Pointz graffiti mecca in the dead of night, the federal judge will not back down from his verdict. On Wednesday, June 13, Block issued a cutting decision rejecting Wolkhoff’s post-trial motion to void the judgment or grant a new trial, according to Artnet.

    In an eighty-nine-page assessment, Block says he was “appalled” at Wolkhoff’s decision to white out the graffiti on the factory’s walls, an action the

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  • June 14, 2018 at 12:57pm

    Former Museo Reina Sofía Director Appointed Spain’s New Culture Minister

    José Guirao, the former director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, was named Spain’s new minister of sports and culture. His predecessor, Màxim Huerta, stepped down after only a week in office, following allegations of tax fraud.

    Huerta, an author and former popular TV host, was pressured to resign after the Spanish press reported that he was fined nearly $420,000 after he tried to evade paying the government taxes last year. In response, Huerta criticized the press and said that he paid the full amount of the fine twice but still decided to resign.

    Currently the head of

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  • June 14, 2018 at 12:11pm

    Harvard Art Museums Names Soyoung Lee Chief Curator

    The Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced that Soyoung Lee has been appointed chief curator. Lee will be responsible for overseeing the museums’ three curatorial divisions: Asian and Mediterranean art, European and American art, and modern and contemporary art. She will take up the post on September 24.

    Lee comes to the Harvard Art Museums from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she has served as curator, associate curator, and assistant curator in the department of Asian art. She joined the Met in 2003 as its first curator for Korean art and has organized a

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  • June 14, 2018 at 10:24am

    AGUAS to Serve as Guest Curator of the 2018 Edition of Untitled, Miami Beach

    Untitled, Art announced that AGUAS, the artist-run curatorial platform founded by artist Rodrigue Mouchez in 2017, will be the guest curator of the seventh edition of its Miami Beach fair, which will take place from December 5 to December 9. AGUAS will work with Untitled executive director Manuela Mozo and artistic director Omar Lopez-Chahoud to curate a selection of international galleries and to develop a series of special artist projects that will be integrated throughout the fair.

    “When considering a curatorial guest for Untitled, Miami Beach I wanted to incorporate the collaborative energy

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  • June 14, 2018 at 9:31am

    Zac Langdon-Pole Named BMW Art Journey Award Winner

    Art Basel announced that the New Zealand–born, Berlin-based artist Zac Langdon-Pole has been named the next winner of the BMW Art Journey. An international jury unanimously selected Langdon-Pole from a shortlist of three artists whose works were exhibited in the Discoveries sector at this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong.

    Langdon-Pole’s installation at Auckland gallery Michael Lett’s booth at the fair comprised a new series of works, “Passport,” for which he fused two disparate materials: iron meteorites and nautilus shells. By pairing objects in configurations that are different from how viewers are

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  • June 13, 2018 at 10:04am

    Lawsuit Over Egon Schiele Works Tests HEAR Act

    A pair of watercolors by Egon Schiele—Woman In a Black Pinafore, 1911, and Woman Hiding Her Face, 1912—which were seized from the London dealer Richard Nagy at an art fair three years ago, are going to be auctioned off at Christie’s this fall, per the orders of a New York judge, writes David D’Arcy of the Art Newspaper. They are expected to sell for anywhere between $5 million and $7 million.

    The pieces, however, are at the heart of a legal battle. The heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish collector and theater artist who died in 1941 at the Dachau concentration camp, say that the works

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  • June 13, 2018 at 5:02am

    Forty-Ninth Edition of Art Basel Opens Thursday

    As the forty-ninth edition of Art Basel prepares to open to the public on Thursday, VIP guests are pouring into Basel to glimpse the thousands of artworks being displayed by the 290 participating galleries from thirty-five countries during the prestigious art fair’s two preview days, June 12 and June 13. Held at the Messe Basel exhibition hall, the event will run through June 17.

    The sixteen galleries that are making their debuts at Art Basel this year include White Space Beijing from China; Freedman Fitzpatrick, Essex Street, and Franklin Parrasch Gallery from the United States; and Galerie Max

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  • June 12, 2018 at 2:52pm

    Rodeo Gallery to Open Second Location in Greece

    Rodeo, the London-based gallery founded by Sylvia Kouvali, has announced that it is expanding to Greece. Originally dedicated to artists from Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, the arts space opened its first location in Istanbul in 2007. Kouvali opened a London branch on 125 Charing Cross Road in 2014 and decided to close the original gallery the following year.

    Kouvali cited the market as the reason for opening the London space. In an interview with Flash Art, she said: “The market is something that’s not necessarily just financial. There’s a curatorial market and then there’s a market for journalism.

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  • June 12, 2018 at 2:47pm

    Miriam Escofet Wins the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award for 2018

    The artist Miriam Escofet has won the 2018 BP Portrait Award from the National Portrait Gallery, London, for a painting of her elderly mother titled An Angel at My Table, writes Mark Brown of the Guardian. She was given a cash prize of almost $47,000 at a recent ceremony. Escofet will also receive more than $9,300 for a future commission, the subject of which will be determined by the artist and the National Portrait Gallery.

    A second prize of more than $16,000 was given to the American artist Felicia Forte for Time Traveller, Matthew Napping, a portrait of her boyfriend. And a third prize of

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  • June 12, 2018 at 1:54pm

    First Artists Announced for Upcoming Kochi-Muziris Biennale

    The first participating artists have been announced for the upcoming Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which will open on December 12, 2018 and run until March 29, 2019. The artist Anita Dube is curating the show, which will take place at a number of venues in the city of Kochi in Kerala, South India.

    “My earliest intuitive vision for this edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale to explore the possibilities for a non-alienated life has remained with me,” said Dube. “The need to listen, think, and learn with each other, particularly voices from the margins—of women, of the queer community, the oppressed

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