News

  • December 03, 2018 at 4:52pm

    Artists Arrested for Protesting New Decree Limiting Artistic Freedom in Cuba

    Artist Tania Bruguera and Bienal de La Habana organizers Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Yanelys Nuñez Leyva were among those arrested on Monday for planning a sit-in at the Ministry of Culture in Havana in protest of a government decree, which aims to eradicate independent cultural activity, days before it goes into effect. The legislation would essentially give the state the power to censor art at will. Several activists were prevented from participating in the protest. Some were antagonized by the authorities for days before the event, and others were detained in the hours leading up to it.

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  • December 03, 2018 at 11:58am

    Raqs Media Collective Appointed Artistic Director of 2020 Yokohama Triennale

    The Yokohama Triennale has named Raqs Media Collective, the New Delhi–based group formed in 1992 by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, artistic director of its seventh edition, which will open in July 2020. Raqs is known for producing work across a range of media that often explores the intersection of art, philosophy, and historical inquiry. Among the collective’s recent curatorial projects are “In the Open or in Stealth: The Unruly Presence of an Intimate Future” (2018–19) at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; the Eleventh Shanghai Biennale (2016–17); and “

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  • Christina Martinez, Bradford Nordeen, Susan Snodgrass, Michael Stone-Richards, Wendy Vogel, and Malik Gaines. Photo: Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
    December 03, 2018 at 10:49am

    Andy Warhol Foundation Awards Grants for Arts Writing

    The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts announced today the twenty-one recipients of its 2018 Arts Writers Grants. They will receive a total of $725,000. Administered by the New York–based nonprofit Creative Capital, the grants will support critical writing about contemporary art and range from $15,000 to $50,000.

    “The foundation’s commitment to arts writing is a natural extension of the grants the foundation makes to artist-centered organizations and museums, which often include funds for the publication of exhibition catalogues, brochures, and other outlets for scholarly perspectives,”

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  • November 30, 2018 at 3:58pm

    Pace Gallery to Open Chelsea Flagship Building in 2019

    Pace Gallery announced today that it will open its new flagship gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in September 2019. Located at 540 West Twenty-Fifth Street, Pace’s new headquarters is being developed by Weinberg Properties and designed by Bonetti / Kozerski Architecture. Spanning eight stories and measuring approximately 75,000 square feet, the building will feature expansive indoor and outdoor galleries; a 10,000-volume research library; an open art-storage area; and a 2,200-square-foot space dedicated to new media works, performance, and public programming.

    “Designing this new

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  • Former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at a press conference announcing the city of Jackson, Mississippi, as the winner of a $1 million Public Art Challenge Grant. Photo: Bloomberg Philanthropies.
    November 30, 2018 at 2:45pm

    City of Jackson, Mississippi, to Receive $1 Million Grant for Public Art

    Jackson, Mississippi, is the latest city to be awarded a $1 million Public Art Challenge Grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization of former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Anchorage, Alaska, and Coral Springs, Florida, were also named as grant winners earlier this month.

    The funds will support the project “Fertile Ground: Inspiring Dialogue About Food Access,” which aims to inform policy related to nutrition by using art as a medium to communicate the complexities of the issue in the city. Local and national artists, landscape architects, filmmakers, farmers,

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  • 22 Cortlandt Alley. Photo: Andrew Kreps.
    November 30, 2018 at 2:19pm

    Andrew Kreps to Relocate from Chelsea to TriBeCa

    In May 2019, Andrew Kreps will head from Chelsea to a two-floor, ten-thousand-square-foot gallery at 22 Cortlandt Alley in New York’s TriBeCa neighborhood, reports Artnews. It will be designed by Markus Dochantschi of StudioMDA and will be around the corner from 55 Walker—the old home of the nonprofit Artists Space—which Andrew Kreps, Bortolami, and Kaufmann Repetto have been operating as a project space, featuring recent exhibitions organized by Blank Forms, Song Cycle, Manila Institute, and O.O. & M.M., this fall. “The two spaces will allow our artists the opportunity to exhibit in

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  • Washington, DC.
    November 30, 2018 at 1:30pm

    New Bill Threatens Independence of DC Arts Commission

    A bill proposed by Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser could change the role of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) from an independent arts funder to an advisory body. The new bill would create a Department of Arts and Humanities within the mayor’s office, which would be run by a director—appointed by the city—who would be given “exclusive authority for evaluating and initiating action on matters relating to the arts and humanities,” reads the draft legislation.

    “As introduced, this bill clarifies that the DCCAH board members serve an advisory role and explicitly

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  • Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1967, screenprint, 25 3/4 x 17 7/8 inches (65.4 x 45.4 cm). © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Chiron Press, New York. Photo: Steven Sloman.
    November 30, 2018 at 12:15pm

    Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Gives More Than $4 Million to Art Schools

    The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced today that it is launching two new multiyear educational initiatives that will support art and art history students studying at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate levels. The organization will give nearly $5 million through scholarships and gifts of art to several art schools across the United States.

    A total of $2 million will be awarded to the Columbia University School of the Arts; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the School of the Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles; and the Yale School of Art.

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  • Mickalene Thomas, Lovely Six Foota, 2007.
    November 30, 2018 at 11:34am

    Baltimore Museum of Art Launches Commission Series and Curatorial Fellowship with Focus on Diversity

    The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) is launching a diversity-minded commission program for artists to create site-specific works in the museum’s lobby with funds from a gift by philanthropists Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker. The New York–based artist Mickalene Thomas—best known for her rhinestone-studded paintings, collages, and photography, which explore the layers of selves in the identities of black women and the constructs of canonical Western art history—has been chosen as the first participant. She will make a new work that will go on view next fall. The funds will also

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  • Louvre Abu Dhabi dome.
    November 30, 2018 at 10:47am

    Austrian Company Declares Insolvency After Louvre Abu Dhabi Dome Project

    Waagner-Biro, the Austrian steel engineering company that made the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s elaborate dome, has declared insolvency due to its involvement in the project, reports Die Presse. When costs for the dome—approximately $90 million—rose during installation, Abu Dhabi refused to pay, and the company was forced to shoulder the financial burden. On October 23, just a year after the museum opened its doors in November 2017, Waagner-Biro announced that its subsidiary SBE Alpha AG was bankrupt and declared that “the remainder of the group is in danger of insolvency.”

    Waagner-Biro, which

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  • Hoor Al Qasimi. Photo by Nato Welton.
    November 30, 2018 at 10:33am

    Hoor Al Qasimi Appointed Curator of Second Lahore Biennale

    Hoor Al Qasimi, president and founding director of the Sharjah Art Foundation and president of the International Biennial Association, has been named curator of the second Lahore Biennale. Set to open in early 2020, the exhibition will take place at various venues across Lahore, Pakistan.

    “The Lahore Biennale Foundation is delighted to have Hoor Al Qasimi as its curator for the second edition of the Lahore Biennale,” Osman Khalid Waheed, chairman of the foundation’s board, said in a statement. “In addition to her deep knowledge and extensive curatorial experience, Al Qasimi brings a very special

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  • Robert Morris in a controversial advertisement for a 1974 exhibition.
    November 29, 2018 at 5:20pm

    Robert Morris (1931–2018)

    Robert Morris—the American artist who, as a founding practitioner of Minimalism, irreversibly transformed contemporary art—has died at age eighty-seven in Kingston, New York, from pneumonia, according to his wife, Lucile Michaels Morris. For over five decades, Morris flouted predictability through his experimentations in sculpture, dance, performance, installation, Land art, and process art.

    Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1931, Morris studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute before serving in the Army Corps of Engineers. He then went on to study philosophy at Reed College

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