News

  • August 03, 2018 at 7:44am

    Nicole Eisenman Wins $200,000 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize

    The Brooklyn-based artist Nicole Eisenman has been named the winner of the 2020 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize. The biennial award includes a $200,000 cash prize, a scholarly publication, and a solo exhibition that will be presented at the Contemporary Austin’s downtown location, slated to open in February 2020, and at the FLAG Art Foundation in New York. 

    “The generous resources around this prize provide opportunities not only for the museum to present a full exhibition of current and past work, but also for the artist to explore new directions,” said Heather Pesanti, chief

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  • August 03, 2018 at 7:00am

    Citing Financial Troubles, Munich’s Haus der Kunst Scraps Upcoming Joan Jonas Exhibition

    Munich’s Haus der Kunst has been forced to cancel a forthcoming Joan Jonas exhibition after it failed to secure enough funding to mount it. The survey of the American performance artist’s work, which is currently on view at Tate Modern in London, was set to travel to Munich in November.

    According to the Art Newspaper, the museum claimed that the cancellation was due to “a difficult financial situation stemming from management errors of the past.” The beleaguered institution has faced financial problems for years. In addition, the museum has experienced a number of other issues ranging from sexual

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  • August 02, 2018 at 4:40pm

    Antonio Dias (1944–2018)

    The Brazilian artist Antonio Dias, whose paintings and sculptures viscerally challenged the authoritarian regime that ruled his country for over two decades, has died at age seventy-four. While Dias’s early canvases mingled Nova Figuração (New Figuration) with graffiti and comic book influences to address urban violence, censorship, war, and Brazil’s former military dictatorship, his later works moved toward a style of abstraction that was less overtly political. Critics often drew comparisons between Dias’s aesthetic—which at times borrowed colors from commercial imagery—and the

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  • August 02, 2018 at 3:30pm

    Getty Foundation Launches Grant Program to Support Conservation of Paintings

    The Getty Foundation announced today the launch of Conserving Canvas, a new initiative that aims to ensure that painting conservation skills are passed on through workshops, seminars, training residencies, and a major symposium. The initiative’s initial projects support the study and conservation of works on canvas by Thomas Gainsborough, Anthony van Dyck, and François Boucher.

    “Through extensive consultation with specialists in the conservation field including experts at the Getty, we heard that there is a growing skills gap between senior conservators who learned treatments of paintings on

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  • August 02, 2018 at 2:39pm

    New Museum Awarded $660,000 Knight Foundation Grant for Its NEW INC Initiative

    NEW INC, the cultural incubator program founded by the New Museum in New York, has received a $660,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that will allow it to extend its technology-focused track for an additional two years. This is the second major gift the initiative has been awarded by the foundation, which gave NEW INC $250,000 in 2017.

    “To increase audience interest and engagement in the digital age, museums need access to products and services that help to make technology part of their culture,” Victoria Rogers, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation vice president

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  • August 02, 2018 at 2:06pm

    Asia Pacific Triennial Announces Artists Participating in 2018 Edition

    The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) announced today that eighty artists and collectives from more than thirty countries will be participating in the Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial, which will be held from November 24, 2018 to April 28, 2019.

    Among the artists exhibiting in the triennial is the Chinese contemporary artist Qiu Zhijie, who will create a massive ink painting, Map of Utopia, at the Gallery of Modern Art. The artist will draw from historical and political narratives, Chinese traditions, philosophy, and contemporary art to make the site-specific work.

    According to

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  • August 02, 2018 at 1:55pm

    Fakir Musafar (1930–2018)

    Fakir Musafar, a performance artist, photographer, pain guru, and Silicon Valley salesman who sought transcendence by piercing and constricting his body in extreme ways, has died at age eighty-seven. The cause was lung cancer. Musafar is considered the father of the “modern primitive” movement, a phrase he coined in the late 1970s. His views on body-modification earned him thousands of international followers who practiced spiritual elevation through shamanic rituals and meditation practices like body suspension, a technique he pioneered and taught. Dubbed an “astronaut of inner spaces” by

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  • August 02, 2018 at 8:59am

    American Folk Art Museum Names New Director

    The American Folk Art Museum in New York has appointed Jason T. Busch executive director. He currently serves as director of Jason Jacques Gallery in Manhattan. Busch will succeed Anne-Imelda Radice, who stepped down in March after six years at the helm of the institution. During her tenure, Radice fundraised more than $15 million, which helped the museum stabilize its finances, expanded the board of trustees, and hired the first curator of self-taught art and art brut. She also spearheaded the effort to digitize the museum’s collection of more than 8,000 works.

    Busch has more than two decades

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  • August 01, 2018 at 5:23pm

    Thirteen-Year Feud Over Lynn Chadwick’s Art Collection Ends, Widow Named Heir

    After a thirteen-year legal battle, Sophie Chadwick’s struggle to secure a portion of the artworks left behind by her father—the late renowned British sculptor Lynn Chadwick—has proven to be unsuccessful, according to the Daily Mail.

    In 2005, two years after Lynn’s death at age eighty-eight, Sophie began questioning the ownership of her father’s works and copyrights, eventually claiming that they belonged to his estate and should be split equally among his four children. But Lynn’s widow and Sophie’s stepmother, Eva Chadwick, disagreed. Eva maintains a majority stake in Lypiatt Studio,

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  • August 01, 2018 at 3:41pm

    Liverpool Biennial Artwork Featuring Names of Thousands of Dead Refugees Is Destroyed

    The List, an artwork that features the names of 34,361 refugees and migrants who lost their lives while trying to reach Europe, was destroyed in Liverpool on Saturday, July 28. The piece was installed as part of the Liverpool Biennial, which kicked off on July 14 and will run through October 28.

    “It is timely and important to make The List public during a global refugee crisis,” the Liverpool Biennial said in a statement. “We were dismayed to see it had been removed on Saturday night and would like to know why. The List has been met with critical acclaim and we are doing everything we can to

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  • August 01, 2018 at 9:08am

    Judge Rules in Favor of California Museum, Ending Legal Battle over Nazi-Looted Art

    An eleven-year ownership dispute over two large-scale paintings, Adam and Eve by the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, may be finally coming to an end. The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has dismissed a claim made by the descendant of a Dutch art dealer and ruled that the two Renaissance works will remain in the collection of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.

    According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the sixteenth-century works were purchased by the Jewish, Amsterdam-based collector and dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who was forced to sell the works, along

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  • August 01, 2018 at 8:07am

    Pussy Riot Members Who Protested at World Cup Final Arrested Again

    The four members of the Russian punk band and activist group Pussy Riot who were arrested and sentenced to fifteen days in jail for disrupting the World Cup final in Moscow earlier this month were released on Monday and then immediately detained.

    After the second arrest, they were charged with “the organization and holding of public events without prior written notice.” They have since been released but are expected to appear in court on an unspecified date and face up to ten additional days behind bars. 

    On July 15, Petya Verzilov, Nika Nikulshina, Olya Kurachyova, and Olya Pakhtusova ran onto

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