News

  • Top row: Kathrin Bentele and Léon Krujiswijk. Bottom row: Clémentine Deliss and Nadim Samman.* Photo: Frank Sperling.
    March 24, 2020 at 10:00am

    KW Institute for Contemporary Art Expands Its Curatorial Team

    The KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, which is currently closed until at least April 19 due to COVID-19, has added four new members to its curatorial team. Kathrin Bentele and Léon Kruijswijk have been appointed assistant curators; Clémentine Deliss has been named associate curator; and Nadim Samman is the institute’s new curator for digital space.

    Bentele was previously a curatorial fellow at Artists Space in New York. Her recent curatorial projects include the exhibition “Clipping the Din” (2019) at Krizinger Projekt in Vienna, which she organized with Daniel Baumann and Matthew

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  • Paul Kasmin. Photo: Cari Vuong.
    March 23, 2020 at 6:55pm

    Paul Kasmin (1960–2020)

    Paul Kasmin, the august New York City art dealer who helped turn Chelsea into the city’s central art hub, died on Monday at age sixty following a long period of illness, his eponymous gallery announced. Founded in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood in 1989, the gallery is distinguished by its elegant mix of emerging and established artists in its programming. Kasmin, a mild-mannered sophisticate and photography aficionado, was ebullient in his praise; those he championed included Tina Barney, Walton Ford, Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Iván Navarro, Jamie Nares, Mark Ryden, and Bosco Sodi. The

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  • Courtesy of the Biennale of Sydney.
    March 23, 2020 at 10:43am

    Biennale of Sydney’s 2020 Edition Goes Digital

    The Biennale of Sydney announced today that it will close its twenty-second edition, which only opened to the public on March 14, because of the worsening COVID-19 pandemic and will move the entire exhibition online. Titled “NIRIN,” which means “edge” in Wiradjuri, the biennial was billed as an artist- and First Nations–led event. Staged across numerous venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Gallery of NSW, and featuring more than seven hundred artworks by 101 artists and collectives, the exhibition opened as scheduled earlier this month with organizers reassuring visitors

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  • The Green Hall of the Yale School of Art.
    March 23, 2020 at 8:30am

    As Curricula Move Online, Yale Art Students Demand Tuition Refund

    Over one hundred MFA students from the Yale School of Art (SoA) have called for a partial tuition refund following the university’s decision to empty its campus and shift curricula online in order to help stem the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus, which has infected at least one member of the Yale community. “We are deeply troubled by the far-reaching repercussions of this event, which has tangible and unfathomable implications for our physical and mental health, financial security, professional careers, housing, and immigration status,” the students wrote of the closure in a letter

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  • Merry Norris. Courtesy of Southern California Institute of Architecture.
    March 23, 2020 at 8:00am

    Merry Norris (1940–2020)

    Merry Norris, a staunch advocate for the arts and a cofounder of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art (LA MoCA), died on Monday, March 16, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at the age of eighty. According to the Los Angeles Times, Norris’s daughter confirmed that the cause of death was pneumonia.

    “Merry was one of the few people in Los Angeles who was really dedicated to supporting culture and the arts in all of its forms—including architecture,” architect Thom Mayne, a founder of the LA firm Morphosis, told the Los Angeles Times. “She was in love with the arts and the people who created it.

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  • March 20, 2020 at 7:24pm

    Ana Mendieta Estate Sues Sotheby’s over Rediscovered Work

    The estate of Ana Mendieta, the groundbreaking Cuban American artist who often used her body and organic materials such as earth, fire, and blood to create feminist and sometimes violent artworks, is suing Sotheby’s over a long-lost photograph by the artist that reemerged in 2019. Galerie Lelong & Co., which represents the estate, discovered it in a preview catalogue for a photography sale that estimated its value at between $60,000 and $90,000.

    Titled Guanaroca (Esculturas Rupestres) (First Woman Rupestrian Sculptures), 1981, the work, which is part of a series inspired by goddesses from the

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  • Jaynelle Hazard. Photo: Prathibha Polapragada.
    March 20, 2020 at 2:11pm

    Jaynelle Hazard Named Executive Director and Curator of Greater Reston Arts Center

    The Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE) in Reston, Virginia, has appointed Jaynelle Hazard as its new executive director and curator. Hazard joins the institution from the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Virginia, where she has served as the director of exhibitions for the last two years and has produced more than seventy-five shows.

    “Jaynelle differentiated herself from a strong list of candidates with her inspiring contemporary curatorial vision and aesthetic since, first and foremost, we are a content organization dedicated to delivering the very best contemporary cultural experience,” said

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  • Rashed AlShashai, A Concise Passage, 2019. Photo: Lance Gerber. Courtesy of the artist and Desert XAlUla.
    March 20, 2020 at 1:15pm

    Desert X Site in Saudi Arabia to Become Permanent Arts Hub

    After the close of the inaugural edition of Desert X AlUla, a free, site-responsive exhibition held in the Al-Ula region of northwestern of Saudi Arabia from January 31 to March 7, the Royal Commission for Al-Ula (RCU) announced that it plans to turn the area into a permanent cultural destination.

    Desert X AlUla was part of a wider, long-term development plan, outlined in a cultural manifesto issued by RCU last fall, to reinvigorate, protect, and preserve Al-Ula. The RCU’s vision for the area includes building new open-air museums, galleries, and exhibition spaces that will highlight the rich

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  • Kahlil Joseph. Photo: Nathan Bajar.
    March 20, 2020 at 1:15pm

    Kahlil Joseph Wins 2020 Eye Art & Film Prize

    Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum has named American filmmaker Kahlil Joseph the winner of this year’s Eye Art & Film Prize, an annual $29,500 award established to support artists whose practices span film and the visual arts. Joseph melds cinema, music, fashion, and the visual arts to produce large-scale installations that are rooted in history, literature, and memory, as well as video clips for artists including Kendrick Lamar, FKA twigs, and Beyoncé.

    Sandra den Hamer, director of Eye Filmmuseum and chair of the prize jury, said: “[Joseph’s] work focuses on the experience of African Americans in the

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  • View of Lower Manhattan from Jersey City, 2019. Photo: Wikipedia.
    March 20, 2020 at 12:27pm

    Charitable Organizations Team Up to Launch $75M Fund for New York Nonprofits

    A number of New York–based foundations, companies, and philanthropists have banded together to launch a $75 million emergency fund to provide relief to arts and cultural nonprofits as well as to social services organizations whose operations are threatened by the spread of the novel coronavirus throughout New York City.

    Dubbed the NYC Covid-19 Response & Impact Fund, the initiative will provide grants and interest-free loans to small and mid-size nonprofits to help them cover losses as a result of temporary closures and continue their work. Many of the fund’s donors have also provided funding

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  • March 20, 2020 at 10:43am

    Alliance of American Museums Appeals to Congress for $4 Billion in Covid-19 Relief

    The Alliance of American Museums (AAM), a nonprofit museum advocacy association that represents botanic gardens, aquariums, presidential libraries, and zoos, in addition to museums dedicated to art, culture, and history, is urging Congress to pass economic relief legislation that would give at least $4 billion to nonprofit museums nationwide. The organization claims that museums in the United States are losing around $33 million due to temporary closures amid the country’s attempts to contain the novel coronavirus that has infected 14,439 Americans.

    According to Forbes, AAM sent a letter to

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  • Mayor Bill de Blasio at a coronavirus roundtable at City Hall. Photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.
    March 20, 2020 at 8:30am

    Hundreds Petition NYC to Aid Galleries Amid Covid-19 Pandemic

    More than six hundred arts professionals are calling for New York City to provide disaster relief to nonprofits, artist-run exhibition spaces, and commercial galleries that have had to cancel events and other programming, postpone exhibitions, and shut their doors in accordance with the precautionary measures set by the city to contain the spread of COVID-19.

    Since the first case of the novel coronavirus was confirmed in New York on Sunday, March 1—a woman in her thirties who had recently returned from a trip to Iran—the city has declared a state of emergency and banned large public gatherings.

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