News

  • Maria Fernanda Cardoso in her studio, 2020. Photo: Daniel Boud. Courtesy of Create NSW.
    March 19, 2020 at 2:00pm

    Maria Fernanda Cardoso Awarded NSW Visual Arts Fellowship

    Maria Fernanda Cardoso, the Colombia-born, Sydney-based artist who creates nature-inspired sculptures and installations comprising unconventional and organic materials, has been named the recipient of the 2019–20 New Dimensions Fellowship for established visual artists. The award, which is valued at up to $30,000, is administered by NSW Create—the creative arm of the government of New South Wales—and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA). The partnership between Create NSW and MCA, now in its second year, was initiated to support the professional practice of artists in New South Wales.

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  • Courtesy of Bonhams.
    March 19, 2020 at 1:21pm

    Bonhams Announces Closures Following Staff Complaints

    Following an article published by Artnews detailing staff complaints about the working conditions at Bonhams amid the coronavirus pandemic, the auction house moved to close several of its locations and is preparing to hold upcoming sales behind closed doors. Competitors such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s have already shuttered following the recommendations of public health officials.

    “In light of the current situation, and in accordance with government advice, Bonhams is taking extra health and safety precautions to protect both clients and staff,” the auction house said in a statement on its

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  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy of the Met.
    March 18, 2020 at 6:47pm

    The Met Predicts Closure Through July, $100 Million Shortfall

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first major New York institution to temporarily shut its doors in response to the coronavirus, is expecting the closure to last through July and is predicting that it will result in a $100 million shortfall, the New York Times reports. The forecast follows the United States Centers for Disease Control’s recommendation on Monday that gatherings of more than fifty people should be suspended for at least eight weeks. To make up for the loss, the museum is setting up an emergency fund of more than $50 million with monies that are usually allocated for acquisitions

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  • Frieze New York 2019. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of Frieze.
    March 18, 2020 at 4:33pm

    Frieze New York Cancels 2020 Edition Amid Coronavirus Turmoil

    Following the cancelation and rescheduling of major international art fairs, including Art Basel Hong Kong, Art Cologne, and Art Dubai, Frieze announced on Wednesday that it has called off the ninth edition of its New York fair, which was set to take place at Randall’s Island Park from May 7 to May 10. In a joint statement, the fair’s organizers—Victoria Siddall, the global director of Frieze Fairs, and Loring Randolph, director of Frieze New York—said the decision was made “in light of global health concerns” and in compliance with the “advice and restrictions from local, national, international

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  • March 18, 2020 at 11:58am

    Art Basel Hong Kong Launches Its Online Viewing Rooms

    Art Basel launched today the inaugural edition of its Online Viewing Rooms, which features more than two thousand artworks presented by 231 galleries from thirty-one countries and territories. Many of the works are what visitors to Art Basel Hong Kong would have seen in person had the fair not been canceled because of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. This first iteration of the new digital initiative will hold preview days on Wednesday and Thursday and will run from March 20 to March 25.

    “I am so pleased that we are able to provide our exhibitors with an alternative platform to show the

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  • Jamey Gambrell. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan for PEN America.
    March 18, 2020 at 10:30am

    Jamey Gambrell (1954–2020)

    Writer, critic, translator, and former Artforum editor Jamey Gambrell, who introduced contemporary Russian writers Aleksandr Rodchenko, Vladimir Sorokin, and Tatyana Tolstaya to English-speaking audiences, died on February 15 in Manhattan. The cause was cancer; she was sixty-five years old.

    Born and raised in New York, Gambrell earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, studied French and Russian at the Sorbonne in Paris, and completed her master’s degree in Slavic languages at Columbia University in Manhattan before traveling to Moscow in the 1980s. She worked as an

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  • Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee.
    March 18, 2020 at 10:05am

    Students Attempt to Block Merger of Nashville Art School with Christian University

    The Watkins College of Art in Nashville, Tennessee, announced in January a controversial merger with Belmont University, a local private Christian institution. The decision has since been fiercely contested by the majority of the college’s student body, comprising 171 enrollees, and its fourteen-member faculty, who have voiced concerns over the university’s policies and culture, which they claim is not welcoming to LGBTQ students or educators. J. Kline, who had brokered the deal with Belmont, was placed on leave in mid-February, after Watkins’s faculty held a vote of no confidence.

    In an attempt

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  • Vittorio Gregotti, 1975. Photo: Adriano Alecchi.
    March 18, 2020 at 8:06am

    Vittorio Gregotti (1927–2020)

    Italian architect, theorist, urban planner, and educator Vittorio Gregotti, known for designing opera houses, arenas, and other large-scale constructions and for transforming the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys in Barcelona into the 1992 Olympic Stadium during the course of his prolific career, has passed away. The ninety-two-year-old died of pneumonia caused by COVID-19 in San Giuseppe Hospital in Milan on March 15. Due to the high number of cases of the coronavirus in Italy—it had more than 31,500 confirmed cases at the time of this article’s publication—the entire country has been under lockdown,

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  • Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Hong Kong.
    March 17, 2020 at 5:30pm

    SCAD Hong Kong to Close Permanently

    Students are protesting the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Hong Kong’s decision to close in June. The school has been conducting online classes since February due to the coronavirus, but gave no reason for ending its program indefinitely other than “student safety and academic quality.”

    Students “in good standing” who do not complete their degrees by June may have the option of transfering from SCAD Hong Kong to the college’s campus in the United States. While tuition fees remain comparable between the US and Hong Kong branches, expenditures for relocation and visas have remained

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  • Wolf Kahn. Photo: Miles McEnery Gallery.
    March 17, 2020 at 4:20pm

    Wolf Kahn (1927–2020)

    German artist Wolf Kahn, whose controlled, atmospheric oil and pastel landscapes fused realism and Color Field painting, has died at the age of ninety-two. In addition to his seventy-year painting practice, Kahn cofounded the Hansa Gallery, one of the many midcentury co-ops on Tenth Street, which showed the work of George Segal, Jane Wilson, and Lucas Samaras, among other artists. Kahn’s wife of more than six decades, the painter Emily Mason, died last December.

    Richly infused with explosive color combinations, his representational paintings of traditional landscape subject matter—hillsides,

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  • The National Portrait Gallery, London. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.
    March 17, 2020 at 4:04pm

    Museums Association Urges UK to Launch Emergency Fund with $145M Earmarked for Brexit Festival

    The Museums Association (MA), a United Kingdom–based advocacy organization that represents more than 1,500 museums, is asking the government to establish an emergency fund for cultural institutions under financial pressure due to the coronavirus pandemic. The group is proposing that the UK pull the $145 million in funds it had allocated to the “festival of Brexit,” a UK-wide celebration of its departure from the European Union, and reinvest the sum into its cultural sector. 

    “We are calling for an emergency fund to be created to support museums through this difficult period,” Sharon Heal, director

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  • Bill Stern in February of 2020. Photo: Charles Rosenberg.
    March 17, 2020 at 3:00pm

    Bill Stern (1941–2020)

    Bill Stern, a curator and avid collector whose fascination with California pottery led him to found the Museum of California Design, has died at age seventy-eight at his home in Los Angeles. The many exhibitions he contributed to either as organizer or lender include “California Design: From Missions to Modernism” (2001) and “California Design, 1930–1965: ‘Living in a Modern Way’” (2011).

    Stern was born in New York City in 1941. After receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of Alaska in 1964, he returned to his hometown to study comparative literature at Columbia University. Stern

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