News

  • Eamon Oré-Girón, Infinite Regress LXXV, 2019. Courtesy of PAMM.
    May 25, 2020 at 9:01am

    Pérez Art Museum Miami Buys Art from Local Galleries to Bolster Cultural Sector

    The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) has added eight artworks by artists represented by Miami-based galleries to its permanent collection, the largest number of works purchased by PAMM’s Collectors Council in a single session. This round of acquisitions, which totaled $145,000, was part of the institution’s effort to give Miami’s arts ecosystem a boost amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

    “As Miami’s flagship arts institution, PAMM must do what we can to shine a light on the city’s vibrant, multi-cultural community of artists and galleries who have been hit hard by the current crisis,” said museum director

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  • Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo: Wikipedia.
    May 25, 2020 at 8:24am

    Philadelphia Museum of Art Workers Seek to Unionize

    After a year of organizing, staff members at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) launched a union drive. On Friday, they announced their intent to join District Council 47 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). By unionizing, organizers are hoping the museum, which is currently closed because of the Covid-19 outbreak, will prioritize ensuring worker and visitor safety and maintaining programs that serve the community as it works to recover from the financial fallout from the pandemic.

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  • Richard Anuszkiewicz. Photo: Loretta Howard Gallery.
    May 23, 2020 at 5:55pm

    Richard Anuszkiewicz (1930–2020)

    American painter Richard Anuszkiewicz, a leading proponent of Op art who experimented with perception through startling tonal harmonies, has died at age eighty-nine. After being mentoring by Josef Albers in the 1950s, Anuszkiewicz became known for nesting squares of vibratory, complementary hues in his paintings—formally sophisticated but playful compositions that mesmerize in their explorations of light, chroma, and line. Alongside his European counterparts Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely, Anuszkiewicz’s images suggest dimensions far beyond the two they occupied, in many ways treating the

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  • Etel Adnan. Photo: The Griffin Trust.
    May 22, 2020 at 3:48pm

    Etel Adnan Wins 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize

    Artist and writer Etel Adnan has received the international Griffin Poetry Prize for her 2019 collection of poems, Time, together with Sarah Riggs, who translated the book from French, and will receive $64,600 in prize money. Published by Nightboat Books, Time interweaves a series of nonlinear poetic exchanges between the artist and Tunisian poet Khaled Najar and addresses Adnan’s consistent themes of memory, war, and migration.

    Born in Lebanon in 1925 to a Greek mother and a Syrian father, Adnan grew up within a multiplicity of cultures, languages, and nationalities. She moved to Paris to study

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  • The Great Hall of the National Building Museum in Washington, DC.
    May 22, 2020 at 2:50pm

    DC’s National Building Museum Lays Off Two-Thirds of Staff

    The private nonprofit National Building Museum in Washington, DC, is permanently laying off two-thirds of its staff, citing the loss of revenue due to the Covid-19 pandemic. More than forty administrative and hourly visitor services positions will be eliminated, effective June 1, leaving eighteen core staffers on partial furlough and two employees working on grant-based projects, reports DCist.

    In February, the museum laid off 8 percent of its staff, citing revenue drops related to a renovation project on the building’s ceramic floors that has kept the museum closed since December. Nationwide

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  • Jammie Holmes, Behold the Golden Horse, 2020.
    May 22, 2020 at 2:12pm

    US Galleries Expect 73 Percent Revenue Loss in Second Quarter, Venus Over Manhattan Withholds Rent, and More

    A new survey conducted by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) reports that art galleries across the US are forecasting a revenue loss of 73 percent for the second quarter of 2020, which began on April 1 and ends on June 30. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the galleries already experienced a 31 percent drop in revenue at the beginning of the year. While 85 percent of full-time staffers have retained their positions, 74 percent of contract workers that had regular assignments at galleries prior to March 13 are no longer employed.

    The study mined data from 168 galleries across the United

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  • Emma Amos at the Art Salon Show, 1979. Courtesy: Ryan Lee.
    May 22, 2020 at 1:35pm

    Emma Amos (1937–2020)

    Emma Amos, a pioneering artist best-known for her vivid figurative paintings exploring gender, race, and power through an inventive approach to color and form, has died at age eighty-three. The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, according to a statement by New York’s Ryan Lee Gallery, which represents the artist. Over a nearly six-decade career that encompassed both figurative and abstract painting as well as printmaking and weaving, Amos drew from art history, current affairs, and her own life, helping fill the representational void surrounding African American identity and heritage in art institutions

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  • A view of the Seine in Paris.
    May 22, 2020 at 12:24pm

    Paris Announces $16.5 Million Relief Fund for Culture

    Christophe Girard, Paris’s deputy mayor for culture, has pledged a $16.5 million relief plan for the city’s cultural sector, reports Le Parisien. The bailout includes $12.5 million for the city’s public theaters, art and cultural centers, and concert halls, as well as $1.3 million for private orchestra and concert halls and live show venues. A $54,500 fund is allocated for playwrights and composers. The cinema sector is also receiving support, with a $1.5 million grant, including $327,000 for independent cinemas and $109,000 for the creation of short films. “It’s more than a boost,” said Girard.

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  • UNESCO’s Paris headquarters.
    May 21, 2020 at 7:18pm

    Covid-19 Impact Reports Say 13 Percent of Museums May Never Reopen

    New studies conducted by UNESCO and the International Council of Museums (ICOM) have found that nearly 13 percent of the more than 85,000 museums across the globe that have shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic may never reopen. Aimed at assessing the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on cultural institutions worldwide, the reports were released on May 18, International Museum Day, and are based on information collected from UNESCO’s 193 member states and eleven associate members.

    With 90 percent of museums shuttered, there has been a big push to churn out digital content to keep audiences

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  • Artist Deborah Zlotsky at Yaddo, which received a 2019–20 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. Photo: Elizabeth Haynes. Courtesy of Yaddo.
    May 21, 2020 at 2:11pm

    Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards Nearly $3 Million in Grants to Artists and Nonprofits

    The Pollock-Krasner Foundation has awarded $2.8 million to 121 artists and not-for-profit organizations. Among this year’s grant cycle recipients, which hail from seventeen states, seventeen countries, and Puerto Rico, are Alejandra Alarcon, Julie Beaufils, Tomasz Klimczyk, Cătălina Nistor, and Prudence Whittlesey.

    In support of not-for-profit institutions that engage directly with Lee Krasner’s and Jackson Pollock’s work, grants will also go to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York for its upcoming exhibition “Away from the Easel: Jackson Pollock’s Mural,” the Vermont Studio Center for

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  • May 21, 2020 at 12:10pm

    Deadline for $100,000 Future Generation Art Prize Extended to June 3

    The Future Generation Art Prize has extended its application deadline to June 3 to offer international artists more time to take part in the sixth edition of the contemporary art prize. Previous winners of the $100,000 accolade include Dineo Seshee Bopape, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and Cinthia Marcelle. Only artists between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five are eligible to apply. From the pool of applicants, a selection committee will nominate twenty candidates for the award’s shortlist. They will then be invited to create work for a prize exhibition to be held at the PinchukArtCentre in Kiev

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  • Neil Mendoza. Courtesy of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport.
    May 21, 2020 at 9:45am

    UK Appoints Commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal

    The United Kingdom has hired Neil Mendoza, the provost of Oriel College at Oxford University, as its new commissioner for cultural recovery and renewal. He will be responsible for advising the government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) on the steps that need to be taken to ensure the UK’s arts sector can recover from the pandemic.

    “Our local, regional, and national institutions have been trailblazers in coming up with innovative ways to reach audiences during the lockdown,” Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said in a statement. “Our focus now turns to paving the way for

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