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  • Jimmie Durham, Self-Portrait Pretending to Be a Stone Statue of Myself, 2006.
    November 17, 2021 at 6:52pm

    Jimmie Durham (1940–2021)

    Sculptor and poet Jimmie Durham, who parodied and challenged Native American stereotypes in his work even as the question of his ancestry drew criticism and controversy, died November 17 in Berlin at age eighty-one. The news was confirmed by the Mexico City–based gallery Kurimanzutto, which represents the artist. Durham in 2019 received the Venice Biennale’s prestigious Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. “We should probably be giving him two lifetime achievements by this point in time,” noted the Biennale’s curator, Ralph Rugoff. “Durham has continued to find new, ingenious and cogent ways

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  • Robert MacPherson. Photo: Mark Sherwood/QAGOMA.
    November 17, 2021 at 11:40am

    Robert MacPherson (1937–2021)

    Australian conceptual artist Robert MacPherson, whose multivalent practice continually yielded iconic work that defied easy description, died in Brisbane, Queensland, November 12 at the age of eighty-four following a brief illness. The news was confirmed by curator Ingrid Periz. In the course of a career spanning forty years, MacPherson used mundane materials and quotidian images to make variegated works conjuring labels from minimalist to Fluxus but almost always slyly placing the contemporary and the cosmopolitan in service of the forgotten and the provincial. “MacPherson’s art is leavened by

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  • Nora Lawrence.
    November 17, 2021 at 11:04am

    Storm King Names Nora Lawrence Artistic Director and Chief Curator

    Storm King Art Center, of Windsor, New York, has appointed Nora Lawrence artistic director and chief curator. Lawrence, who has served as a curator at the outdoor sculpture center for ten years, will be the first to occupy the newly created role of artistic director. She will assume her new dual roles in January 2022, overseeing the museum’s curatorial program, collection, acquisitions, site-specific commissions, temporary exhibitions, publications, and archives. David R. Collens, who has served as director since 1974, will become director emeritus, in which capacity he will collaborate with

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  • Smithsonian American Art Museum. Photo: Tim Evanson/Flickr.
    November 16, 2021 at 5:30pm

    Smithsonian Reveals New Curatorial Appointments

    The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art has announced Diana Jocelyn Greenwold as the inaugural Lunder Curator of American Art and Sol Jung as the inaugural Shirley Z. Johnson Assistant Curator of Japanese Art. Greenwold, who was named to her role in September 2021, holds a BA from Yale University and a doctorate in art history from the University of California, Berkeley. Specializing in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American fine and decorative arts, she was previously curator of American art at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, where she stewarded that institution’s

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  • Christopher Y. Lew. Photo: Whitney Museum of American Art.
    November 15, 2021 at 2:48pm

    Curator Christopher Y. Lew Exits the Whitney

    Christopher Y. Lew is leaving New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, where he has served for nearly seven years as Nancy and Fred Poses Associate Curator, Artnews reports. During his tenure there, Lew was known for mounting career-elevating exhibitions of young vanguard artists, including Sophia Al-Maria, Kevin Beasley, Rachel Rose, and Salman Toor. Though he mainly focused on emerging artists, he occasionally curated shows by established pathbreaking artists, most recently William Pope.L. No explanation has been offered for his departure by either the institution or Lew, who told colleagues

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  • The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photo: Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism/Flickr.
    November 15, 2021 at 1:53pm

    Workers at Museum of Fine Arts Boston to Hold Daylong Strike

    Citing management’s refusal over the course of seven months to negotiate contracts, the union representing more than two hundred employees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA Boston) has authorized a one-day strike, to be implemented Wednesday, November 17, the Boston Globe reports. Ninety-six percent of union members voted for the action, which will not impact the institution’s ability to greet the public, as it is expected to remain open throughout the strike. The picket will begin at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at the museum’s Huntington Avenue entrance.

    The MFA union, in existence for less than

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  • Etel Adnan in her Paris studio in 2016. Photo: Catherine Panchout/Sygma/Getty Images.
    November 15, 2021 at 12:31pm

    Etel Adnan (1925–2021)

    Lebanese American author, poet, and artist Etel Adnan died November 14 in Paris at the age of ninety-six. News of her death was confirmed by her partner, the artist Simone Fattal, according to the New York Times. First coming to wide acclaim as a novelist with her award-winning Sitt Marie Rose, published in French in 1978 and detailing a kidnapping during the Lebanese Civil War, Adnan went on to become a renowned poet and in her eighties achieved global recognition as a painter with her bright, simple works that evoked complex emotions through the warm hues of California sun and Lebanese desert

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  • Hong Kong’s M+ museum opened after multiple delays on November 12. Photo: M+/West Kowloon Cultural District.
    November 12, 2021 at 6:25pm

    Hong Kong’s M+ Museum Opens Its Doors as Beijing Tightens Its Grip

    Hong Kong’s eagerly awaited M+ contemporary art museum opened today, amid a very different climate than the one in which it was conceived over a decade ago. More than 76,000 people had reserved tickets to the museum in advance of its opening, according to the New York Times. Visitors to the museum, which was meant to establish firmly Hong Kong as a major arts center, were greeted by more than 1,500 works, a large number of them donated by Swiss collector Uli Sigg, whose trove of Chinese contemporary art is one of the most comprehensive in the world.

    The opening of the 70,000-square-foot Herzog

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  • Salvator Mundi sold at Christie's in 2017 for $450M to Prince Badr bin Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s culture minister.
    November 11, 2021 at 2:55pm

    $450M Salvator Mundi Likely Not by Leonardo, Claims Prado

    Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado in a catalogue for its exhibition “Leonardo and the Copy of the Mona Lisa” has downgraded the ca. 1500 painting Salvator Mundi, which it now casts as likely not made by the legendary Italian Renaissance artist, The Art Newspaper reports. The work’s decline in status is evinced in the book’s index, where works are listed under two headings, that of “By Leonardo” and that of “Attributed Works, Workshop or Authorized and Supervised by Leonardo,” with Salvator Mundi appearing in the latter category.

    The painting’s lowered standing is further detailed in an essay in

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  • June Yap, Nida Ghouse, Ala Younis, and Binna Choi. Photo: Singapore Art Museum.
    November 11, 2021 at 12:14pm

    Artistic Directors Announced for 2022 Singapore Biennale

    The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) on November 9 revealed the four artistic directors who will lead the seventh iteration of the Singapore Biennale. South Korean curator Binna Choi, director of Utrecht’s Casco Art Institute; Indian writer and curator Nida Ghouse, of Berlin; Kuwait-born artist and curator Ala Younis, of Amman, Jordan; and Singapore native June Yap, SAM’s director of curatorial, collections, and programs, will head the event, which is to run from October 18, 2022, through March 19, 2023.

    No theme has yet been announced for the Biennale, but the four co–artistic directors released a

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  • New Jersey’s Mana Contemporary Arts.
    November 10, 2021 at 6:39pm

    Mana Contemporary Arts Head Indicted For Alleged $7.8 Million Tax Dodge

    Eugene Lemay, the founder and executive director of Jersey City, New Jersey’s Mana Contemporary Arts, has been placed on leave following his indictment on tax fraud charges, according to multiple reports. “Mr. Eugene Lemay is no longer involved in the management of Mana Contemporary,” said a spokesperson for Mana Common, which owns Mana Contemporary’s several locations, including the Jersey City flagship. “He has been placed on administrative leave pending the results of the current action against him.”

    In October, Lemay was charged by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New

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  • Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Qatar Museums.
    November 10, 2021 at 3:58pm

    Zeina Arida Named Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art

    Qatar Museums has announced Zeina Arida as the next director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Arida will step into her new role this month, taking the reins from Abdellah Karroum, who has served as the institution’s director since 2013, and who is departing to act as special curatorial advisor to Sheikha Amna Al Thani, director of the National Museum of Qatar and acting deputy CEO of museums, collections and heritage protection for Qatar Museums. He also plans to take on various independent curatorial projects.

    Arida, an expert in expert in Arab arts, culture, and heritage and specializing

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