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March 30, 2023 at 3:32pm

Ann Wilson (1931–2023)

Ann Wilson, a member of New York’s influential Coenties Slip Group in the 1950s and early ’60s, died at her home in Valatie, New York, on March 11 at the age of ninety-one. Wilson was known for works in which she employed quilts as canvases, painting abstract forms upon their surfaces and thus bringing a form typically associated with craft into the realm of fine art. She was the last surviving member of her fabled cohort, who included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, and Lenore Tawney. Drawn by the promise of cheap, if crude and unheated, workspaces offered by

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March 30, 2023 at 1:09pm

Jenny Schlenzka to Leave New York’s Performance Space for Berlin’s Gropius Bau

Jenny Schlenzka, who since 2017 has served as executive artistic director of Performance Space New York, will depart the organization this summer to lead the Gropius Bau in her native Berlin. Schlenzka was the first woman to helm Performance Space, assuming her post there as the highly regarded venue, formerly known as PS122, reopened in its East Village home following extensive renovations. A replacement will be announced this fall.
“Jenny Schlenzka has been an invigorating leader at Performance Space New York,” said Roxane Gay, the organization’s board president. “She has enriched our organization

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March 30, 2023 at 12:53pm

Influential Collector Myriam Ullens Shot Dead

Myriam Ullens, who with her husband, Guy, helped bring Chinese contemporary art to global attention, was fatally shot in a car outside her home in Lasne, Belgium, on the morning of March 29. She was seventy. According to multiple Belgian news outlets, her stepson Nicholas is believed to have been the gunman. Flemish news site VRT reported that the pair had been in conflict “for years” over an inheritance matter, with Nicholas accusing his stepmother of squandering the Ullenses’s fortune after Guy suffered a stroke. Ullens, who had been shot four times in the head, was declared dead at the scene.

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March 29, 2023 at 11:50am

Robert Storr Donates Archive to CCS Bard

Art historian Robert Storr has bequeathed the majority of his massive personal archive to the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. The gift, described by CCS Bard executive director Tom Eccles as “gamechanging,” encompasses more than 25,000 volumes. Among them are books on twentieth-century art history, criticism, theory, and literature as well as artist monographs, rare periodicals, and out-of-print exhibition catalogues from major international museums and galleries. Also included are Storr’s personal papers, works by major artists from his own collection, and a number of studies that

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March 28, 2023 at 5:20pm

Sarah Lucas Wins New Museum’s Inaugural $400,000 Sculpture Prize

British sculptor Sarah Lucas has been named the first winner of the New Museum’s newly established Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award. The $400,000 prize is named for Sue Hostetler, a trustee of the New York contemporary art institution and will be bestowed upon a total of five women sculptors in the course of a decade. The money supports a new commission by each artist for the museum, and covers associated costs related to production, installation, and exhibition; an honorarium for the artist is included in the amount. Lucas has said her work will be titled Venus Victoria. It will be displayed

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March 28, 2023 at 4:35pm

Alexia Fabre Named Curator of 2024 Biennale de Lyon

Alexia Fabre will curate the Seventeenth Biennale de Lyon, to take place September 2024–January 2025. A Chief Curator of Heritage, Fabre from 2005 to 2022 led the MAC VAL, the contemporary art museum of the Department of Val-de-Marne, in Vitry-sur-Seine, France. She left in January of 2022 to become the first woman to serve as director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
“I am highly receptive to the values that Alexia champions and to how committed she is to artists,” said Biennale director Isabelle Bertolotti. “She has earned wide recognition for her dedication to spreading

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March 27, 2023 at 6:00pm

Koo Jeong-a to Represent South Korea at Venice Biennale

Koo Jeong-a, known for her conceptual work centering ungraspable elements such as scent, silence, and luminescence, has been chosen to represent South Korea at the Sixtieth Venice Biennale, to take place April 20–November 24, 2024, the Korean Herald reports. The notoriously reticent Koo first gained notice in 1998, with her contribution to the exhibition “Unfinished History” at Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center, for which she created a shelter in the corner of the gallery, where she hid while the exhibition was installed. When the exhibition opened and the structure was removed, all that remained

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March 27, 2023 at 5:04pm

Demas Nwoko Awarded Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

The organizers of the Eighteenth Venice Architecture Biennale have bestowed the Nigerian-born architect, designer, and artist Demas Nwoko the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Nwoko was in the vanguard of Nigeria’s modern art movement and is known for highly modern architecture that draws on traditional African designs. He will be honored at a ceremony to take place May 20 at Ca’Giustinian, the Biennale’s headquarters.
Born in the rural hamlet of Idumuje Ugboko, Nigeria, in 1935, Nwoko was inspired as a youth by local residences and by the palace of Obi (King) Nwoko II, his grandfather, who

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March 23, 2023 at 5:43pm

Unionized Staff at New York’s Hispanic Society Museum Vote to Strike

Unionized workers at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York, have authorized a strike to begin March 27, lasting indefinitely. The action, which was approved by 78 percent of members, comes as the institution prepares to reopen April 6 following a six-year closure for renovations. Staff at the museum unionized in 2021, concurrent with workers at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. While the staff at both institutions organized under the auspices of the Local 2110 branch of the United Auto Workers union, ratification of contracts has been slow. The Whitney union finally reached

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March 23, 2023 at 4:38pm

Report Shows Met Holds 1,000+ Antiquities Connected to Trafficking

A new investigation conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in collaboration with the UK-based nonprofit Finance Uncovered has revealed that New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art possesses more than one thousand objects linked to individuals “either indicted or convicted of antiquities crimes.” The organization’s report, published March 20, focused on the provenance of the Met’s antiquities collection, and on its continuing to acquire historic cultural artifacts despite the introduction in numerous countries of laws banning their export. “In the antiquities

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March 22, 2023 at 5:20pm

Director Marina Loshak Exits Pushkin Museum

Director Marina Loshak is leaving Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, which she has led for a decade. Born in Ukraine, Odesa, Loshak arrived in Moscow in 1986. She was appointed director of the Pushkin—home to the city’s largest collection of Western art—in 2013, and since then has organized a number of major exhibitions, frequently collaborating with international institutions. Elizaveta Likhacheva, currently the director of Moscow’s Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, will fill her role.
Losahak’s departure is thought to be a result of political pressure, which has been intensifying

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March 22, 2023 at 3:08pm

$54 Million Jackson Pollock Painting Uncovered in Raid

Authorities in Bulgaria discovered a hitherto-unknown painting by Jackson Pollock in the course of investigating an international art-trafficking ring. According to Bulgarian National Radio, which broke the story, Bulgarian Main Directorate officials were working with a Greek anti-crime unit organized under the Europol umbrella to break up the illegal business, which spanned from the Sofia region of Bulgaria to Athens and the island of Crete.
While in the process of arresting three Greek citizens and a Bulgarian national in connection with the operation, Greek officials discovered five works by

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