| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Monday, February 5, 2024 |
| | Amid a fraught process, a Philadelphia museum entombs remains of 19 Black people | |
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Mourners standing next to a mausoleum outside at Eden Cemetery, in Philidephia on Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024. The remains of 19 Black Philadelphians were entombed in a mausoleum at Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pa., last month, and a public commemoration was held on Saturday. (Kriston Jae Bethel/The New York Times)
by Campbell Robertson
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- There was very little that could be said about the 19 people who were eulogized Saturday morning in a service at the University of Pennsylvania. Their names were lost, and not much about their lives was known beyond the barest facts: an old age spent in the poorhouse, a problem with cavities. They were Black people who had died in obscurity over a century ago, now known almost entirely by the skulls they left behind. Even some of these scant facts have been contested. Much more could be said about what led to the service. This moment, said the Rev. Jesse Wendell Mapson, a local pastor involved in planning the commemoration and interment of the 19, has not come without some pain, discomfort and tension. On this everyone could agree. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, like cultural and research institutions worldwide, has been grappling with a legacy of plunder, trying to decide what to do about artifacts and even human bones th ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installation view, âTakesada Matsutani / Kate Van Houten. Paris Prints 1967-1978,â Hauser & Wirth New York 18th Street 25 January 2024 - 20 April 2024 (c) Takesada Matsutani and Kate Van Houten Courtesy the artists and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer.
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| This ancient fish gave the whole ocean the stiff lower lip | | Director Wim Wenders dazzled by one city's 'Little Jewels' | | These keyboard musicians are thinking beyond the piano | 
Live reconstructions of Alienacanthus. Based on the body morphology of extinct and modern fishes with elongated jaws (elongated, fusiform, bodies). Artwork by Beat Scheffold (Zürich) and Christian Klug.
by Jack Tamisiea
NEW YORK, NY.- Some 375 million years ago, armored fishes ruled a watery world. Known as placoderms, these primitive jawed vertebrates came in all shapes and sizes, from small bottom-dwellers to giant filter-feeders. Some, like the wrecking-ball-shaped Dunkleosteus, were among the oceans earliest apex predators. Few of these ancient oddities were weirder than the aptly named Alienacanthus. Discovered in Poland in 1957, this Devonian Period fish was initially known for a set of large, bony spines. But the recent discovery of a fossilized Alienacanthus skull, described in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, reveals that these spines were actually the fishs elongated lower jaw. Measuring twice as long as the rest of the fishs skull, this lower jaw gave Alienacanthus natures most extreme underbite, and, perhaps, ... More | | 
Wim Wenders the director of Perfect Days, in Tokyo on Oct. 27, 2022. (Noriko Hayashi/The New York Times)
by Motoko Rich
TOKYO.- As artistic inspiration goes, public toilets dont usually stir the spirit. Then again, most toilets arent like the public bathrooms in Tokyo. So when Wim Wenders, the German film director of art-house favorites like Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire, first toured more than a dozen public toilet buildings around the Japanese capital city in the spring of 2022, he was enchanted by what he described as little jewels designed by Pritzker Prize winners including Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban and Kengo Kuma. Those stylish commodes provided the creative sparks for his latest movie, Perfect Days, which has been nominated in the international feature category for an Academy Award and opens in theaters in the United States on Wednesday. The movie a poignant character study of a public-toilet cleaner with a mysterious past who lives a spartan existence and works with the care of a master craftsman actually ... More | | 
One of Phyllis Chens alternative keyboard instruments in New Paltz, N.Y. on Jan. 25, 2024. (Lauren Lancaster/The New York Times)
by Jeffrey Arlo Brown
BERLIN.- Phyllis Chen began studying the piano at age 5, learning from a strict, traditional teacher who taught her the standard repertoire. She was a passionate musician, but sometimes wondered how much of her playing was artistic, rather than purely athletic. I never found it to be entirely fulfilling, Chen said in a video interview. I always thought there was something missing. Chen, 45, was pursuing graduate studies at Indiana University when she first encountered the toy piano, an instrument with a brittle, xylophone-like sound usually around 20 inches long, with a range of three octaves. Her teacher, virtuoso pianist André Watts, was a Franz Liszt specialist but encouraged her to pursue her own interests. Once, Watts tried Chens toy piano; the keys were so small and his hands so big that he struggled to play a single note at a time. But for her, playing the unusual ... More |
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| Frame by frame, an artist distills what sports cameras blur | | 'Magic: The Gathering' Arabian Nights Booster Box offered for first time in Heritage's Trading Card Games auction | | The curmudgeon of Rivington Street | 
Multimedia artist Paul Pfeiffer in his studio in East Harlem with part of the series Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (#32) in which he altered photos of basketball stars, in New York on Jan. 22, 2024. Pfeiffers transcendent manipulations of broadcast footage are intimate confrontations with spectacles meant for millions. (Victor Llorente/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- What would a basketball game be like without the ebb and flow of two teams, without the roar of the crowd? Like Paul Pfeiffers videos. The multimedia artist, whose first career survey in the United States is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) through June 16, began with a suite of videos in which the whole seething, popping commotion has been removed from found live footage, leaving the central monumental figure of an athlete. In Fragment of a Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon), from 1999, Charlotte Hornets star power forward Larry Johnson rocks back and forth, alone on the court, screaming in victory or agony. In Race Riot, hands reach in to brace a fallen Michael Jordan his iconic ... More | | 
Pokémon 2010 World Championships No. 2 Trainer Trophy Card PSA Trading Card Game NM-MT 8 (The Pokémon Company, 2010).
DALLAS, TX.- Call it a Nights shift. The appearance of a Magic: The Gathering Arabian Nights Sealed Booster Box (Wizards of the Coast, 1993)in Heritages February 16-17 Trading Card Games Signature® Auction marks the first time this extraordinary set has been offered at the worlds leading collectibles auctioneer. This is an incredible offering, a must-have for the most serious of Magic: The Gathering and trading card games collectors, says Jesus Garcia, trading card games consignment director at Heritage Auctions. This is the games very first expansion set, based on The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Part of what makes it extraordinary is that collectors have a chance to acquire what amount to error cards: a number of the cards have two versions a light version and a dark version because of printing errors that resulted in different shades of the mana symbols. Adding to the allure of this set: it is from a ver ... More | | 
Yuriy Nartov and Margaret Kieu, who befriended neighbor and building denizen Pierson Tyler-Leonard, in their Rivington Street rental apartment where he once lived, on Manhattans Lower East Side, Dec. 24, 2023. (Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times)
by Ronda Kaysen
NEW YORK, NY.- The drag queens who once paraded through the hallways are long gone. The rundown walk-up on the Lower East Sides Rivington Street was a refuge that offered freedom and acceptance, although it was rife with burglaries and drugs and no shortage of mischief, when Pierson Tyler-Leonard moved in some 35 years ago. He fit right in. Then the Lower East Side changed, snuffing out the spirit of the gritty tenement. He found himself surrounded by button-down professionals who marched off to day jobs in sales, marketing and tech. To him, they represented the erasure of a neighborhood. When a couple moved into the neighboring apartment six years ago, Tyler-Leonard assumed they would be like the others. Margaret Kieu was a project ... More |
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| Christie's unveils David Hockney's 'California' unseen in public for more than 40 years | | ARCOmadrid returns for its 43rd edition with a Caribbean focus and top-tier galleries | | 'My Heart Sank': In Maine, a challenge to a book, and to a town's self-image | 
David Hockney, California (1965, Estimate on request: in the region of £16,000,000).
LONDON.- Christies will offer David Hockneys masterpiece, California (1965, Estimate on request: in the region of £16,000,000) as a highlight of the 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale on 7 March. Held in the same European private collection since 1968, the painting stands among Hockneys first great swimming pool paintings and has been unseen in public for more than 40 years. California was acquired by the present owner in 1968. The painting was unveiled in London on 25 January ahead of a touring exhibition schedule that includes Paris from 3 to 8 February and New York from 15 to 19 February. California will then be on view in London at Christies global headquarters on King Street from 1 to 7 March. California is the largest and finest in the extraordinary group of early pool paintings created in London after Hockneys first visit to Los Angeles in 1964. The art historians Paul Melia and Ulrich Luckhardt ha ... More | | 
The 43rd edition of the International Contemporary Art Fair will be held from 6 to 10 March.
MADRID.- ARCOmadrid, organised by IFEMA MADRID, celebrates its 43rd edition from 6 to 10 March with the Caribbean at its centre. The extremely high quality of projects submitted by galleries guarantees a first-class artistic experience. The exhibition will showcase the current international art scene in a broad dialogue with Spanish art. Across five days of discovery and exploration, and with the presence of new international galleries, ARCOmadrid will be a benchmark for the visibility and introduction of artists, fostering an active market and promoting knowledge of art. ARCO, together with the city of Madrid, will focus the attention of galleries, artists, collectors, curators and other professionals, institutions, museums and art centres from all over the world, representing a unique experience for all visitors. A total of 205 galleries from 36 countries will convert Madrid into the international capital of contemporary art. for ... More | | 
Rich Boulet, director of the Blue Hill Public Library, replaces archive materials at the facility, which faced backlash over a decision to carry a book that suggests gender dysphoria is a diagnostic craze fueled by adolescent confusion, in Blue Hill, Maine, Nov. 10, 2023. (Tristan Spinski/The New York Times)
by Elizabeth Williamson
BLUE HILL, MAINE.- Rich Boulet, the director of the Blue Hill Public Library, was working in his office when a regular patron stopped by to ask how to donate a book to the library. You just hand it over, Boulet said. The book was Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, by journalist Abigail Shrier. The book posits that gender dysphoria is a diagnostic craze fueled by adolescent confusion, social media and peer influence, and that teenagers are too young to undergo potentially irreversible gender transition surgery. Many transgender people and their advocates say the book is harmful to trans youth, and some have tried to suppress its distribution. ... More |
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| Gallery FUMI celebrates first major show in the US | | Lisson Gallery now representing Elaine Cameron-Weir | | Xavier Hufkens opens the gallery's first exhibition dedicated to the work of Leon Kossoff | 
Central to the gallery's debut showcase in Los Angeles is BOX 2, a captivating series of new works, by acclaimed British artist and designer Max Lamb, on display from February 14th.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- To coincide with Frieze L.A., Gallery FUMI announced FUMI LA, a six-week ground-breaking exhibition in Los Angeles, California, featuring new works by its roster of artists and designers. Taking over the iconic SIZED STUDIO in Melrose Hill a burgeoning art and design hub that has recently welcomed leading blue-chip galleries this major showcase marks FUMIs debut show in the US. Building on its past successes in the US, including sell out presentations at Salon Art+Design in New York, Art Basel Design Miami and FOG Design+Art in San Francisco as well as the placement of works in major institutional and private collections, FUMI LA stands as a testament to the gallerys committed following in the country whilst simultaneously providing ... More | | 
Elaine Cameron-Weir, pupil of couture / 4horsemen hairshirt (SS 2024 apocalypse collection), 2024. stainless steel, horse leather trench coats, cow leather, studs, hardware, sand. © Elaine Cameron-Weir.
NEW YORK, NY.- Lisson Gallery announced the representation of New York-based artist Elaine Cameron-Weir. Her first presentation with the gallery will be this March in New York. Elaine Cameron-Weirs work is informed by the array of systems and structures that humans have created to deal with the unknown be that through scientific inquiry, religion, modes of governance or creative practices. Her sculptures incorporate part-objects repurposed from their scientific, medical, military or faith-giving functions into reliquaries or representations of larger systems of belief and power. Her installations combine these found fragments with definitively handmade elements, using techniques as varied as vitreous enamelling, glass casting, ... More | | 
Leon Kossoff in his studio, 1999.
BRUSSELS.- Xavier Hufkens opened the gallerys first exhibition dedicated to the work of the British painter Leon Kossoff (1926-2019). Featuring paintings and drawings made over a four-decade period, the presentation highlights two significant bodies of work showcasing major themes in Kossoffs oeuvre, namely London cityscapes and his translations of works by Old and Modern Masters. Leon Kossoff was a leading member of the London School, a loose association of artists that also included Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and David Hockney. Although stylistically diverse, they all focused on figuration and expressive realism at a time when abstraction and minimalism were the dominant forces in contemporary art. Kossoff painted London almost obsessively. The works in the exhibition include scenes from the north of the city, where he lived and worked, and the East End, where he was raised. Painted betw ... More |
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Unveiling The Hope Cup: Witness the Epic Tale of Perseus Come to Life on this Magnificent $2M Vase
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 On Nantucket, a legal maneuver to protect historic homes from guttingNANTUCKET, MASS.- On an island where the average home sale topped $4 million last year, Ginger Andrews scallop shanty is a golden ticket. If she had any inclination, Andrews, a fourth-generation resident of Nantucket, could sell the waterfront structure next week for a life-changing amount of money. The prospect is intoxicating at least to some of her acquaintances. Theyll say, You could have a chef! Andrews said. Or, Dont you want to travel around the world? But she has a different goal: defending her weatherworn, 19th-century shack against buyers who would gut its unadorned interior, install modern layouts and luxuries, and erase a gritty heritage that has already mostly vanished from the island, 30 miles off the Massachusetts coast. With no children to pass the property on to, Andrews has turned to a little-known legal maneuver that is having a momen ... More  The Mark Knopfler Guitar Collection at Christie's totals $11,227,003LONDON.- The final hammer has gone down on the globally anticipated auction of guitars from the personal collection of music legend Mark Knopfler, the celebrated singer-songwriter, guitar hero and frontman of the iconic British band, Dire Straits. The sale was 100% sold, realising a total of £8,840,160 / $11,227,003 / 10,342,987, including buyers premium. The sale was led by Knopflers 1959 Vintage Gibson Les Paul Standard which sold for £693,000, setting a new world auction record for the model (estimate: £300,000-500,000). Further new world auction records were set, including for a Pensa-Suhr and a Schecter. Music aficionados, fans and collectors from 61 countries registered to bid, with phenomenal levels of competition across the 122 lots offered resulting in the auction lasting over 6 hours. 25% of the total ... More  Carl Weathers, who played Apollo Creed in the 'Rocky' movies, dies at 76 NEW YORK, NY.- Carl Weathers, who went from doling out bone-crunching hits as a linebacker for the Oakland Raiders to delivering knockout punches on the big screen as Apollo Creed, the nemesis of Sylvester Stallones lovable lug prizefighter in Rocky, helping to spark one of Hollywoods most successful cinematic franchises, died Thursday. He was 76. His family said in a statement that he died peacefully in his sleep. It did not give a cause or say where he died. Weathers had a long and varied acting career that took him far beyond the boxing ring. He displayed his range over some 80 film and television credits. Starting in the 2000s, he memorably parodied himself as an acting coach on the sitcom Arrested Development. In more recent years he was the voice of Combat Carl in the animated movie Toy Story 4 and played ... More  David Shrobe's second solo exhibition with Monique Meloche Gallery opens in ChicagoCHICAGO, IL.- moniquemeloche is presenting David Shrobe: Natural Sovereignty, the artists second solo exhibition with the gallery. Through assemblage, collage, drawing, and painting, the works on view draw from oral histories, family portraits, and online archives to present the vitality of family life among Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. Pulling from the past to project new possibilities of the future, Shrobe considers the backyard and garden as an extension of the home and a site of sustenance, survival, and resistance. Natural Sovereignty is the last body of work created in the artists longtime studio in Harlem, NY. Next month, the artist will vacate his studio in the apartment that has housed his family for nearly a century. Slices of the domestic materialize through found objects such as tabletops, doors, molding, ... More  The Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz announces new exhibitions for spring 2024NEW PALTZ, NY.- The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz shared details about the exciting new exhibitions that opened in early 2024: · Global Connections: Works by Miguel Covarrubias, Isami Doi, Aaron Douglas, and Winold Reiss: By comparing the styles and biographies of four artists who crossed paths in New York during the 1920s, Global Connections traces the complicated channels of influence and inspiration within the often-overlooked multiculturalism of American art before the Second World War. Curated by Tom Wolf. On display Feb. 3 - July 21, 2024 · Hudson Valley Artists 2024: Bibliography: Curated by Sophie Landres, this iteration of The Dorskys annual exhibition of contemporary work by regional artists positions books as the connective tissue unifying a variegated selection of riveting artwork. By situating painting, ... More  Critically acclaimed film installation explores life, legacy of orator, author, and activist Frederick DouglassSARATOGA SPRINGS, NY.- The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College is presenting Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour. The critically acclaimed film installation features scenes from the life of former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, often considered the most photographed man of the nineteenth century. The exhibition will be on view February 3 through May 19, with a public reception on February10 at 5 pm. Artist Isaac Juliens breathtaking film shows open-ended narrative vignettes in the life of Douglass (played by actor Ray Fearon) set in Washington, DC, London, and Edinburgh, often with influential women of his timeincluding Susan B. Anthony (Amanda Lawrence) and Ottilie Assing (Cara Horgan)dramatizing ideas of racial and gender equality. The 28-minute film also features ... More  Exhibition connects the work of over 50 women from across the globe through a shared language of radical abstractionMARGATE.- Turner Contemporary presents Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950 1970, a group exhibition presenting abstraction as a radical global language shared by women artists in the twenty years following World War II. Guest curated by Dr Flavia Frigeri, the exhibition brings together the works of more than 50 artists to examine how, through abstract forms, materials and modes, women pushed the boundaries of artmaking while tackling seismic cultural, social and political shifts. Comprising over 80 artworks, predominantly sculpture, the exhibition traces how the language of abstraction developed on a global scale. Beyond Form re-evaluates how art, gender and the act of making intersected in the post- ... More  FOTOHOF opens an exhibition of works by Kerstin Flake and Benoît GrimbertSALZBURG.- The exhibition »Kerstin Flake / Benoît Grimbert«, brings together two international positions whose intellectual affinity is perhaps only apparent at second glance. Kerstin Flake stages bizarre plays as director and stage designer in one person. While the laws of physics only seem to apply to a limited extent in her picture series, Benoît Grimbert's precise photographs resemble an almost archaeological investigation of urban spaces. In his works, he forges links between the places depicted and the biographies of iconic personalities such as Ian Curtis, Nico, Jim Morrison and Charles Manson, thus confusing temporal layers. The result is a conglomerate of pop culture myths and the history of photography, which seems to evoke inner images and at the same time deconstruct them. In Kerstin Flake's enigmatic arrangements, artifacts ... More  Gerald Lovell's second solo exhibition with P·P·O·W opens in New YorkNEW YORK, NY.- P·P·O·W is presenting verde, Gerald Lovells second solo exhibition with the gallery. For Lovell, painting is an act of biography. Combining flat and impressionistic brushwork with thick daubs of impasto, Lovells monumental portraits depict brief moments of love often lost to time. In verde, Lovell interweaves memories with daily moments to depict the landscape of life in transition. Embracing the space between placelessness and freedom, loss and renewal, and the epic and quotidian, Lovell creates contemplative portraits of friends, travel, and nature that chronicle a journey towards self-actualization and discovery of home. In verde, Lovell, who moved from Atlanta to New York City in 2021, portrays himself and a tightknit community of friends who have made New York City their home against the odds. Reflecting on this experience, Lovell ... More  Williamsburg. What happened?NEW YORK, NY.- A car is moving down Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A passenger captures the scene on video abandoned factory buildings, vacant lots and a crumbling warehouse beneath grim skies. Twenty-five years later, that same stretch is lined with glassy apartment towers, boutique hotels and a Trader Joes. For those who remember the Williamsburg of long ago, or even a decade ago, walking its streets can be disorienting, like running into an old friend who has had extensive plastic surgery. In a dramatic transformation, more than 500 condominium buildings have sprung up there since 2005, and much of the north side has become an upscale shopping district. The neighborhood seemed to cross a Rubicon in 2023, when Hermès opened a pop-up shop on North Sixth Street and announced plans for a permanent outpost ... More  Lights! Camera! Modi! It's a one-man show on Indian television.AYODHYA.- The people streaming into the holy town came on an intimate quest: to be among the first to seek the blessings of a beloved god they said was returning home after 500 years. These Hindu devotees took leaves of absence from work. They ate with fellow pilgrims, slept in the cold and sipped tea at roadside joints as they waited to see the dazzling new temple devoted to the deity Ram. Early in the morning, as a soft devotional melody played from speakers strung to electric poles, they took purifying dips in a river. But it was another, smaller group, camped on the riverbank in Ayodhya, that made sure the moment was as much about Indias powerful prime minister, Narendra Modi, as it was about Lord Ram. As a show of laser lights and bone-jarring beats went on in the background, about a dozen national television channels tried ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Gabriele Münter 
TARWUK 
Awol Erizku 
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, Italian painter Giovanni Battista Moroni died February 05, 1579. Giovanni Battista Moroni (c. 1520/24 - February 5, 1579) was an Italian painter of the Late Renaissance period. He is also called Giambattista Moroni. Best known for his elegantly realistic portraits of the local nobility and clergy, he is considered one of the great portrait painters of sixteenth century Italy. In this image: Giovanni Battista Moroni - Portrait of a Lady, perhaps Contessa Lucia Albani Avogadro ('La Dama in Rosso').
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