| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Saturday, July 31, 2021 |
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| | How the Guggenheim got its groove back | |
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Ragnar Kjartansson: Romantic Songs of the Patriarchy, with performers Diana Gameros, left, and Kendra McKinley at the Guggenheim Museum iin New York. A video installation by Wu Tsang with Beverly Glenn-Copeland is part of a series of shows with a shared political charge, a taste of what can be. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; David Heald via The New York Times.
by Holland Cotter
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- When the lockdown lifted this past spring, some of our big New York City museums were able to slide major waiting-in-the-wings exhibitions into place. The Guggenheim wasnt so lucky. A traveling Joan Mitchell retrospective slated to fill its rotunda had been canceled. The museum might have whipped up a crowd-pleasing show of modernist chestnuts from the collection. Instead, it did something more interesting. It turned itself into an old-style alternative space. It already had some small side-gallery shows in place or on track, including a selection of gnarly, gripping photographs by the 2020 Hugo Boss Prize winner, Deana Lawson. But to fill its spiraling central space high and wide, a combination cathedral and chasm the museum had to get inventive, and it did so in a multipart series of installations called Re/Projections: Video, Film, and Performance for the Rotunda. In part, the program was designed to facilitate social distancing. The ramp bays, which ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Aston Hall, one of Birmingham's most iconic buildings, reopened after being closed for more than a year. The magnificent Grade 1 listed mansion reopened its doors with brand new displays that explore the fascinating lives of the Hall's residents and its colourful historic past. Full of architectural and historical delights - from its breath-taking Long Gallery to the battle scars of the Civil Wars - Aston Hall is one of Britain's finest treasures steeped in 400 years of history.
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| Ace Gallery founder arrested on embezzlement charges | | The National Gallery of Art acquires works by Friedrich Sustris and Arthur Wesley Dow | | Murals at a San Francisco school should stay for now, judge says | 
Chrismas organized important early exhibitions at his gallery for such artists as Robert Irwin (pictured above), Michael Heizer, Tim Hawkinson and Mary Corse. Alex Marks/The New York Times.
by Jori Finkel
LOS ANGELES (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Art dealer Douglas Chrismas, who has a decadeslong track record of discovering major artists and an equally lengthy history of not paying artists in full for their sales, has been arrested on charges of embezzlement. Chrismas, 77, surrendered to FBI agents Tuesday and was released on a $50,000 bond. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which carry a sentence of up to 15 years in federal prison. A trial date has been set for Sept. 21. The indictment, filed on March 16, 2020, was unsealed Tuesday. In it, Chrismas is accused of redirecting about $265,000 in funds from the bankruptcy estate of Ace Gallery, which he opened in Los Angeles in 1967, to a separate corporation that he owned. Chrismas bankruptcy lawyer, Jonathan Shenson, did not respond to requests for comment this week and it was not clear who was representing Chrismas in the criminal case. Chrismas organized important early exhibitions at his ... More | | 
Friedrich Sustris, Euterpe (Personification of Music), 1569/1573. Pen and black ink with gray wash, heightened with white gouache, on gray-green laid paper squared in black chalk Sheet: 27.3 x 20.3 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Ruth and Jacob Kainen Memorial Acquisition Fund 2021.15.1.
WASHINGTON, DC.- The National Gallery of Art has recently acquired Euterpe (Personification of Music) (1569/1573), an outstanding drawing by Friedrich Sustris (c. 15401599). Created shortly after Sustriss arrival in what is now modern Germany, the work exemplifies his broad stylistic knowledge and refinement. It joins two other drawings by the artist in the collection: The Baptism of Christ (probably 1580s) and An Elaborate Altar with the Resurrection of Christ and the Martyrdom of Saint Andrew (1570/1580). Of Netherlandish origin but born in Padua, Italy, Sustris trained with his father, Lambert, a painter in Titians circle. He worked briefly in Rome and went on to spent four years in the painter Giorgio Vasaris studio in Florence. His first decorative project was in the Fugger Palace (15681573) for a powerful banking family in Augsburg, Germany. One of the very few studies that can be directly connected to that project, th ... More | | 
The Life of George Washington, a series of murals created in the 1930s for the Works Progress Administration by a Russian-born artist, in the lobby of George Washington High School in San Francisco, April 9, 2019. Jim Wilson/The New York Times.
by Carol Pogash
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A California court this week ruled that Works Progress Administration frescoes depicting the life of George Washington cannot be removed from a local high school without an environmental review, thwarting the San Francisco Board of Educations plans to cover up the hotly debated artwork. Painted in the 1930s by Victor Arnautoff, a onetime assistant to Diego Rivera, the Life of Washington murals dominate the entryway to the school and have been the subject of debate for years. Critics, including parents and students, have said that high school students should not be forced to see the racism in the murals portrayal of enslaved African Americans and Native Americans. They wanted the frescoes painted over. Mural supporters, who included art historians, said that destroying them would be equivalent to book burning. Arnautoff, who was a communist, was born in Russia ... More |
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| 'Alice Neel: People Come First' | | Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to retire | | Guggenheim Museum curators move to join a union | 
Two Girls, Spanish Harlem, by Alice Neel. Estate of Alice Neel via The New York Times.
by Roberta Smith
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Alice Neel: People Come First, on view through Aug. 1, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a momentous show of more than 100 paintings, drawings and watercolors from streetscapes, still lifes and interiors to the portraits of a veritable cross section of New Yorkers, occasionally nude, that are considered her greatest work. The largest Neel retrospective yet seen in New York and the first in 20 years, it reigns over prime Met real estate the Tisch Galleries, typically host to historic figures like Michelangelo, Delacroix and Courbet, and only now to a female artist. This array confirms Neel (1900-1984) as equal if not superior to artists like Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon and destined for icon status on the order of Vincent van Gogh and David Hockney. Neels star has been on the rise since 1974, when, after several decades on the art worlds margins, her confrontational, solidly painted portraits were finally ... More | | 
Before coming to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rub served as the Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Cleveland Museum of Art from 2006 to 2009. Photo: Elizabeth Leitzell.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, announced today that he plans to retire in early 2022 after thirteen years of service at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Rub, who will turn 70 in early March, has led the museum since September 2009. During his tenure, the museum has undergone a significant transformation. A major phase of the Facilities Master Plan designed by Frank Gehry, the Core Project, was completed in late spring 2021 after a decade of planning and four years of construction. Hailed as a thoughtful and nuanced response to the architectural character of the museums landmark main building, the Core Project represents the largest increase in public and gallery space to this facility since it was opened to the public in 1928. Rub also initiated several other capital improvements (listed below), among them the renovation of the Rodin Museum and its gardens, that ... More | | 
The exterior of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, July 15, 2019. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times.
by Colin Moynihan
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- For decades there were no unions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, but now its curators, conservators, editors and other employees are aiming to form the second in just over two years, organizing with a local connected to the United Auto Workers. Workers in similar jobs are already part of collective bargaining units at institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. On Friday, the Technical, Office and Professional Union, Local 2110, UAW filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking for it to authorize a vote by the Guggenheim employees on the union, said Maida Rosenstein, the locals president. She said she had sent an email message to the Guggenheims director, Richard Armstrong, letting him know that the petition had been filed. We respectfully ask the Museum not to delay the election or campaign against ... More |
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| Smithsonian American Art Museum receives $2.1 million from the Windgate Foundation | | The Menil Collection opens 'Enchanted: Visual Histories of the Central Andes' | | Fourth suicide at the Vessel leads to calls for higher barriers | 
Major gift establishes an endowment for acquiring artworks by living artists and support for fellowship positions. Photo: Ron Blunt.
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian American Art Museum has received a $2.1 million gift from the Windgate Foundation to establish an endowment dedicated to acquiring artworks by living craft artists. The gift also funds two sequential one-year pre-doctoral fellowship positions that further scholarship in American craft. This major gift to the museum affirms the Renwick Gallery as the nations preeminent center for the enjoyment and study of American craft, and supports the leadership role of its craft program to advocate for a diverse and inclusive view of what is traditionally considered great art. For the past decade, the Renwick Gallery has presented a series of exhibitions that reassess what craft is in a modern world. This new fund for acquisitions is dedicated to adding to the museums collection artworks made by a broadly representative and diverse group of American artists. This collecting effort will be featured, for the first ... More | | 
Waisted Cup (Kero) Depicting Two Musicians and Floral Elements, late 15th18th century. Quechua. Colonial Period, Peru. Wood, natural resin, and pigments, 5 3/4 Ã 5 3/8 Ã 5 1/4 in. (14.6 Ã 13.7 Ã 13.3 cm). The Menil Collection, Houston. Photo: Paul Hester.
HOUSTON, TX.- Running along the western side of South America, the Andean Mountains have supported a rich, interconnected series of civilizations and empires for more than 3,000 years. Surveying this captivating, multifaceted world, the Menil Collection presents Enchanted: Visual Histories of the Central Andes from July 30 through November 14, 2021. The exhibition showcases works from the museums collection and loans from the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, NM. More than forty objects from different historical moments of Andean history are on viewincluding polychrome ceramic vessels of the Nazca culture (ca. 100 BCE800 CE), important textiles from the Wari (ca. 6001000 CE) and Chimú (ca. 11501450) civilizations, and 20th21st century examples of elaborately embroidered esclavinas (short ... More | | 
People walk past the Vessel at Hudson Yards in New York on Thursday, July 29, 2021, hours after a 14-year-old boy died by suicide there. Jeenah Moon/The New York Times.
by Ashley Wong and Michael Gold
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Just two months after the Vessel, a honeycomb-like spiral of staircases in Hudson Yards, reopened with design changes meant to lower the risk of suicides, a 14-year-old boy died by suicide there Thursday afternoon, the police said. The death, which was the fourth suicide at the tourist attraction in a year and a half, angered community members who have repeatedly called on developers to build higher barriers on the walkways and raised questions about the effectiveness of the structures suicide-prevention methods. The Vessel was closed after the death, and an investigation is underway. The structure, which is the centerpiece of the Hudson Yards complex on Manhattans Far West Side, rises 150 feet above the ground with waist-high glass barriers bordering its walkways. It had ... More |
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| Frankenthaler Foundation commits $10M to promote climate change action in visual arts | | National Museum of the American Indian repatriates two objects to the Siksika Nation | | Joslyn Art Museum reveals design for New Rhonda and Howard Hawks Pavilion | 
The Museo de Arte de Ponce, one of the grant recipients.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced today that it has increased the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative to a total commitment of $10 million and conferred $5.1 million to nearly 80 visual art institutions across the United States. The first program of its kind supporting energy efficiency and clean energy projects for the visual arts in the U.S., the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative was developed in partnership with RMI, a leading global expert and advocate for clean energy, and Environment & Culture Partners consultancy, and was launched this past February as a $5-million, multi-year program. In response to the range, depth, and need of applications from the first call for proposals, the Foundation is conferring the full initial commitment in its inaugural cycle and dedicating an additional $5 million to be awarded over the next two years. The 79 grant recipients from the 2021 ... More | | 
Prairie Chicken Society Headdress. Image courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian (01/6748).
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonians National Museum of the American Indian repatriated a Prairie Chicken Society Headdress and a Weather Dance Robe to Siksika Nation. Siksika Nation, which is located in Alberta, Canada, maintains a network of societies that provide a foundation for their cultural and religious practices. The Prairie Chicken Society is unique to the Siksika, and the headdress once belonged to the societys leader. It was accessioned into the Museum of the American Indianthe predecessor museum to the current National Museum of the American Indianin 1908. The collector is unknown. The Weather Dance Robe is associated with the functions of a Weather Dancera medicine man who maintains a divine connection with the sun. The primary function of a Weather Dancer is the control of the weather during ceremonial ... More | | 
Discovery Connection. Image: Moare.
OMAHA, NE.- Joslyn Art Museum executive director & CEO Jack Becker unveiled the design for the Museums expansion and renovation, led by international architectural firm Snøhetta in partnership with Omahas Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture (APMA). The new building will be named for Rhonda and Howard Hawks of The Hawks Foundation. Central to the 42,000-square-foot Rhonda and Howard Hawks Pavilion are abundant light-filled galleries designed to meet the demands of and explore the possibilities of a growing permanent collection. Visitors will find new community spaces, additional classrooms, and enhanced amenities that support increased public programs. In addition to the new galleries and public spaces, the architectural team will restore and modernize existing office spaces in Joslyns 1931 Memorial Building. The project also redesigns and rejuvenates more than three acres of public gardens and outdoor spaces on the Museum site. ... More |
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Collection in Focus: Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag
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 Talbot Rice Gallery presents 'Emeka Ogboh: Song of the Union in Edinburgh'EDINBURGH.- Talbot Rice Gallery and Edinburgh Art Festival announced that a new sound installation by artist Emeka Ogboh (b. 1977, Nigeria) was unveiled at Edinburghs Burns Monument. The new public artwork, entitled Song of the Union, co-commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery and Edinburgh Art Festival, is a response to the ongoing theatre surrounding the UKs departure from the European Union. On January 29, 2020, as the United Kingdom departed the European Union and as a final gesture of farewell, Members of the European Parliament took to their feet in Brussels, held hands and sang Robert Burns Auld Lang Synea song which has come to represent solidarity, friendship and open doors. The following week, Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh stood in the Robert Burns Monument in Edinburgh and conceived of Song of the Union, a sound ... More  Broadway audiences will need proof of vaccination and masksNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Broadways theater owners and operators, citing the ongoing dangers of the coronavirus pandemic, said Friday that they have decided to require that theatergoers be vaccinated against COVID-19 and wear masks in order to attend performances. The policy, announced just days before the first Broadway play in more than 16 months is to start performances, allows children ineligible for vaccination to attend shows if tested for the virus. Some performing arts venues in New York say they will go even further: The Metropolitan Opera, which hopes to reopen in late September, and Carnegie Hall, which is planning to reopen in October, are planning not only to require vaccinations but also to bar children younger than 12 who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated. The new vaccination requirements for visitors to New Yorks ... More  Chemould Prescott Road opens an exhibition of works by one of India's greatest abstractionist paintersMUMBAI.- Chemould Prescott Road announces its new exhibition, Mehlli Gobhai: Epiphanies, co-curated by Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adajania. It opened on Tuesday: 27th July 2021. The show presents a series of memorable breakthrough moments in the nearly 70-year-long career of Mehlli Gobhai (1931-2018), one of Indias greatest abstractionist painters. Mehlli Gobhai: Epiphanies is an edited extract of Dont Ask Me about Colour, the large-scale retrospective of Gobhais work that Hoskote and Adajania had co-curated at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, early last year. The retrospective was cut short by the Covid lockdown, depriving viewers of an opportunity to immerse themselves in Gobhais art, and to discover his New York phase, which was exhibited publicly for the first time. To viewers who missed the retrospective, Epiphanies offers a chance to engage with Gob ... More  Floyd Cooper, illustrator of Black life for children, dies at 65NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Floyd Cooper, a celebrated childrens book illustrator who explored the African American experience in stories rooted in history, like one about a boy in Alabama in 1955 trying to comprehend why a Black woman on his bus refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, died July 15 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was 65. His wife, Velma Cooper, said the cause was cancer. Over 30 years and some 100 titles, Cooper illustrated childrens stories that not only carried his earthy and golden pastel impressions of Black life, but that also strived to recount chapters of African American history that he felt werent taught enough in classrooms if they were taught at all. In Brick by Brick (2012), he illustrated Charles R. Smith Jr.s story of enslaved people who toiled to build the White House. In Juneteenth for Mazie ... More  How to celebrate the 200th birthday of a man everyone knows and no one knowsNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Theres a piece of art thats been on display in Faye McLeods studio for most of the past decade, depicting what she considers her mantra. In another corporate office, such art might be a portrait of an eagle, soaring above the word perseverance or a modern black-and-white typographical poster with a phrase like work hard and be nice to people. But in the office of McLeod, who is the visual image director of Louis Vuitton, the sign is a few lines of unpunctuated rainbow-colored text, inspired by lyrics from Notorious B.I.G.s 1997 song Hypnotize: Louis Louis Louis cant you see how your world does amaze me. The phrase reminds McLeod, 49, that whenever Im sitting in the studio and we dont have an idea for something, go into the archives, she said. The ideas are always there. About ... More  On the road with Ballet Theatre. Who needs red velvet seats.ST. LOUIS (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- On an afternoon in mid-July, the heat index in Forest Park here was hovering in the upper 90s. Members of American Ballet Theatre, in town on tour, had just sweated through a company class that dancer Tyler Maloney likened to Bikram ballet. He and his colleagues were on an outdoor stage, and its floor was warming like a griddle. How to cool the stage before the matinee? How about scattering ice cubes across the surface? Welcome to ABT Across America, a ballet tour not quite like any before it. The company wasnt just performing outdoors. It was performing outdoors on a stage it had brought along, a stage on wheels that hydraulically unfolds from the form of a truck. And in between putting on shows for grateful, enthusiastic crowds, the dancers were traveling from city to city like a rock band, in sleeper buses ... More  Embracing vintage cars in the CatskillsNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The driving season in the Catskills is quite short, abbreviated by snow and salt in the long winters and a spring rainy season that can sometimes feel endless. But now that its the heart of summer, and people can mingle again, Jared Lamanna wants to provide a place for them to gather and bring their cars. His coffee-shop-slash-garage-slash-vintage-dealership, Churchill Classics Coffee, is intended to be that, with colorful indoor and outdoor seating, a food truck in the side yard and a half-dozen cars for sale in the showroom. Down the line, Lamanna plans a weekend rental business for vintage trucks, outfitted for overlanding rugged backcountry camping and featuring downloadable guides to take advantage of the areas bounteous trails and growing restaurant and performance scene. Well also host ... More  Olympic Games inspired large-scale robotic art installation unveiled in Tokyo by Jason Bruges StudioTOKYO.- Jason Bruges Studio announced The Constant Gardeners, an unprecedented, large-scale, performative robotic art installation, which was unveiled on 28 July 2021 in Ueno Park, Tokyo as part of the Tokyo Tokyo Festival Special 13. Spanning art, technology and sports, the outdoor installation runs in parallel to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, combining cutting-edge computing and the ancient tradition of the Japanese Zen garden. Analysing past video footage from across a wide range of sporting disciplines and events, The Constant Gardeners creates a new visual language to communicate and celebrate the motion of the professional athletes and their feats of physical prowess. The installation produces dynamic, representative patterns, which the gardeners, a team of four industrial robot arms mounted ... More  Museums present 'A Living Language: Cherokee Syllabary and Contemporary Art'ASHEVILLE, NC.- A Living Language: Cherokee Syllabary and Contemporary Art features over 50 works of art in a variety of media by 30+ Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and Cherokee Nation artists. The exhibition highlights the use of the written Cherokee language, a syllabary developed by Cherokee innovator Sequoyah (circa 17761843). Cherokee syllabary is frequently found in the work of Cherokee artists as a compositional element or the subject matter of the work itself. The exhibition is on view at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, NC from June 12, 2021 to October 31, 2021, and in the Asheville Art Museums Appleby Foundation Exhibition Hall from November 19, 2021 to March 14, 2022. The Cherokee Syllabary is a system of writing developed by Sequoyah in the early 1800s prior to the Removal period. Through Sequoyahs ... More  Willie McCovey's Estate rounds home at Heritage Auctions in AugustDALLAS, TX.- To most, he was the man called Stretch, a nickname acquired in 1955 during New York Giants spring training in Florida. In April 1957, shortly before the first basemans Texas League debut as a Dallas Eagle, sportswriter editor Bill Rives explained the moniker: The other players took one look at his elastic frame and tagged him Stretch. And so it was until Willie McCoveys death in October 2018. Beloved, revered Stretch, the man who, so the joke went, could grab the ball at second base all the way from first. There, on the career-achievements ring gifted to McCovey by his Giants teammates upon his retirement in 1980, is the word STRETCH stamped into the 14-karat gold. Its surrounded by the shorthand highlights of a great mans career: 1959-1980, All-Stars 6, M.V.P. 1969, 521, 18. As in: Over the course ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Yukinori Yanagi 
The Interior 
Music of the â80s 
Modern Gothic: The Inventive Furniture of Kimbel and Cabus, 1863â82
Flashback On a day like today, French painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet was born July 31, 1901. Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (31 July 1901 - 12 May 1985) was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. In this image: A young lady looks at "Paysage charbonneux" by French artist Jean Dubuffet dated 1946, and valued at 3.5 million Marks (1.5 million Dollars) at the 34th International fair for modern art "Art Cologne" in Cologne, Germany, Friday, November 3, 2000.
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