The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Saturday, June 17, 2023


 
Hey dad, can you help me return the Picasso I stole?

Whitcomb Rummel Jr. at home in Chapel Hill, N.C., June 9, 2023. A painting that went missing in 1969 turned up at a museum’s doorstep before the FBI could hunt it down — no one knew how or why until now. (Travis Dove/The New York Times)

by Dan Barry


NEW YORK, NY.- The Picasso fell off the proverbial truck. It vanished from a loading dock at Logan International Airport in Boston and wound up where it didn’t belong, in the modest home of one Merrill Rummel, also known as Bill. In fairness, this forklift operator had no idea that the crate he tossed into his car trunk contained a Picasso until he opened its casing. In fairness, he didn’t care much for it; he preferred realism. But now things had turned all too real. FBI agents were hot on the trail of a hot Picasso unavailable for public viewing, as it was hidden in Rummel’s hallway closet. He and his fiancée, Sam, began to panic. “How do we get rid of it?” she recalled thinking. “We couldn’t just give it back. It was a pain in our butt.” ... More



The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Tom Jones: Here We Stand is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg through August 27, 2023. Featuring more than 100 works spanning 1998–2021, the exhibition is the first major retrospective of the Ho-Chunk photographer’s work. For over twenty years, Tom Jones has created a visual record and exploration of his Ho-Chunk community.





Mark Bradford strikes a pose of quiet self-reflection   Thieves' loot: A Warhol, a Pollock and 9 of Berra's World Series rings   Lucian Freud's "Tender Portrait" to highlight Sotheby's London summer sales season


Installation view, ‘Mark Bradford. You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice’ Hauser & Wirth New York 22nd Street 13 April – 28 July 2023 © Mark Bradford. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer.

by John Vincler


NEW YORK, NY.- Mark Bradford found his way to becoming an artist while working in his mother’s beauty shop. The Los Angeles-born artist used layers of the cheap end papers — thin delicate sheets used to protect hair from burning during perming — instead of paint in the early works that would soon earn him an international reputation, eventually leading to the official U.S. pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, his most important exhibition to date. Nearly 40 when Thelma Golden selected him to participate in her landmark 2001 “Freestyle” exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, featuring mostly young Black artists embracing abstraction and challenging dogmas of representation, he has ... More
 

The New York Yankees' Whitey Ford, left, and Yogi Berra depart Yankee Stadium in the Bronx together on Dec. 20, 1956. (Ernie Sisto/The New York Times)

by Eduardo Medina


NEW YORK, NY.- An alarm at the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York, blared around 2 a.m. on a fall morning in 2015, prompting its director to drive to the building and learn that culprits had broken in and stolen six championship belts from the ’40s and ’50s. “Who could do this to a hall of fame museum?” Edward Brophy asked police officers. Blood from one of the thieves appeared to drip from the splintered glass of a window they had broken in through. Brophy recalled thinking at the time: Maybe that would help investigators find the culprits. Nearly a decade later, it did. Federal prosecutors announced on Thursday that nine people had been charged in connection with a two-decade operation in which the group broke into ... More
 

Lucian Freud’s Night Interior, 1969-70 Estimate: £8-12 million. Courtesy Sotheby’s.

LONDON.- This season’s major evening sale of Modern & Contemporary art at Sotheby’s London is set to star four extraordinary pieces by three visionaries of British Art: Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Frank Dobson. Coming to auction from a distinguished private collection, all four works were created within just a few miles of one another in London. Lucian Freud’s naked portrait of Penelope Cuthbertson leads this exceptional group with an estimate of £8-12 million. While from a first glance, the painting appears to be simply a portrait, a closer inspection also alludes to the presence of the artist himself: the haphazard wardrobe offers a glimpse of Freud’s overcoat and boots, while the glowing reflections in the window perhaps hint subtly to Freud’s form, his brush, and his easel. Freud’s meditative portrait will be offered alongside two remarkable paintings from Frank Auerbach’s most revered series’: Mo ... More


Solo show with Tom Allen, titled The Hour now on view at The Approach   Susan Longhenry to lead Sheldon Museum of Art   Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief opened yesterday at Camden Art Centre


Tom Allen, Nepenthe, 2023. Oil on canvas 86 x 48 cm, 33 7/8 x 18 7/8 in. Credit: © the artist; Courtesy the artist and The Approach, London.


LONDON.- There is a long tradition in landscape painting of depicting views at different times of the day, to explore how atmospheric changes alter what we see. In The HoUr, now on view at The Approach, an exhibition of six new flower paintings (all 2023), Tom Allen focuses on a single sixty-minute stretch: the period of transition when the sun gradually begins to fall, day edging into night. When I spoke to Allen, he referred to it as the most “chromatically dramatic” of hours. As the light shifts, new subtleties of tone are continuously revealed, as if by sorcery – no wonder it’s sometimes called the “magic hour”. This is ideal territory for an artist obsessed with colour: Allen’s canvases always teem with countless pigments, from historical specimens like vermillion and lead-tin yellow to ultra-contemporary fluorescent and iridescent shades. The compositions are based on Allen’s photographs of flow ... More
 

Longhenry is a specialist in modern and contemporary art with more than 30 years of leadership experience with art museums nationwide.

LINCOLN, NE.- Susan Longhenry, director and chief curator of the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University, has been named the next director of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Sheldon Museum of Art. The appointment, effective Aug. 15, was announced June 16 by Chancellor Ronnie Green. “Susan Longhenry is an innovative leader of academic-based museums who offers a proven background in community engagement, strategic planning, fundraising and visitor experience,” Green said. “Her ability to collaborate and build relationships across various audiences will certainly help elevate Sheldon’s role on campus, across Nebraska and in the museum community nationwide.” Longhenry was selected through a national search to lead Sheldon, which is home to one of the nation’s premier collections of American art and a national leader in developing multidisciplinary approaches to the visual arts. She replaces W ... More
 

Martin Wong, Tell My Troubles to the Eight Ball (Eureka), 1978—81. Acrylic on canvas.121,9 x 121,9 cm. Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation and P.P.O.W, New York. © Martin Wong Foundation.


LONDON.- Camden Art Centre has now opened Martin Wong – Malicious Mischief - a major survey exhibition of work by celebrated Chinese-American artist Martin Wong (1946–1999, US). Spanning the breadth of his practice including painting, drawing and ceramic sculpture, as well as presenting video footage of him at work in his studio, this will be the first solo exhibition of his work in a UK institution. Martin Wong’s practice draws on and merges various visual languages, including Chinese iconography, portraiture, landscape, urban poetry, graffiti and sign language. Recognised for his depictions of social, sexual, and political scenographies in the United States from 1970s to 1990s, he weaves together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification. Emerging as an important countercultural voice at odds with the art establishment’s reactionary ... More



The University of Melbourne holding major new group exhibition 'nightshifts' at Buxton Contemporary   Christina Quarles: Come In From An Endless Place opening at Hauser & Wirth Menorca   How AI is helping architects change workplace design


Installation view of 'nightshifts', Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne, 2023. Featuring Mike Parr, Bronze Liars series 1996 and Teelah George, Sky Piece, Night (Melbourne) 2021. Michael Buxton Collection, the University of Melbourne Art Collection. Photography by Christian Capurro.

MELBOURNE.- The University of Melbourne has unveiled 'nightshifts', a contemplative new group exhibition considering the importance of solitude through contemporary arts practice. Presented at Buxton Contemporary now on view to 29 October 2023, the large-scale exhibition features more than 30 works drawn from the University of Melbourne’s art collection, alongside two new commissions. Curated by Hannah Presley and Annika Aitken, 'nightshifts' looks to the shadows and ‘after hours’ as metaphors for the work and thinking that happens beneath the surface, away from the public gaze: time alone in the studio, during the quiet of the night and while asleep. Spanning a range of themes, histories and media, the exhibition offers a meditative counterpoint to the recurring emphasis on collaboration and hyper-visibility in contemporary ... More
 

Christina Quarles, It's Been 7 Hours, 2023. Acrylic on paper, 76.2 x 58.4 cm / 30 x 23 inches. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.


MENORCA.- Los Angeles-based artist Christina Quarles has unveiled new paintings and works on paper at Hauser & Wirth Menorca. ‘Come In From An Endless Place,’ her first exhibition in Spain, coincides with a major presentation at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and follows her participation in last year’s celebrated exhibition ‘The Milk Of Dreams’ at the Venice Biennale. Quarles’ critically acclaimed canvases and drawings display fragmented, polymorphous bodies embedded in rich, textural patterns – a singular approach to figuration, unique to the artist’s visual rhetoric and her fascination with the subject of bodily experience. Tangled arms and legs transform across her paintings, while perspectival planes bisect bodies, simultaneously grounding and dislocating them in space. In her initial approach to the canvas, Quarles begins by making marks that evolve into line drawings of human forms and body parts. Sh ... More
 

Uli Blum, standing, and a colleague analyze a visualization of employees’ locations and interactions in their office, at the headquarters of Zaha Hadid Architects in London, on June 5, 2023. Blum said ZHAI, his firm’s unit devoted to using A.I. to rethink work spaces, had a computer tool that, in 27 hours, could come up with 100,000 designs for a building’s interior. (Jeremie Souteyrat/The New York Times)

LONDON.- “I’ve been a workplace designer for the last 24 years,” said architect Arjun Kaicker. “I’ve seen more change in the last 24 months than in the whole of my career.” Kaicker co-runs Zaha Hadid Analytics + Insights, or ZHAI, a five-person team that uses data and artificial intelligence to design workplaces. The team is part of Zaha Hadid Architects, the firm founded by influential architect Zaha Hadid in London in 1979. “The pandemic has really supercharged innovation in the workplace,” Kaicker said in a recent video interview from Atlanta. Before, “the majority of office buildings had a one-size-fits-all desk for everyone, and the same environment around them, the same everything,” he said. Now that they’re back at their desks, “people are requesting more choice, more ... More


Nina Katz and Kirstine Reiner Hansen "Posturing" opening today at Jack Fischer Gallery   Brandywine Museum of Art to present "Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature" first major exhibitioin of his nature-based works   Ebony G. Patterson brings a crowd to the New York Botanical Garden


Nina Katz, “Blue”. Oil on board, 2023, 18 x 24”.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Jack Fischer Gallery is opening Posturing, a painting show by Nina Katz and Kirstine Reiner Hansen on view starting today and continuing through July 29th, 2023, reception for the artists June 17, 3-5 p.m. Nina Katz: “ My paintings for the show span several years of work and include pictures of the famous, infamous, personal connections, and the unknown. Regardless of who is depicted, my work explores the tension between outer affect and inner essence of who these people are and my connection to them. My intent is to let the paint be loose, painterly, or more precise in technique, which in turn is determined by the subject and or the moment. I often seek to subvert the technical and let the strange and engaging emerge in the image with the paint as its vehicle allowing its unique voice to expose itself and be heard. Ensuring its free rein to create compositions with moments of abstraction coupled with ... More
 

Joseph Stella, Purissima, 1927. Oil on canvas, 76 x 57 in. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Harriet and Elliott Goldstein and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2000.206. Photo by James Schoomaker/Courtesy of High Museum of Art.

CHADDS FORD, PA.- The Brandywine Museum of Art is now opening the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the exquisite, nature-based works of pioneering American modernist painter Joseph Stella (1877-1946). On view June 17 through September 24, 2023, Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature will feature more than 80 paintings and works on paper revealing the breadth of the artist’s multi-faceted practice and his complex response to the spiritual qualities he felt in nature. The exhibition was initiated by the Brandywine and co-organized with the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. Stella is best known for the series of dynamic, Futurist-inspired paintings of New York that launched his career—specifically of the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney ... More
 

Hundreds of red gloves cover one side of Ebony G. Patterson’s “…fester…,” a free-standing 10-foot wall on display in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. (Karsten Moran/The New York Times)

by Will Heinrich


NEW YORK, NY.- I have to admit, I didn’t notice them at first. They blend seamlessly as shadows into the bright red petunias and purple coleus on the lawn of the New York Botanical Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. Only when I stooped to read the label for one velvety red blossom — it was a cockscomb, Celosia “Dracula” — did I notice the knee-high, cast-foam black vulture that was sitting watchfully beside it. When I looked up, I realized there were dozens more. The gardens were full of them. They were installed by the Jamaican-born mixed media artist Ebony G. Patterson for her show, “ … things come to thrive … in the shedding … in the molting.” ... More




In The Gallery: The Summer Season with Andrew Graham-Dixon



More News

City of El Paso welcomes new El Paso Museum of Art Director
EL PASO, TX.- The City of El Paso and the Museums and Cultural Affairs Department has announced the appointment of Edward Hayes, Jr., as the new Director of the El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA). “After an extensive nationwide search for the best candidate to lead the El Paso Museum of Art, we are tremendously excited to welcome our new El Paso Museum of Art Director Edward Hayes,” said Deputy City Manager Dionne Mack. “In his new leadership role, he will provide strategic vision, artistic direction, and executive and administrative leadership for the EPMA to build on its rich legacy, collections, and unique strengths—further advancing its excellence and impact in the region and world.” Hayes is a bilingual art museum professional with more than 15 years of experience working as a curator, exhibitions manager, and director of traveling ... More

Marli Matsumoto Arte Contemporânea presents exhibition by Leka Mendes
SÃO PAULO.- 'Ao entrar nas profundezas, pense nas alturas' is the title of Leka Mendes' first solo exhibition at Marli Matsumoto Arte Contemporânea, which opens on Saturday June 17th, curated by Ana Roman. The phrase that gives the exhibition its name is taken from its initial context - Alexander von Humboldt, an important naturalist researcher who lived between the 18th and 19th centuries and is considered the founder of geographic science, is the one who enunciates it. The works by Leka Mendes gathered in the show provoke us to think about the relations of continuity between the sky and the earth, a theme the artist has been thinking about in recent years, and also lead us to fabricate other origin narratives for the planet Earth and the Solar System. Some of the works resemble elements of the celestial landscape, and remind us of the impossibility ... More

New Lyman Allyn exhibition celebrates the work of photographer and author John T. Hill
NEW LONDON, CONN.- The Lyman Allyn Art Museum’s newest exhibition highlights 70 years of photographs by John T. Hill (born 1934), displaying the remarkable scope and empathy of the Connecticut photographer’s artistic vision. Hill, a photographer, graphic designer, and author, co-founded Yale’s Department of Photography and was its first director of Graduate Studies. His show, Random Access, opens Saturday, June 17 and runs through September 10. The exhibition coincides with the publication of Hill’s book Random Access produced by Steidl Verlag, Europe’s leading publisher of art books. For the first time, Hill explores his artistic focus, which he calls “found compositions,” recording spontaneousopportunities that strike a personal chord. Hill, who was executor of the Walker Evans estate for 19 years, produced numerous books and exhibitions on this iconic ... More

The Petronio Residency Center to close after six-year run
ROUND TOP, NY.- On an idyllic spring day, choreographer Stephen Petronio was standing in his favorite spot at the Petronio Residency Center, an elevated wooden structure that he calls the perch. With sweeping views of the Catskills and beyond, the quiet space sits on the lush, hilltop property he has transformed, over the past six years, into a retreat for choreographers and dancers, where artists can come to work — or not work — outside the usual demands of daily life. “Whether you need money or you need an idea, it’s all better when you come here,” he said of the perch. If he sounded a little wistful, that’s because he was preparing to say goodbye. Caught in a web of financial difficulties, Petronio and his board of advisers have decided to close the center and put the 175-acre property up for sale. The final residency takes place this month. ... More

Glenda Jackson, an unnervingly energizing presence at every age
NEW YORK, NY.- She didn’t so much enter the restaurant as erupt into it, a fast-burning blaze of psychic exasperation that seemed to set the silverware rattling. Glenda Jackson was five minutes late for our meeting, and she looked ferociously disgusted with herself, with the universe, with the “bloody” London transit system and, most likely, with the prospect of having to talk about herself. Such was my first in-the-flesh encounter with Jackson, who died Thursday at the age of 87 and who had seared herself into my teenage consciousness decades earlier as an uncompromisingly modern, sui generis movie star. Waiting for her five years ago in the restaurant of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, I had been prepared to be awed, intimidated, even terrified. What I hadn’t anticipated was how unnervingly energizing the presence of this 81 ... More

Review: In 'The Doctor,' a rare case of physician, harm thyself
NEW YORK, NY.- After attempting an abortion at home, a 14-year-old girl lies dying of sepsis at the Elizabeth Institute. No one questions her treatment there; by the time she was admitted, it was too late to save her. But when Ruth Wolff, the Institute’s head doctor, refuses to let a priest perform last rites because it would cause “an unpeaceful death,” ignorance amplified by social media turns a medical decision into a maelstrom. Soon the web is saying Wolff assaulted the priest and killed the girl. Yet it is not simply a question of tweets and misinformation. Wolff is a Jew. So far, the plot of “The Doctor,” Robert Icke’s adaptation of the 1922 play “Professor Bernhardi” by Arthur Schnitzler, aligns closely with the original, except that Bernhardi is a Viennese man in 1900 and Wolff a British woman today. Yet ultimately the two works could not be more ... More

Alexander Gray Associates announces representation of Carrie Moyer
NEW YORK, NY.- Alexander Gray Associates announces representation of Carrie Moyer (b. 1960). Moyer was born in Detroit, MI, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her vibrant paintings and works on paper critically interrogate the formal and conceptual conventions of painting while embracing an approach to abstraction rooted in optical pleasure. Moyer’s playful compositions, layered surfaces, and fluid forms, which freely oscillate between abstraction and representation, speak not only to her commitment to feminist political theory, but also to her deep investment in art history. As she explains, “What is political about my painting is its basis in my own experience. The work engages the history of 20th-century painting from the margins, a position defined by humor, exuberance, and disruption.” Moyer studied modern dance at Bennington ... More

Lamba Forever: Mandrakizay at Hakanto Contemporary, Antananarivo, Madagascar
ANTANANARIVO.- Hakanto Contemporary, Antananarivo, Madagascar, is opening Lamba Forever Mandrakizay, an exhibition celebrating the definitive symbol of Malagasy culture - the Lamba textile - running from June 17 to October 14, 2023. Honouring the traditional garment that embodies Malagasy habits, customs, memories and values, the exhibition explores the Lamba as a point of inspiration for various contemporary artworks, encompassing poetry, photography and painting. Much more than just a traditional garment, the Lamba is both timeless and ubiquitous, crossing the ages and reinventing itself through the desires and inspirations of several generations. The woven cloth has long been a part of Malagasy culture, playing an integral role in social ritual and narratives of commemoration and communication. Crafted mainly from silk, cotton ... More

Eleventh Edition Unseen Photo Fair: 22 - 24 September: Nature
AMSTERDAM.- Unseen Photo Fair, the art fair dedicated to the vanguard of contemporary photography, goes into its second decade with the eleventh edition. Since its first edition, the fair has been internationally heralded for its high curatorial standards and institutional quality. The upcoming edition shows that nature and environment are a source of inspiration and worry for artists from all over the world. The theme is approached from a broad spectrum of subjects and forms. Roderick van der Lee, Director of Unseen: "It's great to see that there is such a clear and urgent subject that has occupied the global range of artists present at Unseen. A perspective on nature is given in a wealth of subjects and forms, which once again shows the versatility of the photographic medium, from cyanotypes to images generated by Artificial Intelligence on the basis of the ... More

Elise Corpataux: Life isn't good it's excellent on view at Kunsthalle Friart
FRIBOURG.- In an expressive rendering of semi-conscious drift, Elise Corpataux’s (*1994, Fribourg) practice has developed around sentimental imagery. With their romantic tropes, her paintings evoke the passing of time, the variation of days, nostalgia. Often in counterpoint, mnesic markers throw up evidence of a psychic life in search of a formula for existence. Life isn’t good it’s excellent, now on view at Kunsthalle Friart, constructs a panorama that is at once personal and destitute. In its deliberate sentimentality, affection is also the locus of humour, just where it hurts most. Corpataux’s painting evokes areas of contact between memory and art and the idea of a life as celebration. Elise Corpataux has developed a painting practice around sentimental imagery. With their romantic tropes, her paintings evoke the passing of time, small daily variations ... More


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Leo Villareal


Flashback
On a day like today, astronomer César-François Cassini de Thury was born
June 17, 1714. César-François Cassini de Thury (17 June 1714 - 4 September 1784), also called Cassini III or Cassini de Thury, was a French astronomer and cartographer. His chief works are: La méridienne de l’Observatoire Royal de Paris (1744), a correction of the Paris meridian; Description géométrique de la terre (1775); and Description géométrique de la France (1784), which was completed by his son ("Cassini IV").

  
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