| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Saturday, November 4, 2023 |
| | A meteoric career, cut short, still burns bright | |
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Escape Plan 76 (Brer Plane in the Brier Patch), 1996, by Michael Richards, a small airplane skinned with tarred paper and wrapped in barbed wire, on display in his retrospective Are You Down? at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York, Oct. 25, 2023. Richards, who died on 9/11, expanded the political possibilities of art his sculptures embodied suffering and hope in a way that now seems prescient. (Vincent Tullo/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- A heavy irony hangs over Michael Richards work: The artist known for images of pilots, airplanes, wings and targets died, age 38, in the Sept. 11 attacks. He had spent the night in his studio on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Centers north tower. In Are You Down?, his first major museum survey, on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through Jan. 7, the circumstances of his death are hard to forget even seemingly foreshadowed. The tragedy flashes to mind with a charcoal drawing that depicts a plummeting airliner; or in a sculpture of a cloud of fighter planes made of black hair flying toward the ground like rain. But its likely that, had he lived, we would still be discussing Richards sculpture. In his handful of active years, he was beloved by curators and peers, and found consistent institutional support. He was already expanding the political possibilities of art, alongside contemporaries like Nari Ward and Kerry James Marshall. Dread Sc ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installation view of 'Point and Line to Plane', created by artist Desmond Lazaro, within the 'Kandinsky' exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Mim Stirling
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| War hasn't stopped the Kyiv Biennial. It's multiplied it. | | With 'Lovers Grave,' Tracey Emin returns, at full emotional volume | | Who killed the innkeeper with a sword in 1315? | 
The contemporary art show has spread beyond Ukraines borders and is now an eight-city European festival about war, democracy and solidarity.
by Jason Farago
VIENNA.- Containment is a strategy that works only so long; the war will not stay put, the war will come to you. The Kyiv Biennial, a key fixture of contemporary art in Eastern Europe over the past decade, has opened its fifth edition on time and at full scale, but not (or not principally) at home. It has taken flight, spread beyond Ukraines borders. It has multiplied itself into a major European festival on war, democracy and the waning promise of solidarity. It has a scholars ambition but a slackers style; it spans a continent even as it anchors itself in Kyiv, Ukraines capital. Its the most energizing exhibition of the year. I say as much even though I saw only a fraction of it the part taking place in Vienna, where independent art spaces across the city have turned over their galleries to their Ukrainian colleagues and friends. (A large swath of contemporary Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and still today Vienna is the only city in so-ca ... More | | 
Tracey Emin with a painting in progress at her studio in Margate, England, Sept. 28, 2023. (Charlie Gates/The New York Times)
by Nancy Hass
LONDON.- Tracey Emin carried around a giant tote decades before enormous handbags were fashionable. Back then, in the 1990s, when she was emerging as a gale-like force in a loosely affiliated group that came to be known as the Young British Artists, people often asked her journalists, fans on London streets What do you keep in there? She says the real answer was usually a sketch pad, her daily ration of three packs of Marlboro Lights, six Stella Artois beers and a fifth of brandy, but it was easier to say she needed a bag big enough to haul all her insecurities. Ironic now, thinking about that, right? she says, in her soft, working-class-accent, on a chilly afternoon, as she tries to find a comfortable position on a sofa in her recently renovated town house on Fitzroy Square, a genteel, central-London pocket that was once home to both Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw. She reaches into the large canvas carryall at her feet to pull out a plastic ... More | | 
The reconstructed Temple Bar Gate, a London landmark, and an entrance to St. Pauls Cathedral beyond, in London on Feb. 8, 2018. (Andrew Testa/The New York Times).
by Isabella Kwai
NEW YORK, NY.- A spice merchant stabbed by a fruit seller over a long-standing feud. A street musician murdered for playing music too loudly after dusk. A deadly quarrel among servants of the queen of England. And who killed the innkeeper with a sword after a fight? These homicide cases, discovered by historians in centuries-old records, may be long closed. But fans of true crime and history can now peruse them in an interactive medieval murder map released in September by University of Cambridge researchers. Users can click through the backstories of more than 300 murders in the English cities of London, York and Oxford. Entries are searchable by gender, day of the week and even weapon (pole-axe or crossbow?). It allows people to engage with this medieval world, but it also allows people to see this medieval world almost like a mirror of our own world, said Manuel Eisner, a criminology professor ... More |
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| The Frick Collection moves into the public phase of its Capital Campaign | | Juanita McNeely, intense artist of the female experience, dies at 87 | | Planned museum to honor Pulse nightclub victims canceled | 
The Frick Collection from 70th Street; courtesy of Selldorf Architects.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Frick Collection announced today the launch of the public phase of its capital campaign, which has already raised $242 million during its quiet phase in support of the ongoing renovation and enhancement of the institutions historic buildings. Designed by Selldorf Architects in collaboration with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, the project is the first comprehensive upgrade of the Fricks facilities in nearly ninety years and will allow the public to experience more of the original Frick family residence. With a public opening anticipated for late 2024, the renovated museum and library will include newly created spaces for exhibitions, education, and conservation, new public amenities, increased accessibility, and upgraded systems and infrastructure, ensuring the ongoing vitality of the Frick for decades to come. With an overall goal of $290 million, the Campaign for the Frick supports the Fricks renovati ... More | | 
Installation view of Juanita McNeely: Moving Through at James Fuentes, Los Angeles, 2023.
by Will Heinrich
NEW YORK, NY.- Juanita McNeely, an uncompromising painter who used the language of expressionism to immortalize the sweetest and most brutal moments of her own female experience, died on Oct. 18 in Manhattan. She was 87. Her death, at Lenox Hill Hospital, was confirmed by her husband and only immediate survivor, Jeremy Lebensohn. McNeelys work was often intense. But the most searing single piece might have been her record of the fragmentary details emotional as well as physical of an abortion she underwent in the 1960s. She had been admitted to a hospital for treatment of a tumor when doctors discovered she was pregnant. Because the pregnancy threatened her life, but with abortion illegal at the time, the doctors prevaricated, argued, even proposed saving the fetus and letting her die. She eventually did receive the procedure ... More | | 
A rendering provided by Coldefy & Associés with RDAI/onePULSE Foundation of the winning design for a museum dedicated to the Pulse nightclub mass shooting. (Coldefy & Associés with RDAI/onePULSE Foundation via The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- The nonprofit onePulse Foundation has ended its plans to construct a museum in Orlando to honor the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting. Representatives from the foundation met last week with Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and told him that the projected cost of the museum had risen too high, making it unfeasible to build. In deciding to terminate the multimillion-dollar project, the foundation agreed to give property it had purchased for the museum site to the county. The foundation had hoped to build the museum at a site only a short distance from the former club, which is being converted into a permanent memorial. The combined project was estimated to cost $45 million. The city of Orlando has said it will continue to work to create a memorial at the Pulse site. Unfortunately the COVID- ... More |
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| A rare 500-year-old manuscript gets a second life online | | New book examines the art and architecture of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State | | MCA Chicago announces gift of 79 objects from Marilyn and Larry Fields | 
Disguised Mexica merchants in Tzinacantlan acquiring quetzal feathers in Book 9 of the Florentine Codex, 1577, Alonso Vegerano. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, and by permission of MiBACT.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- After seven years and the efforts of dozens of specialists from around the world, the Florentine Codex, the most important manuscript surviving from early colonial Mexico and rich in pre-colonial Indigenous knowledge, is now available to explore online with new translations and features. The Florentine Codex (so named because it resides at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy) is a 16th-century manuscript that details, in both the Spanish and Nahuatl languages, the culture and history of the Mexica (Aztec) people, including the invasion of Mexico City by the Spaniards and their Indigenous allies. The Digital Florentine Codex reveals the manuscripts contents by providing access to new and previously published Nahuatl and Spanish language transcriptions, English and Spanish translations, as well as easily searchable texts and ... More | | 
America's Collection: The Art and Architecture of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State.
NEW YORK, NY.- The first volume in more than 20 years tells a new and modern story of the U.S. State Departments Diplomatic Reception Rooms, one of the top collections of American fine and decorative arts in existence. The art of United States diplomacy has been conducted over more than two centuries with figures from all over the world, in peacetime and in conflict. For the last six decades, these negotiations have taken place in the rarified environment of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State. Tucked inside the modern Truman Building in the center of Washington, D.C., lies this special suite of rooms transformed by four renowned architectsgems of classical architecture brimming with exceptional American art and artifacts that tell the story of the nations founding and represent the singular ideals of the American character. Housing one of the finest collections in the world, along with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Winterthur, these rooms display mor ... More | | 
Installation view, Nick Cave: Forothermore, MCA Chicago. May 14 October 2, 2022. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago. Soundsuit (foreground) is a part of the Marilyn and Larry Fields Gift to the MCA.
CHICAGO, IL.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago announced a gift of 79 objects from Chicago-based art collectors Marilyn and Larry Fields. The gift, which was selected by the Fields in tandem with the MCAs curatorial staff, marks another step in the museums mission to create a permanent collection that holistically represents contemporary art history by building its holdings of women-identifying and BIPOC artists. The donation includes paintings, photography, new media, and sculptures by major local, national, and international artists. Marilyn and Larry Fields, long-time supporters of the MCA, have always valued the power that contemporary art has in fostering new ideas and inspiring change, Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn said. This generous gift will help the MCA move the permanent collection forward by adding emerging voices and new artists to the collection, expanding our ability to highlight under ... More |
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| David Zwirner exhibits new large-scale paintings and sculptures by Dana Schutz | | Treasure trove of Jerry Garcia's personal items lead Heritage's Nov. 18-20 Music Memorabilia event | | Explore the transcendent power of abstraction this summer with Kandinsky at the Art Gallery of New South Wales | 
Painted wet-on-wet, Schutzs tragicomic situations are populated by characters preoccupied with self-preservation as they tilt towards oblivion.
NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner is presenting new large-scale paintings and sculptures by Dana Schutz at 525 and 533 West 19th Street in New York. This is Schutzs first solo exhibition with the gallery and coincides with a major survey of the artists work, on view from October 2023 to February 2024, at the Musée dArt Moderne de Paris, where it traveled from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. Among the artists most ambitious in scale and complexity to date, the viscerally evocative paintings and sculptures in Jupiters Lottery depict allegorical scenes in which often grotesque characters negotiate their subjecthood. Painted wet-on-wet, Schutzs tragicomic situations are populated by characters preoccupied with self-preservation as they tilt towards oblivion. With mask-like featuresall jaws and nosesthey emerge, in groups and pairs, out of the painterly atmosphere. The ... More | | 
Jerry Garcia Personally Owned Leather Recliner First Purchased By Mountain Girl.
DALLAS, TX.- The most recognizable figure in one of the world's most beloved bands has a name that sums up decades of American optimism: Jerry Garcia. Countless Grateful Dead fans mourned his death in 1995 at the age of 53 in a way that felt like the end of far more than an era. Because for more than three decades the Dead, with Garcia at the helm, served as the musical embodiment of an entire state of mind one that spoke to generations of seekers who never lost sight of things that matter: tolerance, community, trust, resilience, the unifying power of art and the expansive possibilities of the mind. After a diabetes-related health crisis in 1986 that nearly killed him, Garcia rebounded and enjoyed another nine years on this earthly plane, as a visual artist and as the Dead's most shamanistic founder and two people were instrumental, so to speak, in keeping him healthy, happy and productive in his later years. Vince and Gloria DiBiasi were the longtime ... More | | 
Vasily Kandinsky, Circles on black 1921, oil on canvas, 136.5 x 119.7 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, photo courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
NEW YORK.- Welcome to Kandinsky, a major exhibition celebrating the extraordinary art of Vasily Kandinsky, organised by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. As one of the most adored artists of the 20th century, Kandinskys revolutionary approach to visual expression involving a profound exploration of the interplay between colour, form and the human spirit has captivated generations. Our deep appreciation goes to Richard Armstrong, the former director of the Guggenheim Museum, for allowing so many treasures from their collection to come to Sydney, and to deputy director and chief curator Naomi Beckwith for her continuing support. Our great thanks also go to Megan Fontanella, the Guggenheim Museum curator of modern art and provenance, for her ... More |
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 The Neon Museum reilluminates restored Palms Casino Resort signLAS VEGAS,NV.- Following months of restoration, The Neon Museum reilluminated the iconic Palms Casino Resort sign, which first debuted in November 2001. Made possible by a grant from The San Manuel Gaming and Hospitality Authority, this marks the 24th sign re-illuminated and restored within the Museums Neon Boneyard. Its our extreme pleasure to partner with The Neon Museum for this monumental restoration, said Palms General Manager Cynthia Kiser Murphey. We love to embrace the history and nostalgia of our great city, Las Vegas. The fact that the Palms sign will be on display for thousands upon thousands of guests to enjoy is a proud moment of team members, and our leadership. The Neon Museum is always on my list of must-see attractions in Las Vegas and now even more so! As part of the grant from San Manuel, The ... More  'I Need That' review: It's always messy in New JerseyNEW YORK, NY.- Even before the lights dim at the start of I Need That, the new Theresa Rebeck play at the American Airlines Theater, the show curtain and whats in front of it offer plenty of exposition. The curtain is painted to depict the street grid of a neat New Jersey town, with neat houses on neat lots. But, uh-oh, creeping out from beneath it, on the floor of the stage, are boxes and bins overflowing with junk: ancient copies of Popular Science, bruised holiday decorations, stacks of old clothes, a sad single sneaker. So we know before the curtain rises on what one character describes as a hellhole of a home that well be dealing with hoarding and the orderly world that is horrified by it. Making the point even sharper is the entrance of the star, Danny DeVito, as Sam, the impish, 80-ish widower who lives there. Well, its not so much ... More  Searching for Brian Friel, and his mythical BallybegGLENTIES.- Up a steep and grassy windblown hill, in the top row of whats known as the new graveyard, playwright Brian Friel lies buried under a dark, glossy slab etched with an image of a St. Brigids cross, a traditional Irish symbol woven from rushes. This little cemetery in a remote northwest corner of Ireland has a sweeping view of valley, hills and tiny town: Glenties, County Donegal, which in a way is a curious choice for Friels final resting place. It isnt where he was born, in 1929; that was Omagh, across the nearby border with Northern Ireland. It isnt where he died, in 2015; that was Greencastle, quite a bit farther north in County Donegal, on the sea. But it is, arguably, a place he spent a lot of time in his head. Glenties (population 927 in 2022) is his mothers hometown, where he would go during childhood summers. Not a son of the town but ... More  Are higher rates slowing the economy? A zoo offers clues.NEW YORK, NY.- Leesburg Animal Park in northern Virginia has seen strong business at its Pumpkin Village festival this fall. Even with rainy weekends and a jump in admission prices, families have been coming out to visit the petting zoo, ride on giant slides and zigzag through a hay-bale maze. Shirley Johnson, the parks owner, had been nervous that demand might recede. Headlines were warning all year about impending recession as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to cool growth and contain inflation. That downturn hasnt happened, but the uncertainty and higher borrowing costs have influenced her investment plans. You cant stick your neck out quite as far as you could, she said. The park has held off on an expansion of its gibbon pen, a big project that would have given the playful primates more space but would have also ... More  Fotografiska, New York opens 'Frank Ockenfels 3: Introspection'NEW YORK, NY.- Frank Ockenfels 3 often seeks out that which deviates from the norm, from the expected or the obvious. He approaches his subjects with playfulness and spontaneity and uses what is available in the moment. It might be a ray of light, a movement, or playful use of the flash. By applying several different techniques such as photography, painting, and collage and experimenting with light, optics, and different kinds of cameras, Ockenfels is always trying to stretch the limits of what a photograph or artwork can be. Introspection surveys the artists career across different sections, each one tied to the next through displays of Ockenfelss Journals, which he made to document his various projects. What initially began as quickly scribbled notes on a polaroid picture to remember lighting set-ups and plans for the next day ... More  One of the largest private collections of Judith Leiber handbags heads to HeritageDALLAS, TX.- Susan and Ron Morrow lived life side by side. Whether they were spending time with friends and family in one of their homes in Montecito, California, or Spring Island, South Carolina, or traveling the world for work or fun, the adventure-loving couple were always together. And that never changed, even after Susan was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Ron remained right next to her throughout her two-year battle. Determined to help Susan beat the odds, the Morrows sought care at Vanderbilt University, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Mayo Clinic. "Almost immediately Susan began to document every step of the process, all of her tests and treatments, all of her emotions from hope to despair," Ron says of his wife, who passed away last September at the age of 75. "She sent a ton of emails to her friends and family so they ... More  A Cannes winner asks: What if the powerful woman isn't punished?NEW YORK, NY.- Justine Triet, the writer and director behind this years Palme dOr winner, Anatomy of a Fall, makes movies about the misadventures of working girls and the double standards faced by mothers who have the audacity to be, well, unmotherly. Triet has directed rom-coms, relationship dramas and now, a courtroom whodunit: all magnify the fears and anxieties of women who work and play hard. Movies about victims are off the table. Ive watched hundreds and hundreds of films in which women are violated, killed, chopped up films that say look at this poor, suffering woman, Triet said recently over a drink in Manhattan. Why should I make another one? Instead, Anatomy of a Fall, the fourth feature by the 45-year-old French filmmaker, places a powerful woman on trial and asks: How does a reversal of gender roles transform ... More  Kirsty MacColl's voice was singular. A new box aims to bring it wider.NEW YORK, NY.- During a fitful 20-year solo career, singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl released just five full-length albums, achieving a modicum of success in her native England, and little notice in America. Yet MacColl who died at 41 in 2000 is omnipresent each holiday season: Its her voice offering tart rejoinders to Shane MacGowan in the Pogues cockeyed Christmas anthem Fairytale of New York. But the woman with the soaring alto, whom Bono once called the Noelle Coward of her generation, was far more than her best-known work. Last week, Universal released See That Girl: 1979-2000, an eight-disc boxed set with 161 tracks that follows MacColls musical journey which included ... More  Islamic art exhibition postponed in Pittsburgh amid Israel-Hamas warNEW YORK, NY.- The Frick Pittsburgh postponed an exhibition featuring 10 centuries of Islamic art that was supposed to open Saturday, citing the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war and the fear that the show could become a source of unintended insensitivity or offense. The decision to postpone the show, which was to include scientific instruments, fine glassware, paintings and metalwork from across the Middle East, was denounced by some Muslim and Jewish groups, who said that the museums action seemed to suggest or imply a false connection between masterpieces of Islamic art and terrorism. The postponement was reported earlier by The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which noted that the museum initially said on its website only that the delay had been due to a scheduling conflict. The museums executive director, Elizabeth ... More  Otto Klemperer's conducting still stuns, 50 years after his deathNEW YORK, NY.- There is a touching documentary about Otto Klemperer, that steadfast titan of conducting who died 50 years ago, by filmmaker Philo Bregstein. Watch it for long enough, and a rather surprising face appears surprising, at least, if you think of Klemperer as he is so often imagined, as only the last in a venerable line of German musicians, and not as the architect of something new. The talking head is Pierre Boulez, the leading modernist of his era. Klemperer, he suggests, was a different kind of conductor, neither interested in sentimentality in music, as his contemporary Bruno Walter had been, nor in rhetoric and pathos, like his rival Wilhelm Furtwängler. Klemperer, Boulez said, seemed much more interested in the signification of the form of music. For Boulez, there was no higher compliment to give. Fascinatingly, ... More  Director of Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas to retire in 2024NEW YORK, NY.- Jeremy Strick, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, will retire in June 2024 after 15 years in the role, the center announced Thursday. Ive had a nearly 40-year career in art museums, said Strick, 68, who has led the nonprofit organization since 2009. And Ive always kept an informal list of ideas and projects I wanted to pursue independently. And I thought that now would be a good moment when I still have the time and, really, the energy to pursue them. I love working with artists, and I want to build on some of the relationships and ideas Ive developed over the years. Over his years at the institution, Strick has diversified its collection, focusing on acquiring work by female artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Judy Chicago and Ana Mendieta; artists of color including Xxavier Edward Carter and Simone ... More |
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Gabriele Münter 
TARWUK 
Awol Erizku 
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, Italian painter Guido Reni was born November 04, 1575. Guido Reni (4 November 1575 - 18 August 1642) was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style. He painted primarily religious works, as well as mythological and allegorical subjects. Active in Rome, Naples, and his native Bologna, he became the dominant figure in the Bolognese School, and his eclectic classicism was widely influential.
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