| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Sunday, December 26, 2021 |
| | Last known slave ship is remarkably well preserved, researchers say | |
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In an image provided by the Alabama Historical Commission, a sonar image of the remains of the Clotilda, the last known U.S. ship involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which lies submerged near Mobile, Ala. Researchers say the wreck is remarkably well-preserved, with as much as two-thirds of the original structure remaining. SEARCH Inc./Alabama Historical Commission via The New York Times.
by Michael Levenson
NEW YORK, NY.- In 2019, a team of researchers confirmed that a wooden wreck resting off the muddy banks of the Mobile River in Alabama was the Clotilda, the last known ship to bring enslaved people from Africa to the United States. Now, the researchers say they have made another startling discovery: The wreck is remarkably well preserved. As much as two-thirds of the original structure remains, including the hold below the main deck where 110 people were imprisoned during the ships final, brutal journey from Benin to Mobile in 1860. The researchers said it was possible that DNA could be extracted from the sealed, oxygen-free hull, which is filled with silt. Barrels, casks and bags used to stow provisions for the captives could also be found inside, they said. Its a time capsule that is cracked open and it survives, said James Delgado, an archaeologist who has been helping to study the site on behalf of the Alabama Historical Commission. Delgado said researchers planned to remo ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day The exhibition Tremblings presents a selection of contemporary works acquired by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco over the last ten years. From the installation Alien by the South African artist Candice Breitz, which entered the collections in 2010, to the film The White Album by the American Arthur Jafa, acquired in 2021, the exhibition curated by Célia Bernasconi brings together seventeen artists of twelve different nationalities, offering an equal number of visions of our globalised and fractured societies. Photo : NMNM/Andrea Rossetti, 2021.
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| Group raises $20 million to preserve 'lost' Brontë library | | A painting of George Floyd roils Catholic university | | Rodin bronze from family plot is heading to auction | 
Thomas Bewicks A History of British Birds, part of a recently surfaced private library of rare books and manuscripts that had been set for auction at Sothebys. Sothebys via The New York Times.
by Jennifer Schuessler
NEW YORK, NY.- A consortium of British libraries and museums has announced that it successfully raised more than $20 million to buy a lost library containing rare manuscripts by Robert Burns, Walter Scott and the Brontës, heading off an auction and preserving the collection intact. The collection, known as the Honresfield Library, was assembled in the 19th century by two British industrialists but had gone all but unseen since the 1930s. The announcement in May that it had resurfaced and would be auctioned by Sothebys drew excited reactions from scholars, as well as fears that the collection could be scattered into inaccessible private collections. A collection of literary treasures of this importance comes around only once in a generation, Richard Ovenden, head of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford, said in a news release this month announcing the deal. The arrangement, he said, will ensure it is available ... More | | 
Kelly Latimores Mama, painted following the death of George Floyd. At the Catholic University of America in Washington, conservative students called for a campus ban on further displays of an artwork that depicts Floyd as Jesus. Kelly Latimore via The New York Times.
by Sarah Bahr
NEW YORK, NY.- In the summer of 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd, Kelly Latimore, a white artist who grew up surrounded by images of a white Jesus, decided to make a course correction. Hed paint the Virgin Mary and Jesus with gold halos encircling their heads and both would be Black. Also, his image of Jesus would resemble Floyd, a Black man who had been killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis. The painting, titled Mama, attracted little notice in February after a copy was installed at the law school of the Catholic University of America in Washington. But in November, The Daily Signal, a conservative website, published an article about the work and about the universitys recently published report on diversity and inclusion, and students created a petition calling for its removal. ... More | | 
The statue is now headed for sale at Freemans auction house.
by Eve M. Kahn
NEW YORK, NY.- Auguste Rodins powerful bronze statue of a dying girl cradled by her mother, which spent nearly a century atop a pedestal in a cemetery in Middleburg, Virginia, is now headed for sale at Freemans auction house in Philadelphia on Feb. 22. Descendants of the grieving mother depicted by Rodin Elizabeth Musgrave Croswell Merrill, a philanthropist and arts patron have removed the sculpture, saying they needed to protect it from theft. Although in some cemeteries families are permitted to remove their own ancestors markers, scholars describe the Rodin move as rare in American graveyard history. And, they point out, many important sculptures removed from cemeteries have gone to public spaces, not private sale. Virginia Jenkins, a Merrill descendant, said in a brief phone interview that the sculpture was becoming widely recognized and that it was vulnerable to theft. (Its fans over the years have included Jane Fonda, who blogged about it in 2013.) The family has ... More |
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| Getty Museum celebrates its newest acquisitions | | Whitney Museum transfers the Warhol Film Archive to the Museum of Modern Art | | The Met pairs works from its collections from West and Central Africa alongside art from ancient Egypt | 
Summer Azure, 2020, Tourmaline. Dye sublimation print, 74.9 x 76.2 cm. Getty Museum. © Tourmaline.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Recent Acquisitions 2021: Collecting for the Museum, an exhibition on view at the Getty Center, spotlights 20 works from the hundreds of acquisitions the Getty Museum has made over the past 18 months. The works enrich the six collecting areas of the Museum: antiquities, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, sculpture & decorative arts, and photographs. Highlights of the exhibition include a recently rediscovered painting of Lucretia (about 1627) by Artemisia Gentileschi; Portrait of Madame Charles Mitoire with Her Children (1783), an unconventional pastel representing a woman nursing her child by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard; a bifolium (double-page) from a 13th-century luxury copy of the Quran (known as the Pink Quran after the hue of the paper); and a dreamlike self-portrait photograph called Summer Azure (2020) by activist, filmmaker, and writer Tourmaline. Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. P ... More | | 
Empire, 1964 (detail). Andy Warhol. USA. 16mm, b&w, © 2021 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, a museum of the Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art announced the transfer of the Warhol Film Archive from the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Warhol Film Archive, established by the Whitney Museum of American Art, will be added to the MoMA Archives to serve as an ongoing resource for scholars. Established by the Whitney as the record of many years of research into the films created by Andy Warhol (American, 19281987), the Warhol Film Archive is a collection of books, files, and media assembled in the course of producing The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné. Volume 1 of the catalogue raisonné was published by the Whitney in 2006, and the transfer of the Warhol Film Archive to MoMA coincides with the Whitneys publication of Volume 2 on October 26, 2021. MoMA will continue this important work and research of the Catalogue Raisonné. In the 1980s, MoMA and the Whitney collaborated ... More | | 
The Kings Acquaintances Memi and Sabu, ca. 2575-2465 B.C. Egyptian (48.111).
NEW YORK, NY.- Today, scholars universally recognize Africa as the source of our common ancestry. But in 1974, Senegalese scholar and humanist Cheikh Anta Diop (19231986) shocked and challenged historians with his groundbreaking book, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. In that now-classic text, he asserted that ancient Egyptwhose civilization was a source for the subsequent development of cultural traditions in the rest of the African continent and the Western worldbelongs to Africa. In recognition of Diops visionary call to acknowledge Africas foundational role in major cultural developments, The Metropolitan Museum of Arts exhibition The African Origin of Civilization, presents, for the first time in the Museums history, iconic works from its collections from West and Central Africa alongside art from ancient Egypt. Additionally, important creations by master sculptors from sub-Saharan ... More |
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| Nouveau Musée National de Monaco opens an exhibition of recent acquisitions | | MoMA promotes Esther Adler to Curator of Drawings and Prints | | Fotomuseum Winterthur presents 'Claudia Andujar The Yanomami Struggle' | 
Nan Goldin, Colette in Sophie Loren Drag, 1973. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 20 cm, 48 x 37 x 4 cm framed. Collection NMNM, n°2018.26.1. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: NMNM / François Fernandez.
MONACO.- The exhibition Tremblings presents a selection of contemporary works acquired by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco over the last ten years. From the installation Alien by the South African artist Candice Breitz, which entered the collections in 2010, to the film The White Album by the American Arthur Jafa, acquired in 2021, the exhibition curated by Célia Bernasconi brings together seventeen artists of twelve different nationalities, offering an equal number of visions of our globalised and fractured societies. What all the artists have in common is a response to the definition of trembling thinking which, in the words of the poet Ãdouard Glissant, unites us in absolute diversity, in a whirlwind of encounters. Seismographs of the contemporary world, the artists Yinka Shonibare CBE ... More | | 
Esther Adler.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art announces the promotion of Esther Adler to Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints. Her responsibilities will include developing special exhibitions and publications, helping to shape the Museums acquisitions program, and collaborating with colleagues to realize new rotations across the collection galleries. Adler joined MoMA in 2005, and has worked as a Research Assistant, Curatorial Assistant, Assistant Curator, and Associate Curator. "In the last fifteen years, Esther has developed truly groundbreaking projects at MoMA, ranging from critically-acclaimed exhibitions dedicated to pivotal figures such as Dorothea Rockburne and Charles White, to key acquisitions of works on paper from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries," said Christophe Cherix, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints. "I am thrilled to see her step into this leadership role and look forward ... More | | 
Claudia Andujar, Funeral urn, Catrimani, Roraima State, Brazil, 1976 © Claudia Andujar.
WINTERTHUR.- For five decades, photographer Claudia Andujar (b. 1931) has dedicated her life and work to the indigenous Yanomami communities in the Amazon region of Northern Brazil. In the late 1970s, when the community found itself subjected to severe external threats, the Swiss-born photographer, who is based in São Paulo, began fighting for the Yanomamis rights. Her fourteen-year battle alongside Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa and other concerned parties led to an official demarcation of the communitys land in 1992. Today, Andujars activist efforts are as relevant as ever as is illustrated by current events, such as the ongoing deforestation and environmental destruction caused by mining and ranching, human rights violations in the region or the spread of malaria and COVID-19. The exhibition Claudia Andujar The Yanomami Struggle, which brings together photographs, audiovisual ... More |
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| Six new exhibitions open at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art | | Wanda Young, Motown hitmaker with The Marvelettes, dies at 78 | | On Broadway, newly vital understudies step into the spotlight | 
Aharon Avni, Soldier with a Sten Gun, 1948.
HERZLIYA.- Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art presents a group of exhibitions that raise questions about the construction of diverse narratives of Israeli art in material and conceptual and geographical contexts. including the relationship between the periphery and the center. The exhibitions offer a re-acquaintance with fascinating and forgotten artists, who have been marginalized in the historical narrative of local art and were excluded from the local cultural hegemony, alongside exhibitions of ceramics and textiles handcrafted in traditional and contemporary techniques by artists of different generations. The starting point of the current exhibitions is a self-exploration of the Herzliya Museum: its collection, past exhibitions, and building. The museum building is at the center of an architecture exhibition that examines the buildings of art venues. The exhibition provides a close encounter with the subtlety ... More | | 
She was the lead voice on Dont Mess With Bill and other songs written by Smokey Robinson, who said she had this little voice that was sexy to me.
by Richard Sandomir
NEW YORK, NY.- Wanda Young, one of the lead singers of The Marvelettes, a girl group whose 1961 song Please Mr. Postman, recorded when they were teenagers, was Motowns first No. 1 hit, died Dec. 15 in Garden City, Michigan. She was 78. Her daughter Meta Ventress said the cause was complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The Marvelettes began recording in 1961, two years after Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records. They signed the same year as The Supremes and a year before Martha and the Vandellas, all-female groups who eventually overshadowed them at Motown. Young (who was also known as Wanda Rogers) and Gladys Horton shared lead singer duties. Dont Mess With Bill, which rose to No. 7 ... More | | 
Sid Solomon, an understudy with The Play That Goes Wrong, on Broadway in New York, Dec. 22, 2021. George Etheredge/The New York Times.
by Alexis Soloski
NEW YORK, NY.- One evening in November, just a few hours before showtime, stage management told LaQuet Sharnell Pringle to prepare. A practiced swing, Pringle covers the female parts in the ensemble of the new Broadway musical Mrs. Doubtfire. She also understudies the role of Wanda, the social worker usually played by Charity Angél Dawson. The musical was still in previews. Pringle had never really rehearsed as Wanda. But she had studied the script, mastered the choreography and watched dozens of performances. So when Dawson called out (for a reason unrelated to COVID-19), Pringle went on. Its the job, she later explained. Its the gig to be able to be thrown on in a moments notice and to be able to deliver. ... More |
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Top 5 McNay Moments of 2021
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| More News |
 What is 'West Side Story' without Jerome Robbins? Chatty.NEW YORK, NY.- Its been days since I watched the Steven Spielberg reboot of West Side Story, and I still cant get a scene out of my head: the fateful meeting of Tony and Maria at the gym. In the 1961 film, the pair lock eyes and move closer and closer as bodies spin around them, and the background, a rich red, envelops them. When they stop, theyre face to face, swaying softly. Suddenly, their arms lift to either side and they begin to dance. In the new movie, they spot each other in the gym and meet behind the bleachers. Tony (Ansel Elgort), staring hard at Maria (Rachel Zegler), casually drapes an arm on the metal structure. But before he can speak, Maria stretches her arms out and gives a little snap. This dance Justin Pecks reframing of the original choreography by Jerome Robbins may not be as luminous, but it is a surprise: a slice ... More  The FLAG Art Foundation presents 'Cinga Samson: Iyabanda Intsimbi / The Metal is Cold'NEW YORK, NY.- The FLAG Art Foundation is presenting a solo exhibition of new work by Cinga Samson, on view from October 16, 2021 - January 15, 2022, on its 9th floor. Produced over the past year, Iyabanda Intsimbi / The metal is cold comprises over twenty oil paintings - a cycle of portraits and group scenes which the artist states: "explore the nature of violence: its laws, its flair and its finality. Favoring subtle menaces over obvious instances of brutality, Samson commands an elegant language which acknowledges the allure of a decaying picked flower or the flesh of a butchered animal. Retaining some key elements of his practice - stern figures, lush settings and sombre moods - Iyabanda Intsimbi insinuates those daily threats that pass by almost unnoticed but impact so much in our lives. The expanded text below by Johannesburg-based writer, ... More  Gordon Gallery opens a new space in JerusalemJERUSALEM.- On December 22, Gordon Gallery's new Jerusalem venue opened its doors. It is an unusual step and the first time that a Tel Aviv-based gallery - one of the oldest and most successful-opens an additional venue in Israel. Amon Yariv, the gallery's owner, has entertained the idea of opening an additional Jerusalem art space for many years, ever since he was a student in the Department of Photography at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in the city. Jerusalem is not without an artistic scenefrom the Israel Museum, through Bezalel and the Hebrew University, to independent artistic initiatives such as Barbur Gallery, Agripas 12, and HaMiffal, but it lacks a commercial gallery featuring the country's leading artists. The new Gordon Gallery enters this lacuna, appealing to Jerusalem art lovers, foreign residents, and visitors, who come to the city ... More  Karim Ben Khelifa's latest immersive experience to premiere at Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier ProgramNEW YORK, NY.- American Documentary announced today that Seven Grams, the final project produced by POV Spark, will premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival as part of the events virtual reality showcase, New Frontier. POV Spark, the interactive arm of the iconic series "POV" on PBS, operated from 2018 to 2021; Seven Grams is the third consecutive POV Spark project to premiere at Sundance. Seven Grams is the latest project from photojournalist, war correspondent and director Karim Ben Khelifa, following his award-winning 2017 virtual reality project, The Enemy, a groundbreaking exhibition that sought to humanize the images of war by allowing participants to encounter combatants on opposite sides of conflicts ... More  Liberty Adrien and Carina Bukuts appointed curators for PortikusFRANKFURT.- The Städelschule welcomed Liberty Adrien and Carina Bukuts as new curatorial duo for Portikus. They will start their position on February 1, 2022, succeeding curator Christina Lehnert. Liberty Adrien and Carina Bukutss curatorial approach is based on concepts of collectivity and collaboration. Having both founded city-based projects, they aim to create bridges and networks between the global and the local. Their program will emphasize artistic practices that rethink the notion of exhibition making as well as seek regional and international collaborations. Liberty Adrien and Carina Bukuts are interested in amplifying Portikus as a platform not only for exhibitions but also for publishing and different forms of gatherings. Liberty Adrien is a curator, art historian and critic. She founded the independent art space Ãme Nue in Hamburg, ... More  Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery to reopen in April 2022BIRMINGHAM.- Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG) will partially reopen on Thursday 28 April 2022. After being closed - firstly by the pandemic and then by essential electrical works - BMAG will open seven days a week, from 10am 5pm. To mark the reopening, BMAG is being handed over to some of Birminghams most exciting creatives. Animating the Round Room and Industrial Gallery, while the rest of BMAG remains closed for essential work, are Birmingham Music Archive, Fierce, Flatpack Projects, Kalaboration Arts and working in collaboration with Birmingham Museums - Dont Settle in partnership with Beatfreeks. Having been invited to respond to the theme of This Is Birmingham visitors can expect an exquisite collision of new exhibitions and live events as well as space to join in and contribute. The Edwardian Tearooms will also be an exciting ... More  The breakout stars of 2021NEW YORK, NY.- The cultural world began to sputter back to life this year, and in turn, so did many of us slipping out of our sweats and into movie theaters, clubs and Broadway shows. Even for those who were less confident rubbing (or bumping) elbows in public, artists brought us plenty of joy in the safety of our home. It may not have been the before times, but in 2021, these artists and creators from across the arts gave us a fresh outlook. For those of us older than 30, Olivia Rodrigo seemed to come out of nowhere with her colossal debut single, Drivers License, a heartbreak ballad that dropped in January and stayed at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks. But for a younger audience, Rodrigo, 18, was familiar from her time as a Disney child star. Despite that pedigree, she didnt drag along a squeaky clean image. Jon Caramanica, ... More  Museum Folkwang opens Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker's first institutional exhibitionESSEN.- The Museum Folkwang's Photographic Collection is presenting the exhibition Paul Kooiker Fashion. It is the first time that Kooikers fashion photographs are on display in an institutional context. The newly acquired series of 25 photographs enter into dialogue with works from the Photographic Collection's holdings, including Cindy Sherman, Grete Stern, and Juergen Teller. The exhibition Stopover is being shown concurrently: it presents new works by master's students from the Photography Studies programme at Folkwang University of the Arts. With his current photographs, Paul Kooiker (*1964, Rotterdam) moves at the interface between fashion and art. Using smartphones, apps and digital post-processing, he creates a new, idiosyncratic and internationally acclaimed fashion photography in his Amsterdam studio. He publishes ... More  Kunstverein in Hamburg opens an exhibition of video installations by Korakrit Arunanondchai HAMBURG.- In his solo exhibition Songs for dying / Songs for living, Korakrit Arunanondchai uses large scale video installations to transform the Kunstverein in Hamburg into an atmospheric site for narrating history that focuses on the historical writing, globalization and information networks. The artist's work deals with personal experiences and investigates their socio-historical conditions, often finding inspiration in the cultural contexts of his home country of Thailand as well as sites marked by post-colonial trauma. Dividing the gallery into different settings are two video works, which are in dialogue and lend the exhibition its title, Songs for dying and Songs for living (both 2021). With its bunched up, blue curtain and shimmering, bluish daylight, the atmosphere of the installation Songs for living recalls the depths of the ocean. In contrast, diagonally ... More  Sook-Kyung Lee appointed Artistic Director of 14th Gwangju BiennaleGWANGJU.- After much deliberation, the Gwangju Biennale Foundation appointed Sook-Kyung Lee, Senior Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, as the Artistic Director of the 14th Gwangju Biennale which opens in April 2023. With her appointment, the Gwangju Biennale Foundation anticipates her to create a balance between regionality and globality in the process of planning and organizing the Biennale. The last time a Korean-born Artistic Director helmed the Biennale alone was 15 years ago in 2006 by Kim Hong-hee, former Director of Seoul Museum of Art. Lee has been active in contemporary art curating for the past 28 years, working mostly outside Korea. Her strengths include a robust global network she has built during her time at Tate for 14 years, as well as the ability to rigorously plan and organize large-scale exhibitions. ... More  Stephenson's Jan. 1 auction presents exquisite estate jewelry, silver, midcentury furniture and decorative artSOUTHAMPTON, PA.- For sixty years, family owned and operated Stephensons Auctioneers has earned an impeccable reputation from its sales of fresh-to-market art and antiques from the Philadelphia areas most elegant estates. Traditionally, their most anticipated event of the year is their New Years Auction, which, for 2022, will take place on January 1st and feature high-quality furnishings, art and personal property from residences in the Mid-Atlantic region. All forms of remote bidding will be available for those who cannot attend in person, including phone, absentee or live via the Internet. The fully curated 484-lot selection glitters with a tasteful array of platinum, gold and sterling silver jewelry from the estate of June Felley of Rydal (suburban Philadelphia) Pennsylvania. Mrs. Felleys late husband, Donald Felley, started as a research ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Cassi Namoda 
Anke Eilergerhard 
Jeffrey Smart 
Light & Space
Flashback On a day like today, French painter Maurice Utrillo was born December 26, 1883. Maurice Utrillo (26 December 1883 - 5 November 1955), was a French painter who specialized in cityscapes. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre who was born there. In this image: Maurice Utrillo, Ruelle des Gobelins à Paris, 1921, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right Maurice, Utrillo, V, Mars 1921, signed, dated and titled on the reverse Maurice Utrillo, V, Mars 1921, 65 x 92 cm.
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