April 27, 2023

Good morning. ☁️ Today, we bring you updates on the ongoing labor disputes at the Brooklyn Museum and Philadelphia’s University of the Arts. In both cases, workers are simply fighting for living wages and decent working conditions.

In other news, New York's Frick Collection is set to return home to its Fifth Avenue mansion next year, and artists make miniature racecars for a benefit in Brooklyn.

Furthermore, John Yau reviews Matt Bollinger, Sarah Rose Sharp talks with curator Leora Fridman about what it means to be a contemporary Jewish artist today, and Matt Stromberg visits an exhibition honoring the legacy of the influential East LA Chicano art group ASCO.

— Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor

Matt Bollinger, Painter of the Forgotten 

By dealing with class in his art, Bollinger touches on the strain infecting the current “us and them” situation in the United States. | John Yau 

WHAT'S HAPPENING

Hand-assembled artist racecars ready to race on the Gravity Slide track at Smack Mellon’s 2022 Gravity Racers Benefit (all photos by Cibele Vieira, courtesy Smack Mellon)

• Arts nonprofit Smack Mellon’s Gravity Racers benefit party on May 6 continues a 20-year local New York tradition.

• On Monday, faculty and staff at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts held a joint rally calling for their first union contracts. 

• The Brooklyn Museum’s unionized staff picket a museum fundraising event, demanding a fair contract with improved wages.

• The Frick Collection will return to its Fifth Avenue mansion in 2024, leaving its temporary home in the Met Breuer’s former building.

LATEST IN ART

New Generation of Jewish Artists Pushes Sensitive Buttons 

Leora Fridman discusses curating a new exhibition confronting issues of tradition, gender, and Zionism in the Jewish-American community. | Sarah Rose Sharp

The Rebel Legacy of LA’s ASCO Chicano Art Group

A weekend pop-up draws connections between the influential East Los Angeles art group and a new generation of Chicano artists in the city. | Matt Stromberg

Working Toward a Politics of Borderlessness

Artists in Australia and South Asia highlight the atrocities of caste-based discrimination and make a statement against colonial power. | Cher Tan

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IN MEMORIAM

Harry Belafonte (1927–2023)
Jamaican-American singer, actor, and Civil Rights activist | New York Times

Yvonne Jacquette (1934–2023)
American printmaker and painter | via DC Moore

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