Weekly

August 27, 2022 • View in browser

We're getting ready to start up our podcast again next month, but in the meantime, have you heard the conversation with Tamara Lanier about her quest to have the photographs of her family members owned by Harvard University "returned" to the family? Or our conversation with controversial cartoonist Eli Valley? And then there's the conversation between digital artists Tali Hinkis and Daniel Temkin. I recommend them all.

Our editorial coordinator, Lakshmi Amin, has also been busy transcribing some of our past podcasts for your convenience, and you can peruse the texts for our interviews with Audrey Flack, Ariella Azoulay, Michael Rakowitz, as well as the Tamara Lanier and Eli Valley podcasts mentioned above. Podcasts have always been an integral part of the storytelling we love at Hyperallergic, and look forward to bringing more stories to you this upcoming season. 

This week, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art has been embroiled in controversy, as a group of artists claimed "institutional racist violence" because of various incidents around the current edition of the Wisconsin Triennial. The museum denies some of the allegations.

Researchers at the National Gallery of Art learned some interesting things when they decided to scan paintings by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer at the height of the pandemic. And in a decision that's been years in the making, the International Council of Museums updated its definition of what a "museum" actually is.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief

The nearly empty walls of the exhibition Ain’t I a Woman? at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art after 11 artists withdrew from the 2022 Wisconsin Triennial (photo courtesy Emily Leach)

Citing "Institutional Racist Violence," Half of the Wisconsin Triennial Artists Withdraw Their Work
Jasmine Liu reports on an open letter accusing the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art of the “shameful mistreatment of the Black artists, contractors, and staffers throughout the exhibition.”

Despite the fact that almost half of participating artists have withdrawn their work from the show, there has been no collective communication between artists as a group and the museum’s leadership.

“There has been no communication really recognizing the surrounding conditions that made this possible, or that reflect on the fact that how the museum responded to this was in and of itself undesirable,” said artist Emily Leach.

LATEST DEVELOPMENT

Madison Museum Apologizes to Black Artist but Rejects Racism Allegations
MMoCA has apologized to Lilada Gee for damage caused to her artwork in the Wisconsin Triennial but rejects racism allegations.

NEWS THIS WEEK

A "die-in" protest organized by Nan Goldin's activist group PAIN in the courtyard of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2019. (Naomi Polonsky/Hyperallergic)

• After months of deliberations, the International Council of Museums' updated definition of a museum eschews neutrality.

• A $4.5 million restoration and renovation effort will soon help open the doors to mid-century sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s studio.

• Starting in November, the American Alliance of Museums will require institutions to disclose salaries for positions they post on its job board.

• Authorities are searching for the vandals that etched their initials on the Hellgate pictographs of the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest.

• The Orlando Museum of Art institutes a new damage control task force in an attempt to reestablish credibility after displaying fake Basquiats.

RECLAMATION & ACTIVISM

Sasha Huber, "Tailoring Freedom" (2021), metal staples on photograph on wood (photo by Toni Hafkenscheid, courtesy the artist and Tamara Lanier)

How Do You Repair the Scientific Racism Embedded in the History of Science?
Faith Adiele examines how Swiss-Haitian-Finnish artist Sasha Huber has spent the last fifteen years trying to undo her countryman’s problematic legacy.

“Tailoring Freedom” (2021), created for The Power Plant, is an act of historical repair. Huber printed the Renty and Delia daguerreotypes on wood and created textured, shimmering garments out of staples inspired by those worn by abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. The tens of thousands of staples resemble metallic thread, as Huber put it, “both stitching the colonial wound and making it visible. The wounds are still there.”

Call This Real Estate Company to Hear … a Poem 
Tya Alisa Anthony expands on Steven Yazzie’s “Gold King & Associates” project and how it addresses urbanization, land use, and colonization.

Hiwa K’s Transformative Approach to Activist Art
Sarah Rose Sharp on Hiwa K: Do you remember what you are burning? at the Power Plant.

IN A NEW LIGHT

Henri Matisse, "The Red Studio" (1911), oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund (© 2022 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

Looking Anew at a Strange Matisse Masterpiece
David Carrier on Matisse: The Red Studio at the Museum of Modern Art.

We are in the picture that we view. Matisse made a great many such paintings and drawings — this theme of the radically self-sufficient artwork was deeply fascinating to him. “The Red Studio” anticipates this motif.

The Hidden Truths of Lou Reed’s Musical Poetry
Tim Keane on Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Why Do Artists Keep Painting “The Women in the Window”?
Naomi Polonsky on Reframed: The Woman in the Window at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.

ART IN COMMUNITY

Top to bottom: Justine Kurland, Scooter LaForge, Sally Webster (photo by Keith Lubow at Fredrik Nilsen studio, courtesy Lisa Bowman)

Lisa Bowman’s Exquisite Corpse Makes Connections Through the Mail
Matt Stromberg highlights Lisa Bowman's incredible project-turned-book Cadavre Exquis.

“It was the perfect thing to do during the lockdown,” she told Hyperallergic in a studio visit last year. “It certainly saved me in a way, because I couldn’t go see art, and then I’d get these envelopes in the mail.”

A New California Center Is Building a Legacy of Black Photographers
Joshua Oduga takes a closer look at The Black Image Center and how it's established a space for Black image makers in need of a place to create.

Debunking Myths About Public Art
Kealey Boyd shines a light on Art WithOut Limits and how it seeks to expand art audiences and art practices by popping up in unexpected spaces.

ON FILM

From Funny Pages (2022), dir. Owen Kline (courtesy A24)

Funny Pages Mocks the Idea That Hardship Makes Art More Authentic
Dan Schindel reviews Owen Kline’s directorial debut about a privileged teenage artist who decides to impose some grittiness on his life to improve his work.

With its cast of oddballs and dilapidated urbanity, Funny Pages speaks not just about a past era of cartooning but an earlier of trend of films inspired by it. It’s very much in conversation with ’90s/early ’00s indie-comics-adjacent works like Crumb, or adaptations like Ghost World and American Splendor. 

Riff on One Thousand and One Nights Longs for a Bygone Era of Filmmaking
Mark Asch on George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing and how it defies some orientalist tropes while falling prey to others.

Why One Organization Is Rushing to Digitize Decades of Broadcast Media
Steve Jansen spotlights how the New Mexico Public Media Digitization Project is preserving thousands of analog and digital media from the 1960s to now.

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MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC

Winold Reiss, study for decorative panels in the Prismatic Room, Restaurant Crillon, 15 East 48th Street (c. 1921-23) (courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Winold Reiss Collection)

The German Modernist Who Painted a Multicultural United States
Joanne B. Mulcahy reviews an eclectic anthology highlighting the world and work of Winold Reiss.

Reiss ruptured divisions between cultures and nations as well as applied and fine art. His oeuvre encompassed paintings, book designs, posters, tapestries, and interior and architectural design. His skills and range are so impressive that his relative absence from 20th-century American art history seems unaccountable.

How Softcore Porn Penetrated Mainstream Media
Dan Schindel explores an exhibition that traces how once-verboten depictions of sex became gradually acceptable in pop culture.

After 50 Years, Michael Heizer’s Colossal Desert Installation Is Finally Finished
Sarah Rose Sharp looks at land artist and sculptor Michael Heizer's now complete project, City, on which he has worked since 1970.

Visiting MoMA While Black
"At the retrospective of Sophie Taeuber-Arp, I thought to myself: Am I crazy? I must be tripping, this is straight out of Africa!" — Sydney Harvey

Required Reading
This week, an architect designs his own home, unraveling the white supremacy of archives, pigeons in New York City, being “Asian” in the United States, apologizing to Sacheen Littlefeather, and more.

IN OUR STORE

White on White Socks

Labor Day is coming up fast and you know what they say about wearing white afterward... kidding, who really cares about fashion rules? But if we did, these avant-garde adornments would be seeing double the action during the first weeks of school.

Shop more art-inspired socks!