May 6, 2022 • View in browser

Good morning. 🌧️ Happy Friday! Today, two Icelandic artists steal a racist monument and place it inside a rocket ship, the Vatican launches NFTs, artists create a Monopoly of Gentrification board game to highlight the displacement of Black communities, reviews of Squeak Carnwath and Phyllida Barlow, and much more.

This week's Required Reading features an image of artist Jaishri Abichandani's "Shrine to the Abortion Goddess" (2018) along with her powerful statement against the Supreme Court as a woman who has experienced three abortions in different decades of her life.

— Hakim Bishara, interim editor-in-chief 

Reveling in the Ruins of the Past

In attempting to convey atrocities that confound language, artist Phyllida Barlow comes up against a paradox with no easy resolution. | Natalie Haddad

LATEST NEWS

Bryndís Björnsdóttir and Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir, “Carry On: The First White Mother in Outer Space” (2022), detail view (photo by and courtesy the artists)

• Two Icelandic artists symbolically launch a racist statue into space in an unlikely artistic intervention.

• B. Robert Moore and Esteban Whiteside adapt the Monopoly game format to talk about the consequences of gentrification. 

• The New York City Council eliminates auction industry regulations, including restrictions on hype-generating “chandelier bidding.”

• A new initiative will put the Vatican Museum’s masterpieces on the blockchain.

REVIEWS & MORE

Dana Lok Beckons the Unknowable

Lok's paintings reveal seemingly straightforward objects and events to be strange, slippery, and utterly beguiling. | Cassie Packard

Artists Reflect on the Harms of Data Collection

For her first museum exhibition, Grace Rosario Perkins invited four other artists to ponder the definition of data, centering questions about how it's collected, authenticated, documented, and distributed — and by whom. | Lynn Trimble

“Do We Still Recognize Ourselves?”

In an age when everything is called into doubt, Squeak Carnwath’s concern with seeing carries a deep urgency. | John Yau

Required Reading

This week, reactions to the leaked Supreme Court draft to overturn abortion rights, La Malinche gets an exhibition, Eric Adams brings his "swagger" to the Met Gala, and what did Leonardo get wrong about trees? | Hakim Bishara

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TRANSITIONS

Kara Olidge was named associate director for collections and discovery and Khristaan Villela was named associate director for dissemination and external affairs at the Getty Research Institute.

Sheena Wagstaff, the chair of the department of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is leaving the institution.

Juana Williams was appointed associate curator of African American art at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe was named executive director of the Katonah Museum of Art.

AWARDS & ACCOLADES

Kim Dacres, Jeffrey Meris, and Alex Strada and Tali Keren were named winners of the 2022 New York Artadia Awards.

Binta Ayofemi, Maria Guzmán Capron, Cathy Lu, Marcel Pardo Ariza, and Gregory Rick received the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s 2022 SECA Art Award.

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