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Writing helped her realize she was a woman. It also made her famous.
NEW YORK, NY.- Before Camila Sosa Villada transitioned and stepped out into the world as a woman, she wrote as one. Growing up in the province of Córdoba, in the Argentine interior, she inhabited a first-person, female voice in the stories that she wrote and kept secret from her parents. It was a powerful act of emancipation, she said, one laden with measures of shame and mischief, as if she were doing something forbidden. “Writing enabled a certain courage,” Sosa Villada said in an interview from her home in Córdoba. “It was prophetic.” Years later, that voice would be celebrated. Sosa Villada’s work has collected international prizes and accolades, often drawing on her own harsh experiences as a sex worker, an actress and a travesti — a term she and others in Latin America use to describe people who were assigned ... More

MCA Australia presents a national tour of Spiders of Paradise by Maria Fernanda Cardoso
SYDNEY.- The Museum of Contemporary Australia Art (MCA Australia) will commence a national tour of Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Spiders of Paradise in 2024, celebrating the natural beauty and wonder of the Australian Maratus spider. The exhibition is developed and toured by MCA Australia and will be presented in six galleries across Australia. Maria Fernanda Cardoso is a Colombian Australian artist who is internationally renowned for using unconventional and organic materials to consider nature and its links to culture and science. Using sculpture, photography, installation, video and performance, her work examines the connections and tensions between society and the natural world. The MCA Australia touring exhibition of Spiders of Paradise presents Cardoso’s ongoing photographic project on the captivating tiny ... More

Duke Fakir, last surviving member of the Four Tops, dies at 88
NEW YORK, NY.- Abdul Fakir, who was known as Duke, the last remaining original member of the Four Tops, one of Motown’s bestselling and most beloved groups, died Monday at his home in Detroit. He was 88. His family said in a statement that the cause was heart failure. Fakir sang first tenor with the Four Tops, who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. The group’s hits not only helped define the “Motown Sound” but also the entire 1960s era of pop. Their classics included the exuberant “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” and the urgent “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” both of which hit No. 1, along with the barreling Top 10 staples “It’s The Same Old Song,” “Standing In the Shadows of Love” and “Bernadette.” For two years, the Four Tops ... More

Quannah ChasingHorse's mother-of-pearl septum tusk
NEW YORK, NY.- The mother-of-pearl tusk that runs through Quannah ChasingHorse’s septum is not a fashion statement. Neither is her chin tattoo. Both serve as direct ties to her Han Gwich’in tribe in Eagle Village, Alaska — rites of passage that symbolize her official role within her community as a hunter and warrior. They also serve as inspiration to the younger members of ChasingHorse’s Indigenous communities, which includes the Sicangu and Oglala Lakota nations of the Great Plains and Black Hills. “Bad River,” a documentary narrated by ChasingHorse currently streaming on Xfinity, is about the native Wisconsin Bad River Band’s battle to save Lake Superior. In it, a girl tells ChasingHorse that seeing how she has reclaimed this practice has had a positive influence on her own relationship with the traditional tattoo custom. ... More

The jewelry Shiona Turini never takes off
NEW YORK, NY.- Somewhere at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, is one of four gold bracelets, gifted to Shiona Turini by her mother. She lost it while diving into the water from a cliff. A friend helped her search underwater for it with no luck. But this hasn’t deterred Turini from wearing most of her personal jewelry at all times. In an interview that has been edited and condensed, one of the stylists behind Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” era talked about her most cherished pieces: two necklaces and the three remaining gold bracelets that represent home; three rings; and a friendship bracelet that she found at a truck stop while styling Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour. Q: Do you have a favorite piece of jewelry? A: I pretty much wear the exact same jewelry every single day. I’ll start with the bangles: I ... More

Robert L. Allen, who shed light on a Navy yard blast and trial, dies at 82
NEW YORK, NY.- Robert L. Allen, who definitively told the story of 50 Black sailors who were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny for refusing to continue to load munitions onto cargo ships after explosions had blown apart two ships at a California port during World War II, killing hundreds, died July 10 at his home in Benecia, California. He was 82. He died a week before the Navy exonerated the men. His former wife Janet Carter said the cause was kidney failure. “The secretary of the Navy called to offer condolences,” Carter said in an interview, referring to Carlos Del Toro. “And he said, ‘I’m going to do more than that — I’m going to exonerate these sailors.’ ” Carter, who remained close to her former husband, a writer, activist and academic, added, “I cried in part because Robert wasn’t here to see it.” ... More

National Museum of Asian Art announces a major award from the National Museum of Korea
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art has announced that it is one of six recipients of the National Museum of Korea’s Overseas Korean Galleries Support Program. The award of $1.4 million—the largest grant yet awarded—supports the National Museum of Asian Art’s Korea program for four years and will enable the museum to expand the program, which aims to deepen audience interest in Korean art and culture. The funding supports the following integrated set of activities that will take place over the next four years: • Exhibiting and interpreting key objects from the collection of former Samsung Corp. chairman Lee Kun-hee in association with the National Museum of Korea as part of a major Korean art-loan exhibition that will be held at the National Museum of Asian Art 2025–2026 • Reinstalling ... More

Last chance to see: Exhibition by Arthur Simms, Lucy Fradkin and Philip Hinge at Martos Gallery
NEW YORK, NY.- In Arthur Simms’ Icema’s World and Lucy Fradkin’s Good Morning Alice and Other Stories, two artists reflect on the legacies they have come to share as a married couple. These exhibitions are each grounded in tribute to Simms’ mother, Icema Erica Simms (1924–2015), but also emanate into broader examinations of identity, and how it is informed both by those who came before us and those with whom we share our lives. Icema immigrated to New York in the 1960s, leaving her husband and children behind in Kingston, Jamaica, while she worked to facilitate their reunion, caring for an American family in Westchester. Icema is foundational to these two solo exhibitions—had she not endured her first lonely years in New York, Simms and Fradkin may never have met—however, the two artists reciprocate homage and elegy ... More

In 'Pre-Existing Condition,' a character isn't defined by abuse, or one actress
NEW YORK, NY.- Most actors will tell you that when they take on a role, they want to own it. If it’s a classic or a play based on a movie, they like to say that they avoid watching earlier performances so they can go in free of preconceptions. The women taking turns playing A, the central character in Marin Ireland’s new play “Pre-Existing Condition,” went for a communal quality. “When you’re seeing a person perform, it has the DNA of all the other people because we’ve watched each other,” director and actress Maria Dizzia said. Tavi Gevinson, who starts her stint as A on July 23, said, “I think it definitely helps eliminate this illusion that there is some ideal performance that you’re trying to unlock and do an imitation of; it’s something that you’re co-creating with the piece every night.” The show, whose run at ... More

Karma will open an exhibition of new paintings by Andrew Cranston
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Karma presents One day this will be a long time ago, an exhibition of new paintings by Andrew Cranston, open from July 25 to September 14, 2024, at 7351 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles. With One day this will be a long time ago, Andrew Cranston continues his exploration of how the world of painting, like the world of memory, leaks into the real. Marking the Scottish artist’s first exhibition on the West Coast of the United States, this new suite centers Glasgow, his home for the past twenty-seven years. Working here in oil, varnish, acrylic, and collage on a range of supports—canvas, board, hardback book covers—the artist responds to the demands, or what he calls “momentum,” of a given composition even as he forms it. Figures and objects emerge, dissolve, reemerge, and deliquesce. For Cranston, assemblage ... More

Berggruen Gallery announces first exhibition with artist Heather Day
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Berggruen Gallery announced Heather Day: Cut, Split, Horizon, an exhibition of new work by American artist Heather Day. This show marks her first solo exhibition with the gallery. Heather Day: Cut, Split, Horizon will be on view from August 1 through September 19, 2024. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Thursday August 1, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. In her paintings, Heather Day explores landscape, the figure, memory, and sensation through surges of unabashed color, cut and sewn into biomorphic shapes which split and commandeer the canvas. At once harmonious and confrontational, Day’s paintings tangle with the relationship between the material and the conceptual, considering the indescribable phenomena which define our emotional and sensorial perceptions of our surroundings. In some ... More