NEW YORK, NY.-Pace announced its global representation of The Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative, the primary organization advocating for the achievement of the artist and maintaining a collection and archive of his work. At the vanguard of Pop art and assemblage, Robert Indiana made use of letters and numerals in his bold sculptures, paintings, and prints to explore American identity and iconography as well as the universal power of abstraction. Employing language and color as key materials for his works across media, Indiana called himself an “American painter of signs,” developing a uniquely graphic visual vocabulary that—imbued with literary, political, and spiritual import—made him one of the most inventive and enduring figures in the history of American art. ... More
Danny White, one of the founders of Master Tape Rescue, with a box of tape holding original recordings by the Australian artist Johnny O’Keefe, in an archive room above Sunset Sound, a studio in Los Angeles, March 15, 2024. (Tag Christof/The New York Times)
LOS ANGELES, CA.- In late 2020, Brian Kehew was working at the venerable Hollywood studio Sunset Sound when the owner asked him to help identify some tapes the Who had left behind. It was not an unusual request for Kehew, who has done tape ... More
Martha Diamond’s “New York With Purple No. 3” (2000), oil on linen, at the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles. (Martha Diamond Trust, via David Kordansky Gallery via The New York Times)
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Martha Diamond, who died in December, at age 79, was remarkably consistent in her subject matter — namely New York architecture — but extraordinarily wide-ranging with what a painting of a building could signify. In some of the works displayed in her first show at the David ... More
The artist Blanka Amezkua selects a steel chisel from her 116-piece set at her apartment in the South Bronx on March 8, 2024. (Justin J Wee/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- On a summer day in 2018, Blanka Amezkua arrived in San Salvador Huixcolotla. The southeastern Mexican town is best known as the birthplace of papel picado — intricately cut, colorful tissue-paper banners popular at Mexican festivities — and Amezkua had come hoping to learn the centuries-old techniques for crafting it. ... More
Uzodinma Iweala, chief executive officer of The Africa Center, in New York, March 31, 2023. (Elias Williams/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- After guiding The Africa Center through rocky pandemic years and securing a huge chunk of funding for a major construction project, the leader of the Harlem institution is stepping down. Uzodinma Iweala, who is in his seventh year as CEO of the Africa Center, will depart at the end of 2024. Iweala’s leadership helped to settle an institution with a tumultuous past of various ... More
Prior to her current role, Hellberg was Artistic Director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2015–19). Photo: BMKÖS/HBF/Lechner.
VIENNA.- "mumok is exceptional—as an institution it not only houses one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary art, but continues to foster art’s ability to mirror and shift a given understanding of the present“, says designated Director General Fatima Hellberg. „It is thrilling, and a deep honor, to build on the rich legacy and history of this institution ... More
SAN ANTONIO, TX.-The San Antonio Museum of Art has acquired a painting by New York-based artist Carlos Rosales-Silva. Biblioteca no. 3. is part of a series inspired by San Antonio’s Central Library that the artist began during his 2017 residency ... More
Harper Paradowski, Ripples/Waves. Courtesy of the Artist.
LOS ANGELES, CA.-The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts announced today the recipients of its fourth year of Organizational Support Grants, an unrestricted grant program the Foundation established during the pandemic to address the immediate needs of Los Angeles County arts organizations. While the grants continue to support organizations’ operating costs, 2024 grantees also provided an upcoming project for consideration, and a required minimum of the awarded amount must go to artists involved. The Organizational Support Grants, like the Foundation, ... More
From left, Joseph Bergen, Michael McCurdy and Caitlin Cawley of Mantra Percussion perform at Bethesda Terrace New York on Nov. 3, 2023. (Amir Hamja/The New York Time)
NEW YORK, NY.- As three people struck wood with mallets under a viaduct in Queens during the morning rush hour one day in the fall, a man walked up and asked, “What do you call this music?” The players could have told him the title of the piece, Michael Gordon’s “Timber,” or given him some idea of the genre. But one, Caitlin Cawley, simply said, “Percussion.” Cawley and her colleagues from the ensemble Mantra Percussion were at the viaduct, which runs along Queens Boulevard and under the 7 train, to test the sound ... More
Dr. Cameron Clifford, a dentist, points to a baby octopus as it explores outside its jar, at the Clifford home in Edmond, Okla., April 10, 2024. The Clifford family tracked down an octopus for their son Cal, who has been infatuated with the sea animals for years, but what they did not expect were the 50 hatchlings. (Michael Noble Jr./The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- Dr. Cameron Clifford, a dentist in Edmond, Oklahoma, said his son Cal, 9, has been infatuated with octopuses since he was 3 years old. “Every birthday, every Christmas, every holiday, he would always say: ‘All I want is an octopus,’” Clifford said. For a while, the family nurtured Cal’s interest by buying him octopus toys and octopus T-shirts, dressing him as an octopus ... More
Dr. Theodore Schurr, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, in his laboratory in Philadelphia, May 16, 2023. (Caroline Gutman/The New York Times)
CHARLESTON, SC.- When Edward Lee heard about a project collecting DNA from Black residents like him in Charleston, South Carolina, he had reason to be skeptical. Knowing that African Americans have been exploited before financially and in medical experiments, he feared that handing over his genetic identity could leave him vulnerable. But he knew the people behind the Anson ... More
Third quarter 18th century Louis XV/XVI transitional tulipwood and amaranth commode by Daniel de Loose (est. $3,000-$5,000).
LOS ANGELES, CA.-Andrew Jones Auctions will present the sale of an important private collection out of Pebble Beach, California on Sunday, April 28th and Monday, April 29th, online and live in the gallery located at 2221 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. Online bidding will be available on AndrewJoesAuctions.com, LiveAuctioneers.com and Invaluable.com. The outstanding collection will feature an international ... More
Céline Condorelli, “Untitled”, 2023 (featuring Pontormo’s (1494-1556/7) Joseph with Jacob in Egypt, probably 1518. Oil on wood, 96,5 x 109,5 cm. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1882.Trolley designed by the National Gallery Art Handling Department, with colour chart.
LISBON.-Galeria Vera Cortęs is presenting Céline Condorelli’s new solo exhibition at the gallery. Céline Condorelli was artist in residence at the National Gallery from Sept 2022 to September 2023, at the end of which she had an exhibition titled Pentimenti (The Corrections). All the works in this exhibition were developed during that time and ... More
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Exhibition of works by Nina Sanadze opens at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia MELBOURNE.- Nina Sanadze surveys the work of Melbourne-based contemporary artist Nina Sanadze. With a practice combining installation, sculpture and found objects, Sanadze references public statues, structures and monuments as metaphors for societal transformation, sometimes incorporating physical fragments and traces of public sculpture into her work. The exhibition, on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, presents six sculpture and installation-based works which interrogate the meaning that statues carry, and the ways they reflect the values and priorities of the time and place in which they are erected or removed. Inspired by the public monuments in her childhood home of Tbilisi, Georgia, where Soviet icons replaced imperial statues, Sanadze’s work reveals that our cities, monuments and public artworks are constantly in flux, ... More
Alex Garland answers the question: Why make a film about Civil War today? NEW YORK, NY.- One of the most haunting moments in Alex Garland’s new drama “Civil War” comes in the form of a question. A soldier, fingering the trigger of his assault rifle, confronts a group of terrified journalists: “What kind of American are you?” he asks. That question, and its underlying impulse to divide and demonize, is at the heart of why Garland made a much-anticipated and already much-debated film about the implosion of the United States. “Civil War,” opening Friday, warns against the dangers of extreme partisanship, Garland said in a recent interview — the horrors that can happen when American citizens, or any other group of people, turn on themselves. “I think civil war is just an extension of a situation,” said Garland, the 53-year-old British director behind “Ex Machina” and “Men.” “That situation is polarization and the lack of limiting ... More
A conversation with Deborah Feldman, an unorthodox voice in Germany NEW YORK, NY.- Writer Deborah Feldman has been rattling expectations ever since she published “Unorthodox,” a 2012 memoir of her departure from her Hasidic community in New York, which was later made into an acclaimed Netflix series. Feldman, whose first language is Yiddish, emigrated to Berlin a decade ago. She has published books in English and German. And since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, her writings and interviews have touched a nerve in Germany, where she is now a citizen. She became a rare voice in German media: a Jewish writer critical of Germany’s unquestioning support of Israel, and the stifling of dissenting voices in the country’s cultural institutions. She joined more than 100 Jewish writers, artists and academics who signed a letter condemning Germany’s ban on gatherings showing support ... More
In 'The Outsiders,' a new song for the young misfits NEW YORK, NY.- For many young misfits and wannabes, “The Outsiders,” published in 1967, is still a sacred text. Written by an actual teenager — S.E. Hinton drafted it in high school — it spoke with eyewitness authority to teenage alienation. Even if its poor “greasers” and rich “socs” (the book’s shorthand for society types) now seem like exhibits in a midcentury angst museum, their inchoate yearning has not aged, nor has Hinton’s faith that there is poetry in every soul. These tender qualities argue against stage adaptation, as does Francis Ford Coppola’s choppy, murky 1983 movie. (It introduced a lot of young stars, but it’s a mess.) The material doesn’t want sophisticated adults mucking about in it or, worse, gentling its hard edges for commercial consumption. Harshness tempered with naivete is central to its style and argument. ... More
'Civil War' and its terrifying premonition of American collapse NEW YORK, NY.- Going into Alex Garland’s astonishing new film, “Civil War,” I expected to be irritated by the implausibility of its premise. I’m not talking about the idea that America could devolve into vicious internecine armed conflict. That seems possible, if not probable. In one 2022 poll, 43% of Americans said they thought a civil war within the next decade was at least somewhat likely. I wouldn’t go that far, but I won’t be surprised if political violence spikes after the upcoming election and eventually spirals out of control. I’m pretty confident, however, that if the sort of war Garland depicts ever actually broke out in this beleaguered nation, California and Texas wouldn’t be on the same side. “Civil War” has received plenty of adulatory reviews, but Garland has also been widely criticized for eliding the ideological forces driving America’s fracturing. He’s ... More
These scientists rock. Literally. PARIS.- The Pasteur Institute, since opening in the 15th Arrondissement in Paris in the late 1880s, has been recognized for world-altering scientific discoveries. The institute, named for Louis Pasteur, the pioneering French scientist who founded it, has contributed to the production of vaccines for tetanus and the flu and was at the forefront of discovering the virus that causes AIDS. In recent years, the Pasteur Institute has made advancements in another field — the musical arts — as some of its scientists have formed bands and other acts involving colleagues as well as students who have studied there. That cohort has honed its musical passion and ability at an on-site studio they call the music lab. On a Friday evening in March, three acts developed in the lab headlined an event held at the institute’s cafeteria. They included Polaris and also Billie ... More
There's a bright spot in New York theater. It's not where you think. NEW YORK, NY.- Broadway is struggling through a postpandemic funk, squeezed between higher production costs and lower audience numbers just as a bevy of new shows set sail into those fierce headwinds. At the same time, New York’s off-Broadway nonprofits, long essential seedbeds for many of the nation’s most acclaimed playwrights, are shedding staff, programming and even real estate. But there is an unexpected bright spot this season. Commercial off-Broadway, a small sector of New York’s theatrical economy and one that has for years been somewhere between difficult and dormant, is back in business. “Oh, Mary!” a madcap comedy that imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a daffy alcoholic, is selling out nightly at a 295-seat theater in the West Village, and is likely to transfer to Broadway this summer. Eddie Izzard’s solo ... More
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Flashback
On a day like today, German sculptor Otto Piene was born
April 18, 1928. Otto Piene (18 April 1928 - 17 July 2014) was a German artist specializing in kinetic and technology-based art. He lived and worked in Düsseldorf; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Groton, Massachusetts. In this image: MIT List Visual Arts Center exhibition "Otto Piene: Lichtballett." October 21, 2011 - December 31, 2011.
