COURTESY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
In Tribute
The new issue of the New Yorker has a full feature on “how New York’s postwar female painters battled for recognition” among their Abstract-Expressionist peers. Three cheers for Mary Gabriel’s “timely and ambitious” new book Ninth Street Women! [The New Yorker]
In the current issue of ARTnews, and now online, is an excerpt from Gabriel’s book that explores crucial changes in the 1950s art market that led to AbEx women’s paintings being undervalued. [ARTnews]
Jerry Saltz wrote an intensely personal tribute to Phyllis Kind, the noted dealer and “discoverer of whole new phosphorescent continents of taste.” [Vulture]
Museums
“Less than a month after a fire consumed the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on 2 September, efforts are underway to revive the institution. The museum recently installed tents outside of the charred building to hold a temporary outdoor exhibition of pieces from its collection that were stored in other facilities in Brazil, totalling around 1.5 million objects.” [The Art Newspaper]
The New Museum joined in on New York City’s Culture Pass program, through which holders of a local library card can receive free passes to institutions all around. Other new members include the New York Botanical Gardens and the China Institute. [Culture Pass]
SFMOMA’s creative technologist penned a paean to net neutrality. “Intrinsic to SFMOMA’s core mission is making art ‘a vital and meaningful part of public life.’ To that end, SFMOMA strongly supports net neutrality and its corresponding access to cultural and educational initiatives.” [SFMOMA]
Talk to Me
The new Slate podcast Decoder Ring has an episode devoted to the past, present, and future of hotel art. [Slate]
Even’s podcast Hidden Noise has a new two-part offering of recordings from Digital de Suite, a symposium on blockchain and the arts held earlier this year during Frieze New York. [Even]
Misc.
The secret sitter for Gustave Courbet’s notorious painting The Origin of the World seems to have been found out: “the torso belonged, with near certainty, to Constance Quéniaux, dancer at the Paris Opera, courtesan, mistress of rich men, companion of a celebrated composer, and—improbably at the end—a well-to-do older lady living on one of the most chic streets in Paris, the Rue Royale.” [The New York Times]
Jef Cornelis, the Belgian filmmaker whose work included documentaries about the fourth and fifth editions of Documenta and interviews with avant-garde figures like Robert Smithson, has died at the age of 77. [Standaard]
Here’s an essay that delves into erotic drawings by Egon Schiele, stylish booties known as the Oxford heel, and Brett Kavanaugh. [The Paris Review]
Aye Yi Yi (Caramba!)
There’s an empty 2,400-square-foot SoHo penthouse that rents for $15,000 a month and was designed expressly as “a backdrop for Instagram stars, who have booked it through October.” It’s hard to read such news and not wish the apocalypse would just get on with it already. [The New York Times]
But then . . . David Byrne put together a playlist of salsa music to help us remember some of what makes life worth living. He writes: “I began to realize that though much of it is about joy and dancing, there are plenty of songs that express a deep melancholy, while still musically insisting that we dance. To me this was profound—the ‘illness’ and its cure came in the same package! What other medium can be two apparently opposite things at once?” [David Byrne]