COURTESY HIGH LINE
Lives
According to Fox 2 Detroit, Julia Reyes Taubman, the founder and board chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, has died at age 50. In addition to her work for the museum, she was also a documentary photographer. [Fox 2 Detroit]
ARTnews reports that Robert Pincus-Witten, the art historian and critic best known for coining the term “Post-Minimalism,” has died. In addition to the books he wrote, he was a longtime contributor to Artforum. [ARTnews]
Steve Wynn
The Wall Street Journal reports that Steve Wynn, the casino mogul who is also one of the world’s top collectors, has been accused of sexual misconduct, with dozens of his employees being able to recount instances of harassment and misbehavior. In a statement, Wynn denied the allegations. [The Wall Street Journal]
The Digital Sphere
Zoe Leonard’s text work I want a president was recently censored on Instagram when curators, writers, and others posted it. So what’s the deal? Quartz investigates. [Quartz]
For the New Yorker, Adrian Chen explores the “coded gaze,” or the hidden bias or racism, that undergirds Google’s app that helps you find your art doppelgänger. Non-white users, he notes, might have a more difficult time locating their lookalikes—a typical problem for facial-recognition software. [The New Yorker]
Museums
The Canadian Photography Institute at the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa has received a gift of 635 photographs by Paul Strand, Artforum reports. The three Canadians who donated the works did so anonymously. [Artforum]
The ongoing legal debacle over the Berkshire Museum’s decision to sell off works from its collection, including a noteworthy Norman Rockwell, to raise money has ticked off locals and Rockwell’s family. “This is a betrayal,” one of Rockwell’s grandsons tells the Wall Street Journal in a new report. [The Wall Street Journal]
The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl writes on the Morgan Library & Museum’s Peter Hujar retrospective, which he calls “dazzling” and says “affirms Hujar’s excellence while, if anything, complicating his history.” [The New Yorker]
Market
According to Artnet News, artist Mickalene Thomas and art consultant Racquel Chevremont will co-organize the Volta art fair’s curated section. Their exhibition will be called “The Aesthetics of Matter,” and will explore collage as a way of reflecting one’s identity. [Artnet News]
Look Forward to . . .
Later this year, the Whitney Museum will host an Andy Warhol retrospective. But it’s hardly the only major exhibition about the Pop artist on the horizon. In 2019, the Vatican Museum and the Andy Warhol Museum will stage a show about Warhol’s spiritual side, featuring his skull and “Last Supper” paintings, the Art Newspaper reports. [The Art Newspaper]