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The Numbers
An exhibition of portraits of the Obamas by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald brought in one million more visitors to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., in 2018 than there had been in the prior year. [The Washington Post]
ARTnews crunched the numbers for the Whitney Biennial artist list. Among its findings: 50 percent of the artists are women, 38 participants are based in New York, and 5 artists in the show have participated in a previous edition. [ARTnews]
Vivacity
Roberta Smith on Jasper Johns’s latest outing, at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York: “It reaffirms Mr. Johns as, foremost, a painter’s painter and a working artist rather than an art historical subject.” [The New York Times]
Feast your eyes on a beautiful new set of stamps put out by the United States Postal Service that are based on Ellsworth Kelly’s works. [Hyperallergic]
Controversies
Artist Zehra Dogan has been released from a prison in Turkey, where she had been detained for the past two years. [The Art Newspaper]
Here’s the story of how Mary Baldwin University in Virginia put on a show of work featuring Confederate imagery and then, 48 hours later, amid calls for its removal by the student body, took it down. “One side had clearly prevailed, but was it a victory for tolerance or censorship?” [The Washington Post]
The Art Institute of Seattle is reportedly at risk of closing, leaving students there unsure about their school’s future. [The Stranger]
In with the New
At the Armory Show in New York next week, Leo Villareal will debut a new 75-foot-long piece composed of LED lights. Titled Star Ceiling, it is reportedly the largest digital-media work ever shown at the fair. [Artnet News]
Read a guide to the forthcoming Honolulu Biennial, which is set to open in Hawaii on March 8. [Honolulu Magazine]
Raymond Pettibon
What, you ask, does artist Raymond Pettibon read to keep up to date with the world? “I get my news from the internet and sites that I trust including ‘Anti-War,’ ‘Counterpunch’ but also the New York Times and other media.” [GQ]