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The United States of America
The curators and organizers for the United States pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture have not yet been announced, and the Department of State, which oversees the process, says that the “grant review and award process … has been extremely complex this year.” [The Architects Newspaper]
Salvador Salort-Pons, the director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, writes about becoming in American citizen. [Deadline Detroit]
“Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” which recently opened at Tate Modern in London, will travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and then the Brooklyn Museum. [Arkansas Business]
A Classic Picasso
When Picasso’s now-famous public sculpture for Chicago was installed 50 years ago, a columnist wrote that “it has a long stupid face and looks like some giant insect that is about to eat a smaller, weaker insect.” Ruth Lopez takes a look back at the history of the work. [The Art Newspaper]
Herbert Migdoll, the photographer for Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, suggests that Picasso may have came up with the look of the piece by revisiting a costume he made for the 1917 ballet Parade, which featured choreography by Léonide Massine, music by Erik Satie, and a scenario by Jean Cocteau. [Chicago Sun-Times]
More Public Sculpture News
A public artwork by New York–based Del Geist installed in Calgary is being criticized for its cost, its look, and for allegedly borrowing inappropriately from Indigenous culture. Geist has pushed back against those charges. [National Post]
Erwin Wurm’s Fat House (2003), which has a pretty accurate title, has been installed outside the Upper Belvedere in Vienna. [Dezeen]
A Wide-Ranging Art Writer
Alice Gregory profiles writer Rebecca Solnit. Says Solnit, “If you think of a kind of ecology of ideas, there are more than enough people telling us how horrific and terrible and bad everything is, and I don’t really need to join that project. There’s a whole other project of trying to counterbalance that—sometimes we do win and this is how it worked in the past.” [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]
The Talent
After four years on the job, Noelle Foye is stepping down as the director of the New Bedford Art Museum/ArtWorks! in Massachusetts. [Wicked Local Brockton]
Meg Hagyard has been tapped to be interim director of the University of Arizona Museum of Art. She’s currently senior director of external relations for the university’s Office of Research, Discovery and Innovation. [UA News Press Release]
Cooking
Here’s a look inside the first home that Julia Child owned, a rundown place in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., that is now being renovated. [The New York Times / Times Insider]
Media
Ben Davis on “the rise and fall of the Louise Blouin art media empire,” which includes Artinfo.com, Modern Painters, and Art+Auction. [Artnet News]
And More
Photos of Sheila Hicks’s glorious installation in the Arsenale section of the main show at the Venice Biennale, “Viva Arte Viva,” which remains on view through November 26. [Contemporary Art Daily]
Ben Abramowitz: “In 2013, a curious relationship between Liliane Bettencourt—nonagenarian heiress to the L’Oreal fortune and, according to Forbes, the richest woman in the world—and François-Marie Banier, a much younger, gay artist, brought about the biggest scandal in recent French history.” [Vanity Fair]
Monira Al Qadiri discusses her influences. [Frieze]