©THE ESTATE OF ALICE NEEL/COURTESY DAVID ZWIRNER, NEW YORK AND LONDON, AND VICTORIA MIRO, LONDON/PRIVATE COLLECTION, MIAMI
Rummaging Through the Archives
One of Alice Neel’s portraits in a recent David Zwirner show is titled Woman. For years, scholars weren’t sure who the sitter was, but new research shows it’s Ujjaini Bhattacharya, an Indian immigrant who lived in New York. Here’s a deep dive into her life. [Scroll.In]
The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art has received a $575,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. The money will go toward increasing holdings of archival materials related to black artists. [Artforum]
A Fashionable Affair
A look around the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition about Rei Kawakubo’s collaborations with Commes des Garçons. [Architectural Digest]
What celebrities wore to last night’s Met Gala, including Madonna, who showed up in a camo-pattern Jeremy Scott dress. [The New York Times]
Picture Perfect
Peter Schjeldahl reviews the Museum of Modern Art’s Louise Lawler retrospective. [The New Yorker]
Around Europe
Cornelia Parker will be the official artist for the upcoming British election, making her the first artist to have such a distinction. [ABC News]
Orlan and Kader Attia are among the French artists organizing against Marine Le Pen, whom they believe is limiting creative expression. [The Art Newspaper]
Laure de Beauvau-Craon, the former chair of Sotheby’s France, died this past Saturday at 74. [The Art Newspaper]
At London’s National Gallery, the way the collection is hung continues to affect how viewers experience a Piero della Francesca painting. [The Economist]
Museums
Actor and comedian Cheech Marin is working with the city of Riverside, California, to develop a Chicano art center. [Los Angeles Times]
Renzo Martens and the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise have opened an art center in the Congo. Their hope is to bring activists and intellectuals there, to start a new community. [The Creators Project]