COURTESY CREATIVE COMMONS
Empowered Art
After being rescued by four artists who bound together, Nina Simone’s childhood home has been designated a National Treasure by National Trust for Historic Preservation. [ARTnews]
T magazine commissioned 13 artists—including Alfredo Jaar, Raúl de Nieves, and Adrián Villar Rojas—to make work on a timely subject: immigration. [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]
Current Affairs
Al Jazeera considered the Berlin Biennale in the context of a pointed question: “What would European and North American collections look like if institutions, curators, and acquisitions committees did not have myopic visions?” [Al Jazeera]
As reported by Forbes, Wilbur Ross—President Donald Trump’s current secretary of commerce and a noted art collector too—served the past year in his cabinet position “while maintaining stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government, a shipping firm tied to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a Cypriot bank reportedly caught up in the Robert Mueller investigation, and a huge player in an industry Ross is now investigating.” To put a finer, Forbes-proffered point on it: “It’s hard to imagine a more radioactive portfolio for a cabinet member.” [Forbes]
Living Art
Guardian art critic Adrian Searle considers The London Mastaba—a new work featuring more than 7,500 oil barrels arranged in a lake by Christo—and comes away calling it “a gigantic bath toy afloat on tepid waters.” [The Guardian]
“Three graffiti artists who were killed by a freight train on the tracks in south London in the early hours of Monday have been identified by the street art community as Kbag, Lover and Trip.” [The Art Newspaper]
On the occasion of the Icelandic institution’s 40th anniversary, “Pressure of the Deep” pays tribute to the legacy of the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik with work by 30 artists from the 1960s to the present day. “It was so important,” said the artist Shoplifter, who has been selected to represent Iceland at the next Venice Biennale. “It helped us land in the present.” [The Guardian]
Tributes
For the new issue of the New Yorker, Hilton Als wrote about Reza Abdoh and ways that “MOMA PS1’s retrospective of the late theatre artist is a marvel of research and curatorial empathy.” [The New Yorker]
The New Yorker also has a brief review of the Met Museum show “History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift.” [The New Yorker]
For a story titled “The Stories Behind 5 New York Art Scene Legends,” T magazine has “oral history of some of the places and figures that shaped the city’s past—and are still around today.” (Cheat sheet: they’re Pace Gallery, The New York Earth Room, Met curator Katharine Baetjer, Fanelli Cafe, and the Art Students League of New York.) [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]
The New York Review of Books published an appreciation of Val Wilmer, a photographer and journalist who covered jazz—and authored the recently reissued book As Serious As Your Life. Bonus: a very cool photo of Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton playing pool. [The New York Review of Books]