Sharon Maidenberg, who has served as executive director of Headlands Center for the Arts in the Bay Area since 2010, will join the Contemporary Austin in Texas as its CEO and executive director on September 1. Maidenberg has previously worked with organizations including the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, and New Langton Arts, and she has grown Headlands’s programs for artists and visitors along with its staff, budget, and spaces. She succeeds Louis Grachos, who left the Contemporary Austin in June 2019.
Brooklyn-based painter and writer Cynthia Daignault has joined the roster of Los Angeles’s Night Gallery, which will present new work by the artist at the 2020 Armory Show in New York. Her paintings, which are often exhibited in grids and which depict landscapes and media imagery, have been shown in major museums and galleries, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, MASS MoCA, among others.
Marfa Invitational Names 2020 Exhibitors
The Marfa Invitational fair in Texas has named the participants in its 2020 edition, which will take place at Saint George Hall from April 2 to 5. The boutique fair, now in its second year, will feature presentations by Night Gallery, Future Gallery, Ltd Los Angeles, and Half Gallery, Bill Brady Miami, Natalia Hug, Carl Kostyál, Anat Ebgi, 12.26, Ochi Projects and Lora Reynolds Gallery.
The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas has promoted Anne Kindseth, who has worked as the institution’s education programs manager since 2018, to the post of director of education. During her tenure, Kindseth has created new on- and off-site education initiatives for the teachers across the region.
The architects Herzog & de Meuron will design a new Philadelphia space dedicated to the art of Alexander Calder. Located across the street from the Barnes Foundation and the Rodin Museum, the institution will show a rotating selection of works from the Calder Foundation throughout its indoor spaces and gardens. Construction is set to begin in 2021.
Greene Naftali Now Represents Aria Dean
Ahead of an appearance in the closely watched Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum in June, artist Aria Dean has joined the roster of Greene Naftali gallery in New York. Dean, who also serves as a curator at the New York–based art-and-technology organization Rhizome, is known for her videos and sculptures focused on visibility, the circulation of images, and power relations. Her work is now on view in a group show at one of Greene Naftali’s spaces, and she is slated to have a solo show with the gallery in spring 2021.
Ballroom Marfa Names Executive Director, Partnership with Ruby City
The West Texas nonprofit exhibition space Ballroom Marfa has named Laura Creed as the organization’s new executive director. Creed, who starts in her new post in April, has been the development director for LAXART in Los Angeles since 2017, and has previously been an independent development consultant and worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. In a statement, Creed said, “Ballroom has a unique identity that allows it a certain freedom and agility—which is essential at a time when cultural institutions are being questioned and reconsidered.” The organization also announced that it will partner with another Texas organization, Ruby City in San Antonio. For the collaboration, Ruby City will include Book of Sound (SHAPESHIFT ONE), a work by artist and composer Rob Mazurek with Damon Locks and Lisa E. Harris that was commissioned by Ballroom Marfa, at its annual Music in the Park program on April 30. –Maximilíano Durón
Longtime Bushwick Gallery Slag Contemporary Heads to Chelsea
As many galleries have begun to depart New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, one has decided to return. Slag Contemporary, which opened in 2008 in Chelsea, has announced that it will leave Bushwick, where it operated from 2012 until the end of last year, to move back to its old neighborhood in Manhattan, taking over a 2,300-square-foot space at 522 West 19th Street. It’ll feature three exhibition spaces, one of which will be a project space, and its outdoor patio may serve as a sculpture garden in the future. Slag will open its new space on April 3 with solo shows for Anthony Akinbola and Naomi Safran-Hon. Slag’s founder, Irina Protopopescu, told ARTnews in an email, “I am optimistic as I see an increasing openness in the attitude of the critical stakeholders in the art industry, such as collectors, established galleries, art fairs, to come together in an attempt to support small galleries. –Maximilíano Durón
VI, VII Gallery Now Represents Bjarne Melgaard
Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard has joined the roster of Oslo’s VI, VII Gallery, which will present a solo exhibition of his work at the June Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland, later this year. Melgaard, whose practice spans drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, represented Norway at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, and his work has also been included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, the 12th Lyon Biennale in 2013, and in group exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, White Columns in New York, and other venues. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and elsewhere.
NADA Adds 18 New Members
The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), a nonprofit collective of cultural organizations, has added 18 new gallery members from 11 cities and 4 countries. Among the galleries joining the organization are CASANOVA (of São Paolo), bitforms gallery (New York), Embajada (San Juan), JDJ The Ice House (Garrison, New York), and Lubov (New York).
The Drawing Center to Offer Free Admission for Three Years
The Drawing Center, an alternative space in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood, will offer free admission through February 2023. The new admissions policy, which launches on Thursday, is supported by a gift from the Cy Twombly Foundation. It is not the first time the Drawing Center has changed its admission fee structure recently, however: to coincide with an exhibition of drawings by incarcerated artists last year, the space also went free.
Deana Haggag has been appointed the artistic director of this year’s Seattle Art Fair, which runs July 23–26. Haggag is currently the president and CEO of the Chicago-based organization United States Artists, which facilitates a major artist fellowship program. For the fair, she will oversee its events programming. Nato Thompson, artistic director of the arts space Philadelphia Contemporary, oversaw the fair’s previous two editions.
Bortolami gallery in New York has added Madeline Hollander to its roster. The New York–based artist is best known for site-specific performance pieces, such as Ouroboros: Gs, a meditation on the Whitney Museum’s flood mitigation system that featured in the New York institution’s 2019 Biennial. She has shown work at the Centre Pompidou in Metz, France, the Serpentine Galleries in London, the Artist’s Institute in New York, and elsewhere. Recently, Hollander collaborated with director Jordan Peele to develop the choreography for his 2019 film Us.
The Canada Council for the Arts has named the eight winners of its annual Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Each award comes with $25,000 and is chosen by a jury of artists from a pool of nominations submitted by artists and arts professionals. The awards are divided into three groups. Anna Torma won the Saidye Bronfman Award. Zainub Verjee, an artist, critic, and arts administrator, won the Outstanding Contribution Award. And six artists were recognized with an Artistic Achievement Award: Deanna Bowen, Ruth Cuthand, Michael Fernandes, Kenneth Robert Lum, Jorge Lozano Lorza, and Dana Claxton, the latter of whose work was included in the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art.
Barcelona-based architecture firm Barozzi Veiga has been selected to design the new headquarters for Oolite Arts, a Miami-based arts organization that provides studio and exhibition spaces, residency programs, and funding to visual artists. The new campus, slated to open in 2022, will include new studio space for Oolite’s residency program, a theater for lectures and film screenings, and classrooms to host public educational programming.
The inaugural edition of the Paris Photo New York art fair, which is organized by Paris Photo and the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), will take place from April 2 to April 5 at Pier 94 on Manhattan’s West Side. It will bring together 126 galleries and 47 publishers from 24 countries. Among the highlights are Ming Smith at Jenkins Johnson (of San Francisco), Roy DeCarava at Richard Moore (Oakland, California), Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks (New York and Los Angeles), Dora Maar at Gilles Peyroulet & CIE (Paris), and Curran Hatleberg at Higher Pictures (New York), as well as a talk by photographer and filmmaker Tyler Mitchell. The full list of exhibitors and programs can be found here.
Sound Artist Maryanne Amacher’s Archive Heads to New York Public Library
Blank Forms, a roaming curatorial platform in New York, has announced the establishment of the Maryanne Amacher Foundation and the donation of Amacher’s archive to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The materials in the archive include sound works and related writings, performance materials, and ephemera, as well as more than a thousand reel-to-reel tapes and documentation of experimental sound works in other formats. The collection also includes electronic music gear that the foundation will repair and maintain. “We are thrilled to collaborate with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in ensuring the preservation and continuation of Maryanne Amacher’s singular work,” Blank Forms director Lawrence Kumpf said in a statement. “Blank Forms was founded with the mission of establishing new frameworks to preserve and present the time-based and interdisciplinary practices of underrepresented experimental artists like Maryanne Amacher.” Jonathan Hiam, the library’s curator of Music and Recorded Sound, said of Amacher, “Her collection provides a fascinating glimpse into the creative process of a truly unique artist. Making this collection available alongside our other holdings of Amacher’s peers and collaborators, like John Cage, also gives the public an understanding of the creative community she thrived in and influenced.”
Pirelli HangarBicocca Names Next General Manager
Alessandro Bianchi has been appointed general manager of Pirelli HangarBicocca, a foundation and contemporary art museum in Milan, Italy. He will assume the new position on March 2. Bianchi most recently served as an adviser to institutions including the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in Milan, the Teatro Regio opera house in Turin, and the Fondazione Nazionale per la Danza in Reggio Emilia.
New York Spring/Break Art Show 2020 Announces Exhibitors, New Location
For its ninth edition in New York, the Spring/Break Art Show will take place in the former offices of fashion house Ralph Lauren at 625 Madison Avenue. Running March 3 through 9 during Armory Arts Week, the show will offer more than 100 presentations focused on the fair’s 2020 theme, “In Excess.” Presenters include 550 Gallery, Anna Zorina Gallery, BRIC Arts Center, Galerie Urbane, Integrated Arts, and Monica King Contemporary, among other curators and enterprises. The full list can be found here.