Friday, February 19
Vincent Price Art Museum Names New Director
Steven Y. Wong will be the next director of the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, effective immediately. He succeeds Pilar Tompkins Rivas, who left last summer to become chief curator and deputy director of curatorial and collections at the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Wong is a curator and educator born and raised in Los Angeles. He comes to VPAM from the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, where he was curator and organized group exhibitions focusing on the work of L.A.-based artists. He had also previously served as senior staff curator and interim executive director at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles. In 2019, VPAM awarded Wong its Cultural Leadership Award. In a statement, Wong said, “As an arts leader and community college graduate, I am excited to return to the type of college campus that helped launch my own career in the visual arts.”
Hales Gallery Now Represents Kay WalkingStick
Kay WalkingStick has joined the roster of Hales Gallery, which maintains spaces in New York and London. Throughout her career, WalkingStick has explored the American landscape and its symbolic importance to Native American communities through paintings which meld elements of modernism, abstraction, and concepts derived from Native traditions. She was the subject of a retrospective at the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., and her work is currently on view in “Site”, a group exhibition at Hales New York. The gallery will present a solo exhibition of her work in New York in 2022.
Charlie James Gallery Now Represents Lucia Hierro
The Los Angeles–based Charlie James Gallery has added New York–based artist Lucia Hierro to its roster. She will have her first exhibition with the gallery in the fall, and in June, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, will mount a solo show of her work. (Hierro had previously shown with New York’s Elizabeth Dee Gallery, which ended operations in 2018 with an exhibition of her work.) Hierro is best known for her large-scale sculptural installations that take the form of transparent reusable shopping bags containing a myriad of goods purchased at bodegas and references to pop culture and art history.
Thursday, February 18
Hauser & Wirth’s Menorca Location Gets an Opening Date
The long-awaited Menorca branch of Hauser & Wirth will open on July 17 with a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Mark Bradford. The 16,145-square-foot outpost was first announced in 2019 and in addition to exhibition space includes a residency program for artists, gardens, a store, and a cantina-style restaurant. In a statement, gallery cofounder Manuela Wirth said, “Our dream has been to place powerful contemporary art like his within this very special context. Isla del Rey is an extraordinary place of wild nature, beautiful light and sea, with a fascinating history.”
Newark Museum of Art Appoints New Co-Chairs of Board of Trustees
The Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey has named Eric Fitzgerald Reed, vice president of public policy & community engagement for Verizon Communications, and Allen J. Karp, executive vice president of healthcare management and transformation at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, as co-chairs of its board of trustees. They succeed Clifford Blanchard and Christine C. Gilfillan, who have served as board co-chairs since 2017.
Wednesday, February 17
Marymount Manhattan College Receives Gift to Fund Visual Arts Center
Marymount Manhattan College in New York has received a $25 million gift the Carson Family Charitable Trust to build a visual arts center and fund scholarships—it will put $15 million towards the new center and $10 million towards scholarships for its students. The 12,000-square-foot Judith Mara Carson Center for Visual Arts, which is designed by the architects DSK | Dewing Schmid Kearns, will be located on the eighth floor and a portion of the seventh floor of the College’s main building, Carson Hall. Construction on the visual arts center is set to begin later this year and to be completed in summer 2022.
Fraenkel Gallery Now Represents Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems has joined Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, which will present of survey of the artist’s career in September. Weems’s practice spans photography, installation, video, and performance, and her work can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and other major collections around the world. She will also continue working with Jack Shainman in New York and Galerie Barbara Thumm in Berlin.
Queer|Art, Names Winner of 2020 Eva Yaa Asantewaa Grant for Queer Women(+) Dance Artists
Queer|Art, a New York–based arts nonprofit dedicated to supporting the careers of LGBTQ+ artists, has announced the recipient of the third annual Eva Yaa Asantewaa Grant For Queer Women(+) Dance Artists: Shanel Edwards. A nonbinary artist with roots in Jamaica and Philadelphia, Edwards utilizes filmmaking, poetry, photography, and movement in their work to explore Black queer and trans identities. Edwards was a 2020 Mural Arts fellow and was a 2019 Artist in Residence with Urban Movement Arts in Philadelphia. Four other dance artists were honored as finalists: MurdaMommy, Anna Martine Whitehead, Ogemdi Ude, and x senn_yuen.
Inaugural Knight Arts + Tech Fellows Named
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced the inaugural class of the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, which supports artists working in technology and new media. The five recipients of the fellowship are Black Quantum Futurism, a Philadelphia-based collective of interdisciplinary artists; Rashaad Newsome, a visual artist whose practice blends collage, sculpture, and computer programming; Rodolfo Peraza a multimedia artist whose work focuses on virtual and physical spaces; Sondra Perry, an interdisciplinary artist exploring themes of race and identity through video, computer-based media and performance; and Stephanie Dinkins, a transdisciplinary artist whose works explores the intersection of race, gender, and AI. Each of the five fellows will receive $50,000 in unrestricted funding.
Tuesday, February 16
Guggenheim Museum and Union Reach Contract Agreement
New York’s Guggenheim Museum and the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 30 have reached a three-year contract agreement. The new contract applies to 22 full-time staff and 145 on-call workers, and will see wage increases for unionized employees and new standards for scheduling. “With the Guggenheim, we will continue to improve standards together,” said William Lynn, IUOE Vice President and IUOE Local 30 Business Manager & Financial Secretary. Richard Armstrong, the Guggenheim’s director, said he was looking forward to fostering an “ongoing productive relationship” with the union.
Casey Kaplan Now Represents Caroline Kent
Casey Kaplan gallery in New York has added Chicago-based artist Caroline Kent to its roster. Kent’s practice explores the relationship between language, abstract painting, and textual translation. Painting, sculpture, and performance converge in her large-scale works, which often feature bold geometric line play. Her work has been presented at institutions such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, among other institutions. Her work will feature in a solo presentation with Casey Kaplan at Frieze New York in May, followed by her first solo exhibition at the gallery slated to take place in September 2021.
KOW Gallery Adds Three Artists and One Collective to Roster
KOW Gallery in Berlin now represents interdisciplinary artists Anna Boghiguian and Anna Ehrenstein, painter Sophie Gogl, and the art league of Congolese plantation workers Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC). KOW, which opened in 2009, is known for its socially-minded presentations by international artists.