Friday, January 22
Eric Firestone Gallery has added the estate of the mosaicist Jeanne Reynal to its roster. The gallery will open an exhibition of Reynal’s work from the 1940s to the 1970s on January 28. A first-generation New York School artist, Reynal created largely abstract pieces featuring intricate arrangements of tesserae in cement.
Thursday, January 21
Bemis Alumni Award Names 2020 Recipient
The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha has named artist and curator Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) as the 2020 Bemis Alumni Award winner. The prize comes with an unrestricted $5,000 purse to support Bemis art practice. White Hawk’s work, which spans painting, sculpture, performance, photography, and video, can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and other institutions.
Africa Institute Announces Research Fellowships Program
The Africa Institute in Sharjah has detailed its new research fellowships program, which features a a senior fellowship named for thelate professor of African studies Ali A. Mazrui and postdoctoral fellowships named for late curator Okwui Enwezor, who died in 2019, and forMoroccan scholar Fatema Mernissi. The inaugural cohort includes Surafel Wondimu Abebe, an assistant professor at the Centre for African Studies and College of Performing and Visual Arts at Addis Ababa University, who received the Okwui Enwezor Postdoctoral Fellow in Visual Culture, Performance Studies and Critical Humanities; Nidhi Mahajan, assistant professor in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who received the Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies; and Elizabeth W. Giorgis, associate professor of art history, criticism and theory in the College of Performing and Visual Art and the Center for African and Asian Studies at Addis Ababa University, who received Ali A. Mazrui Senior Fellow in Global African Studies. Additionally, Dagmawi Woubshet, associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, received a senior fellowship.
Phoebe Hui Awarded Audemars Piguet Art Commission
Audemars Piguet Contemporary, the watch company’s initiative devoted to contemporary art, has selected Hong Kong–based artist and researcher Phoebe Hui for the fifth commission, in collaboration with Ying Kwok, curator of the Hong Kong Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. Hui is known for her multidisciplinary practice making use of new technologies. Her commissioned artwork, The Moon is Leaving Us, examines the moon’s slow migration from Earth, providing “a platform for visitors to investigate both cosmic and innate forces,” according to Audemars Piguet Contemporary. The large-scale installation will debut at the Tai Kwun, Centre for Heritage and Arts, in Hong Kong on April 23, and remain on view through Art Basel Hong Kong.
Wednesday, January 20
Altman Siegel Now Reps Troy Lamarr Chew II
Los Angeles–based artist Troy Lamarr Chew II has joined the roster of Altman Siegel gallery in San Francisco, which will co-represent the artist with Parker Gallery in Los Angeles. Chew’s paintings, which often include appliques atop oil on canvas, look at the African diaspora and how its people have had a profound impact on culture, particularly in the United States. In his art, Chew reframes Western art techniques to address the exclusion of Black people from history.
Chief Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts to Retire from Yale Center for British Art
Elisabeth Fairman, chief curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, will retire from her post on January 30. Fairman joined the center as the catalogue librarian in 1982 and went on to hold positions including associate curator for rare books, curator of rare books and manuscripts, and senior curator of rare books and manuscripts. She has helped expand the department’s collection to include some 35,000 volumes dating from the 15th century to the present.
Tuesday, January 19
Victoria Miro Now Represents Flora Yukhnovich
Victoria Miro, which maintains spaces in London and Venice, has added London-based painter Flora Yukhnovich to its roster. Yukhnovichis known for her reinterpretations of 18th-century imagery through a contemporary cultural lens. Her work first appeared at Victoria Miro in a group exhibition in 2019, and she later had two solo exhibitions with the gallery. A third Victoria Miro solo exhibition will follow in London in 2022.
Rele Gallery Will Open Los Angeles Space
Rele Gallery in Lagos, Nigeria, will open its first international outpost in Los Angeles on February 1. The inaugural exhibition at the L.A. space is titled “Orita Meta –Crossroads,” and it will feature works by Nigerian artists Marcellina Akpojotor, Tonia Nneji, and Chidinma Nnoli. “Los Angeles has become a central destination for the arts at all levels, especially for emerging voices, and I look forward to bringing a greater cross-cultural appreciation for African art and the many ways in which it is so tied to our present contemporary moment,” Rele Gallery founder Adenrele Sonariwo said in a statement.
Marina Kellen French Endows Met Directorship
Thanks to a donation from the Marina Kellen French Foundation and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s director position will now bear the name of Marina Kellen French, a trustee at the museum. Max Hollein, the current director of the Met, will be the first to bear the title of Marina Kellen French Director.
The White Review Names New Editors
Rosanna McLaughlin, Izabella Scott, and Skye Arundhati Thomas will be the new editors of the White Review, a London-based publication focused on art and literature. Cofounders Ben Eastham and Jacques Testard praised the trio for their “reimagining of the editorship as a collective enterprise.”