Friday, January 10
Hauser & Wirth Names Marc Payot as President
Marc Payot, who has previously served as vice president and partner of Hauser & Wirth, has been appointed as a president of the mega-gallery, joining co-presidents Iwan and Manuela Wirth at its helm. Payot, who is based in New York, has been with Hauser & Wirth for 20 years and he has played a central role in the development of the gallery’s first purpose-built building set to open on West 22nd Street in Chelsea in spring 2020. Hauser & Wirth has also added eight new partners: Stacen Berg, Florian Berktold, Cristopher Canizares, Barbara Corti, James Koch, Mirella Roma, Graham Steele, and Neil Wenman, all of whom are members of its international team.
Monica Bonvicini Wins Oskar Kokoschka Prize
Italian artist Monica Bonvicini will receive the 2020 Oskar Kokoschka Prize, which comes with a €20,000 purse (about $22,200). Bonvicini is known for her installations that explore gender, sexuality, and architecture. She is a professor of performative arts and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and a professor of sculpture at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. She has had solo exhibitions at the the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kunstmuseum Basel, among others. Previous winners of the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, which is awarded every two years in Austria, include Gerhard Richter and Yoko Ono.
Philbrook Museum Names Associate Curator
The Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has named Sara O’Keeffe an associate curator of modern and contemporary art. O’Keeffe joins the Philbrook from the New Museum in New York, where she has been an associate curator since 2013. Prior to the New Museum, O’Keeffe worked in the curatorial department at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Aimee Friberg To Direct Curatorial Programming at fused space
Aimee Friberg, a curator, performance artist, and founder of the San Francisco gallery CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, will oversee curatorial programming at the San Francisco–based exhibition platform fused space, established in 2013 by the designer Yves Béhar. She succeeds dealer Jessica Silverman in the role, and Friberg’s tenure will begin with a group show titled “Record of Succession,” featuring works by Patricia Fernandez, Masako Miki, Rashaad Newsome, Eamon Ore-Giron, and Curtis Talwst Santiago.
Thursday, January 9
Metropolitan Museum of Art Acquires Works by Lala Rukh
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has acquired two important works by the Pakistani artist and women’s rights activist Lala Rukh—Mirror Image, 1, 2, 3 (1997), a collage comprised of newspaper clippings from the destruction of the Babri Masjid Mosque in India, and the stop-motion animation Rupak (2016). Commissioned for Documenta 14, the 12-second video was Rukh’s final work before her death in 2017. In it, a series of percussive measures—a rupak tal, or a beat common in Indian music—is translated into a single flickering white dot. The artist’s estate has also gifted the Met six posters Rukh created for the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), the Pakistani advocacy group that she cofounded in 1981.
Wednesday, January 8
Artadia Names Recipients of Houston Awards and Fellowship for Immigrant Artists
Artists Adriana Corral and Vincent Valdez are the recipients of Artadia’s eleventh Houston awards. Corral and Valdez will each get an unrestricted $10,000 cash prize. Corral’s installations, performances, and sculptures explore loss, memory, and historical erasures, and Valdez is known for his politically resonant drawings and paintings. The nonprofit has also announced that Betirri Bengtson, Gao Hang, Veronica Ibargüengoitia, Valentina Jager, and Ling-lin Ku have been awarded its second annual Houston Artadia Fellowship for Immigrant Artists. They will each receive $2,500 in unrestricted funds.
Tuesday, January 7
Ken Lum Wins $50,000 Artist Prize from Art Gallery of Ontario
The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto has named Ken Lum the winner of its 2019 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, which comes with a $50,000 purse and a solo exhibition at the museum. The award, which is administered by the late Canadian artist’s eponymous foundation, is presented annually to a Canadian artist. Lum is best known for his canvases that pair images with text and his reconfigurations of motel and mini-mall signs. The artist, who was born in Vancouver, has been a professor at several arts colleges around the world, including the University of British Columbia, and currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. His work was the subject of a solo exhibition at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco in 2018 and has been included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Documenta 11 in 2002, and the 2001 Venice Biennale, among others.
VIA Art Fund Awards Over $1 M. in 2019 Grants
The Boston-based nonprofit VIA Art Fund has named its 2019 grant recipients, who will receive grants ranging from $20,000 to $100,000. Its artistic production grants total $845,000, with Lynn Hershman Leeson, Kahlil Joseph, Jeffrey Gibson, and Sarah Sze among the nine winners. The VIA Art Fund also gifted or partially gifted artworks by Charlotte Posenenske, Isaac Julien, Zanele Muholi, and Tavares Strachan to various public collections around the U.S. Lumi Tan, curator at the Kitchen in New York, was selected as the recipient of the 2020 VIA Curatorial Fellowship.
Monday, January 6
Foundation for Contemporary Arts Establishes New Painting Prize
The New York–based Foundation for Contemporary Arts has named artist Kerstin Brätsch as the recipient of its inaugural Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting, which comes with $40,000. The award is underwritten by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and administered through the FCA’s Grants to Artists program. Brätsch, whose work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the New Museum, the 2011 Venice Biennale, and other venues, said in a release, “My attitude to art-making at large, and in particular the role of experimentation in my practice, is profoundly indebted to Helen Frankenthaler.” In selecting the first recipient of the award the directors of the FCA—Cecily Brown, Anne Collier, Anthony B. Creamer III, Anne Dias, Jasper Johns, Jennie C. Jones, Julian Lethbridge, Dean Moss, Emily Wei Rales, and James Welling—were joined by panelists Bettina Funcke, an art historian; musician Jenny Lin; Matthew Lyons, curator at the Kitchen in New York; and playwright, director, and New York City Players artistic director Richard Maxwell.
Hirshhorn Details Upcoming ‘Infinity Mirror Room’ Exhibition
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. announced on Monday that its next Yayoi Kusama presentation, titled “One With Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection,” will open on April 4. Running through September 19, the show will feature three works by the artist held in the museum’s permanent collection, with the 1965 “Infinity Mirror Room” Phalli’s Field among them. “One With Eternity” follows the Hirshhorn’s blockbuster 2017 Kusama retrospective, which drew record crowds throughout its five-city tour.
Smithsonian American Art Museum Names Curator of Craft
The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., has appointed Mary Savig as its new curator of craft. Savig previously served as the curator of manuscripts at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, where she oversaw exhibits including “What is Feminist Art?” (2019). She also organized the exhibition “Ephemeral and Eternal: The Archive of Lenore Tawney” (2019) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
The Lahore Biennale Foundation Reveals Commissioned Artists for Second Edition
The Lahore Biennale, which runs from January 26 to February 29 in Lahore, Pakistan, will feature works by more than 70 artists, including 20 newly commissioned pieces. Among the commissioned works, which will be installed in cultural and heritage sites across the city, are a film by Alia Farid, an installation and publication by Reem Falaknaz, and a series of bronze sculptures by Tau Makhacheva accompanied by sound and poetry by female writers, including Rachida Madani and Warsan Shire. Other participating artists include Diana Al-Hadid, Hassan Hajjaj and Haroon Mirza. A complete list of commissioned and participating artists can be found here.