Friday, July 24
Hirshhorn Museum Acquires Huma Bhabha Work for Outdoor Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., has acquired We Come in Peace, a work by Human Bhabha originally commissioned for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop in 2018. The 12-foot-tall sculpture—described in a press release as a “many-faced, intersex monumental figure” whose title alludes to the 1951 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still—will be installed “soon” on the National Mall.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., has acquired We Come in Peace, a work by Human Bhabha originally commissioned for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop in 2018. The 12-foot-tall sculpture—described in a press release as a “many-faced, intersex monumental figure” whose title alludes to the 1951 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still—will be installed “soon” on the National Mall.
Thursday, July 23
Getty Research Institute Names Artist-in-Residence
Gala Porras-Kim will be the next artist-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Porras-Kim’s interdisciplinary work explores knowledge formation and language, and her residency at the institution will extend through 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Getty Research Institute has also announced its 43 scholars for the forthcoming year, among whom are Vienna-based curator Sabine Breitwieser; C. Ondine Chavoya, professor of art at Williams College in Massachusetts; and Eleonora Pistis, assistant professor of art history at Columbia University in New York. The full list of GRI scholars can be found here.
The California African American Museum Appoints Two Curators
The California African American Museum in Los Angeles has hired two new members for its curatorial team: Taylor Renee Aldridge as visual arts curator and program manager and Susan D. Anderson as history curator and program manager. Aldridge, a curator and writer, will begin her tenure at CAAM in August after a stint organizing exhibitions with the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Artists Market, Cranbrook Art Museum, and the Luminary. She is the cofounder of ARTS.BLACK, an art journal centered on Black perspectives and the recipient of the 2019 Rabkin Foundation Award for Art Journalism. Anderson joins CAAM this month from the California Historical Society, where she served as director of public programs. Prior to that she was interim chief curator at the African American Museum & Library in Oakland, California, and a curator at UCLA Library Special Collections, where she acquired notable collections such as the Miriam Matthews Photography Collection.
The California African American Museum in Los Angeles has hired two new members for its curatorial team: Taylor Renee Aldridge as visual arts curator and program manager and Susan D. Anderson as history curator and program manager. Aldridge, a curator and writer, will begin her tenure at CAAM in August after a stint organizing exhibitions with the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Artists Market, Cranbrook Art Museum, and the Luminary. She is the cofounder of ARTS.BLACK, an art journal centered on Black perspectives and the recipient of the 2019 Rabkin Foundation Award for Art Journalism. Anderson joins CAAM this month from the California Historical Society, where she served as director of public programs. Prior to that she was interim chief curator at the African American Museum & Library in Oakland, California, and a curator at UCLA Library Special Collections, where she acquired notable collections such as the Miriam Matthews Photography Collection.
National Art Gallery of the Bahamas Appoints New Chief Curator
The National Art Gallery of the Bahamas has named Daniela Fifi as its new chief curator. Fifi has previously held positions at the National Museum and Art Gallery of Trinidad and Tobago, the Whitney Museum in New York, and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in New York. She has also served as managing editor of education at Small Axe Journal, a Duke University Press publication with whom the NAGB staged the 2019 exhibition “The Visual Life of Social Affliction.” Fifi said in a statement, “These may be uncertain times in the world, but it is now that the arts become more important than ever before.”
James Cohan Now Represents Eamon Ore-Giron
The New York–based gallery James Cohan has added Eamon Ore-Giron to its roster. Ore-Giron’s practice spans painting, sound performance, and video installation, often exploring cross-culturalism through abstract geometric iconography. The gallery will host a solo exhibition of the artist’s work in April 2021. Ore-Giron’s work has previously been shown in the 2018 edition of the Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, as well as the at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Pérez Art Museum Miami, among other venues.
Wednesday, July 22
Red Bull Arts Expands Grant Program to 20 U.S. Cities
The national organization Red Bull Arts is expanding its micro-grant program to artists in 20 U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Oakland, Miami, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Detroit, where the initiative started. Beginning in August, Red Bull Arts will give two $1,000 grants in each city on a rolling monthly basis through the end of the year. Applications for the grants are now open online.
Tuesday, July 21
Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center To Return In September
Originally slated to be installed in spring but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center is now set to take place from September 1 to October 2. The second edition of the exhibition, which is free and open to the pubic, is curated by Brett Littman, director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, Queens. Throughout its run, the show will feature works by Ghada Amer, Beatriz Cortez, Andy Goldsworthy, Lena Henke, Camille Henrot, and Thaddeus Mosley.
Tang Teaching Museum Receives $1.5 M. Grant
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College has received a $1.5 million grant from the New York–based Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund to endow an educator position and fund community educational programming at the museum, which extends beyond the museum to local community centers, schools, and libraries and reaches some 8,000 people each year. In a statement, the Tang’s director Ian Berry said, “By endowing our museum educator position, the Illumination Fund ensures we will be able to deliver truly inspiring and transformative moments for our diverse communities.”
Kochi-Muziris Biennale Announces Artists for 2020 Edition
The fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India will open as planned on December 12 and run through April 10, 2021 at sites across Kochi. Curated by Singaporean artist and writer Shubigi Rao, the exhibition is titled “In our Veins Flow Ink and Fire,” which, according to Rao’s curatorial note, “embodies the pleasure of experiencing practices of divergent sensibilities, under conditions both joyful and grim.” The exhibiting artists include Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña, Lebanese video and installation artist Ali Cherri, Hong Kong–based sound and installation artist Samson Young, and Vietnamese filmmaker and visual artist Thảo Nguyên Phan. The full list of artists can be found here. In a statement, Rao said, “As an artist, I’m driven by many things—the need to situate myself in this world (historically and in my current reality), my responsibilities to not just our species but to the planet, and to recognize that artistic and literary practices have the potential to strengthen existing communities and to generate new thought and action.”
David Castillo Gallery Announces Relocation
Miami Beach’s David Castillo Gallery will move to a new space in the Miami Design District this September. The gallery first opened in 2005 in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood and then moved to its current space—a historic building in Miami Beach designed by Albert Anis—in 2014. The inaugural exhibition at the new location will be a solo show of artist Lyle Ashton Harris, timed to the artist’s exhibition of prints at the ICA Miami.
Artist Kader Attia Closes Paris Space
Kader Attia will close his artist-run space, La Colonie, in Paris, the artist announced in an email. La Colonie opened in October 2016 near the French capital’s Gare du Nord train station and included a bar and restaurant on the ground floor, a venue to host panels and lectures on the second floor, and an exhibition space for artist projects on the third floor. According to its website, La Colonie was intended to present projects around “living and thinking together” to examine ways of decolonization.
Monday, July 20
Alexander Gray Associates Opens Second Hudson Valley Location
New York–based gallery Alexander Gray Associates will open a second exhibition space in Germantown, New York. The new location is walking distance from the gallery’s original Hudson Valley outpost, a 19th-century barn which shows one artwork each month. The second Germantown location will be inaugurated in August with a solo show of new work by Hudson-based artist Jennie C. Jones.
Christie’s Names New Head of Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas
Alexis Maggiar is the new international director of the department of arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas for the auction house Christie’s. He will be based in Paris and will report to Cécile Verdier, president of Christie’s France. The department was recently the subject of controversy when art historian Chika Okeke-Agulu called on Christie’s to halt the sale of a pair of Igbo alusi (“sacred sculptures”) that Okeke-Agulu alleged might have been forcibly taken from Nigeria. (The house proceeded with the sale in June, when they sold for €212,500.) In a statement about Maggiar’s appointment, Verdier said, “I am convinced that he will bring to this department, in addition to his long experience, great knowledge, involvement and commitment to clients, a new business approach and market vision.”
Top Collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos Sponsors Richard Long Installation
British sculptor Richard Long will install his 1984 Land art work Athens Slate Line, which consists of dozens of pieces of slate assembled into a line, at the shrine Dionysos Eleuthereus on the south slope of the Acropolis in Athens. The work is sponsored in part by ARTnews Top 200 Collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos and the Greek Ministry of Culture, as part of its “All of Greece, One Culture.” The exhibition, which runs July 21–September 30, is presented by Daskalopoulous’s NEON foundation and is curated by its director, Elina Kountouri.
CORRECTION 7/24/20, 12:45 p.m.: A previous version of this article said that Lyle Ashton Harris would have a survey at the ICA Miami. His ICA Miami presentation is an exhibition of prints, not a survey.