Friday, March 6
Pace Gallery Now Represents Trevor Paglen
Artist Trevor Paglen, who is known for his sculptures, photography, and installations dealing with themes of surveillance, has joined Pace Gallery, with whom he will have a solo exhibition in London in September. Paglen’s work explores the systems and technologies through which humans experience the world, including artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and 3-D modeling. He has also contributed research and cinematography to Laura Poitras’s Academy Award–winning film Citizenfour (2014), and he created the public sculpture Trinity Cube (2015), which was made with material from the exclusion zone in Fukushima, Japan. The artist has had solo outings at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, and other institutions. Through the new arrangement, Paglen will still work with his two other galleries, Metro Pictures (New York) and Altman Siegel (San Francisco).
Time Magazine Unveils Artists Commissions for Women of The Year Project
Time magazine has unveiled 49 original portraits commissioned by an international group of artists for its Women of the Year Project, a spotlight on the influential women who were overlooked during the publication’s 100-year-run. Among the prominent artists selected for the project are Mickalene Thomas (who created a collage honoring trans rights activist Marsha P. Johnson), fiber artist Bisa Butler (who used mixed-textiles for a portrait of Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai), and Toyin Ojih Odutola (who created a drawing of Beyoncé). The full list of commissioned artists, accompanied by their Time portraits cover, can be found here.
Galerie Max Hetzler Becomes First Major Gallery to Open Permanent Space in Marfa, Texas
Galerie Max Hetzler, which currently has locations in Berlin, London, and Paris, will become the first major international commercial gallery to open a permanent space in the West Texas art hub Marfa, according to a report in the Financial Times. Its new 26,000 square-foot gallery, which includes a studio space and storage facility, is slated to open in late August, and it will be near notable institutions such as Ballroom Marfa, the Judd Foundation, and the Chinati Foundation. So far, the gallery plans to host one 10-month exhibition per year, launching its Texas programming with a show of new work by German artist Albert Oehlen later this year.
Thursday, March 5
Public Art Fund Details Artist Commissions for LaGuardia Airport
The Public Art Fund, a New York–based arts organization that places artworks in public settings around New York, has announced a new partnership with LaGuardia Gateway Partners. The initiative will involve the commissioning of four permanent public artworks by Jeppe Hein, Sabine Hornig, Laura Owens, and Sarah Sze for the airport’s redeveloped Terminal B. The large-scale, site-specific installations will be unveiled at the opening of the new Terminal B Arrivals and Departures Hall later this year, and they will be joined by a series of temporary commissions installed throughout the terminal.
Harlem Nonprofit Taps Carrie Mae Weems, Bill T. Jones as Inaugural Artists-in-Residence
The Harlem-based youth nonprofit Brotherhood/Sister Sol has named its inaugural artists-in-residence: artist Carrie Mae Weems and choreographer, director, and writer Bill T. Jones. During the year-long residency, Weems and Jones will participate in a two-part conversation series, taking place in New York City on March 24 and October 13. Weems will also create an original artwork in collaboration with alumni of the organization, while two of its current members will be a part of the cast of Jones’s upcoming production Deep Blue Sea, commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory and slated to run there from April 14–25. Jones and Weems will also serve as advisors on art programming at the organization’s new educational facility that will open in Harlem later this year.
Wednesday, March 4
World Monuments Fund Names First Vice President of Programs
Jonathan S. Bell has been appointed to the newly created position of vice president of programs at the World Monuments Fund. Bell joins the nonprofit organization from the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., where he currently serves as director of the Human Journey Initiative at National Geographic Society. He has previously worked with the Getty Conservation Institute on World Heritage Sites in China and Egypt.
Tuesday, March 3
2020 Pritzker Prize Goes to Two Women For the First Time
The Pritzer Prize, the world’s biggest award for architecture, has this year gone to Yvonne Farrell and Shirley McNamara, who together operate the Dublin-based architectural firm Grafton Architects. In a statement, the jury recognized them for designing buildings that act as “good neighbors” with their surroundings. Their firm previously won the Silver Lion award at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale in Italy, and this year marks the first time a pair of women will win the $100,000 award, which has previously gone to Rem Koolhaas, Robert Venturi, Oscar Niemeyer, and more.
France’s Biennale de Lyon Names 2021 Curators
The next edition of the Biennale de Lyon, one of France’s biggest contemporary art events, will be curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. Both are cofounders of Art Reoriented, a curatorial platform based in New York and Munich that has staged numerous traveling exhibitions, including “Ways of Seeing” in 2017, “Art et Liberté: Rupture, War and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948)” in 2016, and “I Spy With My Little Eye: A New Generation of Beirut Artists” in 2015. Their biennial will open in September 2021.
Monday, March 2
Longtime Baltimore Museum of Art Curator to Retire
Jay McKean Fisher, a longtime curator and the inaugural director of the Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies at the Baltimore Museum of Art, will retire later this month after 45 years at the institution. During his tenure at the BMA, he oversaw major acquisitions for the museum’s collection, including the George A. Lucas Collection of 19th-century French art, the Gallagher/Dalsheimer collection of American photography, and more than 500 works on paper by Henri Matisse from the Marguerite Matisse Duthuit Collection and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. Among the notable exhibitions Fisher organized are “Matisse: Painter as Sculptor” (2007) and “The Prints of Édouard Manet: A Centenary Celebration” (1983). Beginning April 1, he will be named as the BMA’s emeritus senior curator for prints, drawings, and photographs.
Norton Museum of Art Names Rudin Prize Recipient
The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, has awarded its $20,000 Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers to South African artist Kristin-Lee Moolman. Each artist nominated for the award is put up for consideration by another famous photographer, and Moolman was recommended for the prize by Cindy Sherman. Moolman’s films and photography focus on life in South Africa, centering young, black, and queer individuals. Her work, which is currently on view in a group show at the institution, will enter the museum’s permanent collection.
MOCA Tucson Names Director and Curator
Laura Copelin has been appointed the interim executive director and chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, Arizona. Copelin will assume her new role in February. Prior to joining MOCA, Copelin served as the executive director and curator at Ballroom Marfa, a contemporary art space in Texas, where she will continue to serve as curator-at-large. Copelin has also worked in the curatorial department of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, formerly known as the Santa Monica Museum of Art.
Lyles & King Now Represents Rosa Loy
The New York–based gallery Lyles & King has added painter Rosa Loy to its roster. The artist’s figurative works, which can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among other institutions, depict women in dreamy and haunting settings. She will continue to work with Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and Gallery Kleindienst in Leipzig, Germany.