Friday, May 15
Jenny Holzer, Mel Chin, and Others Share Messages to Essential Workers in Three U.S. Cities
As part of a public art campaign spanning New York, Boston, and Chicago, artists’ messages to essential workers are being projected on large-scale digital displays. The project organized by Times Square Arts, For Freedoms, and Poster House features works by Carrie Mae Weems, Christine Sun Kim, Duke Riley, Jenny Holzer, Mel Chin, Pedro Reyes, Xaviera Simmons, and more.
Thursday, May 14
Phillips Appoints Chairman of Asia
The auction house Phillips has appointed Jonathan Crockett as its new chairman of Asia. Since joining Phillips in 2016, Crockett has played a helped the house expand its regional presence and has overseen several high-profile consignments, including the 2018 sale of Zao Wou-ki’s 04.01.79, which fetched HK$69.9 million ( about $8.9 million), making it the most expensive Zao Wou-Ki work from the 1970s ever sold.
Wednesday, May 13
Galerie Max Hetzler Opens New Berlin Space
Galerie Max Hetzler will inaugurate a new space at Bleibtreustraße 15/16 in Berlin with an exhibition of recent work by German artist André Butzer. The show, which includes five large-scale canvases and one work on paper by Butzer, will be on view in the gallery from May 29 through August 1. The space is housed in the former home of German art dealer and publisher Alfred Flechtheim, who championed avant-garde painting in the early 19th century; it is the gallery’s third Berlin location.
Archives of American Art Makes Two Appointments
The Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C., has made two new appointments. Ben Gillespie, who most recently served as the Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral scholar in library-museum collaboration at the University of Oregon and has previously worked in the modern and contemporary curatorial department at the Denver Art Museum, has been named oral historian. Jacob Proctor will work as the Gilbert and Ann Kinney New York collector, following his tenure as a curator at the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. Proctor also has curatorial experience from roles with the Frieze art fair in London and New York, the Aspen Art Museum, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University.
Tuesday, May 12
Baltimore Museum of Art Receives $3.5 M. to Endow Matisse Studies Center Directorship
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland has received a $3.5 million gift to endow a directorship for its Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies, which is set to open in fall 2021. The new post will be taken up by Katy Rothkopf, the museum’s senior curator and department head of European painting and sculpture. The BMA has one of the largest collections of work by Matisse of any art museum, which includes 500 from a 1949 donation by sisters Claribel and Etta Cone and some 500 more that the museum has acquired in the years since.
Monday, May 11
Gagosian Sells Cecily Brown Painting for $5.5 M.
With many of its locations closed, Gagosian gallery has continued to make use of its online viewing rooms, which it launched in 2018, to sell work by its artists. This time the gallery has made a major sale: Cecily Brown’s Figures in a Landscape 1, a 2001 vibrant abstract painting that is among the most expensive ones by the artist ever sold. Her auction record stands at $6.8 million, which was set in May 2018 at Sotheby’s New York with the sale of her Suddenly Last Summer (1999). The next most expensive work sold at auction by Brown is The Pyjama Game (ca. 1997–98) for $4.9 million in November 2018. The Brown was included in Gagosian’s Frieze New York 2020 Online Viewing Room, which is separate from the gallery’s participation in the Frieze New York art fair, where it had a solo presentation of work by Katharaina Grosse and sold all the works on paper it had on offer. —Maximilíano Durón
Tiffany Foundation Names 2019 Biennial Grants Recipients
The New York–based Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation has revealed the 20 recipients of its 2019 Biennial grants, which each come with an unrestricted $20,000 award. Selected from a pool of 110 nominated artists working in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, craft, and new media, the grantees include Carmen Argote, Diedrick Brackens, Sara Cwynar, Brendan Fernandes, Deana Lawson, Tschabalala Self, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya.
Park View/Paul Soto Now Represents Mark McKnight
Mark McKnight, a young photographer based in Los Angeles and Tucson who is known for his pictures likening bodies to their surrounding environments, is now represented by Park View/Paul Soto gallery in Los Angeles. McKnight will be included in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson and the Mistake Room in L.A. scheduled for later this year, and he will have his first solo show with the gallery in the winter of 2021.