COURTESY LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES
Friday, October 25, 2019
Uovo Workers Vote Against Joining Union
As a spate of New York arts enterprises witnessed the formation of unions over the past year, most notably the New Museum and the Guggenheim Museum, it seemed that Uovo, an art-handling company based in Queens, was to join the list. But this week, handlers, dock receivers, and drivers at the company voted against joining Teamsters Local 814. Julia Salazar, a prominent New York state senator who has supported the New Museum Union and other groups like it, had been among those advocating for the union.
In a statement, a Uovo spokesperson said that the company was “pleased with the outcome, which will allow us to retain the flexible, merit-based culture of open communication for which we have always been known.” Reached by ARTnews, a spokesperson for the proposed union attributed the fate of the campaign—for which 18 of 39 voters voted in approval—to “an expensive and vicious anti-union campaign based on fear-mongering lies and intimidation” on the part of Uovo. —Alex Greenberger
National Portrait Gallery Names Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Winners
Artist Hugo Crosthwaite is the first-place winner of the fifth Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, which is organized by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Crosthwaite, the first Latinx artist to receive the award, will receive $25,000 and be commissioned to create a portrait of a living person for the museum’s permanent collection. Prizes were also given to Sam Comen, Richard Greene, and Wayde McIntosh, and Natalia García Clark, Lauren Hare, and Adrian Octavius received special commendations. The jury for the 2019 competition included artist, writer and co-director of the program in photography and media at the California Institute of the Arts Harry Gamboa Jr.; Lauren Haynes, curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas; artist and senior critic at the Yale School of Art Byron Kim; and Jefferson Pinder, artist and professor of sculpture and contemporary practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
USC School of Art and Design to Expand Graduate Facility
The University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design has announced a major expansion of its graduate facility in the Los Angeles Arts District. The project will add 10,000 square feet to the site, which currently spans 15,000 square feet. The new complex will house its curatorial studies and MFA graduate programs. The school will also present arts programs and public events in the new spaces. The expansion is slated to be completed by fall 2020. USC Roski Dean Haven Lin-Kirk said in a statement, “The expansion will bring exposure and opportunities to our graduate students and provide needed studio space for our undergraduates so that they may all explore and build upon their art and design making.”
Shandaken Projects Names Faculty Members for Free Painting Master Class
The New York–based nonprofit organization Shandaken Projects has revealed the faculty members for its third season of Paint School, a free master class focused on the theory and practice of painting. Artists Ellen Berkenblit, Leidy Churchman, Chitra Ganesh, Mark Thomas Gibson, Rob Pruitt, Tschabalala Self, and Kyle Staver will work with 12 fellows in the program, which will run from January 7 to June 16. The initiative was inspired by alternative art education initiatives like Black Mountain College and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Applications will be open from October 25 to November 22.
COURTESY THE ESTATE OF ED MOSES AND KOHN GALLERY, LOS ANGELES
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Art Collector Launches Award for New York City Teachers
ARTnews Top 200 Collector and FLAG Art Foundation founder Glenn Fuhrman has established a new prize recognizing public school teachers of grades K-12 who “inspire learning through creativity, passion, and commitment,” according to a release. The inaugural FLAG Award for Teaching Excellence, which will be given for the 2019-2020 school year, will confer an unrestricted $100,000 purse to one grand-prize winner, whose school will receive an additional $20,000 to be used for arts-based initiatives developed by the winner. Four finalists will each be given $10,000, and their respective schools will get $2,000. In its first year, teachers working in Manhattan will be eligible for the award, and it plans to expand to other New York City boroughs and American cities in future iterations. Teachers can be nominated by students, parents, principles, and colleagues through January 13, 2020, and the winners will be announced in May. Fuhrman said in a statement, “In New York City, teachers face tremendous challenges, including low budgets and large class sizes, and we wanted to reward the fabulous teachers who are initiating positive action and serving as inspirational role models.”
Two Art Fairs Will Collaborate on Presentation for March 2020
As part of its upcoming edition set to open next March in New York, the Independent Art Fair will stage a curated exhibition organized in partnership with Object & Thing, a design fair that looks to break down boundaries between fine art and design. (The fair had its inaugural edition in Brooklyn earlier this year and is scheduled to return next May.) The collaboration will draw its art and design objects from various exhibitors at Independent, as well as invited design galleries, including Patrick Parrish Gallery and R & Company. Keeping with Object & Thing’s ethos, works in the show will not be grouped by gallery, and a full list of participants will be released early next year. Elizabeth Dee, founder and CEO of Independent, said of the collaboration, in a statement, “Together, we are interested in the atmosphere that can be created through prioritizing the creative aspect in how artworks are presented and sold. In this 2020 edition, our goal is to expand that impact, through individual and collective efforts, together opening possibilities for new experiences and structures.”
Fabric Workshop and Museum Taps New Executive Director
The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia has named Christina Vassallo as its new executive director. Vassallo joins the institution following six years at SPACES Cleveland, most recently serving its executive and artistic director. She has also worked as executive director of Flux Factory in Queens, and has curated shows with the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, the Jersey City Museum, NURTUREart in Brooklyn, Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and New Haven University in Connecticut. She takes over the position from Susan Talbott, who announced her retirement earlier this year.
Art-In-Buildings Program Names New Director
Real estate firm Time Equities Inc., which runs an Art-In-Buildings Program that places work by emerging and mid-career artists in its properties, has named Tessa Ferreyros as the new director and curator of that program. Ferreyros joins the firm following her time as curatorial manager for Madison Square Park Conservancy, and has previously worked as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she has worked on shows such as the Adrian Piper retrospective “A Synthesis of Intuitions.”
Fraenkel Gallery Adds Two Partners
The Fraenkel Gallery, a San Francisco space that focuses on photography, has added Amy Whiteside and Daphne Palmer as partners to the gallery, joining its co-owners Jeffrey Fraenkel and Frish Brandt. Whiteside has worked with the gallery for nearly three decades, and is being promoted to partner from her current role as senior director. Palmer has worked with the gallery since 2013, and is currently a director. The news comes as Fraenkel celebrates its 40th year in business, when it opened at near the city’s Union Square in 1979.
Estate of Ed Moses to Kohn Gallery
The Los Angeles-based enterprise Kohn Gallery has added to its roster the estate of Ed Moses, an L.A. painter who died last year. The gallery will include works by Moses in a group presentation in its booth at Art Basel Miami Beach in December. Best known for his abstract works, Moses was a prominent figure in the West Coast art scene during the postwar era. He had his first solo exhibition at the storied Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1958, where befriended artists Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, and others. Moses’s work is in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Whitney Museum in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and other institutions. William Turner Gallery in Los Angeles will also continue to work with the artist’s estate. Gallery founder Michael Kohn said in a statement, “As his paintings are put into context with contemporary art since 1960, Ed Moses will further emerge as one of the leading painters of his generation and beyond.”
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Karen Rifas Wins $75,000 Artist Award
The nonprofit organization Oolite Arts, which looks to support the careers of artists working in Miami and South Florida, has announced the 45 grantees that will share a total of $500,000 in funds as part of its annual program, the Ellies, Miami’s Visual Arts Awards. The largest prize will go to Karen Rifas who has won the Michael Richards Award, which comes with an unrestricted cash grant of $75,000 and a commission for new work from Oolite that will be exhibited at The Bass museum in Miami Beach. (Rifas previously had a career survey at The Bass in 2018.) The other winners range in grants of $2,500 to $25,000 as a way to spur the creation of new work throughout Miami-Dade County. Winning artists include Yucef Merhi, Ernesto Oroza, Agustina Woodgate, CYJO, Terence Price II, Freddy Rodriguez, Liz Ferrer, Juan Ledesma, and Maria Corina Ramirez.
COURTESY JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH
NYFA Names Recipient of Distinguished Artist Award
The New York Foundation for the Arts has awarded its Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award, which is named for the late painter and comes with an unrestricted purse of $12,000, to artist, curator, activist, and independent professor Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. An enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, MT, Smith focuses on notions of community in her prints and paintings. In her work, Smith employs imagery from existing artworks, advertisements, and signage to examine American capitalism and stereotypes about Native Americans and indigenous peoples. Smith was selected by a panel that included artists Polly Apfelbaum, Andrea Arroyo, Sanford Wurmfeld, artist and writer Nell Painter, and David Breslin, curator and director of the collection at the Whitney Museum in New York.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Huntington Names Chief Curator of American Art
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Garden in San Marino, California, has appointed Dennis Carr as its chief curator of American art. Carr, who will join the Huntington in January, currently serves as curator of American decorative arts and sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he has expanded its collections of Latin American and Native American art. Some of his curatorial credits at the MFA include “Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia” (2015), “Collecting Stories: Native American Art” (2018), and “Cecilia Vicuña: Disappeared Quipu” (2018). In his new role, Carr said in a statement that the Huntington “contains not only a superb selection of works representing a range of media and voices, but it is also a relatively young collection, flexible in terms of its range, and ripe for growth and new interpretations.”
©JAIME CASTRO
Monday, October 21, 2019
Galeria Nara Roesler Launches New Curatorial Initiative, Consultantship
Galeria Nara Roesler, with spaces in New York, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, has established a permanent curatorial consultantship with the art historian and writer Luis Pérez-Oramas. Beginning this fall, he will serve as artistic director at-large for the new Roesler Curatorial Project, which aims to create experimental exhibitions, publications, and research initiatives to in the service of dialogue between writers, curators, and artists. The gallery will also facilitate
Tate Britain Taps New Director of Collection for British Art
Polly Staple has been named director of collection for British Art at Tate Britain in London, and has a start date of January
Smithsonian American Art Museum Names First Luce Foundation Curatorial Fellow
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., has tapped Grace Yasumura to be its first Luce Foundation Curatorial Fellow. In her new position, Yasumura will assist on the curation of a survey charting the way American sculptors have thought about race over the years. Her position is supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation through which the museum will receive $590,000 over the course of five years. She starts at the museum on November 12.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Acquires Iconic Movie Costumes From Cinema History
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles has acquired some storied holdings of Hollywood paraphernalia, from the costume Shirley Temple wore in the 1939 film The Little Princess to the gnarly-looking robe that Jeff Bridges wore as “The Dude” in the 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski. Other highlights of the new holdings include a costume worn by Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain, Sammy Davis, Jr.’s suit from Porgy and Bess, Jack Nicholson’s crimson jacket from The Shining, a wig worn by Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, Diana Ross’s ensemble from Lady Sings the Blues, a waitress uniform from Thelma and Louise, and a costume from Mary Queen of Scots, among others.