ARTnews in Brief: Timothy Taylor Now Represents Richard Forster, and More from September 20, 2019

Friday, September 20, 2019

Timothy Taylor Now Represents Richard Forster
Timothy Taylor gallery, which has spaces in London and New York, has added Richard Forster to its roster. Earlier this year, Forster had solo exhibition at FLAG Art Foundation in New York; it will travel to Timothy Taylor’s London gallery in November. The British artist is best known for his intricate drawings exploring architecture and the socio-political climate that at first appear to be photographs or newspaper clippings. He has previously shown work at Tate Britain, the Drawing Center in New York, and Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh, which will continue to represent him in Scotland.

Garth Greenan Gallery Adds James Luna to Roster
Garth Greenan Gallery in New York now represents the pioneering performance artist James Luna, who died last year at age 68. Luna’s practice focused on Native American identity and culture, and his work was included in the 2005 Venice Biennale and the 2019 Whitney Biennial’s film program. He also exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, among other institutions. For one of his most famous interventions, Take a Picture with a Real Indian (1991), Luna, who was of Luiseño, Ipai, and Mexican descent, posed for photographs with tourists. He said of the project, “America loves to say ‘her Indians.’ America loves to see us dance for them. America likes our arts and crafts. America likes to name cars and trucks after our tribes.”

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Names Curator and Mediator of Inuit Art
More museums these days are beefing up their indigenous art programming, and the latest example of this trend can be found at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada has created a new position, Curator and Mediator of Inuit Art. Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk, a prominent member of the Inuit community who is a trained anthropologist, will be the first to hold the position. According to a release, she will not only bolster the museum’s holdings of Inuit Art, which are considered the foremost in Canada, but also foster close relationships between the museum and Indigenous communities throughout the Arctic reaches of Canada. The job will also involve developing and facilitating projects aimed at creating better relationships between Inuit and non-Inuit communities. The creation of the new role comes one year after the MMFA formalized a partnership with the Avataq Cultural Institute, a cultural organization of the Inuit of Nunavik. In a statement, Koperqualuk said, “The Inuit of Nunavik, Nunavut, the Inuvialuit region and Nunatsiavut can count on me for their art to be well presented and highlighted. This collaboration will strengthen our cultural links with Montreal, Canada, and countries across the world.” —Maximilíano Durón

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami Joins Goodman Gallery
Goodman Gallery, which has spaces in Cape Town and Johannesburg, now represents Kudzanai-Violet Hwami. Hwami, whose large-scale paintings address the African diaspora, was the youngest artist in the 2019 Venice Biennale, in which she co-represented Zimbabwe. Her work is currently on view at Gasworks in London, and she will show new work in the inaugural show at Goodman Gallery’s London outpost, which opens October 3.

Norton Museum Creates Artist Residency Program
As museums look for new ways to support artists, one avenue has been to create residency programs. The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, is the latest addition to start such an initiative. Each year, beginning in January 2020, the museum will host four artists for six-week residencies. One of the four spots is being endowed by Mary Lucille Dauray and Alan Davis, a California-based couple who previously funded an exhibition series at the Norton devoted to solo shows for female artists. The Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence program will support the careers of African-American and Latina women, and the inaugural recipient is Addoley Dzegede, a Ghanaian-American interdisciplinary based in Portland, Oregon. The other three artists who will take up residence at the Norton next year are Jessica Ingram, a multimedia artist based in Tallahassee whose work explores the role of the archive in communities; Lavar Munroe, an interdisciplinary artist whose work was included in “All the World’s Futures” at the 2015 Venice Biennale and is based between Washington, D.C., and Nassau, the Bahamas; and Jaye Rhee, a New York–based artist who works in video, photography, and performance. —Maximilíano Durón

Vilcek Foundation to Stage Marsden Hartley Exhibition with Works from Major Retrospective
New York’s Vilcek Foundation is organizing a show focused on the life and travels of the American modernist Marsden Hartley. The exhibition, titled “Adventurer in the Arts,” is set to open in spring 2020, bringing together about 75 paintings, drawings, and multifarious objects the artist collected, including jewelry, luggage tags, postcards, and cameras. Four paintings that are also included in a Hartley retrospective that opened September 19 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark will be on view in the Vilcek presentation, including Schiff (1915), Provincetown (1916), and White Sea Horse (1942). In an interview with ARTnews, Emily Schuchardt Navratil, a curator at the Vilcek, said that the pieces in the exhibition “lend an intimacy to our understanding of Hartley.”

Blanton Museum of Art Appoints New Curator of Latin American Art
The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin has hired Vanessa Davidson as its next curator of Latin American art. Davidson succeeds Beverly Adams, who joined the Museum of Modern Art in New York on September 1. Davidson joins the Blanton from the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, where she worked as a curator for eight years and organized exhibitions such as “Ave Maria: The Virgin Mary and the Archangels” in 2018 and “Masterworks of Spanish Colonial Art from Phoenix Art Museum’s Collection” in 2015. At the Blanton, Davidson will develop and manage the museum’s collection of 2,800 objects from Latin America, organize exhibitions, and conduct research. In a statement, Davidson said, “My aim is to continue to participate in international dialogues about what art from this region is and can be, and also to involve more young scholars in such global conversations.”

Mori Art Museum Director Announces Retirement
Nanjo Fumio, who has served as director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo for 13 years, will retire from his post at the end of the year. Kataoka Mami, the museum’s deputy director and chief curator, will succeed Fumio as director on January 1, 2020. Mami was artistic director of the 2018 Sydney Biennale, and she has previously held curatorial positions at the Hayward Gallery in London and the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. In a statement, Mami said she hopes that, through community outreach and an emphasis on diversity, the museum will “function as a focal point for thinking together about a better future.”

National Portrait Gallery Acquires Works Depicting American Portrait Gala Honorees
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., has acquired portraits of the six 2019 American Portrait Gala honorees: Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos, Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, the band Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Nobel Laureate Frances Arnold. The National Portrait Gallery commissioned the portraits of Arnold (by Katy Grannan), Bezos (by Robert McCurdy), and Nooyi (by Jon R. Friedman), and acquired photographs of Wintour (by Annie Leibovitz), Miranda (by Mark Seliger), and Earth, Wind, and Fire (by Bruce W. Talamon). All portraits will be on view in an exhibition at the museum opening November 15.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

BRIC Launches Prize for Under-Recognized Artists in New York
The Brooklyn-based arts space and incubator BRIC has established the Colene Brown Art Prize, which will dole out $10,000 each to 10 New York–based artists at any stage of their careers . The award is underwritten by artist and BRIC board member Deborah Brown and named for her late mother, Colene. A group of prominent New York–based critics, curators, and artists have made nominations for the prize, and a selection committee within BRIC will select the recipients. The grantees will be named on October 1. “With the awards, I hope to aid an outstanding group of artists in the pursuit of their dreams and at the same time recognize the role of not-for-profit cultural institutions like BRIC that make a transformational difference in their communities,” Brown said in a statement.

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Octavia Gallery Expands to New York
The New Orleans–based Octavia Gallery has opened a space in the High Line Nine gallery complex in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, where it will stage seasonal exhibitions. The enterprise’s first exhibition in New York, opening September 17, will feature recent works by the artist William Monaghan. Next month, the gallery will present a show pairing pieces by the Abstract Expressionist Fritz Bultman with those of contemporary painter Regina Scully.

J. Paul Getty Trust Dedicates $100 Million to Ancient Cultural Heritage Preservation Program
The J. Paul Getty Trust has put $100 million toward a 10-year global initiative focused on cultural heritage and its role in society. Titled “Ancient Worlds Now: A Future for the Past,” the initiative will be staged in collaboration with Getty-affiliated museums and foundations, and is set to launch officially in the summer of 2020.

Luhring Augustine Adds Space in Tribeca
Expanding the gallery’s footprint in New York, Luhring Augustine has added a third location, in the Tribeca neighborhood. The news further attests a trending influx of galleries either opening in the area or relocating there—P.P.O.W gallery recently announced it would ditch Chelsea for Tribeca, joining Andrew Kreps, James Cohan, Canada, and Denny Dimin, who have all recently moved. Luhring Augustine plans to keep their Bushwick outpost and their flagship in Chelsea, saying the gallery is “very committed to its program there,” according to a gallery spokesperson.  —Annie Armstrong

Walker Art Center Names Finalist for Indigenous Public Art Commission
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has commissioned artist Angela Two Stars (Dakota), who is based in nearby St. Paul, to create a public artwork for the institution’s sculpture garden. The work, which will be acquired by the museum and unveiled in fall 2020, will look to serve as a way for visitors to engage with the Dakota language. In an artist statement, Two Stars said, “Language revitalization is a healing medicine for Dakota people. Our identity is grounded in our language. Our ceremonies, songs, and stories are rooted in language. Without our language, we would lose those ceremonies, those songs, those stories. We would lose an integral part of who we are as Dakota people.” Two Stars’s proposal was selected by the Indigenous Public Art Selection Committee, which was formed in the wake of the museum’s installation of Sam Durant’s Scaffold sculpture in 2017. The piece was meant to commemorate the hanging of 38 Dakota men in 1868, but many in the indigenous community found its use of gallows imagery to be offensive and protested its continued presence in the sculpture garden. (The work was eventually dismantled and handed over to Dakota elders, who buried it.) The selection committee who chose Two Stars included seven Native artists, curators, writers, and knowledge keepers, along with the Walker’s curatorial staff. Mary Ceruti, the Walker’s executive director, said in a statement, “Angela’s proposal makes poetic connections between land, water, and language.”

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Adds Alfredo Jaar Installation to Permanent Collection
Alfredo Jaar‘s 2017 work The Garden of Good and Evil will be unveiled at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England on Saturday, September 21, as part of the United Nations’s International Day of Peace ceremonies. The installation, which comprises 10 steel cells that reference the CIA’s secret detention facilities around the world, was commissioned for an exhibition at YSP. Its components will now be permanently sited in the park’s woodland and partially submerged in its Lower Lake.

Marianne Boesky Gallery Now Represents Ghada Amer
Ghada Amer, whose practice spans painting, sculpture, and installation, has joined Marianne Boesky Gallery, which maintains locations in New York and Aspen. The gallery will present ceramic works by the artist at next year’s Independent Art Fair in New York, and Amer will have a solo show in New York in 2021. Much of Amer’s work focuses on identity, gender, and notions of selfhood, and her pieces can be found in the permanent collections of such institution as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and the Art Institute of Chicago. She will continue working around the world with Tina Kim Gallery, Kukje Gallery, Kewenig, and Goodman Gallery. Marianne Boesky said in a statement, “We very much look forward to supporting Ghada in realizing new ambitious projects and to fostering broader global awareness and understanding of the full range of her oeuvre.”

Monday, September 16, 2019

October Opening Date Set for Controversial Jeff Koons Sculpture in Paris
After several open letters and much controversy, Jeff Koons’s monumental sculpture Bouquet of Tulips will go on view to the public in Paris on October 4. Since first being announced in 2016, Koons’s 34-foot-tall sculpture—a monument to the victims of the 2015 terrorist attacks in the French capital—had caused concern among the Paris art community for the high fabrication costs for the work. (According to a press release on Monday that likened the Koons work to the Statue of Liberty, the fees have been “entirely covered by private funds” from “French and American donors.”) The work will appear in the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, near the Petit Palais.

Americas Society Appoints New Director
Aimé Iglesias Lukin has been named director and chief curator of the Americas Society in New York. Taking up the role in October, Iglesias Lukin is currently a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She specializes in modern and contemporary Latin American art, and her dissertation examines immigrant networks and communities in New York between 1965 and 1975. Iglesias Lukin has previously held positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute for Studies in Latin American Art, and Fundación PROA in Buenos Aires.

Monique Meloche Gallery Adds Candida Alvarez and David Antonio Cruz to Roster
The Chicago-based gallery Monique Meloche now represents Candida Alvarez and David Antonio Cruz. Cruz’s first solo show with the gallery opened on September 7, and Alvarez will have a solo presentation in 2020. Alvarez is a professor of painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her work has been exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Queens Museum in New York, the Museum de Arte de Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. A professor of painting and drawing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Cruz has shown his paintings, drawings, videos, and performances about the intersections of queerness and race at El Museo del  Barrio and Performa 13 in New York, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, among other institutions.

First Artworks In City Canvas Initiative Go On View in New York
As part of the street art initiative City Canvas, which was organized by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the Mayor’s office, and the NYC Department of Buildings, murals created by seven New York–based artists have been installed on a construction shed outside Google’s headquarters in Chelsea. The works were commissioned by the nonprofit ArtBridge and Google, and they were designed by BKFoxx, Danielle Mastrion, Indie184, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Gera Lozano, Natasha Platt, and Jess X Snow. In a statement, Stephen Pierson, executive director of ArtBridge, said, “New York City currently has 310 miles of construction fencing—a staggering amount that corrodes the vibrancy of our city. Through City Canvas, we can now transform this eyesore into canvases for local artists.”