Friday, September 17
Greene Naftali Now Represents Steffani Jemison
Ahead of her inclusion in MoMA PS1’s 2021 Greater New York exhibition, artist Steffani Jemison is now represented by New York’s Greene Naftali gallery, where she will show alongside artists such as Cory Arcangel, Aria Dean, Rachel Harrison, and Haegue Yang. In her films, sculptures, performances, and conceptual works, Jemison considers how text and movement communicate meaning. Often with a mind toward the Black vernacular, Jemison mulls the ways that people express themselves. Her first exhibition with Greene Naftali will open in November.
Longtime FLAG Art Foundation Director to Depart for Christie’s
After 15 years at the helm, Stephanie Roach will depart her post as director of New York’s FLAG Art Foundation, an art space founded by ARTnews Top 200 Collector Glenn Fuhrman in 2008. At the foundation, Roach oversaw 65 exhibitions. She is set to leave for Christie’s, where she will become senior vice president and business development director of the house’s Los Angeles location. “I am grateful for Stephanie’s commitment to this organization as well as to our friendship,” Fuhrman wrote on Instagram. “It is an amazing thing to recognize but I have never known FLAG without Stephanie Roach.”
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Manoela Medeiros Joins Nara Roesler
Brazilian artist Manoela Medeiros is now represented by Nara Roesler gallery, which has locations in New York, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Maderios works in painting, sculpture, performance, and installation. Her works respond to the architectural elements of the sites in which they are displayed. In 2018, she was nominated for the PIPA Prize, which is awarded to contemporary Brazil artists. She has had solo exhibitions at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in São Paulo and Double V Gallery in Marseille, France.
Nino Mier Gallery Adds Otis Jones, José Lerma, and Andrew Dadson to Roster
Nino Mier Gallery, which operates spaces in Los Angeles, Brussels, Cologne, and Marfa, has added three artists to its roster. Otis Jones, who had a show earlier this year at New York’s Marc Straus Gallery, creates work built on stacked plywood forms. José Lerma makes semi-abstracted portraits in a range of styles. Andrew Dadson, who will have a solo show at Nino Mier this month, produces photographs and paintings focused on geographies and natural environments.
Mississippi Museum of Art Announces New Trustees
The Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson has named 14 new trustees. Among them are Kimberly Noel Sweet, an Emmy-nominated journalist; Myrna Colley-Lee an arts advocate and the longest-serving commissioner for the Mississippi Arts Commission; and Elee Williams Reeves, the First Lady of Mississippi. The trustees will begin their work at the start of the 2022 fiscal year. Christy Jones, chair of the Mississippi Museum of Art’s Board of Trustees, said the new trustees “embrace our mission to continuously foster meaningful engagements with art among the communities we serve and ensure that a diversity of voices tell Mississippi’s stories.”
Panayiotis Loukas Is Now Represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
Greek artist Panayiotis Loukas is now represented by New York’s Nicelle Beauchene Gallery following his solo exhibition with the gallery in June. The artist’s brightly hued paintings feature psychedelic scenes filled with anthropomorphic fruit and flowers set in twisted domestic spaces. Loukas has previously exhibited at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, and other institutions.
Thursday, September 16
Rashaad Newsome Is Now Represented by Jessica Silverman
The Oakland- and Brooklyn-based artist Rashaad Newsome is now represented by San Francisco–based gallery Jessica Silverman. Newsome works in collage, film, performance, computer programming, and sculpture. His work responds to the commodified and co-opted elements of Black queer culture, such as the ballroom culture of 1970s New York. Newsome was part of the group exhibition “We Are Here” at Jessica Silverman Gallery this past spring and will have a solo show at there in 2022. In a statement, Jessica Silver said, “Rashaad and I met in 2019 and spent much of 2020 in conversation about his artistic practice. I was impressed with the dynamism of his work and the variety of media over which he has mastery.”
Edel Assanti Will Relocate to Larger Space in London
London-based gallery Edel Assanti will open a new 4,000-square-foot gallery on Little Titchfield Street, a block away from its current location on Mortimer Street in the British capital’s Fitzrovia district. The new space will be inaugurated next January with a solo show by Noémie Goudal, who became the first artist to join the gallery’s roster in 2010. The gallery will maintain its current venue as a residency space where international galleries can mount exhibitions during peak seasons in the London art world.
Collection of Max Ernst Documentarian Peter Schamoni to Sell at Phillips
Phillips will sell the collection of German filmmaker and Max Ernst documentarian Peter Schamoni this fall. More than 80 works from Schamoni’s collection will be sold across the house’s upcoming 20th century and contemporary art sales in London and New York between October and December. Highlights from the collection include Ernst’s Pyramid Lake (1946), a painting of a desert lake made during the artist’s time in Sedona, Arizona. It is expected to fetch £550,000–£750,000 ($757,000–$1 million). Ernst’s Matin et soir (1930), a painting featuring the artist’s recurring birdlike alter-ego Loplop, will be offered. It is estimated at £200,000–£300,000 ($275,000–$413,000). “Having been on loan to the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl, the pedigree and art-historical significance of the works here is exceptional,” said Phillips global chairwoman Cheyenne Westphal in a statement, “But it is the deeply personal dimension of the collection which truly sets it apart.”
Wednesday, September 15
Christophe Leribault Picked to Lead Musée d’Orsay
Petit Palais director Christophe Leribault has been selected to lead Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, according to Le Monde. He fills a position left vacant by its former president, Laurence des Cars, who departed to direct the Louvre earlier this month. Leribault has been director of the Petit Palais for nine years; prior to that, he had been director of the Musée Delacroix and a curator at the Louvre.
Neil Cox to Lead Met’s Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art
Art historian Neil Cox has been chosen to lead the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, which facilitates research related to art produced between 1880 and 1960 and houses archives focused on Cubism. Cox’s work has largely focused on Cubism. In 2000, he published a book about that modernist movement with Phaidon; other writings by him have addressed Cubist art by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. In a statement, Met director Max Hollein said that Cox would expand the center’s reach “far beyond its walls as a premier site for the study of Modern art.”
Tuesday, September 14
Nairy Baghramian Wins $100,000 Nasher Prize
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, has given this year’s Nasher Prize to Nairy Baghramian. The $100,000 award is given annually to a sculptor. The Berlin-based artist is known for her abstract sculptures that mimic the form of bodies and consider the relationship between viewers and their environments. Jeremy Strick, director of the Nasher, said in a statement that Baghramian’s work “stood out to the jury as exemplary for its consideration of the body, human relationship, and the built environment through sculpture that champions the often-overlooked objects, people, and experiences at play in daily life.”
Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe Is Now Represented by Almine Rech
Almine Rech gallery has added Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe to its roster. Born and raised in Accra, Ghana, Quaicoe has focused on Black portraiture since his days at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design. It was during his residency at La Brea Studio in Los Angeles that he would come to develop his distinctive use of pure pigment, which he leaves coarsely textured in his paintings. This past year, Quaicoe, who is also represented by Los Angeles’s Robert Projects gallery, has exhibited extensively with Almine Rech, showing at the gallery’s locations in Paris, New York, and Aspen. Quaicoe’s work will be included in the group show “Black American Portraits” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this November.
Artadia Names 2021 San Francisco Awardees
Sydney Cain, Terri Friedman, and Dana King have been awarded the 2021 San Francisco Aratadia Award. Artists who have based for at least two years in the Bay Area are eligible to apply for the award, which comes with $10,000 in unrestricted funds. Cain is a visual artist who works with graphite, powdered metals, printmaking, and chalk to illuminate unseen Black narratives. Friedman is a textile artist who uses her work to respond to anxiety and trauma. King is a figurative sculptor who creates monuments to Black figures. Wassan Al-Khudhairi, chief curator of the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis and one of this year’s jurors, said in a statement, “Selecting the winners was a difficult decision but each of the awardees has a practice that engages their subject and medium in truly unique and engaging ways.”
Monday, September 13
Baltimore Museum of Art Gets Mellon Foundation Grant for ‘Radical Change’
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has given the Baltimore Museum of Art a $150,000 grant intended to achieve greater diversity and equity at the institution. To obtain this, members of the museum’s staff will think through the structures of Western institutions and attempt to overhaul them. “In 2018, the BMA committed to an honest evaluation of its own practices and, over the course of the past several years, we have made strides in shifting our presenting and collecting strategies, as well as the makeup of and investment in our staff, board, and audiences,” Baltimore Museum director Christopher Bedford said in a statement. “We recognize, though, we have not achieved the radical change that we know to be necessary. The Mellon Initiative is an exciting opportunity to further our vision by asking and exploring challenging questions in service to creating a better, equitable, and more thoughtful museum.”
Park Avenue Armory Names Tavia Nyong’o as Curator
The Park Avenue Armory in New York has appointed Tavia Nyong’o as curator of public programming. Nyong’o is a leading scholar on performance art and is currently the chair and professor of theater and performance studies at Yale University, a position he will continue to hold. In addition to serving as editor-at-large for Duke University Press’s journal Social Text, he has published several books, including Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life and The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory, and is a contributor to Artforum, Texte Zur Kunst, and the LA Review of Books. In a statement, Rebecca Robertson, the organization’s executive producer, said, “Tavia will be instrumental in furthering the Armory’s role as an adventurous, relevant, artist-driven organization where artists catalyze robust and often challenging encounters with the most important issues today.”
LACMA Receives 109-Work Promised Gift of Indigenous American Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has received a promised gift of 109 artworks by Indigenous American artists, including Southwestern ceramics, Pomo feather baskets, and carvings from the Pacific Northwest. The works were promised to LACMA by the Reiter family. “In promising these works to LACMA, the Reiters wish to share with the wider public the powerful stories and artistic legacies of Indigenous American artists that so inspired them,” the museum wrote in a blog post.
Bonhams Appoints Molly Ott Ambler as Head of the Fine Art Division in U.S.
Molly Ott Ambler has been appointed head of Bonhams fine art division in the U.S. In her new position, Ambler will oversee the auction house’s post-war and contemporary art, Impressionist & modern art, and American art departments. She previously served as the house’s director of Impressionist and modern art, a role she assumed in 2019. In May 2021, she facilitated the $10.8 million sale of Picasso’s Femme au béret mauve (1937). “Having spearheaded teams that have consigned some of the most valuable paintings ever offered at Bonhams,” said the house’s CEO Bruno Vinciguerra in a statement, “Her track record since she has been at Bonhams speaks for itself.”
JOAN Executive Director to Step Down
The Los Angeles–based arts space JOAN announced that its cofounder Summer Guthery will step down from her role as executive director. She is leaving for a position at a New York City–based nonprofit, which will her hire later this fall. Hannah Spears, the organization’s assistant curator, will serve as interim director while JOAN searches for a permanent executive director. Guthery has been instrumental in transforming JOAN into one of L.A.’s most closely watched alternative spaces since its founding in 2015, mounting shows and performances by the likes of Ann Hirsch, Alison O’Daniel, Ajay Kurian, Aura Rosenberg, Clarissa Tossin, and more.
Janet Taylor Pickett Is Now Represented by Jennifer Baahng Gallery
Jennifer Baahng Gallery in New York now represents artist Janet Taylor Pickett. Taylor Pickett focuses on telling stories about the role Black women played in the Underground Railroad and the Great Migration using painting and collage. Her work has been collected by Kamala Harris and currently hangs in the Vice President’s office in Washington, D.C. The artist will be presenting selected works from the 1980s to the present at a solo show at the Baahng Gallery opening on September 14.