Friday, September 25
Polina Berlin Joins Grimm as a Gallery Director
Grimm gallery, of New York and Amsterdam, has appointed Polina Berlin as a gallery director in New York. Berlin will start her new role on October 1, where she will focus on expanding the gallery’s market presence in New York. Previously, Berlin served as a director at Ortuzar Projects, a gallery in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. Prior to that, she worked in various positions at New York’s Paula Cooper and Kasmin galleries.
Thursday, September 24
White Cube Now Represents Estate of Takis
White Cube, which maintains spaces in London and Hong Kong, now represents the estate of the Greek artist Takis, who died in 2019 and is best known for his inventive, kinetic sculptures. Born Panagiotis Vassilakis, Takis was active for seven decades, and his works can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Menil Collection in Houston, and other international institutions. White Cube will open a solo exhibition of Takis’s works at its Hong Kong outpost on November 21.
New Zealand’s Mossman Gallery Closes Permanently
Mossman gallery in Wellington, New Zealand, will close permanently on October 10. Founded in 2010 as Hopkinson Cundy, the gallery worked with artists including Shannon Te Ao, Bill Culbert, Tahi Moore, and others. In an email announcement, gallerist Danae Mossman said, “We have been honoured to play a part in growing the visibility of critical contemporary art practices both in New Zealand and abroad, and we cherish what we have built and nurtured in this short amount of time.”
Artist Relief Will Continue Funding Initiative Through December
Artist Relief, a national relief fund for artists in the United States facing financial hardship in the face of the pandemic, announced that it will continue distributing grants through the end of 2020. Launched in April, the initiative has received over 120,000 applications and given $13.5 million in the form of unrestricted $5,000 grants. It has thus far funded 2,700 artists in every U.S. state and territory.
MOCA Tucson Names New Director
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, Arizona, has appointed Kate Green as executive director. Taking the helm of MOCA Tucson in October, Green joins the museum from the El Paso Museum of Art in Texas, where she served as senior curator. She previously directed Marfa Contemporary and has held curatorial and educational positions at Artpace San Antonio, MoMA PS1, and the Dia Art Foundation. MOCA Tucson’s interim director and curator, Laura Copelin, will continue to work in a curatorial capacity with the institution in 2021.
Wednesday, September 23
Rhizome Launches New Online Platform for Arts Programming
Rhizome, a nonprofit arts organization that supports new media art, and the Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway have jointly launched 7×7 Stavanger, an online platform pairing leading figures from the fields of art and technology for a series of collaborations. Pairings in the special program include Taiwanese multimedia artist Shu Lea Cheang and Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota; French-Algerian film and installation artist Neïl Beloufa and Damian Bradfield, CCO and Cofounder of WeTransfer; and Norwegian artist Ane Graff and Tal Danino, associate professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. 7×7 Stavanger will premiere the projects daily through half-hour livestream broadcasts via the new website 7×7.no from October 5–11 at 2 p.m. EST.
Frieze to Launch Fellowship for Curators of Color
Together with Deutsche Bank, Frieze will launch a new curatorial fellowship to support U.K.-based emerging curators of color during Frieze Week 2020, which runs October 5–11. The paid program will place recipients with arts institutions across the public and private sector. Each edition of the fellowship will be formed by a collaboration between an institution and artist. For the 2020 program, British artist Idris Khan has partnered with Chisenhale Gallery, which will host the inaugural fellow. The funds from artist initiatives will support the program. A protective face mask and case designed by Khan will be available for purchase, with a second edition by artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah to follow in October.
Tuesday, September 22
Gray Gallery Will Move to New Space in New York
Gray gallery, which was founded in Chicago, is moving floors for its New York outpost, from the fourth floor of 1018 Madison Avenue in New York to the building’s second floor. The new space, which was recently redesigned by the architecture firm &fold, will open on October 22 with the group exhibition “Reframing Minimalism: McArthur Binion and his Contemporaries in New York, 1973–1992,” which will also feature works by Ed Clark, David Hammons, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, and more.
Xavier Hufkens Now Represents Huma Bhabha
Xavier Hufkens in Brussels has added New York–based sculptor Huma Bhabha to its roster. Bhabha is known for her monumental figurative sculptures often constructed from salvaged materials such as clay, plastic, and wood. The artist’s art has been exhibited at the Sydney Biennale (2020), the Venice Biennale (2015), and the Whitney Biennial (2010), among elsewhere. Bhabha’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Monday, September 21
2021 Edition of FOG Design+Art Fair Postponed
The eighth edition of the FOG Design+Art Fair in San Francisco has been delayed from January 2021 until the following year, with its new dates being January 20–23, 2022 and a preview gala set for January 19. In a statement, a spokesperson for the fair said, “After carefully assessing developments of the pandemic and its implications on large-scale gatherings, we do not feel it will be possible to execute an event that fully embraces the spirit of FOG as soon as January 2021.”
Hartwig Art Foundation to Donate Work to Dutch National Collection
Through a new fund, the Hartwig Art Foundation, a Dutch organization based in the Hague that facilitates the creation of artworks, will donate art to national art collection of the Netherlands. The fund will allow for an annual series of new artworks that, once realized, will enter the country’s holdings. Art schools such as the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht will be invited to nominate artists for the series.
Simon Lee Gallery Now Represents Rachel Howard
Artist Rachel Howard, whose abstract and figurative paintings explore human emotions, has joined the roster of Simon Lee Gallery, of New York, London, and Hong Kong. Howard’s work will figure in the gallery’s presentation at the Frieze London Viewing Room in October and in an in-person show at its London outpost in 2021. Pieces by the artist can be found in the collections of the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the Museum van Loon in Amsterdam, and other international institutions.
Mike Kelley Foundation Adds Board Member
Art historian Miwon Kwon has joined the Mike Kelley Foundation‘s board of directors, which also includes Stephanie Barron, Catherine Opie, Claire Peeps, Ed Rada, Gary Simmons, and Joan Weinstein. Kwon is a professor and chair of the art history department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and she co-organized the 2012 exhibition “Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.