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News
Included in the 5,500-page coronavirus relief and spending bill that passed Congress last night is the authorization to begin the lengthy process of creating two new Smithsonian museums, one focused on American Latinos and one on women’s history. [The Washington Post]
The relief bill also includes $15 billion for struggling arts venues, “from dive-bar rock clubs to Broadway theaters and museums,” which many described “as their last hope for being able to remain in business.” [The New York Times]
Kirsten Langkilde, the rector of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, has resigned over a controversy regarding the bust of 18th-century monarch Frederik V being thrown in a canal. [The Art Newspaper]
Related Articles
Art Market
Art dealer Nicola Vassell, who will launch her own gallery next year, talks about her career and the key ingredients for success. [Artnet News]
L.A.’s Commonwealth & Council gallery has created an initiative called the Council Fund to support its artists’ financial needs by asking collectors to donate their discounts back to the artists. [The Art Newspaper]
In January, ARTnews published an article looking at how Commonwealth & Council had become one of L.A.’s most closely watched art galleries for the ways in which it favored “camaraderie over business as usual.” [ARTnews]
Christie’s will auction more than 100 Karl Lagerfeld jewels made for Chanel, from the personal collection of “Upper East Side grande dame” Susan Gutfreund. [Town & Country]
BTS member RM was recognized as an art patron of the year by the Arts Council Korea for his large donation to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. [The Korea Herald]
Art & Artists
Siddhartha Mitter profiles the Kamoinge Workshop, currently the subject of a traveling retrospective, who came together “to take beautiful pictures of our people.” [The New York Times]
In an op-ed, filmmaker Laura Poitras writes, “I am guilty of violating the Espionage Act, Title 18, U.S. Code Sections 793 and 798. If charged and convicted, I could spend the rest of my life in prison.” [The New York Times]
On the occasion of the artist’s novel The Hearing Trumpet being reissued, Merve Emre writes about “how Leonora Carrington feminized Surrealism.” [The New Yorker]
Laila Binbrek, who is the coordinating director of the United Arab Emirates’s National Pavilion, discusses collaborating with artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim for the 2022 Venice Biennale amid the pandemic. [Harper’s Bazaar Arabia]
Laura Cumming reviews Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Tate Britain exhibition. [The Guardian]
Critic Peter Schjeldahl considers “what are artists for?” [The New Yorker]
Lives Lived
Susan Landauer, an Oakland-based art historian and independent curator, has died at 62 from lung cancer. [San Francisco Chronicle]
Michael A. Mennello, the founder of Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Florida, has died due to COVID-19-related illness. [Bungalower]
In a touching slideshow, the New York Times remembers “the artists we lost in 2020, in their words.” [The New York Times]