PXHERE
Expansion
“The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is planning to expand beyond its mid-Wilshire campus to create a satellite campus, or possibly two, in South Los Angeles,” the New York Times reports. Michael Govan, LACMA’s director, said, “If you look at a map of L.A.’s public schools, the dots representing the neediest students are all through South Los Angeles. . . . You start thinking, where can the value of your collection and program be the greatest, when you’re behind a big fancy fence on Wilshire Boulevard or out in the community?” [The New York Times]
Rest in Peace
Ursula K. Le Guin, the masterful science-fiction and fantasy writer, has died at the age of 88. The BBC quotes a tweet from author Stephen King: “Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon. Godspeed into the galaxy.” [BBC]
Artists, curators, and other colleagues discussed Jack Whitten, the storied painter who died over the weekend, for a feature in Artsy. Said artist Marlene Dumas: “He made me laugh and made me cry when I listened to one of his lectures for the first time. His works warm us in our cold times.” [Artsy]
In the City Newspaper, colleagues remembered sculptor Wendell Castle, who died on Saturday. Jonathan P. Binstock, the director of the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York, writes, “He was rooted, straight ahead, open, and friendly. He was also paradoxically modest for how extraordinarily cool and achieved he was. And he was simultaneously a dreamer. He would contemplate, imagine, envision, and create something we had never seen or imagined before. How rare is the man with his head above the clouds and his feet on the ground.” [City Newspaper]
The Market and Patronage
The Art Newspaper: British outfit Thomas Dane is “the latest in a string of galleries to open spaces in [Italy], but are there are enough high-level collectors to sustain them?” Says Paulina Bebecka, who runs a pop-up program for New York gallery Postmasters in the Italian capital: “There are other international galleries in Rome, and more are coming. Not everyone needs to go to London or Hong Kong to expand.” [The Art Newspaper]
For the New York Times, Farah Nayeri visited the home of London collector Valeria Napoleone, who collects only work by women artists. “I’m a feminist, believing in equal opportunities,” Napoleone says of her focus. “I was aware of the fact that women artists were not considered for gallery or museum representation and were dismissed, underrepresented.” Also, of the art world, she has this to say: “There is so much speculation and so much money going into the wrong hands. I see a lot of bad art selling and good art struggling.” [The New York Times]
The Talent
The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University has tapped Clare Fitzgerald to be its associate director for exhibitions and gallery curator. [NYU]
Franciska Zólyom will organize Germany’s pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Hili Perlson reports for Artnet News. The curator has helmed the Galerie für Zeitgenössiche Kunst in Leipzig since 2012. [Artnet News]
Donna Douglass, a veteran nonprofit leader, has been named interim director of the Erie Art Museum in Pennsylvania, according to YourErie.com. The museum is on the search for a new director to replace John Vanco, who retired last year after a nearly 50-year run in the role. [YourErie.com]
Potpourri
Dezeen has a handy little video about the geodesic sculptures that Doug Aitken installed last year near Catalina Island in Southern California. [Dezeen]
Priya Krishna writes in the New York Times that “many of the country’s top pastry chefs have practiced or studied architecture,” and that “this new school of pastry chefs is trying to rescue the dessert course from the outlandish unicorn cakes and mile-high ice cream sundaes that saturate Instagram.” Come for the erudite reporting, stay for the delectable photos of desserts! [The New York Times]
And Nobel Prize–winning writer, musician, and artist Bob Dylan talked genies with Clickhole. [Clickhole]