Friday, July 16
SPARC Names Director of Great Wall of Los Angeles Institute
The Social and Public Art Resource Center has named Pete Galindo as the new director of the nonprofit’s Great Wall of Los Angeles Institute, an eight-year initiative that will extend the Great Wall monument conceived by artist Judith F. Baca. Galindo has previously worked for SPARC as the public art director for the organization’s Neighborhood Pride: Great Walls Unlimited Program. He was most recently the cofounder and CEO of Civic Center Studios, an events venue in L.A. In a statement, Galindo said, “The historical reckoning of the last few years have more fully revealed the relevance of Judy Baca’s vision, and I want to ensure that through The Great Wall Institute we’re training the next generation of artists and activists.”
Related Articles
[How Judith F. Baca plans to expand The Great Wall of Los Angeles.]
Mariane Ibrahim Hires Laura Turcan as Director of Paris Gallery
Laura Turcan has been named a director at Mariane Ibrahim gallery, which has spaces in Chicago and Paris. Formerly a director at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Turcan will be based in the French capital and will seek to widen Mariane Ibrahim’s reach in Europe. Avenue Matignon, where the gallery is located, “is changing, generating a new energy,” Turcan said in a statement. “I am eager to be a part of this renaissance.”
Ford, Mellon Foundations Commit $5 M. to Fund Disabled Artists Through 2025
The Ford Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have committed $5 million to the Disability Futures initiative through 2025. The initiative will provide support to two more classes of 20 fellows each. The program was conceived last fall as an 18-month program to support a disabled artists, with recipients receiving unrestricted $50,000 grants administered by the arts funding group United States Artists. The next cohort of fellows will announced in 2022.
Thursday, July 15
Mark Bradford Launches Education Program at Hauser & Wirth in Menorca
At Hauser & Wirth‘s new Menorca gallery, artist Mark Bradford has started an education residency program for students of the Escola d’Art de Menorca. His new initiative is part of a collaboration with PILAglobal, an education organization focused on displaced and impoverished families. Through the program, students will be enlisted to work with the artist to create paintings alluding to maps and immigration routes. “The project is a response to the global refugee crisis and our work together has been a meeting of minds across continents,” Bradford said in a statement.
Suzy Delvalle Named Interim Director of Socrates Sculpture Park
The Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York, has appointed Suzy Delvalle to serve as interim director. She will take over for John Hatfield, who had led the museum for nine years and announced he would step down last October. A search for the institution’s permanent director is still ongoing. Delvalle was most recently the president and executive director of Creative Capital. In a statement, Ivana Mestrovic, the organization’s board secretary and treasurer said, “Suzy brings a wealth of experience working with artists and communities, and we have the utmost faith in her ability to lead Socrates as we continue our search for a permanent Executive Director.”
Art Basel Launches Podcast
Art Basel has launched a new podcast titled Intersections: The Art Basel Podcast. Sponsored by UBS, the series will be hosted by the fair’s global director Marc Spiegler, who will interview various industry leaders in art, architecture, music, fashion, design, literature, and culture. The first two episodes will be released on Monday, July 19, with interviews featuring acclaimed architect David Adjaye and music producer and ARTnews Top 200 Collector Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean. Future episodes will include interviews with artist Kim Gordon and her gallerist Lisa Spellman, as well as fellow Top 200 Collector Pamela Joyner.
Galerie Eva Presenhuber Adds Amy Feldman to Roster
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, which has two locations in Zurich and one in New York, now represents New York–based artist Amy Feldman. Feldman will have her first solo show with the gallery at its New York space in September and will also create a new work to debut in the gallery’s booth at Art Basel in Switzerland, which was rescheduled for September because of the pandemic. Feldman is best known for her large-scale gray abstractions.
Anton Kern Gallery Adds Yuli Yamagata to Roster
Anton Kern Gallery in New York now represents São Paulo–based artist Yuli Yamagata in collaboration with Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in São Paulo and Galeria Madragoa in Lisbon. Yamagata’s multidisciplinary practice makes use of painting, fabrics, and sculpture to explore ideas of image, taste, and identity. She recently had a solo show at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea Niterói in Rio de Janeiro. This September, the gallery will present Yamagata’s first New York solo exhibition. Coinciding with the exhibition, the artist will present a special project at Art Basel Parcours.
Wednesday, July 14
London’s National Gallery Picks Selldorf Architects to Oversee Renovation
Selldorf Architects, which has designed numerous art spaces over the past decade, has been chosen by the National Gallery in London to oversee the museum’s forthcoming renovation project. The New York–based architecture firm is a favorite in the art world, and has previously designed Hauser & Wirth’s and David Zwirner’s New York galleries, the Rubell Collection in Miami, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in California. It is currently at work on an expansion for the Frick Collection in New York. The initial phase of the National Gallery’s renovation will be completed in 2024, to tie in with the museum’s bicentenary. Gabriele Finaldi, the museum’s director, said that, of the six finalists for the renovation, Selldorf Architects “demonstrated a real understanding of our ambitions as well as sensitivity to the heritage of our existing buildings.”
CCA Santa Fe Names Danyelle Means Executive Director
The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe has appointed Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota) as its next executive director. She will be the first Indigenous person to lead the institution. Means was most recently the director of advancement of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and executive director of the IAIA Foundation. She has previously been a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. Her curatorial credits include “Survivance and Sovereignty on Turtle Island” at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center in New York. Means was recently elected to the board of directors of ArtTable.
Getty Foundation Gives $1.55 M. for Prints and Drawings Initiatives
Nineteen institutions are set to receive $1.55 million from the Getty Foundation in support of initiatives focused on prints and drawings. Among them are the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, which is organizing a survey of Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club; the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, which is creating a digital experience focused on acid-based etchings; and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which will stage a survey of Betye Saar’s travel sketchbooks. The full list of grantees is available here.
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein Names New Director
Letizia Ragaglia has been appointed director of Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, succeeding Friedemann Malsch, the founding director of the institution. Following a stint as a freelance curator, Ragaglia served as director of the Museion, Bolzano’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, from 2009 to May 2020. During her tenure she mounted numerous exhibitions of artists including Danh Vo, Carl Andre, Monica Bonvicini, and Claire Fontaine. In a statement, Ragaglia said, “I am tremendously looking forward to being involved in day-to-day museum work, getting to know the whole team and having the privilege of experiencing the ‘Liechtenstein context’ at first hand.”
Bloomberg Philanthropies Launches Tech-Focused Arts Grants Program
The organization Bloomberg Philanthropies will award $30 million to arts organizations through its new technology-oriented Digital Accelerator Program. Among the art spaces set to receive funding through the initiative are BRIC in Brooklyn, the Queens Museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and the New Museum in New York. A full list of awardees is available here.
Tuesday, July 13
Tate Modern to Become Vaccination Site
A Sophie Taeuber-Arp retrospective going on view this week isn’t the only major attraction at London’s Tate Modern. The museum announced this week that it would soon become a vaccination site. It will offer Pfizer immunizations starting this Friday. Appointments can be made for free via an Eventbrite website set up by the museum
New York Foundation for the Arts Names 2021 Fellows
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) has announced the 2021 recipients and finalists of its NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship program. The program distributes unrestricted cash grants of $7,000 to artists working in 15 disciplines, honoring five disciplines per year on a triennial basis. This year, the organization awarded a total of $616,000 to 92 artists throughout New York State. The full list of awardees can be found here [link].
Mexico’s SFER IK Names New Director
SFER IK, a museum in the Yucatán Peninsula, just outside Tulum, Mexico, has named Marcello Dantas as its new director. Dantas is a Brazilian-born curator who has worked extensively throughout Latin America, holding senior positions at the Museum of Portuguese Language in São Paulo, Japan House São Paulo, the Museo del Caribe Barranquilla, Colombia, and the Telecommunications Museum in Buenos Aires, among other institutions. He has also frequently collaborated with Ai Weiwei, organizing an exhibition of the artist’s work in Brazil in 2018 and another in Portugal in 2021. SFER IK is an interdisciplinary arts center that looks to incorporate the institution’s surrounding natural jungle environment into its programming and installations. The institution launched shortly before the pandemic lockdown, and will reopen in November. In a statement, Dantas said, “My vision is to invite artists who will feel inspired to create work in this very special context.”
Monday, July 12
Glenstone Museum Announces New Building for Richard Serra Sculpture
The Glenstone Museum in Montgomery County, Maryland, has announced plans to construct a building along its Woodland Trail to house a recent large-scale sculpture by Richard Serra. The 4,000-square-foot concrete structure, designed as a collaboration between the artist and Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer and Partners, is slated to open in spring/summer of 2022. Two of Serra’s sculptures are already on permanently on view at Glenstone: Sylvester (2001) located near the museum’s entrance and a site-specific work, Contour 290 (2004), located near the Woodland Trail.
Société Now Represents Marianna Simnett
Marianna Simnett, an artist known for her videos focused on bodies in flux, has joined Berlin’s Société gallery. Simnett’s work has offered up fictional narratives that consider notions of purity and violation, as well as indefinable sexualities and identities. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the New Museum in New York, the Kunsthalle Zurich, and the Zabludowicz Collection in London.
Romania’s Art Encounters Biennial Reveals 2021 Artist List
The Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, Romania, has revealed the artist list for its 2021 edition, which is due to run from October 1 to November 7. Curated by Extra City Kunsthal artistic director Mihnea Mircan and incoming Kanal–Centre Pompidou artistic director Kasia Redzisz, the biennial, titled “Our Other Us,” will be split in two and focus on shifting identities during the pandemic. Redzisz’s half will be a historical show focused on Eastern and Central European art, and feature works by artists such as Irena Haiduk, Jura Shust, and the Sigma Group. Mircan’s portion will feature works by Hito Steyerl, Laure Prouvost, and Jean-Luc Moulène. A full artist list is available here.