July 2019 Art News

An estimated 225,000 works were commissioned during the depression era under president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project (WPA), a program designed to put artists to work in paying jobs and to bring art to public places like schools, libraries and post offices where people congregate.

After months of protests and calls for his resignation, Whitney Museum of American Art Board Vice-Chair Warren Kanders has resigned from his post. Kanders, who, according to the New York Times, has donated more than $10 million to the museum, has been a board member since 2006. In a resignation letter published today, he writes that, “I joined this board to help the museum prosper. I do not wish to play a role, however inadvertent, in its demise.”

Madison, Wis. – As part of a long-term museum-wide effort to welcome more visitors from a variety of backgrounds, the Chazen Museum of Art is making a dramatic change to its open hours. Beginning Sept. 3, 2019, the Chazen’s doors will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. The museum will be open a total of 84 hours per week, more than all of its peer museums, according to “Art Museums by the Numbers 2018”, an annual survey conducted by the Association of Art Museum Directors.

In Order of Imagination: The Photographs of Olivia Parker, now at the Peabody Essex Museum, Parker creates intimate moments through a variety of subject matter.
Monsters exert a timeless fascination, and have often been used as a metaphor for the strange, different, extraordinary and appalling.
The Museum of Modern Art announces a major gift of 45 works of African contemporary art from the prolific collector Jean Pigozzi.
On the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Sotheby’s auction dedicated to Space Exploration totaled $5.5 million in New York, surpassing its high estimate by $1 million and with an exceptional 93% of all lots sold.

Filmmaker and art connoisseur John Waters has just two words for would-be art collectors: Monkey Art.

If you aim to invest in today’s overheated art market, he says in a new book, primate paintings are the way to go.

“Only one collectible art movement from the past hasn’t been reinvented, hoarded, or parodied,” he writes. “Want to speculate in the art market? I’m telling you what to buy–monkey art. Yes, paintings by chimpanzees.”

More than a century ago, Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen (1886–1957) created exquisite interpretations of classic fairy tales that remain some of the most memorable visions of enchantment and fantasy ever to appear in print.