Cecilia Alemani to Curate Site Santa Fe Biennial

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Cecilia Alemani Tapped to Curate 12th SITE Santa Fe International and More News

Photo: Liz Ligon. Courtesy of The High Line

Curator Cecilia Alemani has been tapped to curate the 12th SITE Santa Fe International

Cecilia Alemani to Curate the 12th SITE Santa Fe International
SITE Santa Fe will host its first exhibition since 2018, and has tapped Cecilia Alemani to curate the 12th edition of the exhibition, SITE Santa Fe International (formerly known as the SITE Santa Fe Biennial). In 2022, Alemani curated the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale, “The Milk of Dreams,” and since 2011 has been the director and chief curator of High Line Art in New York. SITE Santa Fe, the nonprofit contemporary arts organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, had to temporarily close its doors during the pandemic, but reopened in July of 2020. More recently, Alemani curated the first US retrospective of Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida at Gagosian. The 2025 exhibition coincides with the 30th anniversary of the museum’s founding.

Controversial Austrian Billionaire Heidi Horten's Estate Goes into Clearance Sale
After an auction that was once hoped to be the equivalent to the Paul Allen sale, but for jewelry, Heidi Horten’s contentious estate has quietly appeared online at give-away prices. The Austrian widow of Helmut Horten, who accrued his fortune when the Nazis rose to power in 1933, beginning with the acquisition of a department store that had belonged to Jewish owners who fled to the United States. Horten made Christie’s $202 million through the first part of a sale of her bijouterie in May 2023. The record-setting sale received enormous backlash from other clients as well as Jewish organizations, leading to the cancellation of the auction’s second half. Now, the clearance and recycling company, Cavinnash, has listed a number of items from the home under the tag “Residence Dissolution.” In a separate but synchronous manner, Portrait of a Man (1917) and Girl With Black Hair (1911), by the Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele, was returned to the rightful family earlier this week, having been pilfered during World War II.

COURTESY BRITISH MUSEUM

Ceremonial cap from the Asante royal palace. In the British Museum's collection.

Ghanian Crown Jewels Returned by British Institutions
150 years after after the English looted Manhyia Palace in Ghana, the Kumasi museum, which resides within it, will be granted a permanent loan of their country’s treasures, according to ARTnews. The golden regalia and ceremonial objects were taken in 1874 from the Asante empire during military expeditions and remained on English soil ever since. Expected to reopen in April, the palace museum which has been closed since 2021, will be able to celebrate their reunification with the 32 objects received from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Des Moines Art Center Set to Destroy Site-Specific Commission by Mary Miss

Mary Miss’s much loved landscape installation, Greenwood Pond: Double Site (1989–96), is scheduled for demolition by the Des Moines Art Center, despite it being a commissioned piece for the museum’s permanent collection, according to The New York Times. After making The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s (TCLF) 2014 Landslide® list—Landslide® is TCLF’s annual list of at-risk landscapes—the work underwent serious repairs, but remained under poor care. Miss had intentionally chosen materials which would endure the ecology, so it was a blow to find that the supposed reason for removal was due to a public safety issue, referencing the “unstable aquatic environment.”

Courtesy of Serpentine Galleries

Architect Minsuk Cho to design the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion

Serpentine Selects Architect Minsuk Cho for Its 2024 Pavilion
Since Zaha Hadid’s design inaugurated the first Serpentine Pavilion in 2000, the summer structure has become one of London’s most popular cultural spaces. Designated as an event epicenter, each year, a new architect is tapped to create a structure to look forward to. This year’s Kensington Gardens slot goes to Seoul-based architect Minsuk Cho and his structure, Archipelagic Void. Opening in June 2024, the Mass Studies founder revealed plans for a constellation of five buildings arranged in the shape of a star, with a central circular space, or void, serving as a madang, a small courtyard of the kind found in historic Korean homes. Architects who have showcased their work for past Pavilions include Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh, Frida Escobedo, Bjarke Ingels and Sou Fujimoto.

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