Beginning this month, Raleigh’s North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) has a new director in Dr. Valerie Hillings. After a worldwide search for Director Dr. Larry Wheeler’s replacement, who was with the museum for 24 years, the museum has found a leader with local roots and global connections.
Art News
French-Tunisian artist eL Seed released his first book project, Perception, earlier this month. The book, in limited edition of 500, is both an accompaniment to and documentation of the artist’s extraordinary mural by the same name, which stretches across fifty buildings in Cairo. Displaying the words of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, a Coptic Bishop from the Third Century: ‘Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eyes first,’ the project employs the artist’s signature style, “calligraffiti,” which incorporates the visual culture of traditional Arab calligraphy into contemporary, often politically charged, street art.
This weekend the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan is offering free admission for visitors, giving them a chance to see a rare work on loan. Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s 1919 Two Women in the Garden (Deux femmes dans un jardin) is making a pit stop at the museum on it’s way to a new home.
In a new text from Cambridge Press, authors Elina Gertsman and Barbara H. Rosenwein offer readers easy access to understanding a complex period of time. "The Middle Ages in 50 Objects" (Cambridge Press, 2018) uses individual works from the comprehensive collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art to exemplify both broad movements and specific moments in history.
As the world mourns the loss of the Brazil National Museum to a monumental fire, we look back on some of the greatest losses to humanity’s art and cultural heritage.
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced today that artist Martin Puryear to represent the US at the 2019 Venice Biennale. In its 58th year, the Biennale will run May 11 through Nov. 24, 2019. The Madison Square Park Conservancy will serve as this year’s curator of the United States Pavilion and will commision site-specific work from Puryear. Puryear follows 2017’s representative for the US, painter Mark Bradford.
A new set of tariffs proposed by President Trump could hit the art world this month. As part of continued efforts to reduce the US’s trade deficit with China, the list of items subject to import tariffs continues to grow. Set to go into effect as soon as late August, that list now includes categories covering paintings, sculpture, collage, ceramics, and antiques from China. The 25 percent import tariff would present a heavy burden to galleries, individual collectors, and museums in the US.
This week the Uffizi Gallery made a significant portion of its remarkable collection much more accessible. Through a partnership with Indiana University, scholars from both institutions have been working for two years to create 3D scans of the museum’s classical sculptures. Launching this week, the Uffizi Digitization Project website hosts over 300 digitized sculptures and fragments from the collection. The digital models offer views of the sculptures and fragments heretofore only available through in-person inspection.
Andy Warhol would have been 90 years old on August, 6. Museums and art lovers the world over are celebrating. The pioneer of Pop Art died in 1987 at the age of 58, but 30 years later, his fifteen minutes of fame aren’t up and his art is still ubiquitous.
Brooklyn polymath, Erik Zajaceskowski, has been making his imprint on the borough’s art and nightlife scenes for nearly two decades. Zajaceskowski and friends launched Mighty Robot, an illegal art and party loft, during Williamsburg’s cultural heydey in the late 1990s. During that time, he forged many connections that remain essential to his art making and curating. Mighty Robot eventually became Secret Project Robot, Zajaceskowski and Rachel Nelson’s acclaimed Bushwick performance space, music venue, and gallery.
