Arts news

• The Stratocaster Became Rock Music’s Most Iconic Guitar 70 Years Ago

  04-09-2024 13:00 via smithsonianmag.com
  
  The plucky design behind the legendary instrument that forever changed the look of rock 'n' roll
  
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• Safeya Binzagr, Pioneering Artist Who Preserved Saudi Arabia’s Culture, Dies at 84

  13-09-2024 22:34 via artnews.com
  
  Safeya Binzagr, a pioneering artist who eternalized folk heritage in her native Saudi Arabia, died on September 12 at 86. The news was first reported by the Abu Dhabi–based publication The National.Binzagr’s trailblazing career revolved the idiosyncrasies of indigenous Saudi culture, which was increasingly imperiled by modernization in the mid-19th century. Aware of the limitations of oral histories—at the time, record-keeping was not common practice in the Arabian Gulf—B
  
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• Richard Pettibone, Artist Who Appropriated Others’ Paintings for His Own Work, Dies at 86

  13-09-2024 21:58 via artnews.com
  
  Richard Pettibone, a painter whose enigmatic work involved copying famed contemporary artworks and then exhibiting these smaller-scale lookalikes, died on August 19 at 86. A representative for New York’s Castelli Gallery, which has shown Pettibone since 1969, said he died following a fall.During the 1960s, well before the heyday of appropriation art two decades later, Pettibone began making replicas of paintings by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and others. Unlike Sturtevant,
  
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• Suspects in Banksy’s ‘Girl With Balloon’ Theft Head to Court Next Month

  13-09-2024 20:18 via artnews.com
  
  Two men accused of stealing Banksy’s painting Girl With Balloon from a London gallery late Sunday night are set to appear before the court next month on charges with non-residential burglary, according to NBC News.The picture was stolen late Sunday night from Grove Gallery on New Cavendish Street in central London. Girl With Balloon was the only work stolen, however it wasn’t missing for long.  By Thursday, police had brought two suspects in custody and
  
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• Sacred Indigenous Cloak Returned to Brazil by Danish Museum

  13-09-2024 19:14 via artnews.com
  
  A sacred cloak that had been in the holdings of the National Museum of Denmark for more than 300 years was returned to Indigenous leaders in Brazil, reported the BBC.The nearly six-foot-long cloak was constructed using 4,000 scarlet ibis feathers. It was taken from the Tupinambá people during Portuguese colonial rule. Since 1698, it has been on display in Copenhagen. The cloak was unveiled at an official ceremony in Rio de Janeiro that was attended by President Luiz Inácio Lula da
  
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• New York Supreme Court Throws Out Lawsuit Accusing Helen Frankenthaler Foundation of Exploiting the Late Artist’s Legacy

  13-09-2024 18:26 via artnews.com
  
  A New York Supreme Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought against the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation by one of its former board members, Frederick Iseman.In the dismissal, Judge Jennifer G. Schecter cited the plaintiff’s absence of standing and, in a seperate motion, ordered Iseman to file any opposition papers by September 18, with the parties ordered to show cause for not granting permanent redactions to numerous exhibits in the case on September 25.Iseman, who is the nephew of the
  
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• Arthur Jafa, Polymathic Chronicler of Black America, Joins Sprüth Magers

  13-09-2024 18:16 via artnews.com
  
  Arthur Jafa, the filmmaker, artist, and cinematographer feted for his elegant excavations of American race politics, has signed with Sprüth Magers. Jafa’s first exhibition with Sprüth Magers opens tomorrow in Los Angeles, one of the gallery’s four locations worldwide. Jafa will continue to be represented by New York-based Gladstone Gallery.“We are very happy to be working with Arthur Jafa,” Monika Sprüth said in a statement ARTnews. “His multidisci
  
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• Banksy’s ‘Girl With Balloon’ Stolen from a London Gallery But Later Found, Ponzi Scheme Fraudster Lisa Schiff Forced to Sell Collection, and More: Morning Links for September 13, 2024

  13-09-2024 17:58 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesBANKSY SMASH, GRAB, AND RETURN. The iconic Banksy print, Girl With Balloon, was stolen from a London gallery on Sunday night—but was promptly recovered by the police on Thursday. Officers also arrested two men, reports the Times. CCTV footage shows a hooded suspect smashing Grove Gallery’s glass front on
  
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• In A Climate Where All Palestinian Art Is “Controversial,” a Connecticut Museum Carves Space for Palestinian Dreams

  13-09-2024 13:00 via artnews.com
  
  “We can stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s greatest artists.”So says Faisal Saleh, founder of the Palestine Museum US. Since 2018, he has directed the space. He also owns the building—an office complex in Woodbridge, Connecticut—and so is free from worry over upsetting the various bureaucracies who might hesitate to showcase Palestinian art.A soft ban on Palestinian artists is, and has been, all too pervasive. (Saleh tells me: “The name ‘Palesti
  
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• Skarstedt Gallery to Open in Chelsea Space Formerly Owned by Cheim & Read

  12-09-2024 22:13 via artnews.com
  
  New York dealer Per Skarstedt will move into a Chelsea space that formerly housed Cheim & Read, a gallery that shuttered last year after 26 years in business. Skarstedt will continue to run his Upper East Side space on East 79th Street, according to Kenny Shachter, who first reported the news in his Artnet column.Skarstedt, whose roster includes artists like Eric Fischl, KAWS, David Salle, and Martin Kippenberger, has secured a $13.5 million deal to move into the West 25th Street gallery loc
  
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• Owners of Marlborough Gallery Put London Building Up for Sale for Over $32 M.

  12-09-2024 21:31 via artnews.com
  
  Marlborough Gallery’s governing trust has listed its London building, the ten-story, 10,300-square-foot Scandia House, for over £25 million, or approximately $32 million, the Art Newspaper reported Thursday.Real estate agency Pilcher London is the exclusive agent for the property, which is located in London’s posh Mayfair district, not far from major galleries like David Zwirner and Gagosian. The gallery is set to vacate the building by the end of the year, according to the Art
  
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• Who Will Succeed Glenn Lowry as Director of MoMA?

  12-09-2024 21:24 via artnews.com
  
  New York’s Museum of Modern Art is set to enter a new era next year when Glenn Lowry, its longtime director, departs his post after 30 years at the helm. “I didn’t want to be the person who stayed too long,” Lowry told the New York Times. His departure has left with the New York art world with a big question: Who will take the reins at this venerable institution, which has not led a search for a new director since the mid-1990s?Lowry’s successor has big shoes to fil
  
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• In a Revelatory Georgia O’Keeffe Exhibition, Paintings of New York Unlock an Entire Oeuvre’s Mysteries

  12-09-2024 19:07 via artnews.com
  
  If things had gone differently, Georgia O’Keeffe would be famous for her paintings of skyscrapers, not her pictures of flowers. Starting in 1925, she began painting tall, monolith-like structures in cities devoid of people and cars. Thee strange, entrancing pictures capture a New York remade by modernity—and act as some of the most crucial documents of that transformation. What a shame it is that these canvases do not act as her calling card.For that, we have O’Keeffe’s h
  
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• Dealer David Lewis Joins Hauser & Wirth as Senior Director After Closing His New York Gallery

  12-09-2024 14:30 via artnews.com
  
  David Lewis, a taste-making New York dealer who recently shuttered his gallery in the city, has joined Hauser & Wirth, where he will now serve as senior director.Lewis’s eponymous gallery opened in 2013 and mounted shows for artists such as Trey Abdella, Barbara Bloom, Thornton Dial, Tomás Esson, Mary Beth Edelson, and Greg Parma Smith. Hauser & Wirth’s announcement of Lewis’s hire did not include mention of whether any artists from his roster would gain represen
  
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• After a Controversial Performance, Roksana Pirouzmand Pivoted to Sculpture, but Her Body Remains Emphatically Present

  12-09-2024 13:00 via artnews.com
  
  Growing up in the ’90s in Yazd, Iran, Roksana Pirouzmand was surrounded by familial creativity. Her mother sewed all the family’s clothes, and her grandmother, remembering songs from her youth, played them on the daf, a Persian drum often used in weddings. Pirouzmand adopted a similar proclivity for making things with her hands, though she entered high school intending to study science, before cajoling her parents into letting her attend art school instead.After high school, Pirouzma
  
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• 3,000-Year-Old Military Fort Unearthed in Northern Egypt

  11-09-2024 22:40 via artnews.com
  
  A 3,000-year-old Egyptian fort used for defense against invading Libyan tribes and sea peoples from the eastern Mediterranean has been discovered by archaeologists, according to the Egyptian ministry of tourism and antiquities.A series of mudbrick ruins in northwestern Egypt contained the remains of military barracks with storage rooms for weapons, food, and provisions. It dates back to the era of the New Kingdom (1550 BCE-1070 BCE).Researchers also identified several artifacts that once belonge
  
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• Unseen for 30 Years, Van Gogh Harbor Scene Is Poised to Shatter Auction Records in Asia

  11-09-2024 20:24 via artnews.com
  
  For the first time in 30 years, Vincent van Gogh’s Les canots amarrés (Moored Boats) is set to hit the auction block. The 1887 painting will appear at Christie’s Hong Kong on September 26 with an estimate of HKD $230 million–HKD $380 million (roughly $30 million to $50 million in US dollars). If the high estimate is met, Les canots amarrés will become the most expensive work by a Western artist sold at auction in Asia, beating the present record-holder, Jean-Miche
  
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• Viennacontemporary’s New Director Wants to Show Vienna’s Rising Stature in Contemporary Art

  11-09-2024 17:47 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.When thousands of Taylor Swift fans saw their Vienna concert plans dashed last month due to security threats, the city’s art institutions came to the rescue. Offering free entry to Swift ticket holders, museums across the city literally opened their doors as a cultural refuge. The p
  
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• Belgium’s Office Baroque Gallery Shutters After 17 Years in Business

  11-09-2024 16:34 via artnews.com
  
  Office Baroque, the influential Belgian contemporary art gallery founded by Marie Denkens and Wim Peeters in 2007, has shut down after 17 years in business.“It is with great sadness and deep gratitude for all the people we have worked with that we announce that Office Baroque is closing its doors,” the gallery wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “Office Baroque occupied an art world niche in Antwerp and Brussels, away from the buzz of the large capitals. It became a home for some
  
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• 5 Shows to See During Berlin Art Week

  11-09-2024 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  Berlin is a city as defined by its seasons as it is by its cultural output. It’s fitting, then, that Berlin’s two major annual art events, Gallery Weekend and Art Week, are staged at periods when the weather turns—the former during April, the latter in September. Just in time to usher in this autumn, the 13th edition of Berlin Art Week will take place from September 11 to 15, uniting over 100 participants as they open their doors and transform the city into an art oasis, with m
  
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• Legal Advocacy Groups Call for Iran to End Campaign Targeting Dissident Artists

  10-09-2024 21:37 via artnews.com
  
  A new report co-published by two legal U.S.-based advocacy groups calls on Iran to stop a years-long campaign to persecute artists, a push that grew more intense after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody spurred nationwide protests in 2022.The report, which was done by the Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI) and Voices Unbound (VU) in partnership with Berkley Law, focuses on the country’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’s role in increasing suppression of artistic speec
  
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• Brooklyn Museum Rebrands After 200 Years

  10-09-2024 19:53 via artnews.com
  
  Can a 200-year-old institution rebrand as cutting edge? The Brooklyn Museum is attempting to do just that with its new logo design.The new “visual identity” of the museum entails a sans serif font, new ligatures featuring an overlapping ‘o’ in Brooklyn and a combined ‘u’ and ‘m’ at the end of museum, and two dots surrounding the institution’s name intended to mimic those that frame the names of ancient philosophers, playwrights, and poets on
  
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• Brooklyn Museum of Art Rebrands After 200 Years

  10-09-2024 19:53 via artnews.com
  
  Can a 200-year-old institution rebrand as cutting edge? The Brooklyn Museum of Art is attempting to do just that with its new logo design.The new “visual identity” of the museum entails a sans serif font, new ligatures featuring an overlapping ‘o’ in Brooklyn and a combined ‘u’ and ‘m’ at the end of museum, and two dots surrounding the institution’s name intended to mimic those that frame the names of ancient philosophers, playwrights, and po
  
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• Stonewall Museum Ends Membership with Florida Tourism Organization After LGBTQ+ Page Disappears

  10-09-2024 18:58 via artnews.com
  
  The Stonewall National Museum and Archives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, canceled its membership with the state’s official tourism marketing corporation, Visit Florida, after that organization “quietly” took down a section of its website dedicated to courting LGBTQ+ tourists, according to a report published in the Advocate.Along with its withdrawal from the tourism site, the Stonewall Museum demanded that Visit Florida’s annual fee of $475 be reimbursed. Vis
  
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• 9 Shows to See During the Getty’s Science-Themed PST ART Festival

  10-09-2024 18:00 via artnews.com
  
  Experimentalism regularly reigns supreme in the latest edition of PST ART, a recurring, Getty Foundation–run initiative in which dozens of museums in Los Angeles and the surrounding region stay shows around a specific theme. Past editions devoted to Californian art history and Latin American art have lured new figures into the canon. Expect this year’s, about the intersection of art and science, to accomplish something similar.The offerings, as usual, skew toward all things cutting-e
  
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• MoMA Director Glenn Lowry to Step Down in 2025 After Leading the Museum for 30 Years

  10-09-2024 17:54 via artnews.com
  
  Glenn Lowry, the director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, will step down from his post in 2025, bringing to a close a 30-year tenure that will have made him the longest-serving leader in the institution’s history.He has held the top post since 1995. When it was revealed in 2018 that he planned to continue on through 2025, the museum parted with one of its cardinal rules: that “chief curators and other senior managers” retire at age 65. The policy, a MoMA spokesperson
  
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• Rare Celtic Helmet Thought to Be 2,400 Years Old Excavated in Poland

  10-09-2024 17:43 via artnews.com
  
  A Celtic helmet that archaeologists believe is around 2,400 years old has been discovered in Poland.Described by its finders as “very rare,” the helmet was unearthed at the Łysa Góra site in the Mazovia region by a team from the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw and Warsaw University’s (UW) Department of Archaeology.Over the course of a year, the team found almost 300 ancient artifacts at the site. Bartłomiej Kaczyński, the excavation leader, said the
  
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• Three Workers at New York’s Noguchi Museum Fired after Wearing Keffiyehs on the Job

  10-09-2024 17:37 via artnews.com
  
  Three employees at the Noguchi Museum in New York were fired for violating an internal policy that banned keffiyehs, a garment symbolic of Palestinian culture. A fourth employee, the director of visitor services, was also terminated. Artists, art workers, and Queens residents protested the firings on Sunday outside the museum, where they demanded the ouster of its director, Amy Hau.“Kept us silent, kept us down. Fire Amy, shut it down,” keffiyeh-clad demonstrators chanted outside the
  
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• 30-Year-Old Painter Michaela Yearwood-Dan Joins Hauser & Wirth

  10-09-2024 17:13 via artnews.com
  
  Michael Yearwood-Dan, a painter whose colorful abstractions have generated a loyal following, has joined Hauser & Wirth, one of the biggest galleries in the world. At just 30 years old, she is one of the youngest artists represented by the gallery, whose roster also includes painters such as Nicolas Party, Henry Taylor, and Nicole Eisenman.Yearwood-Dan will continue to be represented by Marianne Boesky, the New York–based gallery that has shown the London-based artist since 2021. She h
  
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• Art Institute of Chicago Receives Record $75 M. Gift Toward Expansion

  10-09-2024 16:51 via artnews.com
  
  The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) received a $75 million donation from Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed to support future expansion, the museum announced on Tuesday.The largest naming gift in the museum’s 145-year history, the funds will be used to realize building plans that expand access to the museum’s collection and enhance visitor experience. The Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed building will house new galleries for the museum’s collection of late 19th-century, mo
  
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