Arts news

• The Year in New York: The Downtown Gallery Scene Was in Flux Throughout 2024

  24-12-2024 15:45 via artnews.com
  
  Over the course of 2024, New York City’s gallery infrastructure continued to feel the tectonic shifts that began in 2023. Last year, all eyes were on Tribeca, as rosy-eyed art dealers in Chelsea moved to either expand into the chic downtown neighborhood, or trade their spaces altogether for the greener grasses (and cobblestone streets) of lower Manhattan.This year, to some, has seemed more dour then last. Chinatown and the Lower East Side, which have typically served as petri dishs fo
  
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• For His Current Mid-Career Survey, Vincent Valdez Reflects on 25 Years of Putting America on Trial

  26-12-2024 18:30 via artnews.com
  
  Vincent Valdez’s studio in East Los Angeles is packed with large canvases, some still in progress. There’s a painting titled Supreme of the Supreme Court with portions unpainted and sketched on the canvas. On the same canvas, there are glimpses of the Rockefellers and depictions of Manifest Destiny. Another wall has a painting of Michael Jordan mid-dunk circa 1988, shining in the sea of darkness behind him. His canvases of various sizes are stacked and leaning against the walls,
  
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• The Biggest Art Forgery Stories of 2024

  26-12-2024 17:31 via artnews.com
  
  In terms of art forgeries, 2024 belonged to the Russian avant-garde market, the increasingly questioned umbrella term for modernist art from post-Soviet and Eastern European countries. This recess of the art market is riddled with fakes; several dealers told ARTnews that as many as 95 percent of the paintings currently in circulation aren’t legitimate. One art lender said he was invited to Israel by one collector-dealer who showed him a warehouse stacked to the rafters with Russian moderni
  
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• Three Artists Drop Out of First Show at New Venetian Cultural Institution After Questions About Its Links to Russian Oligarch

  24-12-2024 20:12 via artnews.com
  
  Last week, Swiss artist Reto Pulfer, Iranian artist Maryam Hoseini, and German artist Anna Witt demanded their work be removed from the inaugural exhibition at nonprofit Scuola Piccola Zattere in Venice. The show, titled  “One Year Score: Primo Movimento,” opened on November 22 and is scheduled to run until March 30, 2025. Three artists remain in the exhibition: Polish artist Agnieska Mastalerz and Italian artists Ludovica Carbotta and Tomaso De Luca.  Scuola Piccola Zatter
  
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• Jaime Muñoz Mixes Mesoamerican and Contemporary LA Iconographies to Create Paintings about Migration and Labor

  24-12-2024 18:30 via artnews.com
  
  Jaime Muñoz is a keen cultural observer. A conversation with him veers from art history, the commercialization of contemporary art, and Mesoamerican symbology to Los Angeles car culture, science fiction, and literature.All of these references and more filter their way into Muñoz’s art, which is steeped with the ethics of hard work and the visual allures of both painting and graphic design. With the precision of an architect who maps out his canvases in Adobe Illustrator, Mu&n
  
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• Orphism Was a Rare Understudied Avant-Garde Movement—Until Now

  24-12-2024 14:00 via artnews.com
  
  In the pantheon of the early 20th-century avant-garde, Orphism—the subject of a sweeping but diffuse survey at the Guggenheim Museum—is rare among isms in that it remains relatively understudied and misapprehended, at least in comparison to modernist cognates like Futurism, Vorticism, and Cubism. The Cubists’ kaleidoscopic unmooring of geometry from perspectival propriety inspired Orphism’s drive toward “pure painting”—pictorial form and color liberated
  
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• Berlin Moves Forward With €130 million Cuts to Arts and Culture

  23-12-2024 22:44 via artnews.com
  
  Berlin’s government has pushed through a €130 million cut—12% of its culture budget—despite weeks of protests and warnings from the arts sector. The reduction, part of the city’s 2025 spending plan, has prompted widespread concerns over closures and threats to Berlin’s status as a major cultural hub.The budget cut is a departure from Berlin’s previous plan to inject the city’s cultural spaces with new capital.  In 2021, Germany approved a recor
  
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• Berlin Moves Forward With €130 M. Cuts to Arts and Culture

  23-12-2024 22:44 via artnews.com
  
  Berlin’s government has pushed through a €130 million cut—12% of its culture budget—despite weeks of protests and warnings from the arts sector. The reduction, part of the city’s 2025 spending plan, has prompted widespread concerns over closures and threats to Berlin’s status as a major cultural hub.The budget cut is a departure from Berlin’s previous plan to inject the city’s cultural spaces with new capital.  In 2021, Germany approved a recor
  
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• Judge Rules Against Heirs of Famous Muralist Thomas Hart Benton, Ending Five-Year Legal Battle

  23-12-2024 22:30 via artnews.com
  
  The five-year legal battle between the heirs of American scene painter Thomas Hart Benton and a Kansas City bank accused of mismanaging his estate, selling his pieces for below their market value, and misplacing more than 100 artworks, has ended in a win for the bank.Missouri judge Mark Styles ruled that UMB Bank did not violate its duty to the famous regionalist painter, who left his holdings in their care prior to his death in 1975. Styles found that only five works from Benton’s collect
  
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• Partnership Between the Hilma af Klint Foundation and David Zwirner Stands to Separate the Artist’s Work for Profit

  23-12-2024 22:22 via artnews.com
  
  A potential agreement between the Hilma af Klint Foundation and mega gallerist David Zwirner stands to separate the artist’s work for profit. The family of the Swedish artist oversees her foundation, which is responsible for the preservation of her artwork and legacy.A proposed deal between the foundation’s board and Zwirner would likely lead to further commercialization and distribution of af Klint’s works which, according to family members, goes against her personal wishes as
  
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• The Best Board Games of 2024 Will Excite Players of All Ages

  23-12-2024 19:33 via smithsonianmag.com
  
  Whether you love cheese, wordplay, “Star Wars” or Japanese culture, this year’s list has something for everyone in what turned out to be a fantastic year for board gamers
  
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• The Most Valuable Artworks Sold At Auction in 2024 Is a Stark Drop From Recent Years

  23-12-2024 16:41 via artnews.com
  
  In 2024, the art auction market showed signs of recovery but fell well short of the highs reached in 2022, or even the lower totals from last year. The cumulative value of the top ten auction lots sold in 2024 was $512.6 million. That was a 22.3 percent decline from 2023’s total of $660 million and a stark 53 percent drop from 2022’s total of $1.1 billion. Meanwhile, public sales across Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips for Old Masters, modern, post-war, and contemporar
  
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• The Year in Censorship: An Irreparable Art World Schism Over Israel’s War in Gaza Intensified

  23-12-2024 15:23 via artnews.com
  
  Before 2024 even began, and arguably even before October 7, 2023, the art world was split on Israel and Palestine. But this year, the schism widened even further, until there was no room for nuanced debate. Suspicions of antisemitism and anti-Palestine sentiment proliferated in all corners, and looking to museums for guidance surely left some disappointed. Cultural institutions worldwide, from the Noguchi Museum in New York to Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, and to Qatar’s Mathaf, were ac
  
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• San Francisco’s Art Scene Is Thriving, In Spite of ‘False Doom Narrative’

  23-12-2024 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  Earlier this year, dealer Rebecca Camacho was standing in her new and expanded downtown San Francisco gallery in Jackson Square, when she paused and pointed to the arched windows facing the street. “There have been people constantly walking by. It’s alive!” she said.Others in parts of downtown San Francisco, like the Union Square area near Camacho’s previous location, have a different perspective. Nearly 37 percent of the office buildings there remain empty post-pandemic,
  
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• Stonehenge Possibly Erected to Unite Ancient Farming Communities, Study Finds

  20-12-2024 20:13 via artnews.com
  
  This has been a monumental year for further insight about Stonehenge’s creation. Researchers are now positing that the iconic stone circle may have been erected in an effort to unite ancient farming communities, CNN reported.Earlier this year, experts discovered that Stonehenge’s central six-ton altar stone may have come from more than 450 miles away in Scotland. It was previously known that the sarsen stones came from 16 miles away from the site, in what is now the British town of M
  
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• The Most Discussed Art World Lawsuits of 2024

  20-12-2024 19:27 via artnews.com
  
  Like most years in the art world, 2024 saw a slew of lawsuits wind their way through the courts.There were, of course, the professional relationships that went sour and the family drama that spilled into open court. But there were also stranger disputes, like a discrimination battle over an art installation in Australia. There were also cases that could have long-lasting legal consequences, like the artist who is challenging the U.S. Copyright Office’s rejection of his copyright for an art
  
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• Diriyah Art Futures, MENA Region’s First Hub for New Media Arts, Opens to the Public

  20-12-2024 19:00 via artnews.com
  
  Diriyah Art Futures, the first institution in the Middle East and North Africa dedicated to new media arts, has officially opened its doors to the public. Situated in Diriyah, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Saudi Arabia’s capital city of Riyadh, Diriyah Art Futures is an international hub, established with the mission of diversifying the emerging field of new media arts by amplifying the voices of Middle Eastern practitioners.Related ArticlesDiriyah Art Futures Announces First-Ever Mazra'
  
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• Year in Review: The World’s Heritage Sites Faced Destruction in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan

  20-12-2024 18:56 via artnews.com
  
  World heritage is rarely exempt from war, as 2024 proved in the cases of Israel and its enemies in the Middle East, and Ukraine and Russia. Amid each clash, monuments, religious landmarks, and ancient ruins—cultural property defined by the Hague as “immovable” sites with immense value to history—were variably threatened, damaged, or outright destroyed. That is to say, UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, had a busy year.This November, UNESCO reported that since
  
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• The Year in Conflict: The World’s Heritage Sites Faced Destruction in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan

  20-12-2024 18:56 via artnews.com
  
  World heritage is rarely exempt from war, as 2024 proved in the cases of Israel and its enemies in the Middle East, and Ukraine and Russia. Amid each clash, monuments, religious landmarks, and ancient ruins—cultural property defined by the Hague as “immovable” sites with immense value to history—were variably threatened, damaged, or outright destroyed. That is to say, UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, had a busy year.This November, UNESCO reported that since
  
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• SFMOMA Head Curator Eungie Joo Fired for Alleged Workplace Misconduct

  20-12-2024 17:09 via artnews.com
  
  Eungie Joo, head curator of contemporary art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art since 2017, has been fired amid claims of workplace conduct. The news was first reported by the San Francisco Standard.“In accordance with institutional policy on workplace conduct, Eungie Joo was separated from SFMOMA on December 17,” a museum spokesperson told the Standard. “We do not comment on the specifics of personnel matters.” Joo has not made a public statement on the termi
  
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• Ho, Ho, Ho! 15 Festive Photos of Santa Claus to Get You Into the Christmas Spirit

  20-12-2024 14:00 via smithsonianmag.com
  
  It's the most wonderful time of the year, and ol' St. Nick is spreading holiday cheer for all to hear
  
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• George Washington Carver Exhibition Looks at How a Scientific Genius Still Influences Artists Today

  20-12-2024 12:00 via artnews.com
  
  Historically, the relationship between Black Americans and the American South—in both the art world and the world writ large—is reduced to that of oppression and enslavement, with little attention paid to the creative and scientific innovations that both preceded and followed emancipation.The California African American Museum in Los Angeles hopes to change that limited understanding with its current exhibition, “World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project” (o
  
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• Liliane Lijn’s Magical Mechanisms Span Science and Surrealism

  20-12-2024 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  When Liliane Lijn moved to Paris in 1958, she found herself at the tables of the storied Surrealist cafés. By then, she remembered years later, they had become “kind of boring.” André Breton, whose 1924 manifesto had launched the movement, had since “banished all the most interesting people.” The Nazis had, too.Lijn was 19 years old when she arrived on the scene, so few in the cafés really listened to her ideas. Still, there was lots to absorb. Lijn w
  
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• French Painter Claire Tabouret Chosen to Create New Stained Glass Windows for Notre-Dame Cathedral

  19-12-2024 23:10 via artnews.com
  
  French figurative painter Claire Tabouret has been chosen to create new stained glass windows for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which reopened on December 7 after a six-year-long renovation. Tabouret was selected by French president Emmanuel Macron and the Paris archbishop, Laurent Ulrich, and said in a statement to the press that her winning project depicts praying people from different cultural background celebrating the Pentecost.The painter is based in Los Angeles and will collaborate with
  
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• The Oldest-Known Ten Commandments Tablet Sells at Sotheby’s for $5 M.

  19-12-2024 22:31 via artnews.com
  
  The world’s oldest-known stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments surpassed expectations at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday. Expected to sell for an estimated $1 to $2 million, the tablet fetched a whopping $5 million.“The result reflects the unparalleled importance of this artifact,” Richard Austin, Sotheby’s global head of books and manuscripts, told the New York Times. “To stand before this tablet is an experience unlike any other — it offers
  
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• The Ramallah Art Fair Returns with a Theme of Resilience

  19-12-2024 21:09 via artnews.com
  
  Zawyeh Art Gallery, the organizer and sole venue of the Ramallah Art Fair, wants it known that the name of the event is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, the works in its newly opened fourth edition are for sale—and at purposefully affordable prices—but here the market comes second. This is foremost a showcase of Palestinian stories.Titled “Voices of Resilience,” this iteration of the Ramallah Art Fair (RAF) features more than 100 artworks across a diverse range of medi
  
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• The Year in Self-Taught Artists: 2024 Expanded the Canon

  19-12-2024 19:59 via artnews.com
  
  2024 has been marked by the exponential presence of self-taught artists in museums, galleries, and art fairs. Increasingly sought by collectors from various horizons, represented by a vast community of art dealers, and included in a broader spectrum of art history curriculums, these artists have secured the attention of educators, art critics, and museumgoers—suggesting a new normal as to who counts as an “artist” in the first place.As a curator at the American Folk Art Museum
  
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• Zilia Sánchez, Painter of Erotically Tinged Shaped Canvases, Dies at 98

  19-12-2024 19:12 via artnews.com
  
  Zilia Sánchez, an artist known for her shaped canvases that bulge outward, has died at 98. The San Juan–based aritst’s death was announced on Thursday by the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, which did not state a cause.Sánchez’s erotically tinged paintings alluded frequently to the female body, which she abstracted beyond recognition. Using a palette of muted grays and blues, she created spare canvases that were stretched taut over wooden frameworks. Those armatures,
  
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• Roberto Chavez, Iconic Artist Who Influenced Generations of Chicanx Artists, Dies at 92

  19-12-2024 19:09 via artnews.com
  
  Roberto Chavez, a major figure within US Latinx art history whose work has influenced generations of artists that followed, died on December 17 of natural causes in Arivaca, Arizona. He was 92. The news was confirmed by the artist’s daughter, Sonna Chavez, in an email. Chavez was part of a generation of Mexican American artists working in LA beginning in the early 1950s, before the Chicano Art Movement that they would come to influence. That cohort, including Chavez and five other artists,
  
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• Felix LA Names 64 Exhibitors for Upcoming 2025 Edition

  19-12-2024 18:12 via artnews.com
  
  Felix LA, the art fair that each week during Frieze LA takes over the iconic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, will bring together 64 galleries for its upcoming 2025 edition, which will run February 19–23.For its seventh edition, around half of the exhibitors will be showing at Felix LA for the first time. Among these are ILY2 from Portland, Oregon; COMA from Chippendale, Australia; and sobering galerie from Paris. They will join Felix LA fixtures like 56 Henry, Charlie James Gallery, Document, L
  
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