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• Thomas H. Lee, Collector of Photography and Contemporary Art, Is Dead at 78

  24-02-2023 22:49 via artnews.com
  
  Thomas H. Lee, an iconic figure in private equity and a major art collector and patron, died at 78 on Thursday, a family spokesperson said. A cause of death was not given.“The family is extremely saddened by Tom’s death,” Michael Sitrick, the spokesperson, said in a statement. “While the world knew him as one of the pioneers in the private equity business and a successful businessman, we knew him as a devoted husband, father, grandfather, sibling, friend and philanth
  
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• Harmony Hammond, Feminist Icon, on Adapting a “Survivor Aesthetic”

  03-04-2025 21:28 via artnews.com
  
  Political discourse has always flowed freely in Harmony Hammond’s art. Hammond arrived in New York in 1969, months after the Stonewall riots rocked Greenwich Village. Against the backdrop of the gay liberation and women’s liberation movements, she came of age as an artist while attending consciousness-raising meetings and participating in the founding of A.I.R. Gallery, the first women-run nonprofit artist cooperative in the United States. After coming out in 1973, Hammond became an
  
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• This Organization Has Added Legions of Women to Art History, and Now There’s a Show to Prove it

  03-04-2025 20:26 via artnews.com
  
  At New York University’s Grey Art Museum, the head of artist Rona Pondick—a cast of it, anyway—can be seen emerging from a pedestal in the center of one gallery. Her skin is pink, her ear is translucent, her head is bald, and her eyes are closed. It is hard to look away from her as she pushes through a bed of unnaturally yellow resin, emerging from a surface that has concealed her for so long.Pondick’s sculpture, titled Magenta Swimming in Yellow (2015–17), acts as
  
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• Sculptor Ti Pèlen, Known Figure in Haitian Arts Collective, Dies at 66

  03-04-2025 20:03 via artnews.com
  
  Haitian sculptor Ti Pèlen, whose birth name is Jean Salomon Horace, died last month at the age of 66. His cause of death remains undisclosed.His family will preserve the remaining artworks in his possession, according to a spokesperson for Pioneer Works, which featured his work in a 2018 exhibition on Port-au-Prince artists.Pèlen’s carved stone sculptures—oversized heads with serene expressions—were a centerpiece of Pòtoprens: The Urban Artists of Port-au-P
  
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• Berkeley Art Museum to Stage Retrospective for Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Next Year

  03-04-2025 20:00 via artnews.com
  
  The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in California will present a retrospective for the late artist and writer Theresa Hak Kyung Cha next year, making it the first show of its kind in two decades.Related ArticlesIn a Long-Overdue Retrospective, Amalia Mesa-Bains Holds Space for the Chicanx Community A Sharp, Understated Whitney Biennial Looks to the Past to Process the Grief of the Present The exhibition, titled “Multiple Offerings” and on view from January to April
  
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• Smithsonian Director Pledges Museum’s Independence Amid White House Order of Internal Review

  03-04-2025 19:52 via artnews.com
  
  The Smithsonian Institution’s leadership is standing firm after the Trump administration ordered a review last month of its exhibits, accusing the museum network of pushing a “race-centered ideology.”In an internal memo to staff Friday obtained by Courthouse News Service, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III told employees that the institution would continue to operate “free of partisanship” despite White House efforts to reshape its programming. “We remain
  
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• Val Kilmer, ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Batman Forever’ Actor, Was an Artist, Too

  03-04-2025 19:34 via artnews.com
  
  Val Kilmer, the actor who died at 65 this week, was known widely for his star-making experiences in films such as Top Gun and The Doors. But beyond having a significant screen presence, Kilmer was also an artist, maintaining a painting practice that he considered an important part of his work.Kilmer’s big breakthrough as an artist came in 2017, when New York’s Woodward Gallery gave him a solo show. Titled “Valholla” (a reference, a release explained, both to Valhalla, a f
  
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• Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart Reveals ADQ’s Stake Is 25–30 Percent of Auction House

  03-04-2025 17:12 via artnews.com
  
  Earlier this week, the Financial Times published a wide-ranging interview with Sotheby’s CEO Charles F. Stewart, seemingly meant to talk up the auction house’s business ahead of next month’s all-important marquee auctions in New York.The biggest takeaway, however, didn’t come from a quote, but was tucked halfway through the piece. The auction house’s recent $1 billion investment deal with ADQ, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and investment company, the FT re
  
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• The Most Controversial Artworks of the 21st Century So Far

  03-04-2025 16:46 via artnews.com
  
  The world loves few things better than a controversy involving an artist. Such brouhahas are nothing new; Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin (c. 1605–06), for instance, was rejected by the Church fathers who commissioned it for the chapel of Santa Maria Della Scala in Rome because of its brutally realistic depiction of Mary—for whom a prostitute served as model, according to some sources. Clashes became more regular during the 19th century, when épater les bourgeois became
  
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• The Getty Trust Is Selling $500 M. in Bonds for Increased Protection Against Natural Disasters

  03-04-2025 16:22 via artnews.com
  
  Following the Palisades and Eaton wildfires in California earlier this year, the Getty Trust has decided to sell $500 million in bonds to enhance museum protection against natural disasters such as fires and earthquakes, according to an official filing.The additional funds will be used to support the maintenance and purchase of new boilers, irrigation and surveillance systems, water storage, communications systems, emergency management software, and firefighting equipment. The bonds are availabl
  
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• Tate Modern Acquires Joan Mitchell Masterpiece in Major Gift from Pérez Family

  03-04-2025 16:00 via artnews.com
  
  Miami-based arts patrons and ARTnews Top 200 collectors Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez have made a major gift of artworks to London’s Tate Modern, which includes Iva (1973), a monumental triptych by Joan Mitchell. The 20-foot-long painting, one of the artist’s most significant works, was unveiled Thursday. It now hangs alongside Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals. Tate director Maria Balshaw told the BBC on Thursday that the donation was “one of the most
  
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• Frieze Commissions Artists Pilvi Takala and Asad Raza for New Performance-Based Pieces

  03-04-2025 15:00 via artnews.com
  
  Frieze New York is set to return for its 13th edition on May 7 to 11 in Chelsea, featuring newly commissioned performances and public art projects by Pilvi Takala and Asad Raza.This year’s lineup includes a new performance by Takala, who is based between Helsinki and Berlin, and is known for videos and performative pieces that deal with unraveling social conventions. The 44-year-old artist, who represented Finland at the Venice Biennale in 2022, has gained a following abroad for pieces tha
  
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• Smithsonian Fallout Continues, Art Institute of Chicago Didn’t Name Donor When Restituting Stolen Buddha, and More: Morning Links for April 3, 2025

  03-04-2025 14:56 via artnews.com
  
  The HeadlinesTHE SMITHSONIAN DRAMA CONTINUES, with the Washington Post reporting yesterday that Kevin Young, the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has been on leave since March 14 and will be out of office indefinitely. It’s unclear whether Young’s leave was related to President Donald Trump’s March 27 executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the NMAAHC and many other mu
  
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• African American History Museum Director on Leave as Trump Targets Smithsonian

  02-04-2025 23:19 via artnews.com
  
  Kevin Young, the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., has been on personal leave since March 14, and will continue to be out of office indefinitely, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the news on Wednesday.The Post reported that a museum spokesperson said Young would be out for an “undetermined period.” Young has been director of the museum, one of many run by the Smithsonian Institution, since 2021.The insti
  
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• Texas Politician Proposes Plan to Fine Museums for Displaying ‘Obscene’ Content

  02-04-2025 22:56 via artnews.com
  
  A Texas lawmaker has proposed a bill that could be used to keep certain kinds of art off view, the Fort Worth Report reports.On March 6, representative David Lowe filed House Bill 3958, which outlines a proposed civil penalty against any museum showing “certain obscene or harmful material.” The Texas Penal Code defines “obscene” as any kind of performance or material that depicts sexual acts without literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.If passed, Lowe’
  
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• Patti Smith to Perform at Rally to Save New York’s Elizabeth Street Garden Park

  02-04-2025 22:43 via artnews.com
  
  Patti Smith performed at a New York City rally Tuesday as part of an effort to prevent a downtown park from being converted into affordable housing.The Elizabeth Street Garden, located between between Spring and Prince streets, has long been a community gathering place for artists and city dwellers. However, the city — which owns the land — announced plans to transform the space into an “urban oasis,” a move that longtime SoHo icons like Smith, Robert De Niro, and Ma
  
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• It’s in the Cards: An Exhibition at London’s Warburg Institute Offers a History of Tarot

  02-04-2025 19:54 via artnews.com
  
  From Renaissance Milanese court painter Bonifacio Bembo to the Surrealists and even contemporary artist Claire Tabouret (who painted her home’s ceiling with images from an early-20th-century tarot deck), tarot—a centuries-old set of 78 cards—wafts in and out of art history. Between 1979 and 1998, French avant-garde artist Niki de Saint Phalle built a sculptural installation called the Tarot Garden outside Rome, and a newly opened show dedicated to British Surrealist and occulti
  
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• Nonprofit Focused on Restoring Cultural Sites Affected by State Department Cuts to Foreign Aid

  02-04-2025 19:19 via artnews.com
  
  The U.S. Department of State’s recent cuts to foreign aid grants is expected to affect New York nonprofit World Monuments Fund (WMF), which has lost seven grants totaling more than $800,000, the Art Newspaper reported Tuesday. The cuts affect restoration efforts in Algeria, Benin, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ukraine, and Iraq. The broader policy shift, part of the White House’s “America First” agenda, which seeks to move resources away from international
  
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• Trump Administration Threatens Extreme Cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities

  02-04-2025 18:14 via artnews.com
  
  Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is reportedly recommended extreme cuts to staff and programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the New York Times reported Tuesday evening.NEH employees were informed by managers on Tuesday morning of DOGE’s recommended reductions to the staff by as much as 70 to 80 percent of the organization’s 180 staffers, as well as the possible cancellation of all outstanding grants made under the Biden administration
  
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• Khaled Sabsabi Says Australian Pavilion Cancelation Is ‘Dismantling’ His Career, Trump Portrait Smuggled into Louvre, and More: Morning Links for April 2, 2025

  02-04-2025 14:26 via artnews.com
  
  The HeadlinesAUSTRALIA’S VENICE CONTROVERSY CONTINUES, with Khaled Sabsabi now telling the Guardian that Creative Australia’s controversial decision to suddenly drop him from as the country’s representative for the 2026 Biennale is “dismantling” his career. “Nobody should have to go through this torture,” he added. Creative Australia’s board nixed Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino’s p
  
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• Karyn Olivier’s Elusive Art Bears Witness to Hidden Histories

  02-04-2025 12:00 via artnews.com
  
  Karyn Olivier’s work can often read as elusive. An expansive artist whose practice floats across various mediums, her works take many forms: a white column that rests on a historical table, a set of 15 stacked orange construction barriers, heaps of found clothing or fishing nets, an aesthetically pleasing piece of driftwood resting atop sheets of steel, photographs that are partially obscured by asphalt. They typically come off as quiet or deceptively straightforward, slowly unfolding to r
  
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• Reproductive Justice is Under Threat. What Can Art Do?

  02-04-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  BASED ON DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSES of the last United States presidential election, Norma McCorvey would probably have voted for Donald Trump were she alive today. The “Roe” of Roe v. Wade (1973), McCorvey was a non-college-educated white Christian woman who lived in the South. Born in Louisiana in 1947, she spent most of her life in Texas working as a janitor, housecleaner, waitress, and receptionist after dropping out of high school. She was married at 16, had her tubes tied by the
  
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• Artist Janiva Ellis, Art Historian Rizvana Bradley Cancel Harvard Event, Citing University’s Decision to ‘Repress Academic Freedom’

  01-04-2025 23:09 via artnews.com
  
  Artist Janiva Ellis said on Tuesday that she would pull out of a talk she’d been scheduled to give at Harvard University amid scrutiny over a variety of recent developments at the school, including reported attempts at conciliation with the Trump administration, which earlier this week threatened to pull billions of dollars in funding from the school.Ellis is currently the subject of a solo show at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, a contemporary art museum run by Harvard and locat
  
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• EPA Head Shutters Agency’s National Environmental Museum

  01-04-2025 20:43 via artnews.com
  
  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently shuttered the National Environmental Museum, located inside the federal agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.In a statement issued on March 31, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said the closure would save taxpayers about $600,000 per year. The small museum was created in 2016, dedicated to the nation’s environmental history, and included exhibits about prevention measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental justice, and effor
  
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• Historians Condemn Executive Order Targeting Smithsonian

  01-04-2025 20:29 via artnews.com
  
  The American Historical Association (AHA), a D.C.-based advocacy group, has issued a statement condemning a recent White House executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, which relies on federal funding to drive a significant part of its operation.The order accuses the Smithsonian, which oversees a network of more than 20 museums and research centers, of promoting “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology,” a claim the AHA calls a blatant misrepresentation of the Inst
  
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• Newly Attributed Turner Painting Heads to Sale in Vienna for $41 M.

  01-04-2025 20:24 via artnews.com
  
  A painting newly revealed to be by J. M. W. Turner has surfaced in a private Austrian collection and is now up for sale at a Viennese gallery for €38 million ($41 million).A version of Venice, Seen from the Canale della Giudecca, an 1840 painting housed at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, the piece was confirmed as an authentic Turner after extensive analysis by European researchers as part of an independent study published earlier this year.Vienna’s Artziwna gallery overs
  
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• Hong Kong Collector Alan Lo Talks About What He Bought at Art Basel

  01-04-2025 20:15 via artnews.com
  
  From developing The Pawn and Duddell’s restaurants to co-founding Design Trust and chairing Para Site art center, Alan Lo has helped to redefine Hong Kong’s culinary and cultural scenes. A longtime arts philanthropist, the entrepreneur, developer, and collector established the Singapore-based Yenn and Alan Lo Foundation (YAL Foundation) with his wife in 2022, which fosters Asian transnational artistic practices and dialogue.The foundation sponsored the first three iterations of the S
  
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• Archaeologists in Egypt Uncover Tomb of Ancient High-Ranking Military Commander

  01-04-2025 17:36 via artnews.com
  
  An Egyptian archaeological team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has unearthed the tomb of a high-ranking military commander dating back to the reign of King Ramesses III (ca. 1184 BCE–1153 BCE).The tomb was found at Tell Roud Iskander, a site in the Maskhouta area of Ismailia Governorate, Archaeology Magazine reports. The discovery highlights the region’s strategic military importance during Egypt’s New Kingdom, where fortresses and strongholds were built to defen
  
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• Institute of Museum and Library Services Staff Placed on Administrative Leave by Trump Administration

  01-04-2025 16:33 via artnews.com
  
  Work at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in Washington, D.C., came to a screeching halt yesterday afternoon after the entire staff was placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).Between 55 and 70 employees received a letter that has been circulating on social media. In that letter, the employees were informed that they would be placed on administrative leave with full pay and benefits for the next 90 d
  
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• Trump’s Executive Order on the Smithsonian Will Send Art History Backwards

  01-04-2025 15:00 via artnews.com
  
  During the 1990s, artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood was driving along the 405 Freeway in San Diego when she spotted a yellow sign showing a man, a woman, and a little girl running in fear from an unseen threat. Above these people was a menacing word: “CAUTION.” The sign, informally known as “Immigrant Crossing,” was meant to warn drivers of illegal immigrants dashing through traffic and was pervasive at the time in California.What were these migrants fleeing from? The que
  
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