Art News & Articles

Rebeccah Blum, an independent curator based in Berlin who was known there as an ambitious and compassionate supporter of artists, has died at age fifty-three. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Emma, on social media. Through initiatives like Blum Fine Art Management, a firm she started in 2012, and Satellite Berlin, a platform cofounded with art advisor Kit Schulte in 2014, Blum focused her career on international collaboration. From 2007 to 2012, she directed programming at Aurel Scheibler gallery’s downtown Berlin space, ScheiblerMitte, where she oversaw solo exhibitions by Michel Auder, Anthony Goicolea, and Joe Zucker. Blum also worked as a European ambassador to New York’s David Nolan Gallery and created a translation and editing service, Wordsmith, whose clientele included the Goethe-Institut and the Vitra Design Museum. “Rebeccah wanted to stimulate the general dialogue between art and culture in a meaningful way and to develop new content in collaboration with other areas...

Despite  objections  around the world from preservationists, politicians, prominent curators, and tens of thousands of  petition signers , the Norwegian government has detached the concrete mural by Pablo Picasso that has adorned a building in Oslo’s downtown Regjeringskvartalet quarter for fifty years. The structure, a Brutalist office complex known as the Y-block, which was damaged in a 2011 terrorist attack, is slated for demolition as part of redevelopment plans for the city’s small government district. The Y-block was realized in 1969 by modernist architect Erling Viksjø, who also designed the adjacent H-block, which hosts a smaller Picasso mural,  The Seagull , in its lobby. Both works were executed by Picasso collaborator Carl Nesjar and are being relocated. According to the  Times , Viksjø’s grandson and Nesjar’s daughter, Gro Nesjar Greve, have jointly sued the Norwegian government to prevent  The Fisherman  from being reintroduced above the V...

The artist Heather Phillipson’s latest work is a 31-foot statue of a dollop of whipped cream, with a fly on it. This one hasn’t been easy. In March, the work was meant to be installed on an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, the latest in a series of commissions that brings contemporary art to the central London plaza. But on the day the installation was scheduled to begin, Britain went into lockdown. Soon after, she was having conversations with the London city officials about whether the work could be installed during the pandemic at all. The work’s title, “The End,” didn’t have the best connotations at a moment when thousands were dying. “It started to feel like there’d never be a good time, or a right time, for it to go up,” Phillipson said in a recent interview at her East London studio. On Thursday, “The End” was finally unveiled. Phillipson said the work had been conceived in 2016, not long after Britain voted to leave the European Union, and she had wanted the creamy sculpture, ...

Many public art installations have been created in support of the Black Lives Matter movement this summer, including street murals appearing on the streets of cities across the country after the words were painted in bright yellow on the street behind the White House on June 5. While some examples have been powerful because of their timely reaction to current events, some communities are emphasizing the importance of taking the time to have community input before creating anything and to ensure that those involved with the public art projects are committed to the issue for which the art is seeking to promote.  When the New York City Public Design Commission (which has jurisdiction over all buildings and art proposed on city-owned property in Manhattan) set out to paint their own street mural, they slowed the process and listened to the community: “We actually took the time to have the conversations with people that are in the actual Black Lives Matter movement,” says Justin Garett ...

Museums and Galleries, Cultural Heritage Sites, Photography studios and Auction houses are all exempt from wearing masks indoors. Of course, it is up to the individual gallery to decide if they will require masks to be worn to protect their staff and visitors and many have already stated that all entering their premises must wear masks. The UK Government has brought in new laws which will fine people flouting the rules by slapping them with a £100 penalty charge. Police have stated, this will only be a last resort. The new guidance states: No one can enter a buildings such as shops without a mask which covers your face and nose unless you have a reasonable excuse. Face coverings must be worn in: Shops and shopping centres, Banks, building societies, credit unions, short-term loan providers, savings clubs and currency exchange offices and anywhere that transmits money by cash or cheque, Post offices, Takeaway food establishments. The requirement to wear a face-covering also app...

The Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania is putting in storage a collection of more than 1,000 skulls, including some that belonged to enslaved peoples, following an outcry from students. The crania, which were held in a private classroom, belonged to the collection of Samuel George Morton, a 19th-century Philadelphia-based physician known for his “broadly white supremacist” views, according to the institution.  Last year, a group of students at the university discovered that 53 skulls in the Morton Cranial Collection came from individuals enslaved in Havana, Cuba, while two others belonged to enslaved Americans. They presented their findings at a symposium hosted by the Penn & Slavery Project, an initiative tasked with probing the school’s “ historical connections with the institution of slavery .” The museum, which reopened to the public today for the first time following a four-month shutdown, is currently working to repatriate or re-bury the crania, it said in a...

The artist Petrit Halilaj has withdrawn from the Belgrade Biennial after the organizers of the exhibition dithered over how to present his nationality in accompanying materials. Halilaj is from Kosovo, and the biennial is organized and hosted by the Cultural Centre of Belgrade in Serbia, a country that does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state. He pulled out of the show after he was unable to agree with the organizers about how his country of origin would be named in the list of participating artists. Halilaj, who is based in Berlin, has written an open letter detailing his experience with the exhibition, which is officially called the 58th October Salon: Belgrade Biennial.  Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and there is a fraught history between the two nations. During the Kosovo War of 1998–99, fought between the two nations,   Halilaj himself was displaced and spent more than two years living in refugee camps.  In his letter, Halilaj recalls how...