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.
Art News
Christie's announces the sale of An American Journey: The Diann G and Thomas A Mann Collection of Photographic Masterworks. On public view in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York – the sale will take place at Christie’s Rockefeller Center the evening of October 4, followed by a morning session on October 5.
Now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), In and About LA showcases the late Robert Rauschenberg’s photographic exploration of Los Angeles. A pioneering American artist whose groundbreaking work anticipated the Pop Art movement, Rauschenberg worked in a wide range of subjects, styles, materials, and techniques, utilizing photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. In 1950, he began making "Combines," which bridged photography, found objects and painting, blurring the line between painting and sculpture, merging kitsch and fine art.
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.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents an inside look at the tough and unsentimental world of boxing—including Philadelphia’s Blue Horizon gym—through the photographs of Larry Fink. Widely recognized as one of this country’s greatest photographers, Fink captures the subculture of boxing through its champions and challengers, its ambition-fueled gyms and rowdy rings and overheated atmospheres of locker rooms, as well as the many fascinating people—among them coaches, trainers, mothers, fathers, girlfriends, and spectators—who populate this world.
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) announces Cycle 30 of its Artist Studios program. The selected artists, who will work in MAD's sixth-floor open studios from August 7, 2018, through February 3, 2019, are Elodie Blanchard, Damien Davis, Jesse Harrod, Victoria Manganiello, Lily Moebes, and Monika Zarzeczna.
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.
Now at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, The Last Days of Pompeii, an installation by multidisciplinary artist Delia Gonzalez, creates a multimedia environment, using intricate drawings, neon sculpture, architecture and music. Gonzalez's multi-layered work is informed by many sources, including history, surrealism, mythology, and mystical traditions. The Last Days of Pompeii uses the dramatic destruction of that ancient Roman city to allude to cycles of destruction and renewal, and current issues of ecological, economic, or political disaster.
Aicon Gallery in New York is showcasing the work of New Delhi-based Shobha Broota. An educator and award-winning artist, Broota has had a 60-year career exhibiting internationally. Resonance is her first solo show in New York. The exhibition includes work from the past decade, representing two types of abstractions the artist has explored.
This summer, the Whitney Museum of American Art will present the first museum solo exhibition of Eckhaus Latta, the New York—and Los Angeles—based fashion label, founded in 2011 by Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta. Eckhaus Latta: Possessed highlights the work of this compelling young design team who belong to a new generation of designers operating at the intersection of fashion and contemporary art. The exhibition, part of the Museum‘s emerging artist series, will be on view in the first—floor John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Gallery from August 3 through October 8, 2018.
