On Monday the first fair reports came in from Art Basel Miami with the biggest purchase estimated as the £17 million being paid for Pablo Picasso’s Tete de Femme (1917) from Van de Weghe Fine Art. On Tuesday Olafur Eliasson unveiled a new public sculpture on the banks of the River Thames in London, featuring a ring of 24 icebergs. Ice Watch London, made of ice from the Nuup Kangerlua fjord in southwestern Greenland, transported to the site outside Tate Modern, is a reminder of man-made global warming and is installed just as world leaders meet at the COP24 climate change conference in Katowice, Poland. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, announced Kaywin Feldman as the institution’s next director. Feldman, who succeeds Earl A. Powell III, who has served as director since 1992, will be the museum’s first female lead. She currently heads the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Dotty Attie, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Patty Chang, Beverly Fishman, Kate Gilmore, Heather Hart, Deborah Roberts, Rocío Rodríguez, Michèle Stephenson and Betty Tompkins were named recipients of Anonymous Was A Woman grants. Taking its name from line in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, the annual award is an unrestricted prize of $25,000 made each year to ten female artists over the age of 40. The award was begun in 1996 in response to the decision by the National Endowment of the Arts to cease support of individual artists. The identity of the funder was long a secret, but earlier this year the New York–based artist Susan Unterberg acknowledged that she was behind the programme.
On Wednesday Matt’s Gallery announced that it will represent Cornwall-based British painter Nicola Bealing. In Havana, artist and activist Tania Bruguera announced she was pulling out of the Kochi Muziris Biennale (opening today), as she vows to keep fighting against the Cuban government’s controversial censorship law Decree 349, which was introduced on 7 December. Bruguera was released last week along with other cultural activists after being detained for protesting the new law.
On Thursday José Olympio da Veiga Pereira was named the new president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo. The collector, who heads Credit Suisse in Brazil, will hold the position for two years, and can be reelected two more. Julio Landmann was elected as chairman of the Bienal’s executive board. Bertille Bak, Mircea Cantor, David Maljkovic, Maria Papadimitriou and Unknown Friend have been shortlisted for the third edition of the Mario Merz Prize in the arts category. The winner will be announced in October 2019, and will be commissioned to produce an exhibition at Fondazione Merz in Turin in November 2020. Works by the shortlisted artists will be presented in an exhibition in Turin from June 2019. In Paris, it was announced that Palais de Tokyo director Jean de Loisy will take up the reins of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. De Loisy, who will also curate the next Lyon Biennale, joins the institution in the midst of turmoil following the resignation of his predecessor, Jean-Marc Bustamante.
Tate Modern has announced that Anne Imhof will create a programme of performances for its 2019 edition of BMW Tate Live. The largescale commission is set to incorporate music, sculpture, painting and durational performances during the 10-day exhibition in March.
On Friday, Indian artist Subodh Gupta was accused of being a ‘serial sexual harasser’ by a former employee who posted the allegation on the Instagram account ‘Scene and Herd’. The post includes accusations made by a number of women who have worked with or for him. Gupta has categorically denied the allegations of sexual harassment, which include unwanted verbal and physical advances as well as vulgar comments.
Berlin-based Portuguese artist Leonor Antunes, best known for her site-specific installations that pay homage to modernist artists, architects and designers, was awarded the Zurich Art Prize for her contribution to contemporary art by Museum Haus Konstruktiv. The annual prize, which is backed by Zurich Insurance Group Ltd, includes $100,000 – $80,000 of which will go towards the production of a solo exhibition at the institute next year (31 October 2019 – 12 January 2020). Antunes was selected from a short list which also included Claudia Comte, Wyatt Kahn, Eva Kot ́átková, Magali Reus and Ignacio Uriarte.
Stay tuned for the daily rundown on the artworld’s latest gallery news: awards, appointments, artist representation, open calls and more…
