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The Headlines
THE LIVES OF THE ARTISTS. Laura Poitras’s film about the art and activism of Nan Goldin, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, did not end up taking home the Oscar for best documentary feature (Daniel Roher’s Navalny won), but in the run-up to the awards ceremony, Goldin told the New York Times, “I’m not a competitive person, and I never have been. What’s important to me is that the film is now an action unto itself.” Meanwhile, filmmaker and artist John Waters gave CBS Sunday Morning a tour of the show at the Baltimore Museum of Art that is devoted to art that he donated to the institution. He said of a Richard Tuttle, “I love this piece, because it basically looks like I had a niece that failed shop class in summer camp.” And digital artist Refik Anadol discussed his latest project, Glacier Dreams, which just launched at Art Dubai, with Designboom.
LEGAL AFFAIRS. An archaeologist was assaulted in an Athens suburb, an attack that some officials believe may be related to his work monitoring illegal building projects on the island of Mykonos, as an employee of the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades, Kathimerini reports. The police are investigating. Meanwhile, some politicians in Canada are pursuing legislation that would strengthen protections for Indigenous artists against the illegal copying of their work, CBC News reports. Right now, cracking down on companies that do that is like playing “whack-a-mole,” one artist said. “Art fraud is big,” Patricia Bovey, the first art historian in the history of the Canadian Senate, told the outlet. “It comes right after issues of the illicit drug trade and firearms.”
The Digest
Artist Adam Pendleton and tennis star Venus Williams will stage a charity auction at Pace in New York in May to fund the preservation of singer Nina Simone’s childhood home in North Carolina, Karen K. Ho reports. Pendleton bought in with fellow artists Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson, and Julie Mehretu in 2017. [ARTnews]
Roland Castro, the politically engaged French architect who devoted his practice to improving the living conditions of the working class, has died at the age of 82. In a statement, French president Emmanuel Macron termed Castro a “legend of architecture and urbanism” and a “visionary left-wing activist.” [AFP/Euronews]
The Donald Judd–founded Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, has a new director: Caitlin Murray, who was previously director of archives and programs at the Judd Foundation. She succeeds Jenny Moore, who departed last summer and was recently tapped to lead Tinworks Art in Bozeman, Montana. [The Art Newspaper]
Mansoor Adayfi, a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay, penned an op-ed calling for the Biden Administration to clarify its position that prisoners can take “a practicable quantity of their art” if they are transferred from the site. Each painting made there “holds moments of our lives, secrets, tears, pain and hope,” he writes. [The Guardian]
The next time you are in Málaga, Spain, perhaps swing by the Museo Casa Natal Picasso, where the future superstar artist lived for his first three years with this family. “There are a lot of Picasso museums in the world, but this is the only Picasso birthplace museum,” its director, José Maria Luna, told the Financial Times. [FT]
Nick Yu, the associate director of Hong Kong’s Blindspot Gallery, has been hired as head of programs at London’s Asymmetry Art Foundation, which is “dedicated to nurturing curatorial practice about Greater Chinese and Sinophone contemporary art.” [ArtAsiaPacific]
The Kicker
THAT SUMMER FEELING. When hot weather arrives, the South Korean artist Lee Bul loves a bowl of ice-cold Pyongyang naengmyeon, she told Wallpaper. Lee was kind enough to share her recipe for the hearty and refreshing noodle dish, and said, “I find it sculptural, as it’s served in a metal bowl and every ingredient can be discerned. “ To experience Lee’s own sculptures, book a ticket to Sweden, where the Gothenburg Museum of Art is hosting a solo show of her work through late August. [Wallpaper]