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The Headlines
A SHORTER LIST. The Smithsonian has narrowed down the possible sites for the forthcoming National Museum of the American Latino and Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, the Washington Post reports. From more than two dozen that were originally proposed, four now remain: three are undeveloped parts of the National Mall, and one is the Arts and Industries Building, which was also in the running to house the National Museum of African American History and Culture . (That instead got its own dedicated building designed by David Adjaye, which Greg Tate reviewed for ARTnews in 2017.) Under legislation passed by Congress, the Smithsonian Board of Regents has until the end of the year to pick the sites.
VIVIAN HEWITT, AN IMPORTANT COLLECTOR OF BLACK ART, died late last month at the age of 102 in Manhattan, the New York Times reports. With her husband, John Hewitt Jr., who died in 2000, she amassed a collection of hundreds of works that included Romare Bearden, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Elizabeth Catlett, and lesser-known figures. Remarkably, she and her husband did this while working respectively as a librarian and a professor (and then journalist). The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina, acquired 58 of their pieces that were purchased by NationsBank. Besides being a devoted collector, Hewitt delighted in connecting artists. “She brought us together,” Ann Tanksley told the paper.
The Digest
ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARTICLES. First, the good news: Archaeologists have found a 500-year-old Inca-era tomb while digging beneath a working-class home in central Lima, Peru, Reuters reports. Now the bad: Fires raging in Arizona are imperiling Native American artifacts, according to the Washington Post, and in Iraq, a dam currently under construction may flood the ancient city of Ashur and displace 250,000 people, according to some experts, the Art Newspaper reports.
ON THE MOVE. Sebastian Cichocki, the chief curator of Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art, will curate the next EVA International biennial in Ireland, in 2023, ArtReview reports, and Chelsea Pierce has been named curator of modern and contemporary art at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, per ArtDaily.
Next year, London dealer Timothy Taylor will open a 6,000-square-foot space in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, to which galleries have been flocking in recent years. It will take the place of the modestly sized townhouse Taylor has operated in Chelsea since 2016. [ARTnews]
As part of its 200th-anniversary festivities in 2024, the National Gallery in London will lend some of its most prized art for the first time, with works by Monet, Renoir, Constable, and others alighting at 12 institutions around the United Kingdom. [BBC News]
More news on the National Gallery’s bicentennial in 2024: It will stage a major Vincent van Gogh exhibition centering on the artist’s time in Provence, France, with no fewer than 50 works. It will reportedly be the largest van Gogh show in the country since the Royal Academy’s 2010 blockbuster outing. [The Art Newspaper]
The biannual Cardiff, Wales–based Artes Mundi prize, which honors socially engaged artists and comes with £40,000 (about $48,800), has named its latest short list: Rushdi Anwar, Carolina Caycedo, Alia Farid, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Taloi Havini, Nguyễn Trinh Thi, and Mounira Al Solh. [ArtReview]
The Kicker
HONG KONG IS MARKING the 25th anniversary of its handover from Britain to China next month, and the South China Morning Post has a feature on how the art scene has changed in that time—and how it has changed in just the past few years. “I cannot begin to think of returning to the old days of attending cocktail openings during Art Basel week and so on,” one artist told the paper. “How can we go back to that when the traumas of 2019 are not dealt with, and memories of the tear-gassing in Wan Chai, just outside where the art fair and auctions are held, are still fresh?” [SCMP]
