artnewz

The Defining Artworks of 2021

After a tumultuous 2020 that involved the beginnings of a pandemic and worldwide upheaval, the art world began to slowly go back to a form of normal in 2021. Along with that shift came a number of developments that brought art-making in new and unexpected developments. There was the rise of a new medium, and…

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Winners of the Russian Art Focus Prize announced at Viennacontemporary

The winners of the Russian Art Focus Prize, an award for critical writing about the country’s cultural scene organised by the English-language magazine Russian Art Focus (part of The Art Newspaper network), were announced on Friday at the Viennacontemporary fair in Austria. The €6,000 prize is being split equally between two writers: the British journalist Theo Merz won “best publication” for his article “A tribute to the Russian avant-garde sets off a storm”, published in The Economist in 2019; and collective Agitatsia (made up of Dasha Filippova, Pavel Mitenko, Antonina Stebur, Vera Zamyslova and Anastasia Spirenkova) won “best research paper” for their article “Party of the Dead: Necroaesthetics and Transformation of Political Performativity in Russia during the Pandemic”, published in the online magazine ArtMargins.com in 2021.

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Cuba on the brink: artistic voices refuse to be silenced

ast month, Amnesty International named the Cuban artists Hamlet Lavastida, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and four others as prisoners of conscience: “People imprisoned because of their political, religious or other beliefs who have not used or advocated violence.” Both artists, who are outspoken critics of government repression, have been held in maximum security prisons on trumped-up charges for several months. The statement from Amnesty is “a symbolic gesture to the many hundreds more who likely deserve the designation”, says the organisation’s Americas director, Erika Guevara Rosas, calling for the “immediate and unconditional release” of all those imprisoned.

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As organizing accelerates, workers at the Brooklyn Museum vote to form a union

Full-time and part-time workers at the Brooklyn Museum have voted to form a union, Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers (UAW) has announced. The vote follows successful labour organizing efforts at a range of US museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the New-York Historical Society, the New Museum, and the Hispanic Society of America.

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Frieze Art Fairs return to Regent’s Park in October—so what has changed since 2019?

After a year’s hiatus, Frieze London and Frieze Masters return to their respective tents in Regent’s Park this October, with 276 galleries from 39 counties expected to take part.

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The Met will return three African art objects to Nigeria

Joining recent moves by European museums to return African art treasures to Nigeria, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced today that is sending three objects back to the country. Two of the works, a pair of 16th-century Benin Court brass plaques of a Warrior Chief and Junior Court Official, were donated to the museum in 1991 by…

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Minneapolis Institute of Art announces over $19m in gifts, including funds for a diversity officer, Latin American curator and deputy director

Amid a continuing financial squeeze, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) announced today that it had secured more than $19m in gifts for its endowment and operations, including $5m to create the position of a new chief diversity and inclusion officer who will advance a drive for equity at the museum. The gifts will also…

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Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, landscape architect known as the ‘Queen of Green’, has died, aged 99

The Canadian doyenne of landscape architecture, 99-year-old, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, was remembered on Monday in a ceremony at the Temple Sholom in Vancouver, amid a grove of cedars in a garden sanctuary of her own design. Affectionately known as the “Queen of Green,” Oberlander died on 22 May, just a month short of her centenary…

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Plywood boards used to shutter New York shops are transformed into canvases for local artists

When Black Lives Matter protests swept across New York City in June last year, businesses across the city shuttered their storefronts with plywood to brace for the civil unrest. The city “felt apocalyptic”, says Neil Hamamoto, the founder of Worthless Studios, a non-profit arts organisation that is repurposing the leftover plywood into art installations that…

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Black artist detained by police in his gallery residency in South Carolina

John Sims, a Black artist and activist whose work explores the symbols of white supremacy, became an allegory unto himself this week when he was detained and questioned by police officers in his apartment at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, South Carolina, where he is the artist in residence. His current multidisciplinary…

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