WIELS Names New Senior Curator

POSTED February 25, 2015

Zoë Gray has been appointed new senior curator at WIELS, the contemporary art center in Brussels. Born 1978 in the UK, Gray currently lives in Brussels, and her recent independent curatorial projects include "PLAY TIME," at les Ateliers de Rennes, the contemporary art biennale, Rennes, 2015; and "Wilfrid Almendra: Matériologique," staged at Fondation d'entreprise Ricard, Paris 2013.

Gray was a curator at Witte de With center for contemporary art Rotterdam from 2006 to 2012. She was also a project manager for the LUMA Foundation in Arles. Currently, she is editing the first monograph of Hedwig Houben.

September 18, 2015

Noelle Bodick reports at Artinfo that David Findlay Jr., an art dealer who owned an eponymously named gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan and comes from a family of gallerists, died last Monday.

The first of the Findlays' art galleries was founded in Kansas City, Missouri in 1870. David. B. Findlay, Findlay Jr.'s father, opened a gallery in New York in 1936 while his brother established another in Chicago. After working in his father's gallery for ten years, Findlay Jr. started his own in 1982 and moved the business to its current space in 2000. His specialty was nineteenth and twentieth century American art. Findlay Jr.'s brother, Peter Findlay, also operates a gallery in Manhattan focusing on Impressionism. David Findlay Jr.'s gallery will continue under the supervision of Louis Newman and Lee Potter Findlay, Findlay Jr.'s daughter. The gallery represents artists such as Betty Parsons, Jack Wright, Vance Kirkland, and Leonard Edmondson.

September 18, 2015

After electing five new trustees last March, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has announced the addition of four more trustees to the Museum's board this week. David Appel, Marcus Brauchli, Theaster Gates, and Sheri Schlesinger are the new members, bringing the total membership of the board to twenty-one. Theaster Gates will replace Ann Hamilton as the artist representative on the board.

David Appel is president of Toronto-based firm David Appel Investment Consultants and serves on the boards of the Shaw Festival, the National Theater School of Canada, and the Toronto Foundation for Student Success. He is a member of the twentieth century acquisition committee at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and has served on the boards of Canadian Stage, the Desrosiers Dance Theater, and the National Ballet of Canada.

Marcus Brauchli is cofounder and managing partner of North Base Media, which invests in journalism-related media and technology companies, and was previously a vice president of the Washington Post Co. and executive editor of The Washington Post. He is chairman of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, an exchange program between the U.S. and Germany, and is also is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York, and the World Economic Forum's global agenda council on the future of media, entertainment and information.

Theaster Gates is Chicago-based artist who founded the nonprofit Rebuild Foundation and is currently a professor in visual arts and director of the arts and public life initiative at the University of Chicago. Gates has exhibited and performed at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the 2010 Whitney Biennial, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, Punta della Dogana in Venice, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.

Sheri Schlesinger is a Los Angeles-based philanthropist who was owner and chief executive officer of Schlesinger & Associates, an interior design and architecture firm. She was the national lay chair of the One Family Fund and is retired board chair of Aleinu.

September 18, 2015

After the Honolulu Museum of Art issued a lawsuit last month to collector Joel Alexander Greene for failing to provide the provenance of five works he had donated to their collection, Greene has now decided to countersue the museum, reports Hannah Ghorashi at Artnews. Greene is suing for breach of contract and damages, claiming his name has been unfairly tarnished and that in his previous dealings with the museum there had been "no question as to the title of the pieces." The breach of contract he claims can be located in the fact that the museum cancelled his charitable gift annuity, an agreement he had with the museum since 2004.

September 18, 2015

The Italian curator Lorenzo Benedetti, who has served as director and curator at Amsterdam's De Appel for just fifteen months, has been abruptly fired by the center's board according to Lorena Muñoz-Alonso at Artnet. De Appel's CEO Alexandra van Huffelen told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that regarding the institution's decision "[Benedetti's] exhibition program was good, but De Appel has missed a leader in other respects: someone who inspires internally and externally and conveys a vision of the future." In a more defensive tone, she also added: "to outsiders it might seem like a fast action to put Benedetti out of commission right now, but behind the scenes there have been problems for the past six months."

Benedetti's programming was embraced by the Dutch art community for his exhibitions of artists such as Melanie Gilligan, Michael Dean, and Michael E. Smith.

September 18, 2015

Hannah McGivern reports in the Art Newspaper that the shortlist of nominees for the seventh edition of Artes Mundi, the UK's largest prize for contemporary art, has been announced. The seven artists in the running for the biannual award, worth about $62,5640, are John Akomfrah (UK), Neïl Beloufa (France/Algeria), Amy Franceschini of the Futurefarmers collective (USA/Belgium), Lamia Joreige (Lebanon), Nástio Mosquito (Angola), Hito Steyerl (Germany/Japan) and Bedwyr Williams (UK).

Artes Mundi was created in 2002 to celebrate international art that engages with "the human condition, social reality and lived experience." The shortlist was chosen from more than 700 nominations across ninety countries and an exhibition of works by the seven artists is set to open next October at the National Museum Cardiff and Chapter gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The winner will be announced in January 2017.

September 18, 2015

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami has appointed Ellen Salpeter as its new director. Salpeter is currently the deputy director of external affairs at the Jewish Museum in New York, where she manages the museum's strategic planning. Prior to that she was the founding director of Heart of Brooklyn, a non-profit consortium of cultural organizations, and was also from 1994 to 2001 the executive director of Thread Waxing Space, a multidisciplinary arts and education space supporting emerging artists. Salpeter begins her new role at ICA Miami on December 1.

September 17, 2015

Maurice Tuchman, A Report on the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971

The Getty Research Institute is acquiring the archive of curator Maurice Tuchman. The first full-time curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Tuchman served from 1964 to 1994. During his tenure he founded the museum's Art and Technology program, which promoted collaborations between artists and the corporate tech world. He also curated shows including "New York School: the First Generation," 1965, and "Edward Kienholz," 1966.

The archive covers thirty years of exhibitions and projects at LACMA and include letters, press clippings, photography, audiovisual recordings, publications, personal papers and even Tuchman's appointment books from the beginning of his tenure at LACMA until the 1980s. Edward Kienholz, Claes Oldenburg, and Jasper Johns are among the artists who figure in the documents. Rare artist publications such as Ilya Kabakov's Red Wagon and the 1970s New York artists' magazine Avalanche are also included in the archive.

Said Thomas W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute. "Maurice Tuchman is a standout figure in the recent history of modern art in Los Angeles and beyond and his influence is unquestionably evident to this day."

September 17, 2015

View of LaMont Hamilton's "Omaha Projects" at Carver Bank, 2013

Artadia has revealed the winners of the 2015 Chicago Artadia awards. LaMont Hamilton and Cauleen Smith will each receive twelve thousand dollars, while Laura Davis and Irena Haiduk will each win five thousand dollars. Chosen from an applicant pool of 450 Chicago-based artists, the winners will also have access to Artadia's New York residency.

Artadia currently funds Awards on a rotating cycle in New York, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, and Los Angeles.

September 17, 2015

An email missive by financier Ronald O. Perelman—who recently became chairman of the hall's board of trustees at Carnegie Hall—has been sent to other board members accusing the venue's executive director of improprieties.

According to Gregory Zuckerman and Jennifer Smith for the Wall Street Journal, Perelman's letter, which expresses concern over "related-party transactions," also brings up "a troubling lack of transparency and openness in the way Clive Gillinson was interacting with me and the board."

"My concerns initially arose because of an inability to obtain a full picture of Carnegie Hall's financial operations, especially as it related to profits and losses involving performances," Perelman wrote. "I was told that such financial information was never shared with the board or even the chairman."

Perelman continued by saying that this policy fell short of criteria of the New York State Nonprofit Revitalization Act, which mandates that board members take an active oversight role over staff action.

The letter "serves notice that he may be prepared to bring the bare-knuckle tactics of a corporate raider into the genteel precinct of one of America's most august cultural institutions. Such disputes generally are handled discreetly and kept out of public view, much as they usually are at orchestras, museums and other art organizations," write Zuckerman and Smith, who also note that Perelman's history of litigating includes suits brought against investment bank Morgan Stanley and art dealer Larry Gagosian.

Clive Gillinson, who is Carnegie Hall's executive and artistic director, has said "In serving Carnegie Hall for ten years, I am very proud of everything we have achieved together. I love the hall and everything it stands for, and will continue to give it my all."

Another member of the board, pianist Emanuel Ax, said the letter was the first time he'd heard about troubles with Gillinson. "My contact with Clive has always been fantastic," he said. "He's a great guy. As far as I could tell, he was running everything wonderfully."