Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 11, 2020

As galleries across the globe continue to roll out online viewing rooms and introduce new digital platforms amid the coronavirus pandemic, Hauser & Wirth announced the launch of ArtLab, the gallerys new research and innovation arm, which will focus on projects at the intersection of art and technology. The initiative, which was conceptualized in the summer of 2019 as a way to reduce the gallerys carbon footprint and address issues of accessibility and sustainability, will include a digital residency program at the gallerys LA outpost and will unveil its first project, a virtual reality modeling tool called HWVR, later this month. The software will allow the gallery to create a VR experience of its location in Menorca, which is currently being restored by the Paris-based, Argentinean architect Luis Laplace and will open in 2021.

Many of the best innovations are driven by necessity, gallery cofounder Iwan Wirth said in a statement. When we created ArtLab and first began developing the HWVR art experience, our primary goal was to develop technology that would help our artists visualize the spaces where their exhibitions would be presented. We were equally motivated by a desire to plan exhibitions for our locations around the globe in a way that would reduce the amount of travel and transportation. Given the current situation, with so many in essential self-isolation, we are accelerating the launch of ArtLabs programs with a new approach to virtual reality exhibitions that can engage as many people as possible and bring them together while were all apart.

As part of Hauser & Wirths #artforbetter initiative, 10 percent of the gross profit from sale of works in the first HWVR exhibition will be donated to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund of the World Health Organization.

Pace Gallery, which maintains locations in New York, London, Hong Kong, Palo Alto, Geneva, and Seoul, furloughed more than twenty-five employees on Thursday afternoon. According to Artnews, the gallery does not expect to welcome back the furloughed employees until mid-August. The move follows a wave of layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts at arts institutions throughout the United States as they try to minimize losses following closures due to COVID-19.

This painful decision came after making every non-personnel related cut we could, which has included drastically reducing the salaries of the most senior people either to the minimum or entirely, Marc Glimcher, the president and CEO of Pace, said in a statement. These are unprecedented and extremely challenging times and no one should imagine that art galleries are any less affected financially than other businesses.Glimcher, who contracted COVID-19 and recovered, wrote about his experience battling the virus here.

Larry Gagosian has agreed to privately sell a pastel drawing by Pablo Picasso that dates to 1903, one week after it was restituted by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, to the descendants of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German Jewish banker who likely sold the work under duress along with a dozen others after Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933. According to the Wall Street Journal, Gagosian has given Head of a Woman a $10 million price tag. The dealer was approached by the heirs of the collector last September as they attempted to secure the return of the Blue Period work. The museum, which agreed to restitute the piece in February, said in a statement, that it chose to give the work back to the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family to avoid the heavy toll of litigation. It also said that its decision does not constitute an acknowledgment of the merit or validity of the asserted claims.

Gagosian has also welcomed American artist Titus Kaphar to the gallery. The Michigan-born, Connecticut-based creator is the founder of the nonprofit NXTHVN, an arts incubator that mentors young curators through a fellowship program designed to help them carve out careers in the art world, and is a MacArthur Genius Grant winner. Best known for producing works that challenge racism and question historical narratives, Kaphar is one of more than a dozen artists who will be featured on the gallerys new platform Artist Spotlight. The initiative, which went live on Wednesday, April 8, will highlight one artist each week.

Marc Straus announced its representation of Marie Watt. Born and raised in Seattle and based in Portland, Oregon, Watt, a trained painter and printmaker, weaves mythologies and history from her Native American heritage to create sculptural works made from everyday materials. In recent years, she has focused on textile works, which incorporate shirts, blankets, and other items that were donated by people and are embedded with their own histories, and often invites community involvement through sewing circles to help her realize large projects. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Portland Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Jennie C. Jones has joined Alexander Gray Associates in New York.Jones, who is also represented by Patron Gallery in Chicago, is known for her interdisciplinary conceptual practice, which encompasses painting, sculpture, sound, and installation. A faculty member at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson in New York, the Cincinnati native often explores the relationship between sound and physical matter and draws inspiration from avant-garde African American music. My practice mines the territory of modernismabstraction and minimalism, experimental jazz, and seminal political and social shiftsto reveal the complex and often parallel legacies of the mid-twentieth-centurys social, cultural, and political experimentations, Jones said in a statement. My work brings to light the unlikely alliances that emerged between the visual arts and the imprint of jazz, highlighting the way they became and continue to exist as tangible markers of social evolution and political strivings.

The rest is here:

Hauser & Wirth Unveils ArtLab, Pace Furloughs Workers, and More - Artforum

Category: Jewish Heritage Month
Tags: