Weekly

March 26, 2022 • View in browser

This week, Mayor Eric Adams has proposed a $72 million cut from the city’s culture budget, we talk to the founders of a group helping museum staff in Ukraine, a report on a controversy in Memphis regarding an artwork by Tommy Kha and racist Elvis fans, and we take a look at what ancient paint palettes tell us about the lives of painters.

We also have reviews of Joan Mitchell, Julia Fish, Hugh Hayden, Gretchen Scherer, and much more.

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— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief 

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(image courtesy Asortymenta Kimnata)

This Group Is Helping Museum Workers in Ukraine
The founders of Museum Crisis Center discuss what they are doing to help safeguard museum staff and save Ukraine’s cultural heritage.

Museum teams in the region often risk their lives staying in the war zones to guard exhibits. To save overlooked Ukrainian heritage from vanishing, local citizens, cultural workers, and NGOs organize independent initiatives and evacuate art that has fewer chances to survive the war. 

NEWS THIS WEEK

Tommy Kha, "Constellations (VIII)/Golden Fields" (2013) (© Tommy Kha; courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures Generation)

• The Memphis International Airport reinstalls a work by artist Tommy Kha depicting an Asian Elvis after accusations of censorship.

• An anonymous artist spray-paints massive graffiti on the New Museum’s façade.

• NYC Mayor Eric Adams plans to cut the city’s culture budget by $72 million.

• SVA Galleries withdraws from an exhibition accused of "exploiting Ukrainian pain" and highlighted the plight of Russian artists.

• A demonstration at the Baltimore Museum of Art puts pressure on the museum director to sign the city’s union election agreement.

LATEST IN ART

Joan Mitchell, "Untitled" (1992), Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg Collection (© Estate of Joan Mitchell, courtesy Baltimore Museum of Art)

Why Joan Mitchell’s Paintings Can Never Die
Seph Rodney on Joan Mitchell at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Her earnest energy imbues all these works and makes this show more than a paean or tribute, or even a remembrance. This exhibition is a template for a way of being in the world in such a way that the memory of you can never die.

Julia Fish’s Architectural Abstractions Are Joyful Enigmas
John Yau on Julia Fish: Threshold/s with Hearth: recent paintings and a site intervention at David Nolan Gallery.

Surrounded by Wealth, an Artist’s Comment on Education Loses Its Edge
Erin L. Thompson on Hugh Hayden: Brier Patch at Madison Square Park.

Gretchen Scherer, “The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1769-1915” (2021-22), oil on panel, 24 by 30 inches

Messing with Museums and Our Desire for Order
John Yau on Gretchen Scherer: Sometimes, Light at Monya Rowe Gallery.

By painting her versions of the works that exist in Soane’s museum, and by arranging them as she wishes, Scherer recognizes the human folly of trying to preserve a moment.

The Problems and Pleasures of an Activist Art Exhibition
Billy Anania on Articulating Activism: Works from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection at the 8th Floor Gallery.

The Art of a Haunted United States
Sheila Regan on Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

ALSO ON HYPERALLERGIC

Denise Wallace, “Origins, Roots, and Sources: Past, Present, and Future ” (2021) (photo by Kiyoshi Togashi, courtesy the artist)

The Never-Ending Storytelling of Native American Jewelry and Its Makers
Brain Fleetwood highlights two artists who exemplify the power of storytelling at the center of Native American art through jewelry-making.

Storytelling is central in much of Native American art, and the work being produced by Indigenous jewelers is no exception. Native jewelry, whether based in historical practice, contemporary innovation, or somewhere in between, carries the identities and histories of the artists and craftspeople who created it; jewelry allows us to carry those stories with us and on us.

A Rehang of Hopper’s Iconic “Nighthawks” Changes the Game
Hall W. Rockefeller expands how recontextualizing Hopper’s iconic painting taps “into a common unease interpreted by American artists of all kinds.”

From Ancient Egypt to Teotihuacán, Centuries-Old Palettes Illuminate the Role of the Painter
Elaine Velie takes a closer look at how ancient paint palettes reveal the cultural impact and the role of the painter within each civilization.

For the Love of Murderous Women
Billie Walker: “We need to see the history of female violence as a history of retaliation, a fuck-you to the patriarchal violence women consistently experience.”

Required Reading
This week, an early conceptual artwork by Yves Klein goes to auction, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will finally include a section on the pivotal role of Jewish immigrants, the inventor of GIFs dies, and much more.

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