Report highlights the ongoing gender disparity amongst US art directors
The pay gap persists, says The Gender Gap Report 2017, published March 22 by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD). The study shows that despite a five percent increase in female directorships since 2013, women still hold fewer than 50 percent of directorships in US art institutions.
Researchers compared contributing contemporary and historical factors in data collected from AAMD member institutions, and interviewed female directors along with recruitment consultants. Results reveal the majority of museums with budgets of over $15 million are led by men, with female directors earning 79 ¢ for every dollar earned by their male equivalent. For details on the report, see AAMD.
Two exiled Polish artists living in the UK to be forced back
Performance artists Władysław Kaźmierczak and Ewa Rybska might be forced back to Poland after living in the UK for almost a decade. The couple have been living in Northamptonshire without British citizenship since leaving Poland, and say they risk arrest if they venture abroad.
In a recent email from the Polish embassy, the Prosecutor’s Office denied the renewal of their 10-year passports, instead offering them seven-day passports to visit Słupsk to discuss accusations against them. Back in Poland, Kaźmierczak directed the Baltic Gallery for Contemporary Art in Słupsk, with Rybska as his employee. The Serious Organised Crime Agency issued a European Arrest Warrant in 2008 against Rybska “for 25 offences against the property and activity of state institutions”. Details via The Art Newspaper.
Władysław Kaźmierczak and Ewa Rybska, Stakehouse Live (2016) Image courtesy of DARC Archives
Postmasters Gallery Expands to Rome
After 32 years, New York’s Postmasters Gallery looks set to finally expand. A second space will open in Rome, though the date is not yet known. The Italian branch will be overseen by Paulina Bebecka, currently co-director of the New York gallery, and will host pop-up exhibitions, special projects, and art fairs.
The announcement also included news that Kerry Doran, the current director of New York’s Bitforms gallery, will be the new director of Postmasters’ TriBeCa space, starting April 11. Info via artnews.
Top : Installation view of Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung's "In G.O.D. We Trust" exhibition at Postmasters New York | Bottom : Krishna - Odharma (2009) © Postmasters Gallery
Romanian artist Ciprian Muresan awarded 10th Contemporary Drawing Prize at the Guerlain Foundation
Yesterday, the tenth Contemporary Drawing Prize was awarded to the young Romanian artist Ciprian Muresan by the Daniel and Florence Guerlain Foundation. He beat the two other finalists – French artist Didier Trenet and Scottish artist Charles Avery, who also have their work on display at the Salon du dessin in Paris, through March 27.
Represented by the Paris-based Éric Hussenot Gallery, Muresan will receive €15,000 from the foundation.
Ciprian Muresan, All Images from a Book on Giorgio Morandi (2015) Galeria Plan B at Frieze London 2015
Filmmaker and artist Jonas Mekas to showcase photographs of life in displaced persons camps, taken in the aftermath of WWII, at Documenta 14
This year’s Documenta 14 exhibition “is very much focused on the refugee situation,” says Jonas Mekas. The veteran Lithuanian-American avant-garde film-maker, 94, said in an interview, “my photographs are connected directly with it, the problem of refugees, what’s happening right now in Europe, [things] that we don’t talk about here [in the US].”
Captured by the Nazis and sent to a forced labour camp during the war, Mekas took the photographs whilst at a displaced persons camp in the suburbs of Kassel. An anticipated 30 black-and-white photos will be on display, showing “German children scrounging for food in garbage cans; miseries of the displaced persons camps life,” as well as those bittersweet moments, such as two laughing boys on a see-saw. A few of Mekas’ relevant films will also be shown, such as Lost, Lost, Lost (1976). More info at documenta 14.
