Hundreds turn out in New York to protest NEA cut
The Rally to Save the Arts took place yesterday New York—organized by the city council’s Democratic leader Jimmy Van Bramer—in protest to President Trump’s proposed cut of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities (NEA and NEH).
The protest drew in a crowd of over 400 people, ranging from the two-month-old protest group We Make America to the nearly century-old Actors’s Equity Association. Elimination of the NEA would have especially severe consequences for New York’s art scene, which has received about $233 million in NEA grants since 2000. Details via Hyperallergic
Musician David Byrne joins NYC rally © New York Daily Times
Lorna Simpson now represented by Hauser & Wirth
American multidisciplinary artist, Lorna Simpson, will now be exclusively represented worldwide by Hauser & Wirth. The artist’s career, spanning three decades, interrogates issues such as race, class, gender, politics, and history through multidimensional work. Her first presentation with the gallery will feature at this year’s Frieze New York, with a new cycle of paintings and sculptures on display at their booth.
Marc Payot, Hauser & Wirth’s vice president, praised “her superbly intellectual approach to a variety of media, which suggests a remarkable affinity with fellow gallery artists Roni Horn and Zoe Leonard, as well as Rashid Johnson, Mark Bradford, and others tackling complex issues of identity.” Simpson’s success has seen her the first African American woman to exhibit at the Venice Biennale, in 1990, exhibiting at New York’s MoMA, the MCA Chicago, the Miami Art Museum, LACMA, and Paris’s Jeu de Paume, among many others.
Lorna Simpson, Stereo Styles (1988)
Documenta 14 to showcase work responding to the hoard of Nazi loot
At least three artists will debut work at this year’s Documenta 14, responding to recluse Cornelius Gurlitt’s cache of art.
The hoard of suspected Nazi loot, which included works by Picasso, Degas, Dürer and Renoir, was discovered in 2012, and quickly seized by German police. Although in 2015 Documenta 14’s artistic director, Adam Szymczyk, proposed to show the Gurlitt collection in its entirety, this was not possible. The display will include works that engage with the complex issues surrounding the hoard, including “the enduring riddle of modern German history as refracted through the Gurlitt family saga,” says Dieter Roelstraete, one of the exhibition’s curators.
Cornelius Gurlitt, photo courtesy Markus Hannich
Santa Fe University of Art and Design, a for-profit art school, closes
After suffering a whopping $7 million net loss in 2015, Santa Fe University, owned by Laureate International Universities, was due to be sold to Raffles Education Corp of Singapore. However after negotiations fell through, the university announced it would not be taking applicants for the upcoming academic year.
Currently, the school has 670 students enrolled, with each paying about $14,000 to $20,000 every semester for tuition and housing. If the institution is to close, students will be allowed to finish their degree first. Further details available here.
Santa Fe University of Art and Design
