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The Headlines
THE RIOT CONTINUES. Fresh off helping to raise about $7.1 million through the sale of an NFT of the Ukrainian flag, and amid the crackdown on free speech in Russia, Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of the activist-art group Pussy Riot, talked with the Guardian about the war in Ukraine, protesting under Vladimir Putin, and Unicorn DAO, a crypto fund she is involved with that will buy art by female and LGBTQ artists. Meanwhile, the Moscow apartment door of another Pussy Riot member, Rita Flores, was spray painted with a large Z, which has become a pro-war symbol in Russia, the Art Newspaper reports. Flores left Russia law year; Tolokonnikova did her interview via Zoom from what the Guardian described as a “a geographically undisclosed location.”
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THE RENAISSANCE MAN. The actor and musician Conrad Janis, who worked at, and later co-owned, the famed Sidney Janis Gallery started by his parents in mid-century Manhattan, died last week at 94, the New York Times reports. Janis—perhaps best known for his role on the hit TV show Mork & Mindy as the latter’s father—appeared in numerous shows and films, including The Cable Guy (1996). He also regularly played jazz trombone. His father, Sidney , retired from his namesake gallery in the 1980s, and gave it to Conrad and his brother, Carroll, reporter Neil Genzlinger writes. The operation closed in 1999. While employed by his father, Conrad had worked with trailblazing artists like Claes Oldenburg, according to Pace founder Arne Glimcher, who told the Times, “His knowledge of 20th-century art and Modernism was really encyclopedic.”
The Digest
Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, the director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum Complex in Kyiv, Ukraine, said that, after working with her team to safeguard its collection amid the Russian invasion, she is staying in the country. “All my colleagues, directors of other museums, are staying at the moment,” she said. [CBC]
More than 100 years after it was mired in ice, the wreck of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s doomed ship Endurance has been located by searchers in Antarctica. [The New York Times]
Workers at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus have announced plans to start a union. The museum and school have not said if they will voluntarily recognize the group. [The Columbus Dispatch]
More than doubling its high estimate, a 1924 painting by Gerda Wegener of Lili Elbe, one of the first transgender women to undergo gender confirmation surgery, sold for €135,000 (about $147,000) at Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers in Copenhagen. [The Art Newspaper]
ARTISTS INTERVIEW RUNDOWN. On the eve of opening a Gagosian show in New York, Awol Erizku is in the New York Times. At 102, Ernest Rosenthal is having a moment, with an exhibition at Last Projects at Tin Flats in L.A., says the Los Angeles Times. And Valeska Soares, readying work for the Lyon Biennale, is in Artnet News.
The Kicker
THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR. Max Hollein, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s director, got the profile treatment in WSJ Magazine from journalist Ted Loos, who delved into the many projects underway, or being planned, at the storied institution. “We are reconfiguring about a quarter of the museum,” Hollein said. The most high profile: a proposed $500 million renovation of its modern and contemporary art wing. A veteran museum leader, Hollein said, while discussing his career, that he has “learned that you need to juggle your options as long as possible until you see this window of opportunity where everything falls into place. You have to be a gambler and a player.” [WSJ Magazine]
Source: artnews.com