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The Headlines
THIS MORNING IN LONDON, officials revealed the next two artworks that will grace the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square—one of the world’s most high profile public art commissions. They are by Samson Kambalu, slated for 2022, and Teresa Margolles, for 2024. BBC News has photos and details. Kambalu’s includes a larger-than-life statue of the pastor John Chilembwe (ca. 1860–1915), who led opposition to British rule in what is now Malawai. It is based on a roughly 1914 photo in which Chilembwe wears a hat, which was forbidden in front of white people at the time. Margolles’s work is a soaring cube made of life masks of 850 trans people. It was inspired by the tzompantli, or skull racks, of Mesoamerican civilizations. The other finalists were Goshka Macuga, Ibrahim Mahama, Paloma Varga Weisz, and Nicole Eisenman.
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WHILE THE MARKET FOR NFT ARTWORKS has cooled considerably of late, the phenomenon is certainly not going away. A token tied to a digital artwork that the artist Derrick Adams made to toast the 25th anniversary of Jay-Z’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt, went for $139,000 via Sotheby’s, BeInCrypto reports, with the proceeds going to charity. Meanwhile, the Pace Gallery has no fewer than four NFT projects on deck, with Urs Fischer, Lucas Samaras, and others, and will launch an NFT platform in September, Bloomberg reports. Pace’s president, Marc Glimcher, described himself as a “a crypto person,” and said that the gallery has also begun accepting digital currency for all sales—and that it does not plan to convert it to cold, hard dollars. “A little piece of the balance sheet will be in crypto,” Glimcher said.
The Digest
William Fagaly, who worked for 50 years at the New Orleans Museum of Art in a variety of roles, has died at 83. An expert on African art, Fagaly also curated important shows of outsider and contemporary art, Roberta Smith writes, and helped found the city’s Prospect triennial. [The New York Times]
The Los Angeles artist Kenzi Shiokava, who forged charismatic and sometimes mysterious sculptures from leftover hunks of wood, has died at the 82. [Los Angeles Times]
The street artist Hash Halper, who drew hearts all around New York, has died at the age of 41. He once sold paintings outside the redoubtable SoHo restaurant Balthazar with the late artist Dash Snow. [The New York Times]
Some artists have demanded their work be removed from the Momentum 11 biennial in Moss, Norway, following the dismissal of its curator, Théo-Mario Coppola, in the run-up to its opening, for alleged unprofessional behavior. [The Art Newspaper]
Janet Carding, the director of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart, Australia, has been tapped to lead the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, which oversees lands around that area. At the museum, Carding apologized to Aboriginal people for the taking of their artifacts and remains, and set about returning them. [Sydney Morning Herald]
The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin is facing criticism for charging admission for a show of works from its permanent collection, which is typically free. The price for an adult: €16.20, or about $19.20. [The Times of London]
Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, reportedly the largest cartoon museum in the world, is hosting a show devoted to 200 years of cartoons featuring dogs. The exhibition runs in Columbus through October. [Associated Press]
The Kicker
IT IS A GOOD TIME TO EXPLORE THE DEEP SEAS. That is the message of oceanographer Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the Titanic, who said in a Guardian profile that high-tech autonomous vehicles have the potential to revolutionize the hunt for shipwrecks. “We’re going to be finding them like crazy,” he said. “It’s going to be rapid discovery because of this technology. New chapters of human history are to be read.” (There are apparently more than 3 million shipwrecks all around the world!) Advances in the underwater craft mean that researchers do not even need to venture to sea anymore. “I don’t have to be on my ship now,” he said. “We don’t even have to have ships. But I come because I want to get away.” [The Guardian]
Thank you for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.
Source: artnews.com