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The Headlines
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FASHION MODA. The work of the late designer Karl Lagerfeld will be the theme of the next Met Gala in New York, the Associated Press reports. On the calendar for May 1, the festivities will be tied to the opening of the exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at the Met’s Costume Institute, which will include some 150 pieces made by the designer, who died in 2019 at 85. Up in Toronto, Fashion magazine proposed that the Art Gallery of Ontario‘s Art Bash! fundraiser could be Canada’s answer to the vaunted Met Gala. And in Paris, Page Six reports, Balenciaga staged its spring/summer 2023 runway show at the Parc des Expositions on a mud-covered runway by the controversy-generating artist Santiago Sierra. Kanye West was among the models.
SOME PEOPLE JUST WANT TO WATCH THE WORLD BURN. Artist Damien Hirst is getting ready to start burning some of his art as part of his The Currency project next week in London, the Guardian reports. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom: BBC News reports that, on Saturday, a show called “Radical Horizons: The Art of Burning Man” closed at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England, with the planned burning of a sculpture by Rebekah Waites. (Here are photos of the conflagration.) Meanwhile, ARTnews reported on Friday that Mexican officials said that they will investigate a collector who claims to have burned a Frida Kahlo artwork for an NFT project.
The Digest
Journalist Michael Shnayerson, the author of Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers and the Rise of Contemporary Art, is at work on an unauthorized biography of mega-dealer Larry Gagosian. It will be published by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. No release date has been set. [ARTnews]
President Biden reestablished the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, an advisory group that President Trump disbanded in 2017 after its members resigned to criticize his response to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. [CNN]
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has removed the Sackler name from its arts education center and a courtyard. It is the latest in a string of museums to cut ties with the Sackler family, some of whose members own Purdue Pharma, the now-bankrupt maker of the OxyContin painkiller. [ARTnews]
CAFE CULTURE. Billionaire Hasso Plattner has restored the Minsk cafe in Potsdam, Germany, which was built in the 1970s, and will use it to show his collection of East German art, the Guardian reports. Also, the St. Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff, Wales, has acquired a beloved pub in the city that was once slated to be destroyed and is rebuilding it on its grounds, per the Art Newspaper.
ARTIST UPDATES. Tschabalala Self is in the Financial Times, Barbara Chase-Riboud is in Frieze, Marilyn Nance is in the New York Times, and Mary Mattingly is in T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
AUDIO GUIDES. The podcast This Day in Esoteric Political History took a look at New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 1999 showdown with the Brooklyn Museum over its “Sensation” exhibition, and curator Helen Molesworth’s Death of an Artist podcast, about the 1985 death of artist Ana Mendieta, released its third episode.
The Kicker
NICK HOLONYAK JR., AN INVENTOR OF ASTONISHING ACHIEVEMENT,has died at 93, the New York Times reports. Over his long career, Holonyak’s breakthroughs included early LED lighting (integral to flatscreen TVs) and the lasers that allow DVD players to function—both essential elements for the display of so much video art. In college, Holonyak rebuffed a teacher’s suggestion that he pursue chemistry instead of his eventual expertise, electrical engineering. The Times quotes him in a 2012 interview with General Electric saying, “It’s a good thing I was an engineer and not a chemist. When I went to show them my LED, all the chemists at G.E. said, ‘You can’t do that. If you were a chemist, you’d know that wouldn’t work.’ I said, ‘Well, I just did it, and see, it works!’ ” [NYT]
Source: artnews.com