Curator Legacy Russell has been named the executive director and chief curator of the New York arts center the Kitchen. She is the first Black person to lead the revered cultural nonprofit.
Russell explained that she hopes to advance the Kitchen’s avant-garde momentum. “I think deeply about intersections—across Blackness, queerness, feminist histories—and the future possibilities of taking risks,” Russell stated, “and how art institutions can play a critical role in making that possible, by giving artists the support to take monumental risks.”
Front-Page Femmes
In an essay for the Believer, journalist Jillian Steinhauer explores the social conditions and cultural narratives that relegate women artists to “discovery” and mainstream fame late in life.
Artforum reflects on the life and work of painter Judith Godwin, who died on May 29 at age 92. She was the last living member of the generation of groundbreaking women Abstract Expressionists.
Barcelona art school professor Maria Llopis and seven of her students protested Picasso’s abuse of women, including artist Dora Maar, at the Picasso Museum. Llopis spoke to Artnet about the demonstration.
London’s Serpentine Galleries unveiled its newest pavilion designed by Counterspace, the studio of architect Sumayya Vally, who is the youngest person in the gallery’s history to receive the commission.
Cecilia Alemani, curator and director of the 2022 Venice Biennale, announced that next year’s exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, is inspired by Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.
Hyperallergic looks inside Liza Lou’s famed beaded kitchens, the artist’s monument to women’s unrecognized domestic labor.
Hyperallergic reports on the growing consensus that two paintings discovered in Beirut are the works of Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi.
The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art calls for young women artists ages 13–19 to submit artwork for its forthcoming teen juried exhibition Emergence.
In an interactive article, the New York Times unravels the competing gazes in Berthe Morisot‘s painting Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight (1875).
Frida Kahlo: Timeless is now open at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art at the College of DuPage, marking the first time in 40 years that a comprehensive collection of Kahlo’s works is presented in the Chicago area.
The Art Newspaper interviews Cao Fei on the conclusion of her first major solo show in her home country China and the importance of local art scenes.
BOMB interviews Madeline Hollander about her recent video work, the emergence of silent crickets in Hawai’i, and her solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum.
Shows We Want to See
In Sized: An Exhibition of Works for the Home and Life in Los Angeles, over 40 artists and designers respond to the deliberately ambiguous prompt “design.” Creative Director Alexander May aims to consider the ways that people collect for their homes. Sized features wide-ranging artists including the fashion house No Sesso, model Princess Gollum, artist Vanessa Beecroft, and singer-songwriter Lykke Li. On view from June 15 to 27.
At the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri, Hannah Wilke: Art for Life’s Sake is the first major retrospective of the mid-20th century artist in over a decade. Characterized by experimental forms and provocative feminist politics, Wilke’s oeuvre expresses the vitality and sensualities of the body. “I have always used my art to have life around me,” the artist once proclaimed. “Art is for life’s sake.” On view through January 16, 2022.