Art Fix Friday: May 15, 2020

Blog Category:  Art Fix Friday
A black-and-white photograph of a light-skinned adult woman holding a newspaper with news about World War II. She wears a coat and her short, curly hair is caught in the wind.

Marabar, a million-pound granite sculpture by artist Elyn Zimmerman that has been installed in the courtyard of National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C., for almost 40 years, is scheduled for removal in favor of a new entrance pavilion.

A long, rectangular water pool is cut out of a grey terrazzo tiled courtyard. One large granite rock dips into the pool; at the other end, the water cuts through the middle of another rock, creating glossy vertical edges. Other granite rocks rest throughout the courtyard.
Granite elements of the Marabar installation are seamlessly integrated into the courtyard of the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.; Courtesy Elyn Zimmerman; © Elyn Zimmerman

The plan has met with strong protest from industry and community members. Penny Balkin Bach, executive director of the Association for Public Art, calls Zimmerman “a pioneer and one of the earliest contemporary female artists to work at such a monumental scale.”

Front-Page Femmes:

Latela Curatorial founder Marta Staudinger has launched the GLB Memorial Fund, which will support woman-identifying artists and curators who reside in Washington D.C., Maryland, or Virginia to further advance women-led contemporary art initiatives.

The Creative Review interviews Lisa Sorgini, who is photographing mothers and children in isolation for her new series “Behind Glass.”

Carolyn Reidy, President and CEO of Simon & Schuster, has died at age 71.

Alexandra Bell and Joiri Minaya have won the 2020 New York Artadia Awards; Bell featured in Fresh Talk: Art, Power, and the Vote in November 2019.

Hyperallergic reviews Concordance, a new poetry collection by artist and writer Susan Howe, which confronts the plight of the female writer in a masculine literary culture.

For the first time ever, four black female solo artists top the Billboard Hot 100.

The New York Public Library has acquired the archive of dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.

Art in America profiles Lenore Tawney, an artist who created dynamic multi-format weavings throughout the 20th century.

Strings of pale pink linen hang from the ceiling of a grey gallery room. The strings are more densely concentrated halfway up; this top layer is more clearly pink, while the strings hanging below are sparse and fainter. The organization of the strings evokes clouds and rain.
Lenore Tawney, Cloud Labyrinth (detail), 1983; Courtesy Lenore G. Tawney Foundation; © Lenore Tawney

Hyperallergic reviews Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity, an essay collection exploring labor and motherhood.

An oil painting of birds and other wildlife by 17th-century nun Orsola Maddalena Caccia was a surprise hit at a recent Sotheby’s auction, far exceeding the previous auction record for the artist’s work.

NPR reviews Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, a new collection of essays by Olivia Laing that consider the purpose of art in times of crisis.

Artnet speaks to Zanele Muholi about their mobile studio and influential portraits of the LGBTI community in South Africa.

The Los Angeles Review of Books examines the influence of female artists on Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Gagosian sold Cecily Brown’s painting Figures in a Landscape for $5.5 million via its online viewing platform.

ARTnews highlights Swiss Neoclassical painter Angelica Kauffman.

Writer Mieko Kawakami, whose influential novel Breast and Eggs was recently translated into English, shares her current playlist.

Shows We Want to See—Online Edition

Varsity interviews the curator of WE ARE HERE, an exhibition at the University of Cambridge’s Heong Gallery examining the presence of women artists in colleges. Exhibition images, interviews, and activities are available at the Heong Gallery’s blog.

A woman stands in front of a screen projection of purple flowers. She wears red rights and heels and a white T-shirt with three colored disks printed across the center. She holds her arms out to hold two pieces of checkered fabric that extend like wings from her back.
Emilia Galotti’s Colouring Book of Feelings, a work comprising two garments that take on meaning only when worn by the performer, is performed by artist Sophie Seita; Courtesy Heong Gallery; © Sophie Seita

Hollis Taggart gallery in New York City opens Michael West: We Come Alive and Dream, viewable online until May 23. The exhibition features West’s abstract expressionist paintings, writings, and poems. Artsy profiles West, who until recently has been overlooked in art history.

She Marches On, an exhibition recently opened online at Massachusetts’s Falmouth Art Center, displays the work of four artists reflecting on the women’s suffrage movement.

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