France commissions monument to victims of slavery
The ministry of culture has launched an open call for a memorial which will be installed in the Tuileries Garden, Paris. ‘This project expresses the desire to honour the victims of slavery and to recognize their invaluable contribution to the nation’ the open call states. The deadline for proposals is 1 September.
Artists in the Philippines protest anti-terror bill
The ‘Artists Fight Back’ campaign – which has gathered more than 1,400 signatories – has called out new controversial legislation which will open the door to warrantless arrests and 14-day detentions of suspects. In a statement, the artists have drawn attention to the bill’s Section 9, which states ‘any person who, despite the lack of a direct part in it, incites others to commit or participate in acts that the bill considers as a terrorist may be jailed for up to 12 years,’ warning that this may be used to clamp down on anti-government or dissident positions: ‘We are this nation’s storytellers. We are watching, and we will act.’ Read the statement here.
In biennial news…
The Sharjah Art Foundation has pushed its March Meeting to next year (originally slated for March 2020, it was postponed in the COVID-19 crisis), and has scheduled the next edition of the Sharjah Biennial for March 2022. Meanwhile the 11th edition of the Berlin Biennale will take place 5 September – 1 November 2020.
Latest reopenings
In Istanbul, major art museums including Arter, Istanbul Modern and Pera Museum are preparing to reopen their doors from 16 June. Paris’s Palais de Tokyo is set to open from 15 June. And London’s Royal Academy of Arts has moved its annual blockbuster Summer Exhibition to winter, with dates yet to be announced.
Here’s the Manifesta artist list
Manifesta 13 – still scheduled to run from 28 August to 29 November in Marseille, France (after pushing back its May opening) – has announced its artist list. Curated by Katerina Chuchalina, Stefan Kalmár and Alya Sebti, the biennial takes the title ‘Traits d’union.s, Le Tiers Programme, Les Parallèles du Sud’. The artist list is as follows: André Acquart, Yalda Afsah, Antonin Artaud, Aoziz (Béatrice Pedraza, Ludovic Mohamed Zahed, Andrew Graham), Yassine Balbzioui, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, James Benning, Minia Biabiany, Black Quantum Futurism, Hannah Black, Anna Boghiguian, Mohamed Bourouissa, Benjamin de Burca & Barbara Wagner, Center for Creative Ecologies (Isabelle Carbonell, Hannah Meszaros Martin, T. J. Demos), Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Ali Cherri, Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley, Dennis Cooper and Gisèle Vienne, Julien Creuzet, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Martine Derain, Lukas Duwenhögger, Jana Euler, Ymane Fakhir, Peter Fend, Pierre Guyotat, Samia Henni, Stine Marie Jacobsen, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho, Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Ken Okiishi, Sara Ouhaddou, Selma & Sofiane Ouissi, Philippe Pujol, Arthur Rimbaud, Cameron Rowland, Sara Sadik, Judith Scott, Hélène Smith, Lionel Soukaz, Reena Spaulings, Arseny Zhilyaev.
Arwa Abouon (1982-2020)
The artist Arwa Abouon has passed away – the news was announced by Dubai gallery The Third Line. Abouon was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1982, and grew up in Canada, studying at Concordia University. Across photography and video to installations, Abouon explored feelings of nostalgia and diasporic identity.
Stedelijk appoints curators-at-large
The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has announced the appointment of Yvette Mutumba and Adam Szymczyk as curators-at-large, a newly created position with an initial commitment of two years. The museum has said that the appointment of Mutumba, a curator at the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt and co-founder of Contemporary And, and Szymczyk, artistic director of documenta 14, is part of a strategy that questions the Stedelijk’s own established knowledge in order to engage with narratives beyond Western European modernism.
London galleries to reopen by appointment
Galleries in London’s West End have announced their reopening (by appointment) from next week – following the classification of art galleries as ‘non-essential retail’ businesses in the government’s easing of lockdown restrictions. From 15 June, White Cube Mason’s Yard, Thomas Dane Gallery, Luxembourg & Dayan, Holtermann Fine Art, Stephen Friedman Gallery, Gagosian, Goodman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Annely Juda Fine Art, Pace Gallery, Simon Lee Gallery, Skarstedt, Sprüth Magers, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and David Zwirner, will open their doors.
Manila’s Green Papaya seeks donations
Following the blaze which ripped through the Manila artist-run space on 3 June, causing extensive damage to its archives, Green Papaya has launched an appeal for donations – to help with renting a temporary space in order to process and restore materials recovered from the fire. More information about how to donate to and support Green Papaya’s conservation work can be found here.
MCA Chicago divests from police
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd and calls within the artworld for institutions to respond, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has cut ties with the police department – off-duty members are sometimes hired by the institution to patrol events. Following an open letter from the Teen Creative Agency, the museum’s youth development programme, calling for MCA to ‘acknowledge the systematic abuse of power and overt brutality exhibited by the police’, the museum has suspended contracting CPD services until significant reforms are in place. Meanwhile thousands of art workers have signed an open letter calling on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to defund the NYPD.
SFMOMA announces cuts
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced another round of staff cuts, laying off 55 employees – in the face of an expected deficit of USD$8 million for the 2020 fiscal year, and USD$18 million for the 2021 fiscal year. The move followed an initial round of furloughing in March affecting 60 percent of the museum’s staff, and 135 on-call workers being layed off in April.
