Items from the archive of fashion designer Halston will be offered 44 items from his estate at an auction this September at Phillips. The grouping includes illustrations by the designer and his long-time creative director Joe Eula, alongside photographs by Helmut Newton and Bill Cunningham and works on paper by Victor Hugo and Joan Miró. Carrying estimates between $500–$35,000, the works will be sold in an online sale that will run from September 9–16. Proceeds from the auction will benefit a fashion scholarship initiative funded by the Halston archive. Leslie Frowick, Halston’s niece and the archive’s CEO and founder, said in a statement, “The archives are flush with historic material, peppered with a few special art pieces that illustrate his symbiosis with other distinguished artists of his day.”
The New York Foundation for the Arts has announced the five winners of the JGS Fellowship for Photography, which goes to five New York State–based photographers and comes with grants of $7,000. This year’s fellows are Adrianna Ault, Ryan Frigillana, ITENJI, Adrian Javon, and Funmi Oladipo. In a statement, NYFA executive director Michael L. Royce said, “It is an exciting time for photography, and we hope that the JGS Fellowship is a springboard for recipients into the next phase of their careers. We look forward to seeing what’s next!”
Artist, writer and activist Patrisse Cullors has joined the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ Art Commission advisory body for the art. A co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, Cullors has founded led many L.A.-based social justice organizations, including Dignity and Power Now, Justice LA, and Reform LA Jails. She also recently co-founded the Crenshaw Dairy Mart, an artist collective and gallery dedicated to intertwining advocacy and cultural work in Inglewood, California and developed the Social and Environmental Arts Practice MFA program at Prescott College in Arizona. In a statement, Cullors said, “I am invested and committed to weaving community solidarity in the Second District, and more broadly in Los Angeles County, through art and culture.”
The UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in China said that it will expand its presence in Beijing, where it has operated since 2007, by adding exhibition space in a shopping mall in the country’s capital. The institution will also open a new branch in Chengdu, which is set to open 2024. The UCCA also has locations in Beidaihe and Shanghai.
Wednesday, September 1
Steven Shearer Is Now Represented by David Zwirner
David Zwirner, one of the world’s biggest galleries, now represents Steven Shearer, who is known for his figurative paintings that pay homage to Edvard Munch, Romanticism, heavy metal music, and more. Shearer, who formerly showed in New York with the now-defunct Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, will continue to be represented by Galerie Eva Presenhuber. He represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2011, and is set to have shows at Eva Presenhuber in Zurich and the Polygon Gallery in Vancouver in September and November, respectively. “I am thrilled to be working with Steven Shearer, an artist whose work I’ve followed for many years,” said dealer David Zwirner in a statement. “Steven is a true artist’s artist and his work defies easy categorization.”
Black Art Futures Fund Announces 2021 Grant Recipients
The Black Art Futures Fund has awarded over $40,000 in grants to Black-led art organizations that have been serving Black creators and communities for at least ten years. The recipients of its sixth funding cycle are New York nonprofit publisher African Voices Communications; the collaborative performance group Angela’s Pulse; and the Memphis Black Arts Alliance. Each organization will receive grants of $10,000 to support programming and general operating costs. The Philadelphia-based dance company Dance Iquail, a member of the 2020 grantee cohort, will also receive a second round of funding.
Destination Crenshaw Names 7 Artist Commissions for Crenshaw Boulevard
Destination Crenshaw, a community-led project founded in 2017 that makes direct investments to local small businesses and builds green community gathering places and parks, has announced the initial seven artists who have been commissioned to create outdoor public artworks along a 1.3-mile stretch of Crenshaw Boulevard in the historically Black neighborhood in Los Angeles. With eventual plans to commission some 100 artists, the seven artists, all of whom have close ties in South Los Angeles, are Charles Dickson, Melvin Edwards, Maren Hassinger, Artis Lane, Alison Saar, Kehinde Wiley, and Brenna Youngblood. Destination Crenshaw will submit the artists’ proposals to the City of Los Angeles’s Cultural Affairs Commission in October for review and approval.
Tuesday, August 31
Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Now Represents Brook Hsu
Brook Hsu, who is known for her multimedia explorations of pre-Christian myths, is now represented by the Berlin-based gallery Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler. The Taiwanese-American artist will also continue to be represented by the Hong Kong–based Edouard Malingue Gallery. Hsu, whose solo exhibition at Krauoa-Tuskany Zeidler is opening tomorrow, employs painting, textile, sculpture, and text to explore the meeting point of the personal and mythological. A book of her works, Norwegian Wood, is set to be released next week.
Julia Stoschek Foundation Names Members of Advisory Board
The Julia Stoschek Foundation, the organization that manages the collection of the eponymous German collector, has named the five people who will constitute its advisory board. They are artists Meriem Bennani and Arthur Jafa; Chrissie Iles, a curator at the Whitney Museum; Andrea Lissoni, director of the Haus der Kunst; and Udo Kittelmann, director of the Museum Frieder Burda. They will help oversee the holdings of Julia Stoschek, who is known for her collection of time-based art and has ranked on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list each year since 2012.
Governors Island Art Fair Cancels 2021 Edition
The 2021 edition of the Governors Island Art Fair in New York has been canceled by the artist-led nonprofit 4heads, which cited concerns about the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19. The event was originally slated to take place from September 8 through 13 on Colonels Row on New York’s Governors Island, with 34 participating artists. It was to coincide with the Armory Show, which is still set to take place largely in person. 4heads has announced plans to stage the next edition of its fair on Governors Island in September 2022, while the artists who planned to present work at the 2021 fair will continue with the 4heads residency program, which concludes this November.
Monday, August 30
Frick Collection Receives Major Gift of Drawings and Pastels
The Frick Collection in New York has received a gift of 26 drawings and pastels—18 drawings, 5 pastels, 2 prints, and an oil sketch—from the collection of museum trustees Elizabeth “Betty” and Jean-Marie Eveillard. The works range from the end of the 15th century to the 20th century, and represent prominent European artists, including Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Francisco de Goya, John Singer Sargent, and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. The museum will present an exhibition of these works in fall 2022 at its temporary Frick Madison location.
Barbara Hammer Estate Announces Executive Director
Louky Keijsers Koning has been appointed as the first executive director of the Barbara Hammer estate. During her lifetime, Hammer received many awards for her groundbreaking experiment films, many of which considered forms of intimacy from a lesbian point of view. The artist died in 2019 and is survived by her wife, Florrie Burke, who heads the estate. Keijsers Koning was the founder of LMAKgallery, which she ran for 15 years before switching her focus to art appraisal. At the estate, she will work with Hammer’s two gallery representatives—KOW in Berlin and Company in New York—to manage exhibitions of the artist’s work.
Getty Museum Acquires Ken Gonzales-Day Photographs
The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired six photographs by Ken Gonzales-Day. Three are from Gonzales-Day’s series “Searching for California Hang Trees” and “Memento Mori,” which focus on the histories of lynching in California and the victims of this violence, many of whom were BIPOC or Latinx. Another work by Gonzales-Day has also been acquired by the Middlebury College Museum of Art in Vermont, his gallery, Luis De Jesus, revealed.
