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Dia Chelsea’s Deft Expansion May Start a New Trend in the World of Museum Renovations: Subtlety

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For major museums and galleries, a renovation is a statement. The announcements usually look the same: X starchitect will lead Y’s redesign that cost Z millions of dollars. Z is always a big number.
But the Dia Art Foundation has opted to tweak the traditional formula—instead of going big, it has opted to go subtle. The Minimalism-focused organization opens its renovated 20,000-square-foot home in West Chelsea, New York, on Friday after a two-year renovation.
In 2018, when Dia first announced a fundraising campaign to upgrade its campuses, including a redesign of its three contiguous industrial buildings in Chelsea, it said the goal was to raise $90 million. That’s a big number, to be sure. But only $20 million—an uncharacteristically small figure for such a prominent project—was put toward the renovation in Chelsea. The rest was put back into the organization’s endowment for future use. (Money from the fund will also be used for the construction of Dia’s new 2,500-square-foot exhibition space in Soho starting next year.)
The restraint and foresight to squirrel away money for safekeeping looks even more canny today, two years and one pandemic-induced financial crisis later. It also expresses the ethos of the redesign, which is about preserving what you have. 
Dia Chelsea, New York. Photo: Elizabeth Felicella. Courtesy of Dia Art Foundation,New York.
Led by Architecture Research Office, Dia’s industrial properties, which were in rough shape prior to construction, weren’t whitewashed in pursuit of the big, boxy aesthetics we’ve come to associate with flashy renovations. Instead, the buildings were left more or less intact. Broad wood beams span the ceilings, bisected by windows that fill the place with natural light. The walls are brick; the floors, concrete. 
“The modesty of this was very intentional,” says Dia director Jessica Morgan, who, upon taking the director job in 2015, scrapped her predecessor’s flashier renovation plan. “These buildings are remarkable, particularly for showing art—even more so, I would argue, than some spaces that are deliberately designed that way, which often end up competing with the art that they are showing.” 
The goal, Morgan adds, was to find a “way to do it that was practical, achievable, and that would allow us to put more money into the institution.”
Lucy Raven, Casters X-2 + X-3 (2021), installation view, Dia Chelsea, New York City. © Lucy Raven. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York. Courtesy of Dia ArtFoundation, New York.
A suite of newly commissioned works by American artist Lucy Raven, on view through January of next year, inaugurates the new galleries. Dia’s first room is illuminated by two wall-mounted spotlights, which the artist calls Casters. Attached to moving armatures—a technology that was invented for war before being appropriated by big-budget filmmakers—each one projects a beam of light that roves around the space as if simultaneously searching for an escaped convict and promoting a Hollywood premiere. 
Sitting in the second gallery, meanwhile, is a massive movie screen, recalling those found in drive-in theaters. This one plays Raven’s slick new black-and-white film Ready Mix, which depicts the process by which minerals become concrete. It was shot with an anamorphic lens—another military invention adopted by the movies. 
The artworks occupy all 20,000 square feet of street-level exhibition space, which may come as a surprise when you see just how minimal they are in their installation. But granting artworks like Raven’s the space to breathe is something Dia, which is best known for its sprawling converted Nabisco factory space in Beacon, upstate New York, has long prioritized.  
Lucy Raven, Ready Mix (2021), installation view, Dia Chelsea, New York City. © Lucy Raven. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York. Courtesy of Dia Art Foundation,New York.
Early on in the renovation process, Morgan turned to friends like Zoe Leonard and Roni Horn, both of whom have shown with the foundation before, for an artist’s perspective on what to do with the space. Both preferred a minimal approach that embraced the industrial vibe; anything else would be like putting lipstick on a pig—and in this case, the pig wasn’t a bad place to show art in the first place.
“They really encouraged me to dig into what would be possible by staying here and using what we had rather than thinking about building anew,” the director explains. “Ultimately, these are galleries and we want to make sure that artists are inspired by these spaces.” 
“It’s not about what I think is necessarily a good space,” she continues, “it’s about what artists think is a good space.” 
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    Dia Chelsea’s Deft Expansion May Start a New Trend in the World of Museum Renovations: Subtlety

    For major museums and galleries, a renovation is a statement. The announcements usually look the same: X starchitect will lead Y’s redesign that cost Z millions of dollars. Z is always a big number.
    But the Dia Art Foundation has opted to tweak the traditional formula—instead of going big, it has opted to go subtle. The Minimalism-focused organization opens its renovated 20,000-square-foot home in West Chelsea, New York, on Friday after a two-year renovation.
    In 2018, when Dia first announced a fundraising campaign to upgrade its campuses, including a redesign of its three contiguous industrial buildings in Chelsea, it said the goal was to raise $90 million. That’s a big number, to be sure. But only $20 million—an uncharacteristically small figure for such a prominent project—was put toward the renovation in Chelsea. The rest was put back into the organization’s endowment for future use. (Money from the fund will also be used for the construction of Dia’s new 2,500-square-foot exhibition space in Soho starting next year.)
    The restraint and foresight to squirrel away money for safekeeping looks even more canny today, two years and one pandemic-induced financial crisis later. It also expresses the ethos of the redesign, which is about preserving what you have. 
    Dia Chelsea, New York. Photo: Elizabeth Felicella. Courtesy of Dia Art Foundation,New York.
    Led by Architecture Research Office, Dia’s industrial properties, which were in rough shape prior to construction, weren’t whitewashed in pursuit of the big, boxy aesthetics we’ve come to associate with flashy renovations. Instead, the buildings were left more or less intact. Broad wood beams span the ceilings, bisected by windows that fill the place with natural light. The walls are brick; the floors, concrete. 
    “The modesty of this was very intentional,” says Dia director Jessica Morgan, who, upon taking the director job in 2015, scrapped her predecessor’s flashier renovation plan. “These buildings are remarkable, particularly for showing art—even more so, I would argue, than some spaces that are deliberately designed that way, which often end up competing with the art that they are showing.” 
    The goal, Morgan adds, was to find a “way to do it that was practical, achievable, and that would allow us to put more money into the institution.”
    Lucy Raven, Casters X-2 + X-3 (2021), installation view, Dia Chelsea, New York City. © Lucy Raven. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York. Courtesy of Dia ArtFoundation, New York.
    A suite of newly commissioned works by American artist Lucy Raven, on view through January of next year, inaugurates the new galleries. Dia’s first room is illuminated by two wall-mounted spotlights, which the artist calls Casters. Attached to moving armatures—a technology that was invented for war before being appropriated by big-budget filmmakers—each one projects a beam of light that roves around the space as if simultaneously searching for an escaped convict and promoting a Hollywood premiere. 
    Sitting in the second gallery, meanwhile, is a massive movie screen, recalling those found in drive-in theaters. This one plays Raven’s slick new black-and-white film Ready Mix, which depicts the process by which minerals become concrete. It was shot with an anamorphic lens—another military invention adopted by the movies. 
    The artworks occupy all 20,000 square feet of street-level exhibition space, which may come as a surprise when you see just how minimal they are in their installation. But granting artworks like Raven’s the space to breathe is something Dia, which is best known for its sprawling converted Nabisco factory space in Beacon, upstate New York, has long prioritized.  
    Lucy Raven, Ready Mix (2021), installation view, Dia Chelsea, New York City. © Lucy Raven. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York. Courtesy of Dia Art Foundation,New York.
    Early on in the renovation process, Morgan turned to friends like Zoe Leonard and Roni Horn, both of whom have shown with the foundation before, for an artist’s perspective on what to do with the space. Both preferred a minimal approach that embraced the industrial vibe; anything else would be like putting lipstick on a pig—and in this case, the pig wasn’t a bad place to show art in the first place.
    “They really encouraged me to dig into what would be possible by staying here and using what we had rather than thinking about building anew,” the director explains. “Ultimately, these are galleries and we want to make sure that artists are inspired by these spaces.” 
    “It’s not about what I think is necessarily a good space,” she continues, “it’s about what artists think is a good space.” 
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    ‘My Work Is an Expression of My Sensuality’: Watch Painter Loie Hollowell Describe How Her Pregnancy Transformed Her Practice

    Why bright colors? Why geometric forms? What is beauty? 
    These are all questions that painter Loie Hollowell poses to herself and strives to answer with her work, which is (of course) all of those things: brightly colored, geometric, and handsome.
    The artist, who gave birth to her second child during the pandemic, spoke to Art21 in an exclusive interview as part of the “New York Close Up” series about how her painting was changed by her pregnancy.
    “My work is an expression of my core sensuality,” Hollowell said. “I’m a body experiencing desire, experiencing pleasure… It is sensual and needy and dirty and expressive.” 
    In the video, Hollowell describes the experience of choosing to have an abortion in her late 20s, and the tumult of conflicting emotions and the bodily transformation.
    Production still from the Art21 “New York Close Up” film, “Loie Hollowell’s Transcendent Bodies.” © Art21, Inc. 2021.
    As a child, Hollowell grew up in the midst of the Light and Space movement in California, where artists were invested in using light to manipulate environments and perceptions.
    Those influences come to bear in Hollowell’s work, though she manages to conjure the same effects on a canvas instead of in the wider world.
    “What I love about having a painting that, in reality, is a sculpture, is that it changes within each context, within each space that it’s hung,” she says.
    “There’s always that hunting, that searching for a light-filled experience,” she tells Art21.
    Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s New York Close Up series, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. 
    [embedded content]
    This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
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    Hiroshi Sugimoto, Ugo Rondinone, and Other Artists Have Hand-Written Hopes for Yoko Ono’s ‘Wish Tree’—See Their Messages Here

    Yoko Ono is bringing her famed Wish Tree to the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.—but with a virtual twist for the age of social distancing.
    The interactive artwork typically allows viewers to write their wishes for the future of humanity on small slips of paper and hang them from the branches of trees planted by the Japanese artist in places around the world.
    In 2007, Ono gifted a dogwood tree, titled Wish Tree for Washington, D.C., to the Hirshhorn, and it “blooms” with museum goers’ wishes each summer. (The rest of the year, Ono asks that you whisper your wish to the tree.)
    This year, art lovers are invited to share photographs of their handwritten wishes with the museum via Instagram under the hashtags #WishTreeDC and #YokoOno. Hirshhorn staff will then transfer as many wishes as possible to paper tags, sharing photographs of the installation on social media as it grows.
    As always, the wishes will be harvested at the end of the season, and buried on Videy Island in Iceland, at the foot of Ono’s installation Imagine Peace Tower, a memorial dedicated to her late husband, John Lennon.
    Yoko Ono, Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007), installed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Photo by Andy DelGiudice.
    “We are honored to partner with Yoko Ono to share her timeless message of peace,” Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu said in a statement. “The past year has challenged the Hirshhorn to translate the power of artworks including Wish Tree for Washington, D.C. for online audiences… . We’ll continue to invite global audiences to connect through modern art in meaningful ways until we can be together in person once again.”
    The museum has also created instructions for making your own Wish Tree at home. To date, the Hirshhorn has collected over 100,000 wishes for the project, which has had more than a million participants worldwide.
    See some of the wishes submitted to this year’s Wish Tree at the Hirshhorn below.
    Hiroshi Sugimoto’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Written on Japanese rice paper, it reads, “Peace and mind (or heart),” with two stamps by the artist. Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
    Ugo Rondinone’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
    Ken Lum’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
    Byron Kim’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
    Liz Larner’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
    Sarah Anne Johnsons’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
    Michelle Stuart’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
    “Yoko Ono: Wish Tree for Washington, DC” will be on view virtually and in person at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Independence Ave SW &, 7th St SW, in Washington, D.C., April 15–31, 2021.
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    Artist Sam Durant’s Eerie Modernist Drone Will Hover Over New York as the Next High Line Plinth Commission

    An ominous but easily missable new sculpture will appear 25 feet over the High Line next month. Sam Durant’s fiberglass kinetic sculpture of a Predator drone will be more or less visible depending on the wind, time of day, and light conditions. Sometimes it will blend into the clouds altogether.
    The artist’s stripped-down drone looks like a sleekly abstract Modernist sculpture, and does not include the remote-controlled military aircraft’s cameras, weapons, or landing gear. But with a 48-foot wingspan, it is the same size as the real deal.
    “For Sam, the goal is to make visible in America the drone warfare that this country carries out against countries very far away,” Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art, told the New York Times.
    The U.S. military began using Predator drones in 1995. It has used them to conduct reconnaissance and airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and other countries in the decades since.
    Sam Durant, Untitled (drone), rendering. Photo courtesy of High Line Art.
    “We can pretty much say that there’s never been a just war,” Durant said in a video produced by High Line Art. “Maybe people are not aware of the drones and just how ubiquitous they are in other parts of the world.” The sculpture, which rotates like a weathervane, will be on view for 18 months,
    “Untitled (drone) is meant to animate the question about the use of drones, surveillance, and targeted killings in places far and near, and whether as a society we agree with and want to continue these practices,” Durant said in a statement.

    [embedded content]

    Durant’s work is the second commission for the High Line Plinth, a dedicated space for monumental contemporary art that was first announced in 2017 and inspired by the “Fourth Plinth” in London’s Trafalgar Square. Durant’s proposal was one of 12 finalists unveiled that year, but his selection remained under wraps until now.
    The plinth’s inaugural work, Brick House by Simone Leigh, has been on view since 2019, when the last section of the old train tracks that make up the High Line first opened. (Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced a two-pronged expansion of the elevated park.)
    Leigh has since been tapped to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale in 2022, for which Alemani is director of the international exhibition.
    Simone Leigh, Brick House at the Spur, the last section of the original structure of the High Line to be converted into public space in New York. Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images.
    Last summer, the High Line offered the public a chance to weigh in on 80 proposals for the third and fourth plinth commissions, set to appear in 2022 and 2024. The 12 artists still in the running include Iván Argote, Nick Cave, and Teresita Fernández.
    Untitled (drone) is Durant’s first major public sculpture since a controversy erupted after Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center acquired his piece Scaffold (2012) in 2017. The work, which had been exhibited without issue at Documenta in Germany, served as a critique of capital punishment in the U.S. The sculpture was a composite of the gallows used in six high-profile executions, including the largest in the nation’s history, of 38 Dakota men, in Mankato, Minnesota.
    Sam Durant, Scaffold. Courtesy of Sarah Cascone.
    The tribe, which was not consulted ahead of the work’s acquisition, objected to the display and Durant ultimately handed the sculpture over to the tribe to be buried.
    “Having my work seen by the Dakota community, whose struggle with historical injustice it was meant to support, as an attack on them was deeply painful,” Durant told the Times. “They wanted to perform a ritual healing process and that was, in my eyes, the most appropriate way to continue with the work.
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    The Late Artist Matthew Wong Made an Ink Drawing Every Morning. For the First Time, Two Dozen Will Go on View in New York

    Next month, two dozen never-before-exhibited ink drawings by the late painter Matthew Wong will debut at Cheim & Read in New York. 
    The graphic, black-and-white drawings represent just a small sampling of such works the artist left behind when he died by suicide in 2019 at the age of 35.
    ARTnews, the first outlet to report the upcoming show, points out that, for years, Wong would make an ink illustration every morning after waking up. “The only thing that takes place at the same time every day is when I get out of bed, I have to do an ink drawing before doing anything else, such as brushing my teeth or eating,” the artist said in an early interview with the blog Studio Critical.
    Matthew Wong, Winter Wind (2016). ©2021 Matthew Wong Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Alex Yudzon / Cheim & Read, New York.
    “Footprints in the Wind, Ink Drawings 2013–2017,” as the show is called, comes via a collaboration between the gallery and the newly created Matthew Wong Foundation, run by Wong’s parents. (The foundation, which is still in its early stages, will determine what to do with the 1,000 works Wong left behind.)
    It’s set to open May 5 at Cheim & Read’s old building in Chelsea—the first time the dealers John Cheim and Howard Read have used the space for a public exhibition since decamping to the Upper East Side in 2018. A representative from the gallery declined to share the price range of the works, but did mention that “several of them have been earmarked for museum acquisitions only.”
    You can expect collectors to make the trip. The market for Wong’s work has been rapacious in the wake of his death: Since June of 2020, 11 of the artists’ paintings have fetched over $1 million at auction, with each exceeding their pre-sale estimate by at least 100 percent, according to Artnet’s Price Database.  
    Matthew Wong, The Watcher (2017). ©2021 Matthew Wong Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Alex Yudzon / Cheim & Read, New York.
    The influence of Chinese landscape painting looms large in Wong’s ink-on-rice-paper illustrations, but a darkness—literal and metaphoric—undercuts the sense of sublimity you’d expect from such work. Mysterious figures and looming specters appear throughout.
    In a statement to Artnet News, Cheim, one of the artist’s earliest supporters in the New York art world, compared his drawings to “Kusama, Van Gogh, Munch, and the early ink drawings of Louise Bourgeois. It is as if you can feel the particles in the air. The space between the interior and the exterior dissolves—a kind of psychological pantheism presents itself.”
    Sometime in 2014, the dealer met Wong over Facebook, a platform on which the artist often engaged in public discussions about art. The next year, Wong and his mother Monita visited Cheim in New York with a tube of large black ink drawings in tow. “Matthew was a striking presence—tall, handsome, a shock of black hair and large black eyeglasses, all carefully considered,” the dealer recalled. 
    “I found the ink drawings to be singular, intense,” Cheim added. He reportedly purchased one at the time and maintained a close relationship with the artist thereafter.
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    9 Gallery Shows to See Now in London, From a Spotlight on Young French Painters to Rachel Whiteread at Gagosian

    The UK’s long winter lockdown is finally being eased.
    From April 12, galleries and other businesses deemed “non-essential” (huff!) have been permitted to reopen their doors. By now, London is well-versed in the art of reopening. Most galleries require visitors to book ahead, and social distancing, mandatory mask-wearing, and crowd-control measures will be in place to keep the public safe.
    Alas, visitors will have to wait until May 19 to return to museums. In the meantime, here are nine gallery shows we are looking forward to seeing.

    “Charles Gaines: Multiples of Nature, Trees, and Faces”Hauser & WirthThrough May 1
    Charles Gaines’s show at Hauser & Wirth in London. Photo by Alex Delfanne. ©Charles Gaines Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
    For his first solo exhibition in the UK, conceptual artist Charles Gaines (who we spoke to earlier this year) is presenting two new bodies of Plexiglas gridworks at Hauser & Wirth. His “Numbers and Trees” works continue a series Gaines began in 1986, and “Numbers and Faces,” a set of new pictures, plot and overlay gridded portraits of people who identify as multiracial.
    “Charles Gaines: Multiples of Nature, Trees, and Faces,” Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London

    “Ryan Driscoll: Holst”Soft OpeningApril 14 through May 22
    Ryan Driscoll, Uranus(2020). Courtesy the artist and Soft Opening, London. Photography Theo Christelis.
    Ryan Driscoll has created a series of oil-on-wood paintings responding to the English composer Gustav Holst’s early 20th-century seven-movement orchestral suite, “The Planets.” Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the solar system and its corresponding astrological character. Rendered as enigmatic and romantic characters or landscapes, Driscoll’s interpretations are infused with queer sensuality and androgyny, giving a refreshing injection of queer energy into classical subjects.
    “Ryan Driscoll: Holst,” Soft Opening, 6 Minerva Street, London

    “Sam McKinniss: Country Western”Almine RechApril 15 through May 22
    Sam McKinniss, Dolly Parton with kitten (2021). © Sam McKinniss. Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech. Photo: Dan Bradica.
    The US artist Sam McKinniss is showing new paintings of celebrity subjects, honing in on the world of popular country music. Included are portraits of Shania Twain, Tammy Wynette, and a picture of Dolly Parton cuddling a kitten. “It seems like the entire planet loves Parton, which terrifies me,” the artist writes. “What scares me is the enormous task of entertaining so many people, while also taking on the unilateral scrutiny of worldwide love or obsession.”
    “Sam McKinniss: Country Western,” Almine Rech, Broadbent House, London

    “Ed Fornieles: Associations”Carlos/IshikawaApril 17 Through May 22
    An image from Ed Fornieles’s show, “Associations.” Courtesy Carlos/ Ishikawa.
    Ed Fornieles used internet search tools to create this new series, which knits together images based on formal and conceptual associations. The artist likens the trance-like mental state required for his process to the “flow state” social media companies aim to create to keep users hooked and suggestible. The presentation probes the mysteries of the psyche and individual and collective subjectivities, and will probably resonate with you if you’ve accidentally spent untold hours buried in TikTok scroll holes during lockdown.
    “Ed Fornieles: Associations,” Carlos/Ishikawa, Unit 4, 88 Mile End Road, London

    “Sanya Kantarovsky & Camille Blatrix: Will-o’-the-wisp”Modern ArtApril 23 through May 22
    Hermann Hendrich, The Will o’ the Wisp and the Snake (1823).
    While visiting Japan a few years ago, Sanya Kantarovsky developed an edition of traditional Ukiyo-e woodblock prints together with the Adachi Hanga Institute of Printmaking, and Camille Blatrix has created Corian frames embedded with handcrafted wood marquetry pieces responding to the prints they encase.
    “Sanya Kantarovsky & Camille Blatrix: Will-o’-the-wisp,” Modern Art, 7 Bury Street, London

    “Allez La France!”Saatchi YatesThrough May 26
    Paintings by Mathieu Julien, Jin Angdoo, Kevin Pinsembert and Hams Klemens at Saatchi Yates Gallery. Image courtesy of Saatchi Yates © Justin Piperger, 2021.
    A collective of emerging French artists has come together for “Allez La France!” the second exhibition at the new Cork Street space run by Phoebe Saatchi Yates and her husband Arthur Yates. The show brings together Hams Klemens, Jin Angdoo, Mathieu Julien, and Kevin Pinsembert, who are used to creating work in the streets of Paris and Marseille, rather than on large-scale canvases at a tony Mayfair gallery. The gallerists say they wanted to highlight the work’s resonance with Abstract Expressionism, and its departure from typical French street art.
    “Allez la France!” Saatchi Yates, 6 Cork Street, London

    “Agnès V. par Jenna G”Sim SmithMay 1 through May 29
    Jenna Gribbon, You want me to pose nude (2021). Courtesy Sim Smith.
    The US painter Jenna Gribbon has taken inspiration from the late French artist and director Agnès Varda’s 1988 portrait of Jane Birkin (Jane B. par Agnès V) for her latest solo outing at Sim Smith. The artist has played on Varda’s habits of inserting documentary moments into fictional films, and has made a series of figurative paintings of her friends gathered together to watch Varda’s films projected onto the wall.
    “Agnès V. par Jenna G,” Sim Smith, 30 Old Burlington Street, London

    “An Infinity of Traces”Lisson GalleryThrough June 5
    “An Infinity of Traces” at Lisson Gallery, London. © The artists, courtesy Lisson Gallery.
    This group exhibition curated by Ekow Eshun spotlights 11 Black artists based in the UK whose work probes questions of race, history, being, and belonging. Featuring artists Ayo Akingbade, Ufuoma Essi, Liz Gre, and others, the show reflects on the Black Lives Matter protests and their relation to the nation’s imperial history. The show also includes an online component developed by the participating artists.
    “Infinity of Traces,” Lisson Gallery, 27 Bell Street, London.

    “Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects” at GagosianThrough June 6
    “Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects,” installation view, 2021. © Rachel Whiteread. Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates, courtesy Gagosian.
    In her latest show, Whiteread presents new works created during lockdown, including two halting sculptures that revisit her early plaster cast rooms. Called Poltergeist and Doppelgänger, the haunting cabin-like structures have been constructed from found wood and metal painted ghostly white (rather than cast in her usual process) and evoke catastrophic events like natural disasters, or perhaps the frustrations of a lockdown that went on a little too long.
    “Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects,” Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London
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    Saudi Arabia Refused to Lend the ‘Salvator Mundi’ to the Louvre Because It Wouldn’t Be Shown Next to the ‘Mona Lisa,’ a Report Says

    The plot thickens around the Salvator Mundi, the world’s most expensive painting, and the mystery of why the Louvre didn’t include it in its blockbuster 2019 Leonardo da Vinci exhibition.
    A new documentary film, The Savior for Sale, which premieres tomorrow night on French television, claims that according to anonymous French officials, the museum refused to acquiesce to Saudi Arabian demands that the work be displayed as an autograph Leonardo after scientific testing determined that the artist merely contributed to the painting.
    But a New York Times story now contradicts that claim. According to a Louvre report obtained by the Times, the museum didn’t doubt the work’s authenticity. The real issue is that Saudi officials demanded it be shown next to the Mona Lisa, which curators refused to allow.
    “In general, the museum world, and the specialist art historians and curators in it, never really had any doubts about the painting’s authenticity,” dealer Robert Simon, who played a key role in the rediscovery of the work after it turned up at an estate sale in 2005, told Artnet News in an email.
    Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi (ca. 1500). Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd.
    “There have been a couple of outliers, of course, but most scholarly discussion has had to do with the date, patron, iconography, and workshop participation, if any,” he added.
    The newly leaked report—from a planned Salvator Mundi book pulled from the Louvre’s gift shops when plans to exhibit the work fell through—would have confirmed the painting as an authentic Leonardo. The Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France is said to have made that determination on the strength of a weeks-long forensic examination using fluorescent X-rays, infrared scans, and high-resolution microscopes in 2018.
    State of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi before restoration. Image courtesy Christie’s.
    “The results of the historical and scientific study presented in this publication allow us to confirm the attribution of the work to Leonardo da Vinci,” Jean-Luc Martinez, the Louvre’s president, wrote in the introduction.
    The cancelled publication also identified the Saudi Culture Ministry as the painting’s owner. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, is widely understood to have purchased the work at Christie’s New York for a record-setting $450 million on 2017.
    The Louvre pulled its book on Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. Photo courtesy of the Louvre.
    But a power struggle developed because the Louvre didn’t think it was a good idea to exhibit the painting next to the Mona Lisa. The Louve’s most famous painting was to remain on view apart from the rest of the Leonardo exhibition, in order to accommodate its regular crowds. What’s more, adding another major work to the gallery would have presented too big of a security challenge.
    The Saudis ultimately withheld the painting, and the Louvre withheld its evaluation, which caused a storm of doubt about the work.
    (A planned appearance at the Louvre Abu Dhabi was also cancelled, and the painting—not seen publicly since its sale—has been rumored to be aboard the prince’s yacht, the Serene.)
    Antoine Vitkine’s The Savior for Sale will debut on French television on April 13. Image ©Zadig productions/FTV.
    But Antoine Vitkine, the director of the new film, stands by his version of events, suggesting to La Tribune del’ Art that the book was produced as a contingency plan in case the government agreed to bow to Saudi demands that the painting be shown as authentic.
    The museum has declined to comment on the issue.
    “It is, of course, unfortunate that the painting was pulled from the Louvre exhibition, but that does not reflect poorly on the painting,” Simon said. “In fact, it probably just adds to the painting’s celebrity and allure, and will only generate more interest in it when it is eventually shown, wherever and whenever that might be.”
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    in Exhibitions

    Yayoi Kusama’s Exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden Offers New Yorkers a Welcome Shot of Joy—See Images Here

    After a year spent largely inside, New Yorkers have a joyful gift awaiting them at the New York Botanical Garden. The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored orbs, bold polka dots, and signature pumpkins are being unveiled after a year’s delay amid the seasonal rebirth that is early spring, surrounded by blossoming daffodils and cherry trees.
    “People are just itching to be outdoors and to see something cultural again,” Nicholas Lechi, the garden’s senior director of communications, told Artnet News.
    The exhibition, “Kusama: Cosmic Infinity,” functions as a celebratory reminder that despite the struggles of the past year—and rightly maligned editorials to the contrary—this city is still here, and still has so much to offer. After the long, dark winter, it’s not only the art show we need, but the art show we deserve.
    Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden (1966/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
    Unlike her wildly popular museum exhibitions, where visitors queue for hours for the chance to spend 30 seconds inside one of Kusama’s mirrored “infinity rooms,” most of the art here can be experienced outdoors without long lines, making it ideal for the age of social distancing.
    “It’s a refreshing experience since we don’t normally see art that way. You go from one gallery to the next,” curator Mika Yoshitake said at the exhibition’s press preview. “Kusama’s work really enhances the botanical landscape.”
    Yayoi Kusama, Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees (2002/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
    The setting is a fitting one for the artist, who grew up in a seed nursery, and for whom flowers are a recurring motif.
    “There’s a very visceral connection to nature that you see in her forms,” Yoshitake said.
    Yayoi Kusama around age 10. Photo courtesy of the artist.
    The garden was forced to pare back on its indoor exhibition plans because of the pandemic, so only the first floor library space is in use, showcasing a limited selection of paintings and sculptures.
    But there’s plenty to see outdoors. Greeting visitors at the entrance fountain is the smiling sun sculpture I Want to Fly to the Universe (2020), while the fabric-wrapped trees of Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees (2002/2021) line the path in front of the library.
    Yayoi Kusama in Flower Obsession. Photo by Yuzuke Miyazake ©Yayoi Kusama 2021.
    Outside the conservatory stands the monumental Dancing Pumpkin (2020), a bronze sculpture that combines the artist’s love of tentacles and pumpkins. And one of artist’s most famous works, the shiny steel orbs of Narcissus Garden (1966/2021), is installed in the Native Plant Garden, floating in the shallow waters like a sea of tiny globes.
    Those four Kusama artworks are on view to all visitors, but the indoor works, including those in the conservatory and library, will require a special galleries ticket, priced at $35 for adults. (General grounds admission is $25.)
    Later in the season, health regulations permitting, the show will add one final piece, Infinity Mirrored Room—Illusion Inside the Heart (2020), which features colored glass and natural light. Guests will be required to purchase a separate ticket for access.
    Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity (2017). Collection of the artist.Photo courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
    Weekend dates are already sold out through June 30, but the show is on view through Halloween, providing ample opportunity to visit despite capacity restrictions.
    And for those who looking for an extra helping of Kusama—or who can’t snag a ticket to the gardens yet—New York gallery David Benrimon Fine Art is opening a show of the artist’s prints next week.
    But the garden, with the interplay of the sun and breeze and flowers, undoubtedly offers a unique way to experience Kusama’s work.
    “This exhibition will be great to see as the seasons change,” Leshi said. “So now you’re seeing spring, then you’ll see summer, then you’ll see the fall and there’ll be different things like the Kiku, the Japanese chrysanthemums.”
    See more photos from the show below.
    Yayoi Kusama, Dancing Pumpkin (2020) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
    Yayoi Kusama, My Soul Blooms Forever (2019) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
    Yayoi Kusama, Starry Pumpkin at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
    Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden (1966/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
    Yayoi Kusama, Life (2015) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
    Flower paintings by Yayoi Kusama at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
    “Kusama: Cosmic Nature” is on view at the New York Botanical Garden, Southern Boulevard, Bronx, April 10–October 31, 2021.
    “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity” is on view at David Benrimon Fine Art, the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, April 15–May 27, 2021. 
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