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      Simone Leigh’s Assembly of Black Feminist Creativity in Venice Left Me in Awe

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      In what is sure to be remembered as a historic moment that honored Black womxn’s labor, creativity, and intellect, dozens of scholars, thought leaders, educators, writers, curators, authors, and artists from across the African diaspora communed in Venice last week for artist Simone Leigh’s symposium, “Loophole of Retreat.” The program included talks, film screenings, dance performances, music, panel discussions, and more. Over three emotional days, from the perch of my home office in New York—and at times, my local Soho House—I watched the livestream, engulfed in the feeling of being seen, heard, and perhaps finally understood in a way I’d never quite been before—in a way only a Black woman could understand.
      Taking its name from a section of Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the symposium was guided by five overarching themes, or “key directives:” “Maroonage,” “Manual,” “Magical Realism,” “Medicine,” and “Sovereignty.” It unearthed a long legacy of scholarship, free thought, wild imaginings, and the freedom Black women have continuously worked to build for themselves despite centuries of racialized and gendered oppression.
      “The labor of Black women is often made invisible,” author, social media star, and Pace gallery associate director Kimberly Drew told me, commenting afterwards on the remarkable experience of the weekend. “This obscuring of our rigor, scholarship, and dedication makes it seem like we haven’t been here. During these three days, I left feeling far from alone, inspired in every moment never to take for granted what happens when Black women come together.”
      Rashida Bumbray and Simone Leigh. Photo by Glorija Blazinsek.
      Curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray organized the event, with Saidiya Hartman and Tina Campt. And from the moment that Bumbray’s voice flowed through my computer screen, singing out “good morning everybody” to the audience, I knew this weekend would be filled with claiming strength through sisterhood, and finding empowerment in the ethos of “doing it ourselves” (as trail-blazing Black gallerist Linda Goode Bryant puts it in a text currently on view at MoMA for a show celebrating her Just Above Midtown gallery).
      The conference’s first theme, “Maroonage,” was informed by Jamaican artist Deborah Anzinger’s work. Anzinger herself was on hand with a presentation that offered a reevaluation of both Black labor and the extraction of natural resources. But many other inspired interventions into the past filled the event. One that sticks in my mind is professor, poet, and critic Canisia Lubrin’s presentation of a series of 59 fictional codes in response to King Louis XIV’s infamous Code Noir (The Black Code), the set of rules defining the conditions of enslaved Africans within the French empire.
      Las Nietas de Nonó perform during Loophole of Retreat: Venice, October 9, 2022. Photo by Glorija Blazinsek.
      The second theme, “Manual,” was inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s “Manual for General Housework” in her brilliantly moving book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. While some presentations contextualized a set of conditions Black women have been subjugated to through physical labor and egregious bodily harm, I came away with the sense that, infinitely more important than these crushing constraints are the ways in which they, us, and the collective ‘we’ have persisted, forged untrodden paths, and continued to envision new forms of freedom by revolutionizing personal intimacy and kinship. Watching the program, I truly felt that by holding space for Black women to congregate and share knowledge, “Loophole of Retreat” existed as a haven, a respite, a dwelling where community could flourish.
      The event’s other directives—”Magical Realism,” “Medicine,” and “Sovereignty”—guided conversations and performances that made visible the creative labor of poets, activists, authors, and academics from every part of the diaspora. Women who were also mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters came from Portugal and Berlin, from South Africa and Brazil, and from all over the United States to share knowledge and hold space for joy, creative freedom, and community through sisterhood. To take one example, the literary and artist collective Black Quantum Futurism incorporated spoken word and poetry with rhythmic music and the ancient sounds of maracas.
      Black Quantum Futurism performs at Loophole of Retreat: Venice, October 8, 2022. Photo by Glorija Blazinsek.
      “‘Loophole of Retreat’ beautifully captured the thoughtfulness, joy, sacrifice, and rigor that is often carried out in the Black feminist imagination,” said Taylor Renee Aldridge, curator at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, after the event. “One of the many memorable moments for me was witnessing deference on display between generations and peers: Simone’s reverence of Lorraine [O’Grady], Rashida’s reverence of Simone, and Simone expressing gratitude for her own daughter.”
      Elsewhere during the weekend, the phenomenal Legacy Russell spotlighted works by painters Naudline Pierre and Firelei Báez, and moderated a riveting conversation with artist Ja’Tovia Gary following a screening of her work. Russell inspired the audience by speaking powerfully of the collective purpose represented by the event. “In a moment in the world where the visibility of Black femmehood continues to rise yet where sustained equity and representation still requires constant vigilance, care, and strategic work, being ‘in the loophole’ perforates boundaries and breaks through the mythos of Black exceptionalism and Black alienation—a reminder of the power of collective congress and its dazzling capacity to transform the world by holding space for shared information.”
      Guests share a moment during Loophole of Retreat: Venice. Photo by Glorija Blazinsek.
      As I reflect on the exuberant and utterly transformative weekend of “Loophole of Retreat,” I find myself entranced by this surplus of Black feminine creativity, presented in a way I have never seen. Every friend I spoke with during the retreat and in the days following remarked that they were “still processing” and needed “time to unpack.” It took me days to come up for air.
      When I finally resurfaced, I recognized that through the scholarship, care, and the brilliance of Simone Leigh, Rashida Bumbray, Saidiya Hartman, Deborah Anzinger, Zara Julius, Ja’tovia Gary, Mabel O. Wilson, and so many others who touched me, I came through the symposium forever changed. Perhaps by some force of nature or deep ancestral ties, I felt protected, seen, and celebrated by every Black woman I have ever known or have yet to meet, privileged not only to bask in our glory, but also to be in service to so many Black women.
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      6 Things the Whitney’s New Edward Hopper Show Teaches Us About the Artist’s Tortured Love Affair With New York

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      The Whitney Museum’s newly opened show “Edward Hopper’s New York” is sure to be a blockbuster in the fall art calendar, both for veteran New Yorkers and for the throngs of international tourists who flock to the museum’s eye-catching building at the base of the High Line elevated park.
      With over 3,100 Hopper pieces, including more than 220 paintings, the Whitney is the largest holder of the artist’s work. And while the museum has held many exhibitions devoted to the artist over the years, this is the first to focus exclusively on his relationship to New York City, where he lived and worked for more than six decades.
      “There is truly no better place to experience this group of works that were largely created only blocks south of where the museum is today and that connects us in often-unexpected ways with the past and present of our city,” said lead curator Kim Conaty during a press preview. Its last major Hopper show, which concentrated on the artist’s drawings, took place in 2013, when the Whitney was still at its former, longtime home in the Marcel Breuer-designed building on the Upper East Side.
      The current exhibition is a dynamic mix of artworks and archival materials that tell the story of Hopper’s life and work in New York City—from visits made during his youth from his hometown just north in Nyack on the Hudson River and later during his art-student days to commuting into the city while working as a commercial illustrator and eventually as a fine artist and master of shadow and light, who continuously explored themes of alienation and loneliness against the backdrop of the rapidly developing metropolis.
      Along with famous paintings and sketches from the museum’s own collection, there are dozens of major institutional loans as well as archival materials, including letters, postcards, theater tickets, and notebooks, that carefully record both earlier advertising commissions as well as later painting sales.
      As museum director Adam Weinberg pointed out at the preview, the show is sure to be a learning experience for even the most seasoned Hopper experts, including himself. “It’s rich in materials, there is so much to see. I learned so much in the process.”
      Here are six key takeaways on Hopper’s relationship to, and life in, New York City.
      Edward Hopper, Blackwell’s Island, (1928). Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy Art Resource, New York. Photograph by Edward C. Robison III
      The Whitney Is Truly Hopper’s Home
      Hopper was a touchstone for the Whitney even before the museum was officially founded, said Weinberg. In 1920, the artist was 37 years old when he had his first solo exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club—an association formed by Gerturde Vanderbilt Whitney that was the forerunner of the museum.
      Hopper had eight exhibitions at the Studio Club before it closed to make way for the Whitney Museum, which, at the time was on 8th Street and which is now the studio school. It’s also not far from Washington Square North, where the artist lived and had his studio for about 63 years.
      In May of 1930, the Whitney became one of the first museums to acquire one of Hopper’s works when Vanderbilt Whitney bought Early Sunday Morning (1930). The artist participated in 29 annuals and biennials at the museum, “which is I think probably the record,” Weinberg said, adding: “Hopper’s painting Room in New York (1932) was included in the first Whitney Biennial in 1932 and it’s back here 90 years later in the museum show.” He noted that the 3,100 Hopper works owned by the Whitney represent “roughly ten percent of the total holdings,” of the museum. “The Whitney is truly Hopper’s home.”
      The Horizontal City
      “The Horizontal City” is one of eight thematic sections that make up the show. As Conaty pointed out, it is “not a retrospective since it doesn’t include works from Maine or Cape Cod or Hopper’s other locations of interest. But it does cover Hopper’s entire career, since New York had been a part of his life since he was a child.”
      The artist “famously detested skyscrapers and the increasing verticality of the city,” said Conaty. With respect to Early Sunday Morning, she said she is fascinated by the fact that it was painted in 1930, the same year that the Chrysler building became the world’s tallest building only to lose the title a few months later to the Empire State Building. “Yet the vertical dynamics of the growing city were of little interest to Hopper. And there is a certain irreverence here in the idea of painting compositions like Early Sunday Morning in that year and a constant tension between longing for the past and yet an embrace of the modern city. And there is, of course, a hint of what is to come by the looming gray rectangle,” in the upper right hand corner of the work.
      Edward Hopper, Manhattan Bridge (1925–26). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1098 © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
      Eschewing The ‘Post Card’ Pics
      Noting that the Manhattan Bridge, built in 1901, was a site that Hopper returned to many times, and of which there are numerous depictions in the show, Conaty said: “I love his focus on the Manhattan Bridge, because on the one hand it’s not the Brooklyn Bridge.” Hopper was “skeptical of landmarks and popular, ‘postcard’ New York sites.”
      There are also paintings of the Queensborough Bridge (Hopper lived nearby on 59th Street in his early years in the city) as well as views of Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island, the Williamsburg Bridge and the lesser known Macombs Dam Bridge near 155th Street. The double-truss construction and Gothic Revival abutments of the Macombs bridge caught Hopper’s eye.
      Edward Hopper, Roofs, Washington Square, (1926). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Bequest of Mr. and Mrs. James H. Beal. © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
      Washington Square Park
      Historic Washington Square Park, which has its own thematic section, plays something of a starring role in the exhibition. Hopper and his wife Josephine, who was also an artist and the model for nearly all of her husband’s female characters, lived and worked there at their respective studios at No. 3 Washington Square North. Included in this section of the show are their own depictions of the surrounding area, such as the Judson Memorial Church, and portraits of the artists by photographers such as Bernard Hoffman and George Platt Lynes.
      The couple were also fiercely protective of the area, with Hopper even penning letters to various civic officials and to developer Robert Moses when he thought his home was at risk of destruction due to encroaching development. Through the letters, said Conaty, Hopper “is trying to really fight off gentrification,” which certainly resonates in a place like New York.
      According to the wall label text:  “The Hoppers witnessed the incessant cycles of demolition and construction as 19th-century buildings like their own were torn down to make way for new structures. During their many decades in Greenwich Village they advocated for the preservation of the neighborhood as a haven for artists and as one of the city’s cultural landmarks.”
      Edward Hopper, The Sheridan Theatre, (1937). Newark Museum of Art, NJ; Felix Fuld Bequest Fund. © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy Art Resource
      Love of the Theatre
      A thematic section focused on the theatre is fascinating on two fronts. While paintings like The Sheridan Theatre (1937), which sat on 12th Street, speak for themselves, archival materials help to provide a window into the couple’s love of the theatre. Included in this section is a large collection of their ticket stubs on which Hopper meticulously recorded each production they attended. The fact that their seats were mostly in the balcony points to the couple’s frugality, said Conaty. Further, the materials are part of the Sanborn Hopper archive acquired by the museum in 2017. A lengthy New York Times profile delved into how the Rev. Arthayer R. Sanborn, who lived close to Hopper’s childhood home in Nyack, came to possess the huge collection of letters, photos, news clippings, and notebooks documenting Hopper’s life.
      Edward Hopper, Drug Store (1927). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of John T. Spaulding.
      Blending Fantasy With Reality 
      While many of Hopper’s paintings depict discernible New York sites and locations, others show facades and structures that are ultimately more “composites” of a streetscape, such as Drug Store (1927) which Hopper endows with a name “but not an address,” according to the label text. Said Conaty: Hopper “is showing us this old view of New York, this nostalgic view of New York.. this almost jewel box atmosphere that was created to capture people’s attention and their imagination as they strolled the city at night. 
      “You would be hard-pressed to find a pharmacy so decorated today. I think our CVSs haven’t really taken that cue,” she joked.
      “Despite his private, solitary, hermit-like nature, Edward Hopper was a man of the city, of New York City,” said Weinberg. “While capturing the soul and soullessness of modern life, he simultaneously shunned it and sought to find those moments of beauty and quietude, despite the changes that he detested. He painted the world that he saw, the world he knew, the world he invented, and the world he wished.”
      Conaty summed up her remarks by recapping an exchange between a journalist and the couple during an interview at their home. When the reporter asked what they liked to do for fun, Jo, who was known to be the more outgoing one, said: “We’re not spectacular, and we’re very private, and we don’t drink, and we hardly ever smoke.” After a pause, Hopper said: “I get most of my pleasure out of the city itself.”
      “Edward Hopper’s New York” is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, October 19, 2022—March 5, 2023. 

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      A Woman Claiming to Be Bansky’s Ex-Girlfriend Is Debuting Six Never-Before-Seen Early Works Attributed to the Artist

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      An anonymous woman who says she is Banksy’s ex-girlfriend has loaned six never-before-seen early works purportedly by the street artist to the latest installment of a traveling exhibition titled “The Art of Banksy,” on view at MediaCity in Salford, England, from tomorrow through January 8.
      According to Independent, the relics include “handmade birthday cards, flyers, and an A-board for her corset shop in Bristol, which she claims the anonymous graffiti artist painted for her while they were together from 1994 to 1998.”
      “The Art of Banksy” is one of numerous “unauthorized” shows of Banksy’s work that have taken place over the years, often capitalizing on the artist’s mysterious reputation. Some are are backed by entertainment corporations and charge admission.
      “Banksy has NOTHING to do with any of the current or recent exhibitions and they are nothing like a genuine Banksy show,” reads a statement on the website of Pest Control, the group authorized to authenticate Banksy works. These shows, they added, “might be crap so please don’t come to us for a refund.”

      Ex-girlfriend’ of Banksy offers previously unseen artworks to Media… (www.independent.c…)
      A woman who claims to be the former girlfriend of Banksy has loaned a collection of previous…
      Add your highlights:https://t.co/G9oTOobJbA#UK #news
      — UK News Briefly (@UK_News_b) October 19, 2022

      Michel Boersma, founder and CEO of GTP Entertainment, curated and produced the Salford stop of “The Art of Banksy” U.K. tour, which previously appeared in London.
      The show’s FAQ page says that Pest Control has verified all the artworks that appear in “The Art of Banksy,” adding that private collectors purchased them directly from the artist. In total, the nearly 13,000-square-foot event in Salford will include 145 prints and canvases from 2002 to 2017, featuring iconic images like Girl With Balloon (2002) and Brace Yourself (2010).
      “I could not believe what I was reading when the email suddenly appeared in my inbox two weeks ago,” Boersma told the Independent of the six intimate additions to his exhibit at MediaCity. “If true, these were completely unknown and highly personal works by Banksy.”
      “We then established the authenticity of the owner and the works she was offering,” Boersma continued. “Speaking with her, a lot of details of the early life of the now world-famous artist were shared,” he said, including “Exciting little anecdotes, about her and their life at the time.”
      Exhibition organizers did not immediately respond to questions about how they verified the woman’s identity and the works’ authenticity.
      Another show, titled “The Art of Banksy Without Limits,” came under fire last summer following runs in Seoul and Warsaw where attendees noticed that out of 150 works, only 27 were originals. Organizers issued refunds.
      Pest control did not respond to a request for comment.

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      The 2022 Turner Prize Exhibition at Tate Liverpool Is Remarkably Cohesive—See Images Here

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      The Turner prize has returned Liverpool for first time in 15 years. Though the four shortlisted installations are like mini-retrospectives, the exhibitions this year share several themes that address pressing contemporary issues.
      The showcase of Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, and Sin Wai Kin—four U.K.-based artists nominated for the coveted prize which opens to the public at Tate Liverpool on Thursday, October 20—could give the audience the impression of “an exhibition of exhibitions,” said the museum’s senior curator Sarah James. It was “a beautiful coincidence,” the curator said, that the artists’ presentations shared common ground despite their vastly different practices.
      The winner will be selected by a jury on December 7, and be awarded £25,000 ($28,143)—the three runner-up artists will each receive £10,000 ($11,257). In the meantime, audiences are also asked to participate by casting their vote for their favorite artist on-site.
      Turner Prize 2022: Heather Phillipson, Rupture No 6: biting the blowtorched peach. Installation view at Tate Liverpool 2022. Photo: © Tate Photography (Matt Greenwood)
      James said the thematic overlaps may “the product of this massive, collective, shared experience of the pandemic and lockdown, and the fact that maybe we’re sort of feeling slightly more solidarity than we might normally be.”
      The presentation of each of the shortlisted artists—three women and one non-binary artist of diverse age ranges and cultural backgrounds—begins with the striking, mixed-media installation RUPTURE NO 6: biting the blowtorched peach (2022) by the London-born, 44-year-old Phillipson.
      Turner Prize 2022: Veronica Ryan. Installation View at Tate Liverpool 2022. Photo: © Tate Photography (Sonal Bakarina)
      The work is a re-imagination of her Tate Britain solo exhibition that closed in January this year, the same show that earned her the current nomination. It invites the audience into an exhibition space transformed into an otherworldly setting of sumptuous colors conjured by a series of moving image projections and installations repurposing motorized ship anchors into wind turbines and gas canisters into wind chimes. Phillipson’s imaginary world is known as a “mutated habitat” in organizers’ words, but it evokes an apocalyptic feeling.
      This is juxtaposed with a serene, yellow room created by the 68-year-old Ryan. The subtle repurposing of everyday materials, from fruit to takeaway food containers, feathers, paper, or even pillows and bandages, is not just about “psychological resonance” and the “extended self,” in the artist’s words. The resulting plant-like sculptures and installation pieces relate childhood memories with distant histories of global trade, while commenting on environmental and ecological issues.
      Turner Prize 2022: Ingrid Pollard. Installation view at Tate Liverpool. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
      Viewers then step onto green floor, which hosts Sin’s iconic mixed-media installation work It’s Always You. Here, the 31-year-old non-binary Canadian-born artist reconstructs a boy band fantasy featuring four characters invented and played by Sin, who utilizes drag as their artistic expression.
      There’s a karaoke screen, boy band dance choreography, and even autographed posters, but beneath the fantasy and the symbolic, colorful painted faces of Sin’s characters is the questioning of identity, body politics, and queer coding. Sin’s lyrical video work A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021), draws inspirations from Chuang Tzu’s ancient Taoist classic Dream of the Butterfly, which is also on show.
      The study of body and identity politics is differently approached in the 68-year-old Pollard’s thoughtful presentation that revolves around racism within the context of British history. The show features the powerful Bow Down and Very Low – 123 (2021), which includes a set of three kinetic sculptures made with everyday objects referencing to the gesture of a young Black girl from a 1944 colonial propaganda film. Was girl bowing down or sinking into a deep curtsy? The uneasy movements of the kinetic sculptures offer interpretation from multiple perspectives.
      The Turner Prize shortlist exhibition is on view at the Tate Liverpool until March 19, 2023. A winner will be chosen on December 7, 2022.

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      Rosa Bonheur Was One of the Most Influential Artists of Her Time. Two Centuries Later, Museums Are Giving Her Remarkable Animal Portraits New Life

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      It’s been 200 years since French artist Rosa Bonheur was born and people are still talking about what she was wearing when she painted live lions and tigers and cows. 
      Bonheur was one of a handful of mid-19th century women issued a police permit allowing them to wear men’s clothes. Yes, it’s true: the accomplished Bonheur—who audaciously used the monumental scale typically reserved for history painting to depict livestock, and was likely the most commercially successful woman artist of her time—wore pants.
      But fascination with Bonheur’s persona has detracted from a closer look at her work, which portrayed animals with psychological presence and meticulous anatomical detail. 
      “There are so many things to [uncover] about Rosa Bonheur, because we study her more for her unconventional life than for her art,” said Lou Brault, assistant director of the Château de Rosa Bonheur, a museum opened in 2017 in the artist’s longtime house in the town of Thomery. To some, Bonheur is a model for women’s liberation because she never married (deciding instead to spend her life with another woman), was childless, and supported herself financially. “There are not so many studies about what she’s fighting for through her art.”
      Rosa Bonheur, Deux Lapins (1840). © Mairie de Bordeaux, musée des Beaux-Arts, photo: F.Deval.
      In honor of the bicentenary of her birth this year, a retrospective of some 200 paintings, graphic works, sculptures, and photographs reintroduces Bonheur’s work to French audiences and offers new ways to look at the artist. The show recently debuted at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, where it broke attendance records, and opens at the Musée d’Orsay later this month. 
      Exhibitions about Bonheur’s lost artworks and photography (a barely researched aspect of the artist’s work, even though she left behind her darkroom and thousands of exposures) have opened concurrently at the Château de Rosa Bonheur. Bonheur’s last show in Paris was a full century ago, and there has never been an exhibition of this scale devoted to her work in France. 
      “We were shocked by how important she was in the 19th century,” said Brault. “Here in France, in the 21st century, nobody knows her anymore.” 
      There are a few reasons why, including the fact that Bonheur’s chosen genre, animal painting, wasn’t highly regarded in France. “Being a woman artist and painting animals were two ‘mistakes,’” explained Leïla Jarbouai, chief curator at the Musée d’Orsay. “She made popular art, and her art was duplicated in prints, another mistake. And she sold most of her works abroad, in the United Kingdom and in the United States, so French visitors could not see her accomplished work.” 
      Rosa Bonheur, Têtes et encolures de bœuf brun. Château de Rosa Bonheur. Photo © musée d’Orsay /Alexis Brandt.
      Bonheur has always been more famous abroad than at home, even modeled into a popular doll for young American admirers in the 19th century.
      Bonheur’s ‘mistakes’ may have turned French art lovers off from the major canvas she did leave in her native country, such as Ploughing in the Nivernais (1849), of oxen trudging through rich dirt, but some novelties on view at the retrospective may pique their interest.
      The painting reproduced on the publicity poster for the Musée d’Orsay exhibition, The King of the Forest (1817), is of a regal stag staring piercingly at the viewer and it has never been shown in France, not even during Bonheur’s lifetime. Some recent discoveries excavated from storage at the Château de Rosa Bonheur, also never exhibited, are being debuted, including a grand preparatory sketch for her famous painting The Horse Fair (1852-55), and a cyanotype of a horse. The exhibition also includes personal things that Bonheur never meant to show, like painted pebbles and caricatures. 
      Jarbouai believes that the crowds that visited Bonheur’s retrospective in Bordeaux, and the growing curiosity about her in general, are linked to a greater interest in women artists today. There has also been a concerted effort since 2017 to revive Bonheur’s legacy in the place where she lived and worked for the last four decades of her life. 
      Rosa Bonheur, Cheval de face avec son palefrenier (ca. 1892). Château de Rosa Bonheur. Photo © musée d’Orsay /Sophie Crépy.
      Bonheur bought the Château de By near Fontainebleau with earnings from selling her monumental The Horse Fair, which was shown at the Paris Salon and ultimately donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Cornelius Vanderbilt. In By she lived among a menagerie of creatures including monkeys, tigers, and lions (the skin of Bonheur’s pet lioness, Fathma, ultimately became a rug strewn near her easel). Bonheur bequeathed the château to her companion, American painter Anna Klumpke, who in turn left it to her niece. Until 2017, the house and all its untouched contents were passed down within the same family, who they claimed that they tried to sell it to the French government but that there was no interest.
      “People didn’t care about her. She was just, like, painting cows,” said Brault, whose mother bought the château in 2017 in order to convert it into a museum. After securing funds to open it up to visitors year-round, the Château de Rosa Bonheur started inventorying her archives to encourage research. 
      “This place needs to be here to make people talk about Rosa Bonheur,” said Brault. “There was a Rosa Bonheur street, there was a famous café in Paris named Rosa Bonheur. Rosa Bonheur was a name people already knew but they didn’t know who she was. What we hope is that the bicentenary and the exhibition change this, and that afterwards people know she was a very famous artist of the 19th century and she painted animals.”

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      in Exhibitions

      From Forest Dragons to Painted Bodies, Here Are the Winners of This Year’s ArtPrize

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      The 12th edition of the ArtPrize—an independent, contemporary art competition held in Grand Rapids, Michigan—concluded on October 2 following a successful 19-day run across 200 local venues, including auto body shops, banks and even bridges.
      Since its inception in 2009, each edition of the open, international event has distributed around $450,000 in grants to participating artists. After a contentious cancellation in 2020 because of the pandemic, the competition returned this year with a full roster of extracurricular programming.
      “ArtPrize is all about bringing fine art into the public eye, free of charge,” ArtPrize’s Mady Ellinger told Artnet News. “It’s unorthodox, highly disruptive, and undeniably intriguing.”
      “There is still a common misconception that ArtPrize is privately funded,” Ellinger continued, when it  actually is a non-profit that relies on sponsors, donors, and grants.
      ArtPrize takes shape organically through its online portal, where venues from a three-square-mile radius in Downtown Grand Rapids connect with artist applicants to determine which projects will go where. Meanwhile, ArtPrize leadership selects the jury of comprised of curators, critics, artists and museum directors.
      “What makes ArtPrize unique is that awards and prizes are selected by both public visitors casting votes and also by jurors,” Ellinger said, revealing “the intersections and incongruities between professional and populist opinions.” Some projects have even won world records.
      Artists competing for the Popular Award can submit their work into one of five categories—two-dimensional, three-dimensional, time-based, installation, and digital art—with the public and juries both awarding prizes for their favorites in each category. Artists behind each of the ten selected projects receive $10,000 each. Jurors also choose their second-favorite works of art in each category for the Honorable Mention award, which comes with a $2,500 purse.
      ArtPrize distributes $125,000 during the event, through daily and weekly prizes, with the remaining prize money going to specialized awards. Artists can also sell their works through the online art platform AllArtWorks.
      This year, the organizers of the Grand Rapids African American Arts & Music Festival singled out William Davis’s interactive poetry piece to receive the Contemporary Black Art Award, while the West Michigan Asian American Association chose a mixed-media, 2D-piece by Stacie Tamaki for the Asian Art Award.
      Florida-based artist Florencia Clement De Grandprey took home two accolades for In My Eyes, snagging both the 2D Public Award and the Artista Latino Award, chosen by the West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
      New to the 2022 edition was the Artist-to-Artist award, where participating artists could weigh in on their favorites. North Carolina brothers Brad and Bryan Caviness took home the inaugural $12,500 prize for Creation, Destruction, Reflection.
      Ellinger cited the last-minute addition of the John Ball Zoo to its list of venues as this year’s greatest thrill. There, Michigan-based artist Stacy Rhines installed an interactive disc golf course made of recycled scrap metal sculptures. When avid disc golfers caught wind of his work over social media, they flocked to the city—even from out of state.
      ArtPrize also expanded its geographic footprint beyond its traditional three-square-mile radius in Downtown Grand Rapids. This year, its Featured Public Project, Made Again, was placed at Martin Luther King Jr Park in nearby Ottawa Hills. “Swilk’s compelling and gentle works brought high art to a key neighborhood,” Ellinger said.
      Here are the incredible winning sights that graced Grand Rapids this year.
      ArtPrize 2022 Winners:
      2D Public Winner and Artista Latino Award Winner: In My Eyes by Florencia Clement De Grandprey

      3D Public Winner: American Eagle by Kasey Wells

      Time-Based Public Winner: Embodied-Healing Through Body Art by Kristen Zamora

      Installation Public Winner: Twigg the Forest Dragon by Jennifer Dunahee

      Digital Public Winner: Urban Arterials by Rob Finch

      2D Juror Winner: For Dorothy Afro Harping by Harold Allen

      3D Juror Winner: Last by Mo Jauw

      Time-Based Juror Winner: Fusion by LiChtpiraten

      Installation Juror Winner: Seeking a pleasant peninsula by Maddison Chaffer

      Digital Juror Winner: Derivations of a Gothic Arch Part 2 by Gary Mesa-Gaido

      2D Juror Honorable Mention: In Bello (In Time of War) by Erica Kuhl

      3D Juror Honorable Mention: Embedded by Mark Mennin

      Time-Based Juror Honorable Mention: Ineffable Lypophrenia by Ciara Glass

      Installation Juror Honorable Mention: Who’s Next? By Brian Whitfield

      Digital Juror Honorable Mention: Algorithm + You = Art by Charles Cusack

      Artist-To-Artist Award: Creation, Destruction, Reflection by Brad and Bryan Caviness

      Contemporary Black Art Award: Poetry on Demand by William Davis

      Asian Art Award: Sold to Slaughter by Stacie Tamaki

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      in Exhibitions

      From an Alice Neel Survey to a Moving Show About Still-Life Art, Here Are 9 Buzzed-About Museum Exhibitions to See in Paris

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      As the debut of Paris+ prepares to unfold in the Grand Palais Éphémère, the city’s museums are presenting a rich variety of visually and intellectually stimulating exhibitions. Our round-up of nine shows confirms how artists continue to reinvent the wheel while drawing inspiration from artists born decades and centuries before them.

      “Things – A History of Still Life”LouvreUntil January 23, 2023
      Barthélémy Toguo Le Pilier des migrants disparus © Barthélémy Toguo ADAGP Paris 2022. Courtesy de lartiste et HdM Gallery © Audrey Viger Musée du Louvre.
      Soaring into I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid at the Louvre is a towering sculpture of fabric-covered balls by Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo. Alluding to migrants that have perished on their voyage (the piece is titled The Pillar of the Missing Migrants), the commissioned work exemplifies how curator Laurence Bertrand Dorléac has sought to extend what the genre of “still life,” or nature morte, can encompass today. “Things – A History of Still Life” assembles an incredible diversity from Bottle Rack (1914/59) by Marcel Duchamp to Georges de La Tour’s painting of Mary Magdalene in front of a candle.

      Frida Kahlo: “Au-delà des apparences”Palais GallieraUntil March 5, 2023
      Hand-painted medical corset. © Museo Frida Kahlo – Casa Azul collection – Javier Hinojosa, 2017
      Taking us behind the scenes of Frida Kahlo’s life, this insightful exhibition explores the intimate issues that informed and created the Mexican artist’s unique identity. On show are more than 200 objects from the Casa Azul, the house where Kahlo grew up, including black-and-white family photos, hand-painted orthopaedic corsets that she wore due to her disability after contracting poliomyelitis, a prosthetic leg, boots, and traditional Tehuana dresses. Kahlo’s husband, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, placed these personal items under seal after she died, and they were not discovered until 2004. Also on view are several self-portraits and a portrait of Kahlo by Dora Maar taken during Kahlo’s trip to Paris.

      Alice Neel: “Un regard engagé”Centre PompidouUntil January 16, 2023
      Alice Neel, “un regard engagé” © Centre Pompidou. Photo: Hélène Mauri.
      Mixed-race and homosexual couples, unemployed people, and pregnant women all fell under the unflinching gaze of the 20th century artist Alice Neel—a radical feminist who was also a member of the Communist party. Yet as her figurative painting went against the prevailing vogue of abstraction, pop art, minimalism, and conceptualism, Neel’s oeuvre was largely overlooked during her lifetime. This exhibition seeks to elevate her place in the history of art cannon.

      “Monet – Mitchell”Fondation Louis VuittonUntil February 27, 2023
      Joan Mitchell, Two Pianos, (1980). 
Private collection
© The Estate of Joan Mitchell
. Photo © Patrice Schmidt
      American artist Joan Mitchell once said that she “admired the late but not early Monet.” It is indeed with the fabulous paintings from Monet’s late period of his garden in Giverny that Mitchell’s vibrant works made with thick brushstrokes, many decades later in Vétheuil near the Seine, are juxtaposed. What’s immediately striking is how the two artists shared a similar chromatic sensitivity in their palettes and a dedication to inventing new ways to depict landscape—Monet spoke of “impression” and “sensation,” while Mitchell sought to express “feeling.”

      Mickalene Thomas: “Avec Monet”Musée de l’OrangerieUntil February 6, 2023
      Mickalene Thomas Le Jardin d’Eau de Monet (2022). Photo: © Mickalene Thomas © Adagp, Paris, 2022
      In 2011, American artist Mickalene Thomas was an artist-in-residence at Claude Monet’s home in Giverny. For this exhibition, she has revisited that experience and interpreted the Impressionist artist’s house with her own visual language—a rich collage composed from photographs of Monet’s garden as well as printed and painted elements delineated with Swarovski crystals. Another work referring to Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe features three Black women in a celebration of pride and female power. A video work shows Thomas reclining nude, interspersed with fragments of Amedeo Modigliani’s famous nudes and abstract images, as a voice narrates the hardship of growing up as a mixed-race woman.

      Kehinde WileyMusée d’OrsayUntil January 8, 2023
      Kehinde Wiley Femme Piquée Par Un Serpent (Mamadou Gueye), (2022). Kehinde Wiley / Ugo Carmeni
      In the nave of the Musée d’Orsay is Kehinde Wiley’s magnificent monumental bronze sculpture of a young man collapsed across the saddle of a galloping horse. Another sculpture portrays a resting male figure, ivy meandering over his body—the pose is duplicated in a richly detailed painting of a figure clad in a Louis Vuitton top, jeans, and white Nike sneakers, lying upon a rock in a landscape. Through revisiting stereotypes of Western art, Wiley majestically re-contextualizes classic pictorial forms while dwelling on violence, suffering and peacefulness.

      “Reversing the Eye: Arte Povera and Beyond 1960-1975: Photography, Film, Video”Jeu de Paume and Le BalUntil January 29, 2023
      Giuseppe Penone Svolgere la propria pelle (1997) © Archivio Penone.
      The title of this show is taken from the work Rovesciare i propri occhi (To reverse one’s eyes), 1970, depicting a young Giuseppe Penone—who was the youngest member of Italy’s Arte Povera group—wearing mirrored contact lenses he had custom made. Spread across two venues, the exhibition features seminal works by Arte Povera artists, such as Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Sfera di giornali, a ball made of newspapers that he rolled in the streets of Turin, and his mirror paintings. It also looks at the work of lesser-known photographers who influenced or exhibited with the Arte Povera artists, thus bringing a wider context to the radical Italian movement.

      Cyprien Gaillard: ‘Humpty Dumpty’Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette AnticipationsUntil January 8, 2023
      Reference for “Humpty/Dumpty” on view at Palais de Tokyo. © Cyprien Gaillard. Photo: Max Paul, (2021)
      Entropy and man’s quest to overcome it and failure to do so lies at the heart of Cyprien Gaillard’s double exhibition. From the restoration of the Eiffel Tower to the removal of love locks from the Pont Neuf because they were weighing down the bridge, Gaillard’s gaze is turned to Paris and the attempts to spruce up the city ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games. The second-part of the show, at Lafayette Anticipations, is focused on literally trying to make a clock sculpture work again.

      Anri Sala: ‘Time No Longer’Bourse de Commerce – Pinault CollectionUntil January 16, 2023
      Anri Sala, Time No Longer, 2021. Pinault Collection © Anri Sala / Adagp, Paris, 2022. Photo Aurélien Mole
      Projected onto a vast, curved screen in the rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce is Anri Sala’s Time No Longer (2021) – an elegy to African-American astronaut and saxophonist Ronald McNair who never fulfilled his dream to record music in space as his space shuttle exploded seconds after takeoff. As with ‘Ravel Ravel Unravel’, which the Albanian-French artist unveiled in the French Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2013, it is a mesmerizing exploration of recomposing sounds and images. Other new works by the artist are on display in the vitrines while older videos are on show in the ground-floor gallery and basement.

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      in Exhibitions

      How the Mystic Seaport Museum Is Making Waves in Visual Art, From Hosting a Smithsonian Show to Commissioning New Artwork

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      What do the port cities of Venice and Mystic in Connecticut have in common? Both share a long seafaring history and world-class art. On October 15, Mystic Seaport Museum opens “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano,” an exhibition organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum that features more than 115 artworks from over 40 institutions and private collections that explore how Venetian arts influenced American artists. The show debuted in Washington, DC, and stopped in Fort Worth before docking in Mystic, where it will remain through February 27, 2023.
      Christina Brophy, Senior Vice President of Curatorial Affairs, told Artnet News that she had collaborated with the Smithsonian on a previous show, and jumped at the opportunity to host this art exhibition at the maritime museum.
      The Mystic edition of “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass” shifts the show’s sequence to highlight cultural connections between Venice, Mystic, and greater New England. For this edition, Rhode Island’s Tomaquag Museum is loaning a trade bead necklace and beaded top hat, both by Indigenous artists, to emphasize “the incorporation of Venetian and other trade glass into the vernacular of traditional work, which also includes elements of wampum, bone, and porcupine quill,” Brophy said.
      Mystic Seaport Museum has also pulled rarely-seen works from its own collection, including glass-plate negatives taken in Venice by the whaler, merchant, and diplomat Henry Hiller, along with a diary documenting one mariner’s Venetian adventures. Lino Tagliapietra, a glass maestro from Murano, appears alongside other living legends he inspired, including Debora Czeresko, Dale Chihuly, and Kim Harty.
      Local glass artist Jeffrey P’an also makes an appearance—museum members will have the opportunity to visit his studio for a live glassblowing demonstration. Other programming for the general public includes on-site tours and talks by glass and lacework experts. Throughout the duration of the show, visitors entering the lobby will be greeted by a 35.5-foot Venetian gondola from La Gondola in Providence. The Rhode Island-based specialist gondola tour company will also offer rides on the Mystic River in another of its vessels during the show’s opening weekend.
      Since 1929, Mystic Seaport Museum has dedicated its 19 acres to America’s maritime past. Facilities include a 75,000-volume research library, a recreation of a 19th-century seafaring village, and the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard. It also has an extensive collection of film, photography, and over 500 different types of watercraft, as well as a choice selection of prints and paintings.
      The museum has plans both to show more of its permanent art collection and to increase its engagement with living artists by commissioning site-specific works that address issues such as climate change and ecology. Rhode Island artist Sue McNally was commissioned to paint an on-site mural called Mystic Blue, and the museum has also commissioned Alexis Rockman to produce 11 paintings around the theme of climate change in the maritime industry for a show called “Oceanus”, which will premiere in May 2023 before traveling domestically and abroad—in true seafaring fashion. Brophy also mentioned a forthcoming call for artists to create an installation for its planned exhibition “Entwined”, slated for 2024, “on Indigenous, African, and African American Maritime Social History.”
      Below is a preview of works to be featured in “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass” before the exhibition sets sail.
      Attributed to Società Veneziana per l’Industria delle Conterie (SVC), “Sample Cord with Flameworked Beads”, (Late 19th century—1904). Image courtesy of Illinois State Museum.
      Maxfield Parrish, “Venetian Lamplighters” (1922). Image courtesy of National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, RI, and American Illustrators Gallery, New York, NY.

      Francesco Toso Borella, Vittorio Toso Borella and Compagnia di Venezia e Murano, “Replica of a Renaissance Goblet (Campanile Cup)” (1903—12). Image courtesy of Iris and Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.

      Scuola dei Merletti di Burano, “Lace Panel with Lion of St. Mark” (20th century). Image courtesy of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

      Thomas Moran, “A View of Venice” (1891). Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

      John Singer Sargent, “A Venetian Woman” (1882). Image courtesy of Cincinnati Art Museum.

      Louise Howland King Cox, “May Flowers” (1911). Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.

      Roman Empire, “Mosaic Glass Bowl”, (1st century B.C.E. – 1st century C.E.). Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.

      Giovanni Boldini, “Portrait of James McNeill Whistler” (1897). Image courtesy of Brooklyn Museum.
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