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      Olympic Organizers in Tokyo Will Put Together a Splashy Art and Culture Initiative to Accompany the Summer Games

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      The Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage (OFCH) has unveiled plans for the inaugural Olympic Agora, an exhibition and series of art installations that celebrate the ideals and spirit of the games.
      The project, on view in Tokyo from July 1 to August 15, is inspired by the public assembly spaces, or agoras, of Ancient Greece, according to a statement.
      Viewers will be able to see artworks throughout Tokyo’s historic Nihonbashi district, including installations by Japanese artists Rinko Kawauchi and Makoto Tojiki and exhibitions of works by six Olympian and Paralympian artists-in-residence. 
      Another highlight will be a life-size commission by French artist Xavier Veilhan, who represented France at the 2017 Venice Biennale, that depicts five people of various ages, genders, and nationalities gathered in sport spectatorship. 
      Titled The Audience, it will become a permanent installation after its unveiling on June 30.
      3D rendering of Xavier Veilhan’s The Audience commissioned for Olympic Agora at the upcoming Tokyo Olympic games.
      The project also includes a multimedia installation by Montreal-based studio Moment Factory, and an exhibition of treasures from the Olympic Museum’s permanent collection in Lausanne, Switzerland.
      Onsite installations will be complemented by a digital program, including virtual exhibitions and artist talks on the Olympic Agora website and the Olympic Museum’s social media channels.
      In keeping with public health restrictions, visitor levels to in-person events will be limited and strictly controlled, organizers said.
      The agora will serve as “a hub for the cultivation, exploration and promotion of the Olympic values,” said OFCH director Angelita Teo.
      “In this unprecedented moment, the Olympic Agora is a symbol of determination, overcoming challenges, and international cooperation; of the power of sport and art to carry us in times of crisis.”
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      ‘For Every Story, I Have a Photograph’: Legendary Ghanaian Photographer James Barnor on His London Retrospective

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      Photographer James Barnor has just celebrated his 92 birthday, weeks after his retrospective, “James Barnor: Accra/London,” opened at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
      Throughout his six-decade career, Barnor ran his own photographic studio and retouching business, Ever Young, in Accra in the 1950s, and then worked as a photojournalist at Ghana’s first daily newspaper, the Graphic, before moving to London in 1959 (two years after the African nation won its independence) to train and work as a lead photographer for the South African fashion magazine Drum. His oeuvre now stands at tens of thousands of images.
      Working as a photographer in the 1950s and ’60s, Barnor documented life in the U.K., photographing members of the Windrush generation, his holiday hikes with friends, and various weddings and christenings.
      He took iconic cover shots for Drum and shot the famous portrait of BBC Africa Service journalist Mike Eghan, the BBC’s first Black presenter, whose iconic celebratory pose under Eros in Trafalgar Square was recreated for Barnor’s Italian Vogue cover with British model Adwoa Aboah for its April 2021 issue.
      Published as a gatefold, the two images sit side by side: Eghan against the lights of the advertisements, and Aboah in the same motif, descending the steps of Eros, arms outstretched, 54 years later.
      James Barnor, Mike Eghan at Piccadilly Circus, London (1967)
. Courtesy Autograph.
      Since 2007, when his work was exhibited at the Black Cultural Archives London, he has had 16 solo shows internationally. 
      “I wish I was just a bit younger for this,” he said wistfully as we sat in his home in suburban West London. “I’ve got so many stories. And for every story I could tell you, I have a photograph.”
      Barnor’s photographs from the 1950s show a buzzing Accra at the dawn of independence. Yet he lost his Accra photo studio when his landlord wanted the space back, and after a friend sent him a postcard suggesting he may want to live in London, he decided to make the jump. In 1959, he got the money together and went to the U.K. with the idea of learning about television, which was yet to be introduced in Ghana.
      “When you’re young and you get the opportunity, you use it,” he said. “I came for a new country and new experiences overseas.”
      Barnor’s big breaks included photographing the Ghanaian independence ceremony for The Telegraph and, about a decade after his return to Ghana from the U.K. in 1970, he opened Africa’s first colour processing lab in Accra. Photographs taken in Ghana include an image of Kwame Nkrumah, who would go on to become the first Ghanaian president after independence.
      James Barnor, Members of the Tunbridge Wells Overseas Club, relaxing after a hot summer Sunday walk, Kent
 (ca. 1968). Courtesy Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière .
      Still, he looks back on his early days in Ghana as “small fry” and calls his opportunities “luck.” 
      “Better late than never,” the photographer joked about his Serpentine exhibition, adding that he’d love to present the works in Ghana. “From Hyde Park to Northern Ghana, now that would really be a thing,” he said.
      As my visit drew to its end, he was still talking about projects and ideas. He showed me a video of the screening of three short films about his work in Trafalgar Square celebrating the opening of the Serpentine show. 
      “All this is wonderful,” he said, watching himself standing just where he took his immortal shot of Eghan in 1967.
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      ‘My Whole Purpose Was to Break the Tradition’: Watch Pakistani Artist Shahzia Sikander Subvert the Ancient Practice of Miniature Painting

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      The Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander helped create a whole new genre of painting known as neo-miniature—all before she’d finished her art degree. The extremely time-consuming practice is based on Indian and Persian miniature painting, which are rooted in traditional manuscript and book illustration.
      For her BFA thesis at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Sikander made The Scroll (1989-90), which represented the aesthetic challenge of a scroll’s rigorous framework, and was more than five feet long and almost a foot high (decidedly not miniature).
      “My whole purpose of taking on miniature painting was to break the tradition, to experiment with it, to find new ways of making meaning, to question the relevance of it,” Sikander told Art21 in an exclusive interview from 2001.
      Since that first breakthrough in the medium, Sikander has received a MacArthur “Genius” award, and raised the profile of neo-miniature painting to an international level. A survey of the first 15 years of her work, titled “Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities,” is now on view at the Morgan Library and Museum.
      Production still from the “Art in the Twenty-First Century” Season 1 episode, “Spirituality,” 2001. © Art21, Inc. 2001.
      In the video, which originally aired as part of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century series, the artist described her work as a continual process of investigating Western stereotypes of her Eastern heritage, power structures in both societies, and her personal identity.
      A recurring theme in her work is the juxtaposition of Hindu and Muslim imagery. In one work, she depicts a multi-limbed Hindu goddess with a traditional Muslim veil covering her face, combining the iconography in order to address the “entanglement of histories of India and Pakistan.”
      “These are very loaded issues to take on,” Sikander tells Art21, “because anything and everything associated with Islam is either terrorism or oppression for women.”
      Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century series, below. “Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities” is on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through September 26, 2021.
      [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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      5 Outstanding Artists From ‘Super-Rough,’ the Experimental Exhibition Takashi Murakami Curated for the Outsider Art Fair

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      “Super-Rough” is a pop-up, one-off extension of the Outsider Art Fair that displays a curated selection of highlights from galleries associated with the event.
      The hook for me is that I love this material. The hook from a broader cultural perspective is that the show was overseen by Takashi Murakami, the Japanese neo-pop artist famous for his collabs with fashion brands and stars like Billie Eilish (and sometimes, both, as in the recent Murakami x Eilish x Uniqlo T-shirt line).
      The main novel installation device here is to show all the work arrayed together on one long waist-height display pedestal, a kind of buffet sampling of Outsider Art Fair fare. A few more spectacular works and larger sculptures are dotted around the edges, but mainly we are talking about a crowd of small, tabletop objects: Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s remarkable little chicken bone thrones; Jordan Laura MacLachlan’s quietly surreal painted clay figures; the artist known as Jerry the Marble Faun’s limestone beast heads.
      Installation view of “Super-Rough.” Photo courtesy the Outsider Art Fair.
      Talking to the New York Times, Murakami is endearingly effusive about the work. The name “Super-Rough” is a reversal of “Superflat,” the long ago title of an art exhibition that made Murakami’s brand of anime-inflected pop famous, and that also stood as shorthand for his theory of the cultural dynamics of post-war Japanese visual culture. I’m not sure, however, that he has quite as much of a theory of the material he’s marshaling here.
      After circling the display a few times, I began to regret slightly the lack of attention on individual artists. Whether it’s because of Murakami’s pop sensibility—pop art being art relating to popular culture, which doesn’t really need a lot of explanation—or the event’s role as an extension of a commercial fair, the only contextualizing material on hand is a checklist with prices. (I should say: the online viewing room is a little more helpful.)
      Jordan Laura MacLachlan, Woman with Three Pigs (2010-2011), from Marion Harris gallery, shows in “Super-Rough.” Photo by Ben Davis.
      These are interesting figures—but not always easy ones to research outside of combing back issues of Raw Vision magazine. They tend toward personal, idiosyncratic ways of working—that’s part of this type of work’s pleasure—and there’s a benefit to knowing something about where they are coming from. The show’s knowing elevation of a yard sale is fun, but it doesn’t do anything to make entering the work easier.
      Here’s a joke. Q: “Did you manage to get to know any artists you liked at Murakami’s Outsider Art Fair show?” A: “I did—but it was super-rough!”
      Three works by Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, from the Gallery of Everything, in “Super-Rough.” Photo by Ben Davis.
      This is a technical gripe though, and a boring one. If you are interested at all in the Outsider Art Fair as a proposition, the show offers a tableful of starting points for things to get excited about. I recommend it.
      Here’s a guide to a few figures I came away wanting to know more about.

      Shinichi Sawada
      Multiple works by Shinichi Sawada, from Venus Over Manhattan and Jennifer Lauren Gallery, in “Super-Rough.” Photo by Ben Davis.
      I got to see a bunch of Sawada’s delightful clay creatures recently at Venus Over Manhattan, but it’s a delight to find them again here (they were also featured in the 2013 Venice Biennale). The artist, who is on the autism spectrum, has an immediately recognizable style. It evokes the frozen exaggerations of ceremonial masks or props for a festival of imagined creatures.

      Gil Batle
      Gil Batle, Abducted (2017), from Ricco/Maresca Gallery in “Super-Rough.” Photo by Ben Davis.
      Having formerly spent multiple stints in a California prison for fraud and forgery, Batle (b. 1962) has created a novel new life for himself carving ostrich eggs, telling stories of people he’s met and known. They are tremendously detailed, displayed here with magnifying glasses for review (though you can’t actually see all sides of each egg in the “Super-Rough” display).
      The fragile medium and decorative intricacy lends a kind of calming order to the often disturbing, frieze-like stories, as if the artist were turning painful lived experience into manageably controlled form. When you really look at the details, they are often bracingly grim—though a work like Abducted also includes a vision of flying saucers.

      Monica Valentine
      Three works by Monica Valentine in “Super-Rough,” from Creative Growth Art Center. Photo by Ben Davis.
      There’s this wonderful all-over tactility to Valentine’s sculptures, which are simple foam volumes adorned with colored sequins. Now associated with San Francisco’s famed Creative Growth Art Center (you can see her at work in an Art21 episode from a few years back), Valentine lost her sight as a girl and composes her work by feel. When you look at the pieces up close you really get a sense of how intricately individual they are, each sequin carefully speared in place by a pin.

      Moses Ogden
      Moses Ogden, Twisted Head (ca. 1900), from Steven S. Powers, in “Super-Rough.” Photo by Ben Davis.
      Ogden, who was born in 1844 and fought in the Civil War, is known for the sculpture garden of curiosities he created in and around his cabin in Angelica, New York, “Moses Ogden’s Wonderland.” His work involved taking found pieces of wood and transforming them into spooky sculpture, bringing out whatever form he saw haunting them. How great is this eerie Twisted Head?

      Chomo
      Chomo, Untitled (ca.1960/70) from the Gallery of Everything in “Super-Rough.” Photo by Ben Davis.
      French artist Roger Chomeaux, aka Chomo (1907-1999), was known, like Ogden, for a world he built: the Realm of Preludian Art, located in the forest near Fontainbleau, where he lived, building up his many creations. Pieces like this untitled one have a quality of suggesting a gargoyle for some kind of pagan cathedral but not quite arriving at a recognizable shape, floating confidently at the edge of meaning—sort of mirroring the way Chomo himself floated at the edge of the official culture, in self-imposed exile.
      “Super-Rough” is on view at 150 Wooster Street, New York, through June 27, 2021.
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      Can Smell Be an Artistic Medium? A Perfume Expert Teamed Up With Joana Vasconcelos and Other Artists to Make ‘Olfactory Sculptures’

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      We have art for the eyes and music for the ears, but what about about creative stimuli for our sense of smell?
      A new show at Phillips auction house in Paris is addressing this question through a new show of olfactory sculptures by six artists, including Joana Vasconcelos and Adel Abdessemed, which incorporate uniquely created fragrances by perfumers.
      “Profile By” is the fruit of an exploration by fragrance expert Diane Thalheimer, who invited each artist to team up with a perfumer to develop a fragrance and embed it into an artwork. She shared her idea with the fragrance production company International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), which agreed to pair six of its perfumers with the artists selected by Thalheimer. Strangely, Vasconcelos is the only woman artist included in the project. Thalheimer later approached Phillips, which offered to host the exhibition in its venue.
      “I chose artists who have strong personalities and a distinctive approach towards making art because that means their olfactory identity will be stronger,” Thalheimer told Artnet News. She then interviewed each artist to unravel their “olfactory identity” before matching each of them with an IFF perfumer.
      Joana Vasconcelos. Photo: Kyla Rosselli.
      Vasconcelos conveys in her scent, titled Lança, her interest in well-being and yoga. Her collaborator, perfumer Anne Flipo, sought to translate the seven chakras into an incense-based fragrance, which is diffused via Vasconcelos’s small, cross-shaped white ceramics decorated with brightly colored crochet.
      “We had Zoom meetings every week to discuss the fragrance and we met in Paris so I could understand the world of fragrances [by visiting the IFF laboratory],” Vasconcelos, who represented Portugal at the 2013 Venice Biennale, said of the collaboration.
      The experience of incorporating the sense of smell into her work has led Vasconcelos, who has exhibited monumental works at the Château de Versailles and the Bon Marché department store, to contemplate sculpture differently. “Normally my pieces are very large and occupy a space. Here, the sculptures are small and it is the fragrance that fills the volume of the space instead,” she said. Vasconcelos intends to incorporate scent-filled sculptures into her exhibition at the chapel Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes in France next year.
      The exhibition also highlights the importance of smell at a time when many people are losing it. “My cousin is one of many people who lost his sense of smell after contracting COVID-19,” Vasconcelos said.
      Pablo Reinoso. Photo: Kyla Rosselli.
      Meanwhile, French-Argentine artist Pablo Reinoso, who has designed fragrance bottles in the past, collaborated with perfumer Domitille Michalon Bertier to develop a fresh, woody scent that is diffused through the enamel part of his spiraling wooden sculpture, Rocking Me.
      “I’ve worked on creating fragrances for Givenchy but this is the first time that I’ve developed something about my own taste and not strategically for the consumer,” Reinoso said. “My concept is that rocking the sculpture activates the fragrance.”
      The most sensual piece is perhaps Abdessemed’s Noli me tangere—a ball containing an oriental rose fragrance balanced under a ceramic-and-plaster white sculpture of a woman’s foot. “When he smelled the rose [note], he immediately thought of a woman’s foot and envisioned seeing a woman that he can’t reach,” perfumer Paul Guerlain explained.
      Adel Abdessamed Photo: Kyla Rosselli.
      French sculptor and designer Hubert Le Gall is so enthusiastic about the project that he included his fragrance-embedded pieces in his current exhibition “Greek Fantasy” at Villa Kérylos in the south of France. He worked with Jean-Christophe Hérault on the aromatic fragrance inspired by the Greek god of wine, Dionysus, which is diffused through a vase pierced by a branch with glass beads.
      Each sculpture is produced in an edition of 15 to 50, with prices ranging from €4,000 to €14,000 ($4,800 to $16,900).
      “Profile By” is on view at Phillips, 46 Rue du Bac, 75007 Paris, until June 24, 2021.

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      The Obama Presidential Portraits Kick Off an 11-Month Tour in Chicago This Week. Tickets Are Already Selling Out

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      This week, the Obama Presidential Portraits go on view at the Art Institute of Chicago—the first stop on a 11-month-long, five venue tour. And the museum, which is now operating at full capacity, is expecting big crowds. 
      With the exception of two days, tickets to see the paintings by artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald are already sold out for the rest of June, a spokesperson for the Art Institute told Artnet News. 
      For the remainder of the portraits’ two-month stint, general admission tickets will be released in batches. Lines are expected to be long, and the institution will implement a  virtual queuing system to manage crowds, allowing ticket holders to explore the museum while they wait.
      Visitors will find the artworks on the ground floor of the Art Institute’s contemporary wing, where the paintings will be displayed side-by-side for the first time since they were unveiled in February of 2018. (As is tradition, portraits of former presidents and their respective spouses live in different exhibition spaces at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.)
      It’s a fitting spot to kick off the tour: Barack and Michelle Obama had their first date at the museum in the late 1980s.

      “The Obamas and the museum help define Chicago for people outside Chicago,” the Art Institute’s president and director James Rondeau told the Washington Post this week. 
      The portraits, he went on, tell a story of “a president and a first lady, a narrative of all the firsts they represent. But seeing them on the wall together, they are perhaps a little more Michelle and Barack Obama. They carry all of the historical precedents, and they carry some of their humanity.”
      The official portraits of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, painted by Wiley and Sherald, respectively, attracted mass crowds upon being installed at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in early 2018, leading to smashed attendance records and stories of gallery-goers breaking into tears. 
      In the two years and change that the artworks were on view at the museum, well over four million people saw them, a representative from the NPG said—and that’s a conservative estimate.
      People stand in line to see the commissioned portrait of former President Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery on February 20, 2018 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images.
      After Chicago, the portraits will make consecutive two-month stops at the Brooklyn Museum (August 27–October 24, 2021); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (November 7, 2021–January 2, 2022); the High Museum of Art (January 7, 2022–March 13, 2022);  and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (March 27, 2022–May 30, 2022), in that order.
      These five tour destinations were chosen for their connection to the artists and the Obamas, the NPG’s director, Kim Sajet, told Artnet News upon announcing the tour last year. Wiley was born in L.A. and is now based in Brooklyn, for instance, while Sherald went to college in Atlanta.
      “Because of the attention the portraits brought to the museum, so many people discovered the Portrait Gallery for the first time. They came to see the portraits and then stayed to look at everything else,” Sajet said. “I hope that is exactly what will happen at the museums where they’ll go on tour.”
      “The Obama Portraits” will be on view at the Art Institute of Chicago June 18 through August 15, 2021.
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      In Pictures: See a Starfish Brooch by Salvador Dalí and Other Glittering Works From the Museum of Natural History’s Surreal Jewelry Show

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      Last week marked the long-awaited reopening of the Halls of Gems and Minerals at New York’s American Museum of Natural History.
      Among the many upgrades to the formerly dated space, last renovated in 1976, is a new exhibition gallery that will host special exhibitions.
      The inaugural show, “Beautiful Creatures: Jewelry Inspired by the Animal Kingdom,” is curated by the jewelry historian Marion Fasel and features 104 piece of jewelry made over the past 150 years—essentially, since the museum’s founding in 1869.
      “It brings together extraordinary jewelry, inspired by fish, birds, butterflies, panthers, lizards, even spiders and jellyfish among others, fashioned by jewelry artists from around,” museum president Ellen Futter said at the press preview.
      According to legend, when actress María Félix commissioned this necklace, she carried live baby crocodiles into Cartier in Paris to serve as models for the design. The realistic sculpting of the gold includes the scutes of a crocodile’s skin. There are 60.02-carats of fancy intense yellow diamonds and 66.86-carats of emeralds in the setting. Photo by Nils Herrmann, Cartier Collection ©Cartier.
      One section of the show is dedicated to late 19th-century jewelry inspired by insect collecting, a popular fad of the period that grew in part out of the collections of institutions like the American Museum of Natural History. There’s an emerald and gold weevil and a stag beetle brooch made of diamonds, rubies, gold, and white gold.
      Also on hand is the famous Cartiér panther, as well as a snake necklace made by the house featuring no fewer than 2,473 diamonds, for a total of 178.2 carats.
      But the jeweler’s most remarkable contribution to the exhibition is undoubtedly a crocodile necklace created for actress María Félix in 1975.
      “The legend is that she walked into Cartier in Paris with a small crocodile and said ‘make me a necklace’—and they did!” Fasel said. It contains 60.02-carats of intense yellow diamonds and 66.86-carats of emeralds.
      Other one-of-a-kind of pieces in the exhibition include the Étoile de Mer Brooch made by Salvador Dalí for philanthropist Rebekah Harkness. She would wear it on her shoulder, so the starfish’s limbs would drape down her arms for an elegantly surreal accessory.
      “It demonstrates extraordinary mounting of gems,” Fasel added. “It has diamonds and rubies on the arms that are totally flexible to the point of being like mesh.”
      Two of Verdura lion’s paw shell brooches, made from lion’s paw scallops purchased by the Italian designer Duke Fulco di Verdura in the American Museum of Natural History’s gift shop in 1940, are on display in “Beautiful Creatures,” including this one. Photo courtesy of Stephen Webster.
      The curator also managed to track down two pieces of animal jewelry with direct ties to the museum itself in the form of a pair of lion’s paw shell brooches by Italian designer Fulco di Verdura, who worked in New York.
      “He got the shells from the gift shop here, took them across Central Park, and had his craftsmen set the diamonds along the crevices of the shell,” Fasel said. “He rather poetically thought it looked like water receding from the shell and shining in the sun.”
      See more photos from the exhibition below.
      This Boucheron stag beetle brooch was made in 1895 from diamonds, rubies, gold, and white gold. The jewel has a removable pin on the back, making it possible to wear it as a pendant, hair ornament, or brooch. Photo ©Boucheron.
      This Van Cleef & Arpels lion brooch is from the collection of philanthropist Brooke Astor, whose patronage of the New York Public Library has led to speculation that the piece might have been a nod to the marble lion statues that flank the main branch’s entrance on Fifth Avenue. Photo ©Sotheby’s.
      Reptiles jewelry in “Beautiful Creatures” at the American Museum of Natural History. Crocodile necklace, Cartier Paris, (1975), Yellow diamonds, emeralds, rubies (eyes) and gold; (Left) Snake ear clips, Cartier Paris, (1971) Rubies (eyes), diamonds (eyes), gold, pink gold and enamel; Salamander brooch (c. 1900), Demantoid garnets, diamonds, rubies (eyes) and gold; Lizard brooch (c. 1880) Demantoid garnets, diamonds, rubies (eyes), gold and silver; Tortoise clip brooch, Cartier Paris, (1962) Sapphires, diamonds, turquoise, platinum and gold; (Bottom) Tarantula brooch, Hemmerle (1995), Horse conch pearl, Umba sapphires, diamonds, colored diamonds and gold; (Right) Tortoise brooch French (c. 1900), Diamonds, rubies (eyes), gold and platinum; Tortoise brooch, David Webb (1971) Nephrite, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and gold. Photo D. Finnin/©American Museum of Natural History.
      Pavé-set amethysts and 71 cabochon rubies cover the curved surface and articulated arms of this gold starfish brooch, which was designed by Juliette Moutard for René Boivin. Experts think only four examples of the starfish brooch were made during the 1930s. Photo by D. Finnin ©American Museum of Natural History.
      American designer Joel Arthur Rosenthal has created only a few snake necklaces. This one, made in 1990, features JAR’s signature blend of pavé-set precious and semiprecious stones (sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds) in a silver and gold setting. French actress Jacqueline Delubac nicknamed the necklace “Dudule” after she acquired it from JAR. The moniker, a proper French name, could have been a play on Delubac’s last name. Photo courtesy of FD Gallery.
      This tarantula brooch was part of a series of animal-themed jewels created by the family-owned German firm Hemmerle between 1979 and 1996. The natural 111.76-carat brown horse conch pearl in the rear segment of the tarantula is believed to be one of, if not the, largest natural horse conch pearls in the world.Photo by D. Finnin ©American Museum of Natural History.
      Jewelry based on creatures of the air in “Beautiful Creatures” at the American Museum of Natural History. Photo D. Finnin/©American Museum of Natural History.
      “Beautiful Creatures: Jewelry Inspired by the Animal Kingdom,” is on view in the Halls of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York, from June 12, 2021. 
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      The Smithsonian Will Stage a Blowout Show With Objects From Across Its Museums—and 5 New Artworks—to Celebrate Its 175th Birthday

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      To mark its 175th anniversary, the Smithsonian Institution is staging a massive celebration in the form of a sprawling exhibition featuring works from many museums under the Smithsonian umbrella. To tie them all together, the organization is also commissioning site-specific art commissions from Beatriz Cortez, Nettrice Gaskins, Soo Sunny Park, Devan Shimoyama, and Tamiko Thiel and p/.
      The show, titled “Futures,” will be held at the Smithsonian’s storied Arts and Industries Building, which has been largely closed to the public for two decades. Dating to 1881, the building, which served as the first home for the U.S. National Museum, has undergone a $55 million renovation and is once again ready to welcome the public with an interdisciplinary, immersive exhibition asking them to consider how art and technology continue to shape our world.
      The show is due to open in late 2021; after its closure, the building will undergo another round of renovations before opening permanently.
      “We have tried to get a piece from each other Smithsonian museum to reflect that diversity of knowledge and celebrate that legacy within the construct of the future,” Ashley Molese, the Arts and Industries Building curator, told Artnet News.
      Expanded Present, an iridescent installation by Park, will greet visitors outside, surrounding the doorway with a sparkling cloud—because when a building has been closed for 20 years, you need to have something letting the public know you’re open for business.
      Soo Sunny Park, Expanded Present. Concept Design courtesy of the artist.
      The piece, which will change in appearance based on the time of day and shifting weather conditions, is made from reflective materials such as fencing, metal studs, and dichroic glass, which was invented by NASA.
      Once inside, there will be more than 150 objects to examine, including artifacts of scientific and technological advancement placed alongside works engaging the tools of the future.
      Highlights include the solar panels that Jimmy Carter installed on the roof of the White House during his presidency in the 1970s and the prototype of Virgin’s Hyperloop used in a successful test late last year. There’s  also the Bakelizer, the original machine that chemist-entrepreneur Leo Hendrik used to produce the first synthetic commercial plastic.
      Soo Sunny Park installing work at the Rice Gallery. Photo by Nash Baker courtesy of the artist.
      In addition to the commissions, other artworks will be scattered throughout the exhibition, including Stephanie Syjuco’s altered photographs of Filipinos put on forced display in “Living Villages” at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis—shown alongside a pamphlet from the event from the Smithsonian collection.
      But it is the five art commissions that will serve as anchors throughout the show.
      For her piece Chultun El Semillero, Cortez was inspired by chultunes, underground storage chambers built by the Maya in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. She’s filled her own welded steel versions with living plants, seeds, and other tools.
      “She’s had the structure be excavated from the earth to create these future space time machines that are transporting knowledge and seeds and medicine to this indeterminate place in the future,” Molese explained.
      The Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian.
      Thiel and p/’s ReWildAR uses augmented reality to show viewers a Washington, D.C., that has returned to nature, transforming the halls into a re-wilded garden. The artist consulted Smithsonian horticulture experts to determine what the environment might look like if climate change continues unchecked.
      “Tamiko was doing A.R. installations before anyone else was using that technology in the art world,” Molese said. “She’s imagining a moment in time in the future where… the landscape in Washington, D.C., has warmed and altered.” (Viewers can download an app to wander through the AR space, or use iPads provided by the museum.)
      Gaskins also explores new technologies with her “Featured Futurists,” portraits of such figures as Buckminster Fuller and Octavia Butler made using a A.I. neutral network application called Deep Dream.
      Nettrice Gaskins, Octavia Butler from “Featured Futurists.” Image courtesy of the artist.
      Shimoyama based his installation The Grove on utility poles, creating a sort of manmade forest where visitors can sit and reflect on the show and our more tumultuous recent history.
      “You come to a kind of clearing where you’re greeted by these stunning bedazzled Swarovski crystal-covered totems,” Molese said. “It’s almost a mourning garden or a labyrinth.”
      Despite the many challenges facing our world and the creation of intentional moments of meditation, the exhibition strikes a purposely optimistic note.
      “‘Futures’ is dedicated to a hopeful vision of a future that we choose, not one that we fear. We wanted to create it almost as a choose your own own adventure, defining pathways that build a more equitable, relatable, and inclusive future,” Molese said. “It was a very conscious choice not to be too dystopic in our vision.”
      “Futures” will be on view at the Smithsonian Institution, Arts and Industries Building, 900 Jefferson Drive, SW, National Mall, Washington, D.C., November 2021–July 2022. 
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