On View

Its been a long time since art was restricted to walls and pedestals, but artists at the cutting-edge of immersive experiences are still finding new ways to create layered encounters with sound, movement, and touch. These elements have made Atmospheric Memory by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer an international hit with audiences.
The Mexican-Canadian artist invites visitors to step into a physical concept that was once just an idea in the mind of 19th century British philosopher and inventor Charles Babbage. “The air itself is one vast library on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said or woman whispered,” wrote Babbage, marveling at how the atmosphere around us captures our every gesture and utterance, however small or mumbled. He even believed that air molecules stored this information, and that they could be the key to rewind the passage of time and experience these moments again.
Inspired by how this “vast library” might work in reality, Lozano-Hemmer has brought together a collection of interactive installations that each make use of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics. One is Cloud Display, a screen made of 1,600 ultrasonic atomizers that uses water vapor to write any word spoken into its voice recognition system. Another, Atmosphonia, is a sound environment that plays waves of familiar sounds like wind, fire, water, birdsong, and bells while visualizing these tonal changes with LED lights.
Lozano-Hemmer is known for his “anti-monument” to victims of Covid-19 and a light show over the U.S.-Mexico border, but he believes that this work may be his most ambitious. “Atmospheric Memory explores [Babbage’s] idea today, when the dream of perfect recollection is one of the defining conditions of our digital life, and the air that we breathe has become a battleground for the future of our planet,” he said.
The work debuted in the U.K. at Manchester International Festival in 2019 and has since traveled to the Carolina Performing Arts theatre in the U.S. The latest stop on its global tour is Australia, where it is headlining the Sydney Science Festival at the Powerhouse Museum until August 20.
See more images from the installation below.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Atmospheric Memory (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley.

More Trending Stories:  
The British Museum Has Reached a Settlement With a Translator Whose Work Was Used in an Exhibition Without Her Permission 
Known as a Deep-Pocketed, ‘Aggressive’ Chinese Collector, Ding Yixiao Has Now Been Blacklisted by the Art Market. What Happened? 
A German Court Rules That Martin Kippenberger’s Estate Must Name a Painter Who Executed His Works as a Co-Author 
Can a Digital Artwork Outlast a 19th-Century Painting? The Answer Is Complicated as Artists, Dealers, and Conservators Battle Obsolescence in the Field 
A Sculptor’s Lawsuit Against Kevin Costner Over Artwork She Created for His Planned Luxury Resort Will Finally Go to Trial 
Creepily, the Woody Allen Romp ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ Channels the Book That Outed Picasso’s Treatment of Women 
JTT, the New York Gallery Known for Minting Star Artists, Is Closing After More Than a Decade 
The British Library Has Discovered Scandalous Details Censored From the Official Account of Elizabeth I’s Reign 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

The long, unsung history of so-called “Women’s Work” takes center stage at the New-York Historical Society in a new show organized by the institution’s Center for Women’s History.
A selection of 45 objects drawn from the museum’s collection showcase the various roles—both paid and unpaid—women have served in New York City society over the centuries, and how a wide range of different activities have been considered “women’s work” during different periods of time.
“We wanted to look at at our collections and find and tell the stories and histories of diverse women,” Anna Danziger Halperin, the exhibition’s co-curator and the associate director of the Center for Women’s History, told Artnet News. “But the show’s title, ‘Women’s Work,’ is kind of a provocative one.”
“On one hand, we are looking at these historical examples of women’s labor of women’s work,” she said. “But then we’re also playing with the idea of women’s work as a stereotype of what people imagine is appropriate within cultural norms for women to do. It’s about the public sphere versus the private sphere, or men’s work versus women’s work, and really blurring those distinctions and showing how women have always worked.”
We spoke with Danziger Halperin about five key objects in the show and what they can teach us about how women’s work has evolved in New York City over the last 300 years. Here is what she had to say.

19th-Century Mahogany Cradle
Mahogany cradle (ca. 1820–30). Collection of the New-York Historical Society, gift of Mrs. Willis Reese.
This is one of the objects that make the biggest impact when you walk into the gallery, and it’s the biggest one physically in the exhibition. It’s a really gorgeous mahogany cradle from 1820 to 1830, with a wide arch over where the infant would have been rocked, draped with a prop veil—it’s very dramatic-looking.
It was really important for us to show examples of care work near the beginning of the exhibition, because that’s often what people think of when they hear the words “women’s work.” Yes, women are considered to be natural caregivers because female bodies can have babies, but caregiving is work whether it’s paid or unpaid, performed by mothers or other kinds of caregivers.
This cradle belonged to a family named the Gallatin who were wealthy and well-connected, very politically influential. [The donors were descendants of Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and founder of New York University.]
The infants who were cared for in this cradle were likely tended to by Black nurses in the 1820s. Because of the history of gradual emancipation in both New York and Pennsylvania, where the family lived, we believe that they were most likely indentured, rather than enslaved. And although that means that they were legally free, women laboring under indentures had to work for many years without wages or salaries. So, it’s a different kind of unfree labor.

National Welfare Rights Organization Pin
National Welfare Rights Organization pin-back button (ca. 1966–75). Collection of the New-York Historical Society, gift of Jim Lodge.
This a pin back button from the National Welfare Rights Organization. This is 100 and 50 years later, and I think there’s some really interesting connections. The organization was active from the late 1960s to the early ’70s. It was a movement that was really coming together at the intersection of the civil rights movement and women’s liberation and antipoverty activism.
Most of the leaders of the movement were single women of color, and they were pushing against social policies that were forcing recipients of different benefits to work in the pay market place rather than taking care of their own families.
The leading activist of the organization, Johnnie Tillmon, wrote an amazing essay for the inaugural issue of Ms magazine [in 1972], “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue.” We included this great quote on the label that in some ways, speaks to the exhibition as a whole: “If I were president, I would solve this so-called welfare crisis… I’d just issue a proclamation that ‘women’s’ work is real work.”
In the ’60s and ’70s, there were different competing kinds of cultural messages about women in the workplace. There were ideas that if you were a middle class or elite white woman, you were expected to stay home, but Black women and women of color were often forced to work for elite, wealthy white families.
There was a movement of feminists starting to say, “we shouldn’t be forced to stay home,” but then you had activists who were Black women saying, “yes, but we also shouldn’t be forced to go out to work. We should be able to be seen as respectable mothers and have our care work recognized as work. And our work of caring for our own babies is just as valuable to society as our work caring for white babies.”

Haudenosaunee Beaded Cushion
Unidentified Native American artist, Haudenosaunee beaded pincushion (ca. 1890–1910. Collection of the New-York Historical Society, gift of Arnold and Dora Stern.
This kind of beadwork work was often associated with women’s work in Indigenous groups. In the later half of the 19th century, when white settlers were really pushing them out of their historic lands, a really sophisticated kind of business model began to spring up, adapting this traditional bead work for a new souvenir market place.
This pin cushion is an example of that, made for white tourists coming to visit Niagara Falls, for example. It has a bird holding two American flags in its wings, and beaded fringe and leaves. It’s this sort of Americana decoration, like something that you would get at a gift shop for a presidential library.
It really shows this traditionally feminine form of craft being used in an entrepreneurial and creative kind of way. They are adapting because they can’t survive off of hunting and fishing and trapping in their homelands, and they need income. Indigenous women would sort of set up an assembly line within their home, and different family members would contribute.
But these things were sold as trinkets, little souvenirs. They were not very valuable. One of the points that we wanted to make is that often when work is identified as something that women do, its wages become depressed, and the professions that women were thought to pursue were more and more lowly paid.
And there’s connections here too to the work women were doing for the garment industry at the same time. We also have on display a hat that has silk flowers. Flower-making was something that women would often do at home with their children, as a way to get around, various labor laws and child labor laws.

Jessie Tarbox Beals, Portrait of Ann Haviland
Jessie Tarbox Beals, Portrait of Ann Haviland, perfumer, (ca. 1915–28). Collection of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
I love this photograph because we use it to tell both the story of two different professional women who were doing really interesting, creative work: Jessie Tarbox Beals, a photographer, and Ann Haviland, a professional perfumer. We might think of them as the new woman of the late-19th century, early-20th century, entering the professional world in new ways. And both of these women are artistic.
Ann is posed in the photograph surrounded by all the different tools of her profession. It really looks like she’s a chemist. So it’s really emphasizing the scientific expertise she had to have to create perfumes.
An early example of a professional perfumer, Ann ran a mainstream fragrance business at the early stages of the beauty industry—this new field where something that was seen as feminine was now being sold to a mass audience. She also marketed herself in really clever ways, by partnering with early film actresses and writing advice columns in fashion magazines. She was putting herself out there as the expert.
And Jessie Tarbox Beals was a professional photojournalist at the time that photography was really taking off. Beals bought her first camera from selling magazine subscriptions. She took a lot of photographs of different people at work, not just women, but men as well. We have a lot of those images in our collection, and several on display because they are so amazing.
In the exhibition labels, we quote from something that Beals wrote in 1904, that “all a woman needed to succeed as a photographer was her health and strength, a fair photographic outfit, and the ability to hustle.”

Mary Dickson’s Tavern license
Tavern license of New York City inn owner Mary Dickson (1784). Collection of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
This is a license that dates to 1784 that was held by a woman named Mary Dixon for a tavern on Moore Street in the South Ward. She was an innkeeper, and she was officially licensed to serve food and drink as well. Women are traditionally housekeepers. So, in some ways it’s an extension of work that would have fallen under women’s purview. It was seen as acceptable for women to be cooking.
Another one of the examples of women business owners that we have is a page of fabric swatches from an account book that was held by a woman merchant named Mary Alexander from the 1740s. Two women who had their own businesses in the 18th century!
We wanted to subvert what people would have expected from the time period about women in public-facing roles. Although under the British laws that would have governed the New York as a British colony, women were the property of either their fathers or their husbands, there was also a legacy of Dutch law that treated spouses as more equal economic partners. So there were women who worked within family businesses, as well as other women who supported themselves.
We included this license to show that women are not just making a clear, linear march towards progress and equality across the 300 years that we cover in the exhibition. It’s really much more complicated than that. But it shows that women’s work is everywhere, and underpins New York society and American society.
“Women’s Work” is on view at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (West 77th Street), New York, New York, through August 18, 2024.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

You might not know the name Dorothy Liebes (1897–1972), but the American textile designer and weaver was a hugely influential figure, with her work in fashion, film, transportation, and interior and industrial design helping define 20th-century taste in the U.S.
Now, she’s back in the spotlight with her first posthumous solo show—her first in more than 50 years—at New York’s Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. The exhibition, titled “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes,” is a celebration of the artist’s many accomplishments, her skills as a designer, and her considerable business acumen.
“Her career was so vast,” Susan Brown, associate curator and acting head of textiles at Cooper Hewitt, who co-curated the show with Alexa Griffith Winton, the museum’s manager of content and curriculum, told Artnet News. “She did so many different things, from being a Californian hand weaver, to her very prestigious commissions with important architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, to her work with fashion designers and on film sets.”
Born in Santa Rosa, California, Liebes got her start in textiles with a two-week stint at Chicago’s Hull House in the summer of 1920, taking weaving and dyeing classes. Three years later, she graduated from University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor of arts in decorative art, architecture, and applied and textile design. (She already had a degree in art education from the State Teachers College at San Jose.)
Dorothy Liebes in her Powell Street studio, San Francisco, California (1938). Photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, courtesy of the Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, ©Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.
By 1928, Liebes had a commission to design draperies for the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and by 1930 she had opened the Dorothy Liebes Studio in San Francisco. Although she collaborated on major architectural projects, including designing the drapery and upholstery for the 1938 New York World’s Fair, the designer also felt it was important that the average person could experience the “Liebes Look,” as her bold blends of vibrant colors accented with shiny metallic thread came to be known.
“She was very acutely aware that her textiles were extraordinarily expensive and could only be afforded by the one percent of the one percent, and she wanted to make them more widely available,” Brown said.
To that end, Liebes forged industry partnerships with companies like Goodall, DuPont, and Dobeckmun. (The latter were the the makers of Lurex, a synthetic metallic yarn that became a Liebes signature and that she helped expand to a wide range of colors beyond the typical gold and silver, including black and pastels.) She worked closely with manufacturers to replicate the results of her hand-weaving techniques on machine looms, helping bring her designs to the masses.
Dorothy Liebes, Mexican Plaid textile (ca. 1938). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
As a result, in the Postwar period, Liebes was able to move beyond high-profile commissions, which typically required a more restrained, subtle color palette to meet the client’s specifications, Winton said, and finally embrace “the virtuoso use of color that she was famous for.”
“The ‘Liebes Look,’ which was very frequently expressed in public spaces like nightclubs, restaurants, ballrooms, and luxury passenger liners, combined very saturated colors, often in unusual sophisticated combinations,” Brown said. “It had this textured, handwoven look with an abundant use of metallics.”
Dorothy Liebes, Sample card (ca. 1953). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.
It was an aesthetic that continues to influence 21st-century design choices to this day—Liebes was a major proponent of decorative pillows, and of livening up a room with an unexpected pop of color.
During her lifetime, Liebes was widely recognized in the press, and exhibited her work at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA), New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, which hosted her career retrospective in 1942. But, like so many women artists, her achievements quickly faded into obscurity, with the Liebes studio shuttering soon after her death, and no children to try and keep her memory alive.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Most of what was written about Liebes was in craft and women’s publications, which haven’t been widely digitized—and even when they have, photography rarely does justice to her gifted sense of color. And some of her most high-profile projects, like the New York interiors such as the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel, the Marco Polo Club at the Waldorf Astoria, and the Usonian Exhibition House, are now almost solely associated with their male architects (Henry Dreyfuss, Donald Deskey, and Wright, respectively).
Another part of the issue was that Liebes’s relatively fragile textiles were meant to be lived with. Drapes faded in the sunlight, and upholstered furniture got damaged by cigarette smoke. Very few objects are still with us today in good condition.
Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel, New York City (1950). Interior design by Henry Dreyfuss; drapes laced with tiny electric lightbulbs designed by Dorothy Liebes. Photo courtesy of the Henry Dreyfuss Archive, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.
Fortunately, the Cooper Hewitt is one of a number of U.S. museums blessed with a collection of showroom samples and exhibition pieces gifted by the Liebes studio after her death. And when Brown and Griffith were organizing this exhibition, they were able to turn to the recently digitized archives of the Liebes papers—which include over 40,000 items—at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.
The two believe the show—which features over 175 photographs, documents, and textiles, including clothing, furniture, and samples—has the power to reestablish Liebes’s legacy, restoring her to the pantheon of U.S. design history.
“This exhibition changes what you thought you knew about mid-century design,” Brown said. “There’s been so many monographs written about all of Dorothy Liebes’s major collaborators—Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Dreyfuss, and Samuel Marx. Now, hopefully people will realize there’s been a very important story missing all along. Her work was very impactful and broad-reaching, and touches on so many different aspects of 20th-century design.”
See more photos of the exhibition and the works on view below.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Installation photo of “A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at the Cooper Hewitt, New York. Photo by Elliot Goldstein, ©Smithsonian Institution.
Dorothy Liebes, Sample card, Chinese Ribbons (ca. 1947). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of Mrs. Morris D.C. Crawford. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
Dorothy Liebes, Handwoven panel for the Observation Lounge of the SS United States (1952). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
Dorothy Liebes, Sample card (ca. 1945). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
Dorothy Liebes, Sample card for Eagle Ottawa Leather Corp. (1958). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
Dorothy Liebes, Sample card (1945). Collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, gift of the estate of Dorothy Liebes Morin. Photo by Matt Flynn ©Smithsonian Institution.
Loom with shuttles at the Dorothy Liebes Studio (ca. 1947). Photo courtesy of the Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Dorothy Liebes Studio, New York City, as photographed for House Beautiful, October 1966. Photo courtesy of the Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Dorothy Liebes, sample for a window blind (1955). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Dorothy Liebes Design, Inc. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource New York.
Donald Deskey, armchair, (1938). Manufactured by Royal Metal Manufacturing Company; Upholstery designed by Dorothy Liebes. Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Florene M. Schoenborn. Photo courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, New York.
Dorothy Liebes, Power­-loomed drapery fabric for the Persian Room, Plaza Hotel, New York City (ca. 1960). Collection of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Photo by Jacklyn Nash.
“A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” is on view at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, New York, New York, July 7–February 4, 2024.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

The idea for a hit, two-venue summer group art show about the unlikely subject matter of boxing, with an all-star lineup of established and up-and-coming artists, was sparked by an idea that star artist Eric Fischl had a while ago. He thought about the boxer as a “metaphor” for the artist in the process of creativity, said chief curator Sara Cochran, who co-curated the exhibition with Fischl.
Little did he and his eventual fellow curators know what a rich vein they were about to mine. “I have to say, as a curator, I’ve never been involved in a show that revealed itself to be so deep within this topic,” said Cochran in a phone interview with Artnet News.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” at FLAG Art Foundation. Left: Rosalyn Drexler, In The Ring (2012). Center: Amoako Boafa, King (2021). Right: Rosalyn Drexler, Prize Fight (1997) Photo by Steven Probert.
The end result is “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” which features 100 artworks spread across both The Church in Sag Harbor on Eastern Long Island (through September 3) and at the Flag Art Foundation, the nonprofit space in Chelsea founded by collector Glenn Fuhrman (through August 11). Fischl and his wife and fellow artist April Gornik acquired the historic former Methodist church in Sag Harbor several years ago and turned it into a center for artists and the community. They offer artist residencies, as well as public space for programs and exhibitions.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing” at the Flag Art Foundation. Photo by Steven Probert.
To give even a sampling of the star-power lineup: artists featured at the The Church include Derrick Adams, Diane Arbus, Zoe Buckman, Jim Campbell, Carroll Dunham, Fab 5 Freddy, Fischl himself, Barry Flanagan, Jeffrey Gibson, Lyle Ashton Harris, Howardena Pindell, and many more.
The Flag Art Foundation presentation includes John Ahearn, George Bellows, Amoako Boafo, Andrea Bowers, Katherine Bradford, Rosalyn Drexler, Chase Hall, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Ed Ruscha, and Carrie Mae Weems.
Cochran highlighted that among the focal points of The Church show is the parallel that runs between the boxer and the artistic struggle—and the question of what is worth fighting for. It may come as a surprise to some viewers, she noted, as to how many women artists are featured in the show because they have tackled the matter of boxing in their work.
“We discovered women artists using boxing as a shorthand for victimization or an idea of empowerment. The fact that the boxer was like a Schroedinger’s Cat… both a winner and a loser,” is a through line of the show, said Cochran.
The Flag Art Foundation immediately got on board after hearing about the idea, though its director Jonathan Rider put his own twist on the presentation in terms of a historical framework. This includes a selection of Roman artifacts, iconic 19th- and 20th-century images by Eadweard Muybridge, George Bellows, and some of the first moving images created by the Thomas Edison Company, he said.
“These are presented in dialogue with artworks by 30 contemporary artists, including newly commissioned pieces. Artists Caleb Hahne and Cheryl Pope, who were both amateur boxers, address the physicality inherent to the sport from their own experiences; other artists respond in metaphorical and poetic ways, such as Vincent Valdez’s suite of oil paintings that look at Muhammad Ali’s legacy by those who eulogized him at his funeral. What was most surprising in organizing the show was the various ways artists continue to reimagine and reinterpret the boxer and boxing, from a cultural symbol of agility, endurance, and physical strength, to the mythos, spectacle, and violence of the sport.”
Fischl took it even deeper when explaining his own inspiration and methodology. The artist said that it was actually the fact that he had reached a point in his creative life “where the nagging doubts were stronger rather than farther away. Do I have anything left? Can I go back out there again? What do I have to offer in terms of inspiring myself?”
This led him to meditate on two works specifically. The first was The Pugilist at Rest, one of the few remaining bronze sculptures from 3000 B.C.E., which he described as “a remarkable sculpture of a man of a certain age who has been a boxer all his life. He’s sitting down. His hands are wrapped and he’s sitting there looking over his shoulder. Is he hearing his name called out or is he having an internal conversation about whether he wants to go back out there or not?”
The second work was a Pierre Bonnard self-portrait in which the artist portrays himself as a boxer, though it’s a painting in which he’s “clearly not a professional boxer,” as Fischl pointed out. “He’s posing as though he was willing to put up his dukes. He’s sort of feigning strength to himself looking in the mirror, this tough-guy stuff. It resonated with me, that pureness of perfection and beauty, the clarity of expression” that an artist is trying to communicate and deliver all of his life, but which can also be an “extraordinary burden. That’s what gave me the idea for the show.”
Here are a selection of highlights from the summer group shows.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing” at the Flag Art Foundation. Photo by Steven Probert.
Carrie Mae Weems, The Boxer (2012). Image courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery.
Amy Bravo, Congratulations Hero! (2023). Image courtesy the artist.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing” at FLAG Art Foundation. Photo by Steven Probert.
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” at The Church in Sag Harbor. Photo by Gary Mamay
Installation view of “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” at The Church in Sag Harbor. Photo by Gary Mamay
“Strike Fast, Dance Lightly” is on view through August 11 at the Flag Art Foundation in Chelsea, and through September 3 at The Church in Sag Harbour. It will next be presented at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida from fall 2024 to spring 2025.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

A new show at Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles will see Allen Ginsberg in dialogue with two distinct technologies: one of photography, which the late poet engaged with throughout the decades, and the other, entirely of our moment, A.I.  
Ginsberg acquired his first camera, a Kodak Retina, in 1953 and began avidly immortalizing his friends and lovers in pictures. He saw these pictures as “sacramental,” as he wrote in 1993’s Snapshot Poetics, a way of enshrining the spiritual gravitas of William S. Burroughs, say, or Jack Kerouac’s “exquisite… face and gestures.” 
“His photos just have that intimacy with deep reverence and admiration for his friends,” Peter Hale of the Allen Ginsberg Foundation told Artnet News, “which is a major component of his poetry: admiration of and reverence for humanity, a celebration.”
The exhibition, “Muses & Self: Photographs by Allen Ginsberg,” gathers such portraits of his Beat colleagues, including Kerouac, Peter Orlovsky, Neal Cassady, and Gregory Corso, captured candidly and spontaneously. But it also goes on to trace Ginsberg’s formal evolution as a photographer beyond this early interest.
Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, William H. Gass, Hotel Royal Elevator, Copenhagen, November 1985. Photo: © Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles.
In 1983, after years of dormancy, Ginsberg renewed his photographic practice by acquiring better equipment on the advice of Robert Frank and Berenice Abbott, and engaging in what he called “continuous reportage.”  
“He basically went from taking a roll or two a year to a roll or two every week!” said Hale. “This period through the late ’80s, I consider his richest, with almost every contact sheet producing something significant.” 
As his fame and friend circle grew, Ginsberg’s images from this era spanned styles and subjects. There’s a casual group shot at the 1990 Small Press Book Fair, a selfie snapped during an elevator ride with Arthur Miller, a street scene of Keith Haring leaving chalk art on a pavement, and a tender portrait of Patti Smith and Burroughs.
A number of Ginsberg’s photographs further feature his handwritten captions (a custom he picked up from Elsa Dorfman), which fill out the pictures’ contexts and narratives. They were “gems of hyper-compressed information,” said Hale, works of art in themselves that harken back to Ginsberg’s knack for poetic incision.  
As Ginsberg wrote in Snapshot Poetics: “In a sense, writing poems and taking pictures have been two discrete but very closely related activities.” 
Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka with Jayne Cortez, Rashida Ismaili, and friends, Small Press Book Fair, December 2, 1990. Photo: © Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles.
It’s apt, then, that “Muses & Self” will also unveil a series of poems that have been generated by an A.I. model trained on Ginsberg’s textual and visual output, including his poetry, prose, captions, and more than 400 photographs. 
The collection, titled “A Picture of My Mind: Poems Written by Allen Ginsberg’s Photographs,” has been developed in partnership with theVERSEverse, a Web3 poetry collective, and based on its member Ross Goodwin’s 2018 work, Word.Camera. It is supported by the Tezos Foundation and the Allen Ginsberg Estate.  
“It’s been exhilarating to see the resonances and associations that pop up between seemingly disparate words, images and moments,” theVERSEverse told Artnet News, “to see from a sort of aerial view how all the relationships and personal encounters and sacred moments captured in Ginsberg’s photographs may have filtered into or out of his writings.” 
Built from such a comprehensive ingestion of Ginsberg’s oeuvre, the generated works “speak to us from the past and invite us into the future,” the group added.
The algorithmically generated “Shared Reflections: A Snapshot,” for instance, created in response to Ginsberg’s image, Calcutta Self-Portrait with Peter Orlovsky, 1961, offers: “Who can capture / the fleeting essence / of such a moment, / fragments of the infinite?” 
Allen Ginsberg, Antler, Poet, Brooklyn Bridge, April 7, 1990. Photo: © Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles.
For his part, Hale has found the A.I. poems “fascinating,” locating them in the tradition of Burroughs’s cut-up experiments. The Beat writers’ choice technique of automatic writing is also echoed in the generative form, theVERSEverse points out. 
While the A.I.-generated poems that make up “A Picture of My Mind” have been edited and curated to keep it “true to [Ginsberg’s] inimitable voice,” theVERSEverse plans to further evolve its generator to reduce the need for such human intervention. Those results are bound for a long-form series planned for the fall alongside generative platform fxhash. 
“We’re essentially turning Ginsberg’s historical photographs into poem machines that allow us not just to read his work but also to engage, interrogate, interact, and continuously create with it,” the collective said. “We’re activating these photos and equipping them to talk back, invite us in deeper, and maybe even reveal things we don’t already know or see.” 
“Muses & Self: Photographs by Allen Ginsberg” is on view at Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 North La Brea, Los Angeles, August 10–September 23.

More Trending Stories:  
Archaeologists in the U.K. Are Using Ground-Penetrating Radar to Locate the 130-Year-Old Remains of a Legendary Performing Elephant 
The Company Behind the Wildly Popular ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ Experience Has Filed for Bankruptcy 
Drake Outs Himself as Buyer of Tupac Shakur’s Iconic Crown Ring, Sold for $1 Million at Sotheby’s 
Nefarious Data Collection Masking as Public Art? An A.I. Company Has Placed Mirrored Spheres Around the World in a Massive Eye-Scanning Project 
Three Ancient Roman Coins That Were Part of a Hoard Found in the U.K. Were Mysteriously Swapped With Other, More Valuable Coins 
Fast-Rising Artist Jeanine Brito’s Visceral Paintings Put a ‘Dark and Grotesque’ Spin on Fairy Tales 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

How have some legendary gallerists contributed to the making of art history? An exhibition at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin is honoring the discerning eye of Rudolf Zwirner, one of the most influential art dealers of all time, on the occasion of his 90th birthday.
Born in Berlin on July 28, 1933, Zwirner and his then wife Ursula Reppin opened his eponymous gallery in Essen, Germany in 1959, quickly expanding to a second location in Cologne (formerly Kunstmarket Köln) in 1963. He is usually credited with having invented the art fair after co-founding Art Cologne with fellow dealer Hein Stünke and artnet’s founder Hans Neuendorf in 1967. Perhaps most impressive of all, Zwirner brought international attention to the German art scene at a time when it had been greatly diminished by the economic ruin of World War II, Nazi suppression of “degenerate” art, and the exodus of many well-established Jewish dealers.
“When we started what became Art Cologne, there were just six of us who sold contemporary art, so it was really a risk,” Zwirner told Artnet News in 2021. “There was very little interest in contemporary art at that time. Now, there are 3,000 galleries in Germany that focus on it.”
In 1992, he retired as an active gallerist but his son David Zwirner, who was born in 1964, has become an art market giant with galleries in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Paris.
Bringing together some 80 works from the Deutsche Bank Collection, other private collections and museums, the show tells Zwirner’s life story and demonstrates his celebrated ability to spot talented artists in the early stages of their careers and support them in becoming successes.
Over decades, he worked with many of the biggest names in modern and contemporary art whose works are in this survey, including Louise Bourgeois, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, and David Hockney. A few standout examples from the more distant past include those by Tiepolo, Dürer, and Gaspare Diziani.
See a handful of works from the exhibition below.
Henri Rousseau, The sign as a painter (1903-10). Photo: Alistair Overbruck, © Courtesy Sammlung Zander.
Matija Skurjeni, Surprise Visit (1958–61). Photo: Alistair Overbruck, courtesy Sammlung Zander.
Astrid Klein, Untitled (I hermetically locked a man in the room) (1980). Photo: Timo Ohler, © Astrid Klein, courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers.
Michael Müller, Epiclesis (2022) from the series “Hades.” Photo: Mathias Schormann, © Studio Michael Müller.
Gerhard Richter, Bomber (1963). Photo: © Gerhard Richter 2023.
Gaspare Diziani, Cane and Abel (early 18th century). Photo: Lea Gryze.
“A Life in Pictures: A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner” is on view at the PalaisPopulaire by Deutsche Bank, Unter den Linden 5, Berlin, through August 14.

More Trending Stories:  
A Sculptor’s Lawsuit Against Kevin Costner Over Artwork She Created for His Planned Luxury Resort Will Finally Go to Trial 
Creepily, the Woody Allen Romp ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ Channels the Book That Outed Picasso’s Treatment of Women 
JTT, the New York Gallery Known for Minting Star Artists, Is Closing After More Than a Decade 
The British Library Has Discovered Scandalous Details Censored From the Official Account of Elizabeth I’s Reign 
Whether Painting Indoors or Out, Canadian Artist Keiran Brennan Hinton Imbues His Serial Studies With Intimacy and Devotional Intensity 
This Bonkers ‘Whale House’ in California, Inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s Architectural Whimsy, Comes to the Surface for $3.3 Million 
How the Many Dilemmas of Hannah Gadsby’s Anti-Picasso Show Feed Our Contemporary Cultural Doom Loop 
Researchers Have Found Hidden Details in Ancient Egyptian Paintings Using Portable Chemical Imaging Technology 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

A new exhibition with nearly 100 paintings by Claude Monet spotlights the artist’s trips to the French Riviera beginning with the first visit with his friend Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1883.
The show, titled “Monet in Full Light,” was curated by Marianne Mathieu and is on view at Grimaldi Forum Monaco, a conference center in the sovereign city state along the French Riviera. Three years in the making with the support of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, it coincides with the 140th anniversary of Monet’s first visit to Monte Carlo and the Riviera.
Monet, then middle-aged, began traveling extensively after death of his first wife, Camille, in 1879. He was invited by Renoir on a trip to the Riviera in December 1883. Their first stop after visiting Paul Cezanne in L’Estaque was Monaco, a place Monet called “the most beautiful spot on the entire Riviera.” The Impressionist painter made two pieces during this first visit that he never exhibited in Paris, as he was then without renown, Mathieu told the news outlet Monaco Life.
Monet returned alone in 1884 and in 1888, visiting Monte-Carlo, Roquebrune, Bordighera and Antibes. He made his famous paintings showing views of the fort in Antibes in all seasons from Salis Beach during his final visit.
Around 60 little-seen works Monet made during this era were shown at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1997.
This is seemingly the first time such a volume of these works has been shown near where he painted them and 23 of them are being exhibited for the first time, according to a news release.
“Monet’s work is very coherent. From his youth in Le Havre, to the last paintings in Giverny, the painter does not try to paint a motif, but rather a moment. Monet does not paint a landscape, but an atmosphere,” Matthieu said in a statement.
The exhibition also reveals new understandings about Monet during this era, including precisely where he put his easels and on which visit his paintings were painted.
Mathieu said Monet painted with “maturity” in his Riviera series, made between 1883 and 1888.
“Monet discovers himself as the painter of the series,” she said, adding, “Let’s not ask what Monet paints but rather when he paints it. Let’s not look for a motif but for a moment.”
See more images from the exhibition below.
Claude Monet, The Rowing Boat (1887). Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco/Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
Installation view of “Monet in Full Light.” Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
Installation view of “Monet in Full Light.” Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
Installation view of “Monet in Full Light.” Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
Installation view. Claude Monet, Villas at Bordighera (1884). Photo courtesy of Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt.
Claude Monet, Agapanthes (1914-1917). Photo courtesy of Grimaldi Forum Monaco/Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
“Monet In Full Light” is on view at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco, 10 Av. Princesse Grace, Monaco, through September 3.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

Derrick Adams’s long-running traveling show “Sanctuary”—first exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City in 2018—has opened at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan.
The body of work, on view through September 10, began with Adams wanting to create a tribute to Victor Hugo Green, a New York mailman, and his wife Alma Duke for their accomplishments in creating the annual The Negro Motorist Green Book. The annual travel guide, published from 1936 to 1966 during the Jim Crow era, provided Black travelers with a list of businesses across the country that served Black patrons.
Adams praised Green for “connecting patrons with Black business owners” around the country during the Jim Crow era with “innovation and problem-solving.”
“It was very important to see someone who took an initiative in a tumultuous time in history when violence and oppression were existing all around Black Americans,” Adams said while discussing his two years of research into the topic before his body of work was completed.
“Mr. Green and his wife Alma decided to create possibility through a publication that will connect people as a counter-response to the conditions of society at the time. For me as an artist, I was excited about responding to that history.”
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
The works in “Sanctuary” include large-scale sculptures as well as mixed-media collages and assemblages on wood panels. The collages use pages from the Green Book and other documents, while some pieces feature visual recreations of the locations listed in the travel guide, which served as refuges for Black Americans.
The artist also studied Black migration from the South to the North over time and particularly was inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series “and the mapping around that.” Adams said his work was inspired by Jacobs’ formal aesthetic and color palette, as well as the visual culture at the time.
“The issue of Black travel is something that is continuous because it is something that is still challenging depending on what part of the country you go to,” Adams said. “The exhibition was really acknowledging the Black traveler, centering them as a primary subject in the work.”
At the exhibition’s wrap at the Wright, Adams will be debuting new work at “Come As You Are,” his first show with Gagosian, on September 14. The exhibition will feature his new portraits and vignettes centered on the Black figure, whether real or imagined, and incorporating materials such as textiles.
According to Adams, this new body of work synthesizes ideas previously explored in his practice “in a way that is more seamless and layered formally and conceptually” than in the past.
“I think this particular body of work, beyond all others, fully utilized various color palettes spread across that are uniquely executed for individual works versus the series overall,” he said. “This particular body of work is my best work to date. I am excited to have it exhibited with Gagosian and I am looking forward to my new relationship with the gallery.”
See more images from “Sanctuary” below.
Derrick Adams. Upscale and or Lowbrow. Photo courtesy of Derrick Adams Studio LLC
Derrick Adams. There’s More Than One Beauty School.. Photo courtesy of Derrick Adams Studio LLC
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
Installation view of “Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 2023. Photo courtesy of the Wright Museum.
“Derrick Adams: Sanctuary” is on view at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 315 E Warren Ave, Detroit, through September 10.

More Trending Stories:  
A Sculptor’s Lawsuit Against Kevin Costner Over Artwork She Created for His Planned Luxury Resort Will Finally Go to Trial 
Creepily, the Woody Allen Romp ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ Channels the Book That Outed Picasso’s Treatment of Women 
JTT, the New York Gallery Known for Minting Star Artists, Is Closing After More Than a Decade 
The British Library Has Discovered Scandalous Details Censored From the Official Account of Elizabeth I’s Reign 
Whether Painting Indoors or Out, Canadian Artist Keiran Brennan Hinton Imbues His Serial Studies With Intimacy and Devotional Intensity 
This Bonkers ‘Whale House’ in California, Inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s Architectural Whimsy, Comes to the Surface for $3.3 Million 
How the Many Dilemmas of Hannah Gadsby’s Anti-Picasso Show Feed Our Contemporary Cultural Doom Loop 
Researchers Have Found Hidden Details in Ancient Egyptian Paintings Using Portable Chemical Imaging Technology 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More