On View

The High Line—a 1.45-mile-long elevated park on a converted railroad line, filled with verdant plants and an array of contemporary art installations—is one of the gems of Manhattan.
Free and accessible public art has long been a draw for High Line visitors. The latest iteration in the park’s revolving art program is the Plinth commission, which has been occupied by Simone Leigh’s towering female bust Brick House since 2019. Now, the High Line wants the public to weigh in on the next work to take pride of place, with 80 artist submissions to choose from for the next two commissions, set to appear in 2022 and 2024.
So, what do you want to see rising above the city at 30th Street and 10th Avenue? Below, see a selection of proposals and then visit the High Line website by the end of September to comment.
Nick Cave, A·mal·gam. Courtesy of the artist and the High Line.

Iván Argote, Dinosaur. Courtesy of the artist and the High Line.

Meriem Bennani, Bouncy Storm. Courtesy of the artist and the High Line.

Bronwyn Katz, Untitled (roots). Courtesy of the artist and the High Line.

Mary Sibande, Old Wars are Out and a New Reason of Humanity is In. Courtesy of the High Line.

Carlos Motta, Koray Duman, and Theodore Kerr, THE VOID. Courtesy of the artists and the High Line.

Amanda Williams, Sandra’s refuge: Safe Passage for Free Movement in Public Space.

Banu Cennetoğlu, right?. Courtesy of the artist and the High Line.

Willie Cole, Totem. Courtesy of the artist and High Line.

Nina Beier, Women & Children. Courtesy of the artist and the High Line.

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In exactly two months, Americans will vote in the presidential election, determining the social, economic, and cultural trajectory of the country for the foreseeable future.
In a prescient artwork aptly titled Theatre of the Absurd, the multitalented artist Eleanor Antin crafted paper dolls to resemble the outrageous characters running as Republican candidates in the 2016 presidential race. In an exclusive interview with Art21, Antin laughed darkly, saying, “I thought that I was finished working with paper dolls and was on to other things until those idiotic Republican debates and that insane list of characters.”
The installation features a diminutive Donald Trump hamming for the camera, Marco Rubio “trying to be noticed,” and Ted Cruz, who Antin describes as vampiric.
In the video, which originally aired in 2016 as part of Art21’s Extended Play series, Antin describes the surreality of seeing her work reinvented and re-performed as life unfolds it through a contemporary lens at this moment in time “with the similarities and the ambiguities—I realize, oh my god, this is like I was prophesying!”

Production still from the Art21 “Extended Play” film, “Eleanor Antin: Politics & Paper Dolls.” © Art21, Inc. 2016.

Antin’s opulent photographic series “The Last Days of Pompeii,” shot in La Jolla, California, draws parallels between the picturesque ancient city that was unknowingly on the brink of ruin and that of a wealthy 21st-century enclave, blissfully ignorant to the impending climate crisis, economic collapse, and societal inequities.
Antin’s work with paper dolls has also included creating likenesses of other artists she admires, including feminist icon Judy Chicago, the poet Jackson Mac Low, and the late painter Elizabeth Murray. Working with the figures allows Antin to keep their presence in her life, she says. “My work has always been political, has always been comic—and also sad” 
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series “Extended Play,” below.
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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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The New York subway system isn’t exactly city dwellers’ favorite place to spend time, but it does provide a vital means of getting around—and it also happens to play an integral role in the city’s creative history. From early graffiti artists to contemporary photographers, the art on display underground has often been just as exciting as what’s going on above.
Now, to celebrate the recent Video Music Awards (which aired on Sunday, with most celebrity appearances filmed beforehand) two MTV employees decided to put on a pop-up art show celebrating BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists.
Invigorated by the uprising in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, Antonia Baker and Rich Tu reached out to eight local artists to create work addressing themes of music, space, unity, and the future, as well as their personal experiences.
The artists include Eva Zar, Amika Cooper, Bronson Farr, Eugenia Mello, Kervin Brisseaux, MorcosKey, and Zipeng Zhu. The installation will continue through September 6 at the Atlantic Terminal Subway Station in Brooklyn.
See images of the pop-up exhibition and individual works, below:

Courtesy of Eva Zar and MTV.

Installation view of the pop-up MTV VMA art exhibition at the Barclays Center.

Courtesy of MorcosKey and MTV.

Installation view of the pop-up MTV VMA art exhibition at the Barclays Center.

Courtesy of Zipeng Zhu and MTV.

Courtesy of Amika Cooper and MTV.

Courtesy of Bronson Farr and MTV.

Installation view of the pop-up MTV VMA art exhibition at the Barclays Center.

Courtesy of Kervin Brisseaux and MTV.

Courtesy of MorcosKey and MTV.

Courtesy of Eugenia Mello and MTV.

Courtesy of Eva Zar and MTV.

Courtesy of Zipeng Zhu and MTV.

Installation view of the pop-up MTV VMA art exhibition at the Barclays Center.

Courtesy of Kervin Brisseaux and MTV.

Courtesy of Bronson Farr and MTV.

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A painting once rejected as a lowly copy of the work of Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn may be the real thing after all, announced the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford on Friday. New scientific research has found that Head of a Bearded Man was almost certainly painted in the great artist’s studio, possibly by Rembrandt himself.
The painting, donated by an anonymous British art collector and dealer in 1951, had been previously accepted as an authentic Rembrandt, until the Rembrandt Research Project reviewed the work in 1981. The authenticating body ruled that the picture was a mere copy, perhaps not even painted during the artist’s lifetime, and the museum exiled the wood panel to its basement.
This week, Head of a Bearded Man will make its triumphant return to the galleries as a late addition to “Young Rembrandt,” the Ashmolean’s exhibition tracking the artist’s early career and artistic development. (The show’s dates have been extended through the fall following the museum’s reopening in August.)
“It is incredibly exciting to find out that a previously unidentified painting can be placed in the workshop of one of the most famous artists of all times,” said An Van Camp, the Ashmolean’s curator of northern European art, in a statement. “I am delighted to have the chance to show the panel in our exhibition where it can be seen alongside other works painted in Rembrandt’s workshop at the same time.”
This 1777 label on the back of Head of a Bearded Man (circa 1630) identifies the panel painting as the work of Rembrandt. Photo courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum.

Van Camp had been curious about the small, disgraced picture in museum storage since she joined the institution in 2015. “It is very typical of what Rembrandt does in Leiden around 1630,” she told the Guardian. “He does these tiny head studies of old men with forlorn, melancholic, pensive looks.”
While the exhibition was on pause, Van Camp and museum conservators Jevon Thistlewood and Morwenna Blewett enlisted Peter Klein, an internationally renowned dendrochronologist, who analyzes tree ring growth to date wooden samples, to examine the painting.
He determined that the wood panel had to have come from the same tree as two other historic paintings: Rembrandt’s Andromeda Chained to the Rocks (circa 1630, Mauritshaus, The Hague) and Jan Lievens’s Portrait of Rembrandt’s Mother (circa 1630, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden). At the time, Rembrandt and Lievens were both young artists working in Leiden, and possibly even sharing a studio.
Rembrandt_van_Rijn, Andromeda (circa 1630). Photo courtesy of the Mauritshuis.

The panel “came from an oak tree in the Baltic region, felled between 1618 and 1628,” Klein said in a statement. “Allowing a minimum of two years for the seasoning of the wood, we can firmly date the portrait to 1620 to 1630.”
These new findings are quite promising—which is why Head of a Bearded Man will go on view at the Ashmolean starting Wednesday. But they aren’t enough to reauthenticate the work outright.
“It requires further conservation and cleaning before any more conclusions can be drawn about it,” a museum representative told Artnet News in an email. “We will do this when it comes off display at the end of the exhibition.”
“Young Rembrandt” is on view online and at the Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH, UK, August 10–November 1, 2020. 
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Art institutions around the globe are reckoning with legacy of racism and colonialism. But what happens when your institution is literally dedicated to celebrating colonial history? In recent years, Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia has been working to re-examine its treatment if history to render a more accurate picture of early America, sins and all.
Visitors got a first look at the results when the Art Museums at Colonial Williamsburg reopened late last month. Following a major three-year renovation, the museums boast a new 65,000-square-foot wing, an expanded entrance, and 25 percent more gallery space, allowing curators to showcase objects previously in storage. (Larger common areas, including a new cafe and museum store, will also in handy as social distancing rules are enforced.)

Installation view, “Early American Faces.” Courtesy of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

The $41.7 million project, funded by donors, allowed curators the time and space to develop more ambitious exhibitions, including “Early American Faces,” which strives to showcase the array of individuals—enslaved, free, white, Black, and American Indian—represented within the museum’s holdings.
The show is the brainchild of chief curator Ron Hurst, who oversees the collections at both art museums as well as some 200 period rooms, preservation of the historic area’s 600 buildings, and its archeology and conservation programs.
As part of its rethink, the museums updated their wall labels to address the previous erasure of slaves at Colonial Williamsburg. The initiative, steered by Hurst, means that decorative objects, tools, and other pieces of the collection that were previously labeled as the work of one individual will now note that slaves also contributed—and, in many cases, actually created the works entirely, previously without credit.
According to Jamar Jones, an actor who has played roles at the living history museum including that of Jupiter, an enslaved manservant to Thomas Jefferson, “Speaking the names of enslaved individuals is particularly vital because sometimes that is all that is available to us. A name and the monetary value assigned to their life.”

The new entrance to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, June 2020. Courtesy of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Over the course of the shutdown, operations at Colonial Williamsburg remained relatively unscathed: the institution managed to avoid layoffs, with many staff members pivoting to telework, and others performing tasks in person at a safe distance, according to the institution. Restaurants that typically serve tourists operated a volunteer program to feed community members outdoors in Williamsburg’s gardens, providing 25,000 meals to children who were out of school and without access to regular meals.
Speaking to Artnet News, Hurst stressed the importance of maintaining a historically accurate record, while also acknowledging the gross disparities among African American and European settlers. The former, which included both free and enslaved individuals, made up at least 51 percent of the population during the Revolutionary era. They are represented by Black actors as part of the “living history” museum.
Hurst notes that, as is often the case with formal, historically white-led history institutions, objects that survived and continue to be celebrated were those owned by the wealthy. But Williamsburg is working to continue its archaeological examination of the site to enrich its understanding of Black history. Among the discoveries are networks of underground storage that show how slaves hid valuable possessions.
“Objects that survived from the past are so frequently those associated with people who had means,” Hurst said. Archaeology, he added, “allows us to bring forth those artifacts that speak to the experiences of people of color.”
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The artist Doris Salcedo is not interested in depicting her personal experiences through art. Instead she tries to give life to the experiences of others, especially the silenced masses who are lost to violence or disenfranchisement.
“I am a third-world artist,” the Colombian-born Salcedo says in an exclusive interview with Art21, adding that she puts herself in the position to speak “from the perspective of the victim, from the perspective of the defeated people.”
In the video interview, which originally aired as part of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century series, Salcedo recounts visiting the sites of mass death and destruction and researching the lives of people who were disappeared, unearthing their stories through her work. She describes herself as taking on the role of a “secondary witness” to the travesties of history. “I don’t work based on imagination, on fiction.”
Salcedo’s works are subtle, though they pack a huge emotional charge. Often they are exercises in futility. One, the project Unland, involved embroidering hair into the grain of wood. The artist cites the poet Paul Celan, who once said, “It is only absurdity which shows the presence of the human.”

Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth at The Tate Modern gallery in 2007. Courtesy of Getty Images.

The interview also features Salcedo’s assistants, part of a 15-person crew who help her bring seemingly impossible ideas into being, often involving their own personal pain and suffering. Ramón Villamarin, who acts as a sort of engineer for Salcedo, notes, “Doris always tries to make something kind of impossible.”
This commitment to the impossible was well in evidence in her Tate Modern Turbine Hall commission, a stunning 160-meter long crack that ran the length of the building’s chic, industrial floor. The title, Shibboleth (2007), is taken from the Bible and refers to a massacre perpetrated over a minor difference. For Salcedo, the physical crack in an otherwise pristine temple of modernism and wealth suggests the pervasive history of racism and colonialism.
In describing the cleaved floor, Salcedo explains, “I wanted this crack to break the building and intrude… almost the same way a nonwhite immigrant intrudes in the sameness and consensus of white society.” 

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Art in the Twenty-First Century, below.
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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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As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to reopen, we are spotlighting individual shows—online and IRL—that are worth your attention.
“William Scott: It’s a Beautiful Day Outside” at Ortuzar ProjectsThrough September 26, 2020

What the gallery says: “If there is a proclivity to label self-taught artists as ‘visionaries,’ it is also because a lack of specialized training promises the subversion of disciplinary boundaries; allowing perception through and beyond the rigid systems that structure—and sometimes stifle, or close down—our expectations for art, for each other, our imagination, and ourselves. The principal vision that all Scott’s works in various media propose is a utopian world that exists in no time like the present, but instead draws on memories of the past, and collective hope in the future, to finally make peace with the condition of human frailty.”
Why it’s worth a look: It’s the first New York show in more than a decade for the San Leandro, California-based artist William Scott. He is often categorized as a “visionary” or “outsider” artist because he is self-taught, the gallery says, but the lack of conventional training is a benefit to Scott’s freewheeling and imaginative practice.
The exhibition, which spans decades of the artist’s career, showcases Scott’s layered and detailed imaginary worlds, populated by famous figures and ordinary people from his own life alike. The fantastical elements: citizen-ships that promise a “Skyline Friendly Organization” are bound for space with the likes of Janet Jackson, Curtis Johnson, and Deena Jones on board—a perfect sci-fi future in the artist’s eyes.
A series of papier-mâché busts depicting Spiderman, Darth Vader, and Frankenstein’s monster are actually masks worn by the artist to assume a new identity. In detailed compositions of city streets that could serve as animation cels, the artist commits every aspect of his environment to the page from various angles, the earthly realm he dwells in while he imagines the limitless future of his imagination.
What it looks like:

Installation view, “William Scott: It’s A Beautiful Day Outside.” Courtesy of Ortuzar Projects.

William Scott, Untitled (ca. 2007). Courtesy of the artist and Ortuzar Projects.

William Scott, Untitled (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Ortuzar Projects.

William Scott, Untitled (2019). Courtesy of the artist and Ortuzar Projects. More

As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to reopen, we are spotlighting individual shows—online and IRL—that are worth your attention.
“Susan Chen: On Longing” at Meredith Rosen Gallerythrough September 19, 2020

What the gallery says: “Chen’s work is a navigation of identity and belonging. Her practice embodies these themes both internally and externally: the painting process prompts inward reflection while the paintings themselves provide outward representation.
Chen paints to answer questions about her own identity and to address the lack of Asian Americans in Western portraiture. When painting Asian Americans, Chen is at once powerful and vulnerable. As an artist, she can grant visibility to her community through her work. As an Asian American, she must confront her own fears and desires in every portrait. ‘On Longing’ represents her embrace of this dichotomy.”
Why it’s worth a look: The layers of colors and textures in Chen’s portraits, not to mention the intricately detailed backgrounds her subjects populate, point to someone enamored with the practice of painting. Thanks to quarantine, Chen’s work in this show feels single-minded and true to its setting. You can hear the commotion from the street scenes and feel the warmth from a cozy-bordering-on-claustrophobic living room. In the painting Street Cars of Desire, the artist herself appears reading Jerry Saltz’s book How to Be an Artist as train cars chug around the canvas bearing the names of painters she admires both living and dead: Soutine, Matisse, Bonnard, Hockney, Susanna Coffey, Aliza Nisenbaum.
As a first-generation immigrant, Chen found her subjects through chat forums for other Asian Americans, and as described by the gallery, invited some she encountered to be her models. Maybe that’s the reason why some of the characters in her work appear uncomfortable, but more likely it is the disquietude of being “other.” In the work About Face, a quartet of girls stand awkwardly in front of a university building, one of them holding a book with the title Racial Melancholia. 
What it looks like:

Installation view, “Susan Chen: On Longing” at Meredith Rosen Gallery. Photo: Adam Reich.

Susan Chen, Arnie’s (2020). Photo: Adam Reich, courtesy Meredith Rosen Gallery.

Susan Chen, Tadashi Mitsui (2020). Photo: Adam Reich, courtesy Meredith Rosen Gallery.

Installation view, “Susan Chen: On Longing” at Meredith Rosen Gallery. Photo: Adam Reich.

Susan Chen, About Face (2020). Photo: Adam Reich, courtesy Meredith Rosen Gallery.

Susan Chen, Nude Self Portrait (2020). Photo: Adam Reich, courtesy Meredith Rosen Gallery.

Susan Chen, COVID-19 Survival Kit (2020). Photo: Adam Reich, courtesy Meredith Rosen Gallery.

Susan Chen, Yang Gang (2019). Photo: Adam Reich, courtesy Meredith Rosen Gallery.

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