Shows & Exhibitions

Its easy to forget that long before human evolution, dinosaurs roamed many of the same landscapes we enjoy visiting today. For a special project, the land artist David Popa has brought this prehistoric fauna back in the form of large scale portraits.
The three works were completed as part of the American artist’s involvement with the second season of Apple TV’s “Prehistoric Planet,” narrated by the nature documentary legend Sir David Attenborough.
One mammoth 100-feet-wide depiction of a T-Rex head bearing its teeth was composed on the red rock of a desert in Utah. Travelling far and wide, Popa also drew a Hatzegopteryx— most notable for its huge wings—on a remote island in Finland, where he lives.
Finally, a Triceratops appeared along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and major destination for fossil collectors.
The ancient animals were drawn straight onto the land, incorporating the terrain’s natural textures into pictures that were made using organic materials like charcoal, chalk and earth pigments. Each work took up to 15 hours to complete.
“It looks like the skin of a Triceratops,” Popa told BBC News about the role of the earth’s surface in the works. “I didn’t have to do too much because it was working for me.”
Due to their expansive size, the portraits can only be seen in their entirety from above and have been documented by drones before they were inevitably worn away by the weather.
“We’re so used to seeing things on a horizontal plane,” Popa said. “But how many beautiful locations are there that look completely different from top down? There’s a limitless number of locations that look otherworldly.”
Popa is no stranger to making art in challenging conditions. Other examples of him working in the wild include a series of faces drawn with charcoal onto fragments of ice. These pieces were also highly ephemeral, although photos of the lost images have been sold as limited edition prints and 1/1 NFTs. More

They may be two of the best-known names in early 20th century modern art, but Piet Mondrian and Hilma af Klint never actually met. Decades after their deaths in 1944, they are enjoying a posthumous encounter for a new show at Tate Modern in London.
With more than 250 paintings, drawings and archival objects, the exhibition “Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life” demonstrates how, even as each artist embarked on their own distinctive journey towards abstraction, many of the same forces were at play.
Both artists shared an initial love of landscape painting and nature before getting swept up in the more radical ideas of their age.
Born in Stockholm, Af Klint was one of the first women to attend Sweden’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and began making a living by creating conventional, naturalistic works including botanical studies. Her real passion lay, however, in spiritualism and she became a medium who later claimed that voices had told her to “to execute paintings on the astral plane.” The result was a highly enigmatic, esoteric body of work that she kept secret for decades. As these paintings have become better known by the public, however, many have realized that Af Klint may well have been very first abstract artist.
Mondrian’s early depictions of plants grew steadily more abstracted over time, until all that remained was the most basic structure of colour and line. At the same time, the Dutch artist’s interest grew in movements like theosophy and anthroposophy. The minimal grid paintings for which he is best known can therefore be understood as attempts to get closer to the essential reality of the universe.
Though the two artists arrived at very different destinations by the end of their lives—Af Klint’s swirling masses a far cry from Mondrian’s more geometric style—the organic world remains for both the universal language through which they made their biggest breakthroughs.
See some key works from the exhibition below.
Piet Mondrian, The Gein Trees along the water (c.1905). Photo courtesy of Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
Piet Mondrian, Red Amaryllis with blue background (1909–1910). Photo courtesy of Tate.
Installation view of “Hilma Af Klint and Piet Mondrian” at Tate Modern 2023. Photo: Jai Monaghan, courtesy of Tate.
Installation view of “Hilma Af Klint and Piet Mondrian” at Tate Modern 2023. Photo: Jai Monaghan, courtesy of Tate.
Installation view of “Hilma Af Klint and Piet Mondrian” at Tate Modern 2023. Photo: Lucy Green, courtesy of Tate.
Installation view of “Hilma Af Klint and Piet Mondrian” at Tate Modern 2023. Photo: Jai Monaghan, courtesy of Tate.
Installation view of “Hilma Af Klint and Piet Mondrian” at Tate Modern 2023. Photo: Jai Monaghan, courtesy of Tate.
Installation view of “Hilma Af Klint and Piet Mondrian” at Tate Modern 2023. Photo: Jai Monaghan, courtesy of Tate.
“Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life” is on view through September 3.

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What’s in a forgery? More than you would expect, according to a new show at London’s Courtauld Gallery.
Opening June 17, “Art and Artifice: Fakes from the Collection” brings together paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the museum’s holdings that have one thing in common: they’re not genuine. The 15th-century panel depicting virgin and child? A 1920s forgery in the style of Botticelli. That watercolor seascape by John Constable? A passing imitation.  
But the exhibition is less a show about the art of forgery than an inquiry into the value of art—and not just the financial kind. The show’s curators Karen Serres and Rachel Hapoienu instead are attempting to suss out the historical and aesthetic value of fakes. 
“If this drawing is by Michelangelo, it adds to our understanding of his evolution as a draughtsman,” they said in a joint statement to Artnet News. “If the drawing is by a forger, then it tells a different story altogether, and has value as a teaching tool for our students and researchers. Close examination of a forger’s lines and their comparison to Michelangelo’s lines forces us to consider the draughtsmanship of each artist.” 
Some fakes too, they added, have been made of works by artists that are little known today, indicating that these artists were likely “much more popular in their own time to give rise to a market for forgeries.” 
It’s for these educational purposes that the gallery has received forgeries over the years, being an institution dedicated to teaching art history and conservation. Some pieces were donated as out-and-out frauds meant to be studied; some others were gifted by collectors who later learned that their prized works, upon technical analysis and provenance research, are but knock-offs.
Jacob Savery I, Forgery in the manner of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rocky landscape with a castle (c. 1590). Photo: The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust).
Still, though forged works may have been produced to hoodwink collectors or museums, the show makes an argument that they too might be considered artworks themselves. Serres and Hapoienu point to the fake Constable, executed in the 1840s long after the artist’s death, which fooled generations of experts, and to the fact that even a skillfully executed fake could be affecting to a viewer.
“If you find a piece of art beautiful, or moving, or thought-provoking, does it matter the name of the artist?” they said. “If a fake is good enough to fool all of the experts, does that mean its aesthetic quality is undisputed? Does knowing the artist’s identity automatically enhance our appreciation of a work of art?” 
In fact, forgers themselves are artists to begin with. The exhibition includes works from the 16th century that were created by well-known artists, as well as those by notorious forgers Han van Meegeren, Falsario del Guercino (Faker of Guercino), and Eric Hebborn, whose counterfeits have entered both art history and the art market.  
Essentially, the curators hope the show might create more transparency around discussions of art forgery (accompanying the Courtauld’s upcoming online collections database that will allow visitors to easily search its collection for fakes). After all, even with art expertise on hand and technological advancements in authentication, anyone could be duped. 
“Most of these fakes fooled the experts of the time and later, and many were likewise unmasked by experts, so there is this question of connoisseurship and our reliance on it in the study of art,” said the curators. “We hope it also serves as a reminder of our fallibility, and that we should challenge our assumptions—often we see what we want to see, and we need to try to view works of art with a critical eye and open mind.” 
See more works in the show below. 
Umberto Giunti, Forgery in the manner of Sandro Botticelli, Virgin and Child (1920s). Photo: The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust).
Forgery in the manner of Auguste Rodin, Seated female nude. Photo: The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust).
Han van Meegeren, Forgery in the manner of Dirk van Baburen, The Procuress (c. 1930). Photo: The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust).
“Art and Artifice: Fakes from the Collection” is on view at the Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London, June 17 through October 8.

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Two men slowly stripped off their clothes and folded them into a neat pile at the preview of “Picasso: Untitled” in Madrid’s La Casa Encendida on May 19. Reclining in the nude against a black, velvety bench at the center of the gallery, they took up a similar position to the woman depicted in Picasso’s 1964 painting on the opposite wall. They held the pose. Visitors stole glances, whispered, and snapped photos.
The performance by artist Maria Hassabi flipped Picasso’s infamous gaze on the women he painted—often depicted as bodies broken into disjointed, monstrous figures—and aimed it at men. Hassabi is one of 50 other contemporary artists invited to re-title and write a new description of a Picasso work, made between 1963 and 1973. On view until January 7, 2023 the show is part of a bonanza of international exhibitions commemorating 50 years since Picasso’s death in 1973; shows celebrate and, on a few notable occasions, skewer the artist.
Picasso’s controversial portrayals and treatment of the women during in his lifetime have been under new scrutiny since the #MeToo movement. Likened to Harvey Weinstein by some, the legacy of the Modern master who famously said, “there are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats,” is also under fire for his use of African art, who some perceive as appropriated.
Performance by Maria Hassabi. Photo: La Casa Encendida Estudio Perplejo
Even the team at La Casa Encendida, a contemporary art space known for its progressive, feminist programming, had real doubts about featuring the icon. “In the beginning at least, Picasso didn’t seem like a good fit for this institution,” Lucia Casani, its director, told Artnet News. Reasons included a preference for working with contemporary “artists who defend diversity, feminism.” She noted, however, that “it was important, in a moment of a complicated trend of cancellation culture, not to directly cancel, but to open the conversation with as many voices as possible.” The results have “been really interesting,” she said.
A collaboration with the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso (FABA) ensued, thanks to urging from the late former Spanish minister of culture, José Guirao. International artists spanning generations and genders accepted the show’s invitation, including the likes of Esther Ferrer, Adrián Villar Rojas, Camille Henrot, the collective Black Quantum Futurism, and Ryan Gander, to name a few.
Visitors observe an artwork during the presentation of the exhibition “Picasso: Untitled” at La Casa Encendida on May 18, 2023, in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Samuel de Román/Getty Images)
Though fallen far from his once unquestioned, God-like status, the artist also remains a household name, pulling in record sales at auction, and the subject of regular shows, even outside this year’s commemoration. Calls for cancellation aside, this leaves many in the art wondering: Does the world need another Picasso exhibition?
“No,” said Catalan curator Eva Franch i Gilabert, speaking at the opening of the “Untitled: Picasso” exhibition, which she curated. “Unless [it] is helping us articulate and provoke the right types of questions and answers we need in a time when we are trying to think through … issues of equality, gender, violence, and appropriation.”
Given that Picasso hits on many of the pressure points of the 20th century’s male and European-dominated art history, the artist, as a result “allows the institution and ourselves to talk about these issues that artists themselves believe are important,” said Franch i Gilabert.
Bernard Ruiz-Picasso during the press conference for the presentation of the exhibition “Picasso: Untitled” at La Casa Encendida on May 18, 2023, in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Samuel de Román/Getty Images)
The exercise comes amid similar efforts to reach younger audiences, such as the Paris Picasso museum’s colorfully busy rehang, or Hannah Gadsby’s feminist critique in the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition titled, “It’s Pablo-matic” that opens on June 2.
At La Casa Encendida, Picasso’s works glow under warm spotlights, bringing his palette of colors to brilliant life. They are free of any labels or text, in otherwise dimly lit, cocoon-like black-walled and carpeted rooms. Twelve of the works from his late period, which was until recently under-valued, have never been shown to the public. These works from the last decade of his life were long-considered too hastily executed as the artist battled against the clock. Yet that gestural freedom is also what gives these works their precursory, contemporary strength.
On the opposite wall, are metallic panels mirroring the paintings. Here one finds—and it’s a bit of a painstaking search—the new titles and descriptions by contemporary artists. They vary in their quality, but ultimately, offer a kind of survey of where Picasso stands with a large swath of today’s socially engaged and conceptual creators.
Most artists, to the surprise of the exhibition organizers, did not reduce or dismiss the artist. Participants appear rather to have been largely inspired to engage with Picasso’s work in a variety of ways, offering their close, critical reading of pieces ranging from ceramics to paintings and etchings.
A visitor observes an artwork during the presentation of the exhibition “Picasso: Untitled” at La Casa Encendida on May 18, 2023, in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Samuel de Román/Getty Images)
New interpretations of Picasso, “are inevitable in our century,” and part of a healthy process, said artist Esther Ferrer, who was present at the opening. Born in 1937, she felt Picasso could not be limited to the female abuser who depicted his muses as hacked up bodies, because “there is also this image of a strong woman, the matron who runs on the beach.” That, or the “tortured, raped woman,” she added.
Plenty addressed the artist’s tormented relationship with women and use of African art, through texts more easily absorbed in the comprehensive catalog, which includes the original titles and artist biographies, rather than the lengthy wall readings, displayed at a distance from the artworks.
“Is this a depiction of one of the wives or girlfriends he treated like shit? I don’t get the Picasso thing. The big kerfuffle around what he did with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon—which is basically an appropriation of African imagery,” writes Korean American artist Johanna Hedva.
Performance by Maria Hassabi. Photo: La Casa Encendida Estudio Perplejo
And while commentary like Hedva’s were in the minority, they were welcomed by organizers, including Picasso’s grandson, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, the son of Picasso’s first child, Paulo, with Picasso’s first wife, Olga Khokhlova. Ruiz-Picasso co-runs FABA with his wife, the art dealer Almine Rech Ruiz-Picasso, and works to preserve his grandfather’s legacy.
In contrast to cancel culture that is an “almost irrational extremism,” Ruiz-Picasso said he “hoped, within the framework of this [50-year] celebration, to address questions,” surrounding his grandfather, which will “allow us to move forward.”
It’s unclear how much an ultimately predictable contribution like Hedva’s moves things forward, or initiates hope for dialog. But it does offer a kind of litmus test for where creators stand today. And even among some of the most radical, socially engaged participating artists, Picasso is given a balanced look, via critical readings and stream-of-consciousness associations that address his complicated legacy in tandem with his enduring, creative force.
Hassabi is one such example. “I don’t like thinking in terms of revenge,” she said after her performance. “It’s a different time now, and men are excited to be looked at—they always were, but now more,” she added, noting that she believed Picasso’s relevance was a classic mainstay, though she welcomed new viewpoints and criticism.
World-renowned Picasso expert Carmen Giménez, who was also present at the opening, went further, reproaching the current, “terrible,” trends in Picasso-bashing, arguing that his work leaves “space for everyone.” Despite having several opportunities to meet the artist, Giménez said she had preferred not to, because of his reputation as a womanizer, and her interest in other contemporary artists. “I did not want to be involved with those kinds of situations,” she said. Unlike so many others at the time, “I didn’t see him as a God—I tried to avoid him,” she added.
“Choosing to live with Picasso was a serious decision,” acknowledged Ruiz-Picasso, who never knew his grandmother, a woman said to have been heartbroken by the death of her family members who were left behind in Russia and killed during the wars of her generation. “If one didn’t know any better, we could very easily think that Picasso was indeed a bastard, … a killer of women [two of the women with whom he had lived committed suicide after his death],” said Ruiz-Picasso. “But I know, and saw how he was with people, and how they felt he had this positive energy. He always said: ‘You want to live? You need to make the most of it. You have to live now.”
“Picasso: Untitled” is on view at Madrid’s La Casa Encendida until January 7, 2024

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Regular museum-goers are pretty au fait with the accepted rules: keep your distance from the exhibits, don’t touch anything, and try to be quiet. So what happens when an eccentric museum director expressly encourages you to break them? This is the strange proposition put forward by the Sainsbury Centre near Norfolk, England at its relaunch over the weekend.
As part of the new program, visitors to the museum are invited to interact with the artworks in unprecedented ways, including hugging a Henry Moore or whispering secrets to a Giacometti.
“We are the first museum to ever understand art as a living entity,” the center’s director Jago Cooper told Artnet News. “Great artists are people who have an ability to channel the uniqueness of the human soul into clay or onto a canvas, and materialize an aspect of their anima. At that moment, art captures the life force of the individual.”
The “living art” concept is a passion project of Cooper’s, and the freedom to carry it out was the main condition behind his slightly surprising decision to leave a cushy senior role as Head of the Americas at the British Museum and join this comparatively provincial center in 2021. The idea sounded exciting, but how do these kinds of encounters with “living art” play out in practice? Artnet News decided to give the tour a go.

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Step one was a battle with rural phone service providers to download Smartify, a free app offering curated information about museum exhibits somewhat like an audioguide. The first tour, “Living Art,” began with Henry Moore’s Mother and Child (1932). Cooper’s voice in my ear instructed me to embrace the statue, make eye contact with the mother, and then close my eyes and try to summon my earliest memory of being held as a child.
While that memory evaded me, I was encouraged to gently caress the groove running up the sculpture’s back, which was pleasantly smooth and cool to the touch. This sensual moment was compared to Moore rubbing oil into his mother’s back as a child, which he often described as his earliest sculptural experience.
The author hugging Henry Moore, Mother and Child at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
“That feeling within you, that feeling of protection, is what Henry was trying to create with this work,” Cooper told me. “Open your eyes and look at this sculpture again, and understand that art isn’t a set of rules to be read, it’s an emotional state of mind to get into.”
I wondered that my actions might damage the sculpture, but Cooper explained that there was video footage of Moore himself telling one of the center’s founders that anyone who thinks they can understand his art without touching it doesn’t know anything about sculpture. Cooper did concede that the work is likely to acquire a patina over time, adding “but that for me is part of the ageing process. I’m not trying to preserve it in a pristine state.”
“Of course, everything has to be done on a very careful, case-by-case basis,” he clarified. “Lots of works of art aren’t designed to touch, but for some things we feel we have clear evidence that it wants to be touched.”
The author moving with three dancing female figures (c. 618-906) at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
Next up were three Tang dynasty dancing figures. “These are not static ceramic vessels within a case, they’re living embodiments of movement and dance that has been going on for more than 1,200 years in China,” said Cooper.
As evocative sounds filled my ears, I was encouraged to raise my hands and sway like no one was watching, although I couldn’t help stealing a few sideways glances to ensure that nobody, indeed, was.
“It might feel strange to move like this in the gallery but it might liberate you from the restrictive ways that you’ve been told to engage with art,” promised Cooper. “By letting go of convention, you can open up and connect with art in a much more creative way.”
The author getting close enough to see Francis Bacon’s hair on Study for a Portrait of P.L., no. 2 (1957) at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
I sidled over to Francis Bacon’s Study for a Portrait of P.L., no. 2 (1957), depicting his violently abusive partner Peter Lacy. In rousing tones, Cooper established the vibes: “His workshop was a place of alcoholic haze, of cigarettes brushing against the canvas, of trauma and turmoil and angst. You can literally feel the energy within him transfer to the canvas.”
At the audio’s bidding, I leaned in unusually close to the canvas to spot one of Bacon’s hairs on Lacy’s shoulder. Its the kind of detail that reminds us of the immediacy of art-making and that these works are vestiges of real lives lived.
Another interesting aspect of the museum’s relaunch was a second audio tour proposing new ways to inform museum-goers about works in lieu of interpretative wall texts. Listeners can chose to hear from either a maker, an academic expert or someone with lived experience. In the case of a pair of snow goggles, for example, we can hear the perspective of contemporary artist Tarralik Duffy, about the process of carving bone, or from the Greenland hunter Aleqatsiaq Peary, about how the goggles are used.
This tour, said Cooper, “is an attempt to say that the museum isn’t an authority through which the knowledge is given to you to understand art. These are living entities and there’s no right or wrong way to meet them.”
The author viewed by art from within a display cabinet at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.

A third tour offered yet more experiential encounters with art. “Quite a lot of people who go to galleries and museums don’t like to read lots of text, how do you get them to experience living art?” was the problem to which Cooper kept returning.
Visitors are invited to write themselves a museum label and step into a glass case. Their audience? A crowd of intrigued artworks all staring back.
The gimmick feels fun for a few moments, but what does it hope to achieve? “It is weird, because when you go in there you cannot help but activate your mind that these artworks are living and looking at you,” explained Cooper. “You become objectified and it reverses the agency of the relationship with art.”
The author lying in a hammock and sharing secrets with a Giacometti portrait at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
Duly humbled, I snuck into a circular structure known as the silo, a dark, sequestered nook where a hammock swayed beneath a 1948 portrait by Giacometti of his brother Diego. I couldn’t see a text identifying the painting but, in lieu of a formal introduction, I spotted an ominous sign urging me to “tell it a secret you would never tell a human being.”
“Some people will say art isn’t alive because it doesn’t talk. It’s not true, there is a two way communication,” explained Cooper, who hopes his new methods will help us all deepen the relationships we already form with our favorite pieces of art.
Founded by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, of U.K. supermarket fame, to steward their trove of over 300 objects, the museum has always sought alternative ways to get visitors engaging with the art. In 2022, the visitor numbers rose to roughly 105,000, an improvement on the pre-pandemic average of 95,000, but it is clear that Cooper is keen to do whatever he can to boost footfall.
To that end, a series of provocative new temporary exhibitions are already in the works that promise to address life’s biggest questions. First up, this fall, is “how do we adapt to a transforming world?” In time, visitors can look forward to asking “what is truth?”, “why do humans still kill each other?” and “what is the meaning of life?” It is clear that Cooper is keen to keep surprising his audiences, how well they will respond remains to be seen.
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For three years in a row, Albertina Modern, the young museum of modern and contemporary art in Vienna, Austria has been presenting major solo exhibitions of top Asian artists on continental Europe. Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki was the star of 2021; Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei took the center stage last year; now, the spotlight is on Yoshitomo Nara, the beloved Japanese artist, international art market darling, and a crowd favorite around the world.
Best known for his childlike depiction of cute and contemplative “angry girls,” the 63-year-old artist has amassed a huge following over the past three decades, and has become a market star in recent years. Nara’s paintings often commend millions of dollars at auctions—his auction record stands at $24.9 million (HK$196 million, including fees) for the sale of his iconic 2000 painting Knife Behind Back at a 2019 Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale.
Drawings, however, are the star of Albertina Modern’s “All My Little Worlds” Nara’s first European institutional exhibition in a decade. The show features more than 400 pieces of works, including some 390 drawings, 15 paintings, and three sculptures, objects, and installations. Works range from early experimental pieces to recent offerings that are immediately recognizable. Drawings that seemed like they were created spontaneously on paper slips, envelops, flyers, and cardboards are on display in a manner arranged by Nara himself.
There is no lack of his signature wide-eyed characters. Some appear to be indignant while others seem to be sinking into deep thoughts. But they go beyond the surface of kawaii. The body of work on show collectively alleges a rebellious attitude and inquisitiveness that is often found among children, qualities that gradually fade away as they grow into adults.
Some works on view also reflect on a range of Nara’s influences, from music to pop culture, touching also on sociopolitical issues and global affairs. His anti-war stance is especially prominent in this selection of works on display.
One of the key highlights is the installation My Drawing Room from 2008, a cabin posing as a retreat for the artist where he can work in solitude. Works on paper, cultural objects, and even toys are scattered across the room, which Nara created out of his imagination. The artist also created a Spotify playlist of some of his favorite songs to accompany the viewing experience of this installation—inviting the visitors to immerse themselves in the artist’s world.
“All My Little Worlds” runs until November 1. See images of the exhibition below.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Yoshitomo Nara. Exhibition view: My Drawing Room 2008 (exterior view), bedroom included, (2008). Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery | © Yoshitomo Nara | Photo: © Sandro E. E. Yoshitomo Nara, exhibition view: My Drawing Room (2008) (exterior view), bedroom included. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery | © Yoshitomo Nara | Photo: © Sandro E. E. Zanzinger
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna (10.5. – 1.11.2023) Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
Yoshitomo Nara, work for Dream to Dream (2001). Acrylic and colored pencil on paperCollection of the artist | Courtesy Pace Gallery © Yoshitomo Nara | Photo: Yoshitomo Nara
Yoshitomo Nara, Fuck U (2015). Collection of the artist. Courtesy Pace Gallery ©Yoshitomo Nara. Photo: Yoshitomo Nara.
Yoshitomo Nara, Cup Kid (2000). Collection of the artist. Courtesy Pace Gallery © Yoshitomo Nara. Photo: Yoshitomo Nara
Yoshitomo Nara, With the Knife (2018). Colored pencil on paper. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo: Keizo Kioku.
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What did the ancient Egyptians look like? A new exhibition at National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands, has sparked controversy by including a contemporary artwork that appears to depict the Pharaoh Tutankhamun as Black.
“Kemet: Egypt in Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul and Funk” pairs Egyptian antiquities from the museum’s collection with work inspired by ancient Egyptian culture by created by musicians of the African diaspora, including Miles Davis, Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, and Rihanna.
The Leiden exhibition acknowledges that while generations of Black musicians have drawn strength and empowerment from ancient Egyptian culture, the racial identity of ancient Egyptians has been a topic of spirited debate for decades.
The show’s title comes from the ancient Egyptians’ name for their homeland, Kemet, which means “black land.” But, the exhibition explains, the color referenced the rich, dark soil of the Nile river valley, rather than the people’s skin tone. The museum also discounts the theory that the noses on many ancient Egyptian statues were broken off in modern times in order to disguise visibly African features.
David Cortes, I Am Hip Hop (2019). Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden.
“This is a very difficult topic and that is the thing with this exhibition: I think you really have to give it a chance,” Daniel Soliman, museum’s Egyptian and Nubian curator, told The Art Newspaper. “There are Egyptians, or Egyptians in the diaspora, who believe that the pharaonic heritage is exclusively their own. The topic of the imagination of ancient Egypt in music, predominantly from the African diaspora, Black artists in different styles, jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop, had long been ignored.”
Nevertheless, the exhibition’s thesis has led to backlash, particularly due to the David Cortes statue, I Am Hip Hop. The 2019 sculpture is based on the 1999 Nas album I Am…, in which the African American rapper was photographed to look like the famed mask of King Tut.
An outraged article titled “Dutch museum claims Tutankhamun was Black” in the Egypt Independent cited a complaint from Egyptian antiquities expert Abd al-Rahim Rihan. Not only does the statue inaccurately depict King Tut’s race, he claimed, the artist has actually created an unauthorized copy of an Egyptian antiquity, which can only be produced by the nation’s Supreme Council of Antiquities under Article 39 of the Protection of Antiquities Law No. 117 of 1983.
The claim has reportedly prompted an official inquiry from Ahmed Bilal al-Burlusy, a member House of Representatives, as to whether Cortes violated Egyptian law. (The piece is a contemporary artwork, not a replica, the museum said in a statement.)
But the exhibition has also fueled long-running arguments about racial identity and cultural appropriation, including on the Facebook group Egyptian History Defenders, which describes itself “defending Egyptian history and heritage against Afrocentric culture vultures.”
There has also been a rash of one-star reviews for the museum on Google, calling it a “woke museum with zero scientific references and heavily under the influence of afrocentrism” who “are forgers who steal the history of Egyptian civilization and attribute it to black African[s].”
“The exhibition does not claim the ancient Egyptians were Black, but explores music by Black artists who refer to ancient Egypt and Nubia in their work: music videos, covers of record albums, photos, and contemporary artworks,” museum director Wim Weijland said. “The exhibition also acknowledges that the music can be perceived as cultural appropriation, and recognizes that large groups of contemporary Egyptians feel that the pharaonic past is exclusively their heritage.”
Adele James, a Black British actress, plays Cleopatra in Queen Cleopatra. Photo courtesy of Netflix.
The question of the race of ancient Egyptians also led to an uproar over the new Jada Pinkett-Smith-produced Netflix documentary-drama series African Queens: Queen Cleopatra and its depiction of the famed ruler by the Black actress Adele James. (An Egyptian lawyer even pushed to block the airing of the series in the African nation, and an Egyptian network has announced plans for its own documentary starring a light-skinned Cleopatra.)
“Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilization is Black,” former Egyptian antiquities minister Zahi Hawass told the al-Masry al-Youm newspaper. “This is completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek, meaning that she was light-skinned, not Black.”
Cleopatra was the last rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Greek-ruled kingdom descended from Macedonians—but her family had been in Egypt for 300 years, and nothing is known about her maternal ancestry.
“While shooting, I became the target of a huge online hate campaign. Egyptians accused me of ‘blackwashing’ and ‘stealing’ their history,” series director Tina Gharavi wrote in Variety, arguing that James was probably more accurate casting than the white Elizabeth Taylor, who famously played the queen in 1963.
“Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white?” Gharavi asked. “Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians, it seems to really matter.”
“Kemet: Egypt in Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul and Funk” is on view at the National Museum of Antiquities, Rapenburg 28, 2311 EW Leiden, Netherlands, April 22, 2023–September 3, 2023.
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As part of city-wide celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Vilnius, the MO Museum—the Lithuanian capital’s modern art hub—has put on a special showcase of contemporary art that invites audiences to time travel to the 1980s and trace Vilnius’s transformation since the late Soviet era.
This show brings together 150 works, ranging from visual art to text and sound, to immerse visitors in the creative vision of theater director Oskaras Koršunovas and set designer Gintaras Makarevičius.
The exhibition is named after and inspired by Ričardas Gavelis’s oppressive 1989 novel Vilnius Poker, a masterpiece of Lithuanian literature that takes the city as its protagonist at a time when its citizens are dealing with the psychological fallout from a collapsing Soviet system. Its publication was a turning point for the country’s creative and cultural liberation, and now this exhibition explores the developments of the decades since and the evolving identity of Vilnius today and tomorrow.
The range of work on show includes pieces from the 1960s up to the present moment that reflect on the novel’s evergreen themes of freedom, identity and memory.
“The novel depicts Vilnius as an intricate, chaotic, dream-like city with nothing specific or real. This was the starting point in creating the exhibition, which is designed like a universal tale, not limited to a specific place or time period,” explained the museum director Milda Ivanauskienė.
“Vilnius Poker” runs at MO Museum until January 28, 2024. Check out some of the works from the exhibition below.
Rūta Spelskytė-Liberienė, Mountain Stag Beetle (2019) in the “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
Installation view of “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
Installation view of “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania showing Nerijus Erminas, That Which Is Unseen (2013). Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
Installation view of Vytautas Tomaševičius, Trajectory (2020) at the “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
Rimantas Milkintas, Too Long (2017) at the “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
Mindaugas Skudutis, Vilnius Poker (2022) at the “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
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