Shows & Exhibitions

The mirror-clad façade of the Maraya Concert Hall in AlUla, Saudi Arabia’s ancient desert region, glitters just like the disco ball found in New York’s notorious Studio 54 club where the likes of Diana Ross, Truman Capote, Cher, and Jackie Kennedy, spent late nights partying in the 1970s. Fittingly, inside this shiny edifice is now the kingdom’s first ever exhibition of iconic works by another Studio 54 regular—Andy Warhol.
Titled “FAME: Andy Warhol in AlUla,” the exhibition (on view through May 16), is part of the second edition of the AlUla Arts Festival, itself among the region’s ongoing efforts to become a global destination for art and culture.
Curated by Patrick Moore, director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, it is being staged at a time of great change for the kingdom under an ambitious reform agenda dubbed “Vision 2030,” which has been spurred by the country’s crown prince and prime minister, Mohammed Bin Salman. The agenda is rapidly pushing forward a complete transformation of the kingdom’s economy through top-down investment in all sectors with a particular focus on art, culture, and entertainment in order to grow a creative economy and wean the country off a dependence on oil and gas. 
Andy Warhol, Liz (1964). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 1998.1.2374 © 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London.
In many ways, the 70 iconic works exhibited at the glistening venue are symbolic of the kingdom’s change. The works chosen for display reflect Warhol’s own fascination with fame, glamor and Hollywood, and include portraits of Dolly Parton, Muhammad Ali, Salvador Dalí, Bob Dylan and Elizabeth Taylor. 
“Warhol is so omnipresent in the world, but there’s never been really a proper exhibition in the Middle East and certainly not in Saudi Arabia,” Moore told Artnet News, adding that the exhibition was conceived in 2021 after he had been invited to AlUla to experience the region and its burgeoning arts scene for himself. 
Staged concisely within an erected series of gallery rooms, the works present a clean and playful look into Warhol’s artistic legacy and genius. The first room showcases the artist’s “screen tests,” filmed black and white portraits of visitors to Warhol’s studio, The Factory, created between 1964 and 1966. Think personalities like Lou Reed, a founding member of the influential band The Velvet Underground slowly drinking a glass of coca cola while nonchalantly donning black sunglasses; Paul Johnson and the American actor known as “Paul America” after regularly staying at Hotel America in New York City. In another gallery, more playful, is Silver Clouds (1965), a room filled with floating metallic balloons prompting visitors to stop and play.
Less lofty and playful, however, were the international political tensions that still hang in the air. Media reports roundly criticized the Warhol Museum’s decision to co-operate on the exhibition prior to the show’s opening, largely written by reporters who had yet to venture to the kingdom. They focused on the fact that Warhol was homosexual and Saudi Arabia criminalizes homosexuality, the maximum sentence for which is the death penalty. While this soured the air for some, Moore, like the Saudis who mounted the show, urged a focus on Warhol as an artist rather than on his personal life. 
“Andy was a lot of things; he was an artist, he was a businessman, he was an entrepreneur, he was a media mogul, and he was also a gay man, but that’s not all he was,” Moore told Artnet News. “So not every exhibition should or needs to focus on that aspect of Warhol’s life because Warhol was an artist, not a gay artist.”
There were no homosexual or otherwise controversial themes present in the works displayed. The works on display were carefully selected to focus on the themes of celebrity, status, and fame.
Installation view, “FAME: Andy Warhol in AlUla.” ©Flint Culture / ©2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Licensed by DACS, London.
Amid the crowd of guests attending the opening, including notable members of the Middle Eastern art scene and regional and international press, praise was heard as was disappointment. 
“The show is more concise, smaller than I had imagined,” quipped one journalist, expecting a grander affair for Warhol’s first Middle Eastern showing. Saudis, on the other hand, could be seen entering the exhibition with interest and excitement while local guides gave in depth tours of artwork in each room.
Of note was a seeming increase of international and American art journalists covering the event—many journeying to Saudi Arabia for the first time. 
“Several of my art world friends were apprehensive about my traveling to see the show,” said one American curator who was among the first timers. “But coming here and seeing the work on show and the quality of local Saudi artists has offered an eye-opening experience—it’s important to see the art here firsthand and give the artists a chance.” (Still, the curator only agreed to speak on condition of anonymity).
AlUla continues to grow its local art scene, investing into local and international exhibitions, education programs, like the Madrasat Addeera, a former girls’ school in AlUla that offers around 70 local Saudi women free training in traditional arts and crafts by the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts, and artist residencies, such as the second edition of the AlUla Artist Residency Program that opened this week during the festival showcasing works by local Saudi and international artists within a lush desert oasis.
Installation view, “FAME: Andy Warhol in AlUla.” ©Flint Culture / ©2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Licensed by DACS, London.
Local artistic growth has been done in tandem with large-scale blockbuster exhibitions in AlUla like Desert X, which has staged two editions, and now the Andy Warhol show. There’s also the upcoming Wadi Al Fann, meaning “Valley of the Arts” set to be completed by 2024, and which will exhibit local and international monumental artists by the likes of Ahmed Mater, James Turrell, and Agnes Denes in one of AlUla’s desert valleys. Iwona Blazwick, appointed chair of the Royal Commission for AlUla’s public art expert panel, will oversee Wadi Al Fann. 
“A lot of the young Saudi artists aren’t known globally, and so by exposing them to artists of the magnitude that we’re bringing in and shows like ‘Fame,’ gives them the opportunity to be exposed to something they may not have ever had the opportunity to experience before as part of our strategy,” Philip Jones, chief tourism officer for the Royal Commission for AlUla told Artnet News. “We want to be known globally as one of the top arts and cultural destinations in the world. There’s tremendous arts and creativity in Saudi Arabia, but very few people around the world know about it.”
Nora Aldabal, arts and creative planning director at the Royal Commission of AlUla, the government body responsible for staging the exhibition in partnership with the Andy Warhol Museum, also emphasized that the show is also about forging cross cultural dialogue.
“For thousands of years AlUla was a place where civilization and diverse cultures came together through trade,” Aldabal told Artnet News. “We are continuing this today.”
“FAME: Andy Warhol in AlUla” is on view through May 16.
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“Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age,” an exhibition gathering 100 works that illustrate how artistic practices shifted with the emergence of computer technology beginning in the 1950s, opens at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at a fortuitous moment. Running through July 2, the show arrives as digital art, with the help of blockchain technology, has acquired new currency, and as A.I. is freshly ascendant as a tool in image-making. 
But as curator Leslie Jones told Artnet News, the exhibition was some 10 years in the making. Its spark was not NFT art, but the gift to LACMA of a series of witty computer drawings created by geometric painter Frederick Hammersley in 1969.
“Being a curious curator, I wanted to know more about their context,” she said. “The seed of the exhibition was about looking back on a period that I felt had been somewhat overlooked and needed to be recontextualized in relation to what was going on at the time.”
Installation view of “Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982.” Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA.
“Coded,” then, takes as its starting point 1952, when programming was in its infancy and computers were room-sized mainframes (see: HAL9000 in 2001: Space Odyssey). However unwieldy the technology, early practitioners such as mathematician Ben F. Laposky and engineer A. Michael Noll, though not artists by practice, saw opportunities to use computational sequences to generate fine art. 
Their work paved the way for the generative artists in the following decades—the likes of Vera Molnár, Harold Cohen, and François Morellet, who addressed the matter of art production systematically. Conceptual and Op art, too, owed a debt to these computational approaches, with such artists as Sol LeWitt and Bridget Riley using algorithmic calculations to determine outcomes of their work.
The exhibition’s scope ends in 1982, when personal computers arrived on the scene—closing out a period during which, Jones points out, artists had to go to some lengths to create any kind of computer art. Without home computers, they had to seek out machines at universities or corporations like Bell Labs, which were friendly to artistic experimentation. Even with access, creators had to learn to program (or find someone who could), then wait hours for the mainframes to generate outputs. 
“I was just amazed by the artists’ commitment to making it happen. They just understood the possibilities and were willing to go through that,” she said.
Victor Vasarely, Vega-Kontosh-Va (1971). Photo: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.
The show makes sense for an institution that can claim itself a role in the history of technology-assisted art. In the late ‘60s, LACMA initiated its Art and Technology program, which paired artists with technology companies to ideate and create cutting-edge art projects. As detailed in the resulting report on the program, the majority of these pairings—Walter de Maria and RCA, Dan Flavin and General Electric, among others—would come to naught, whether due to creative differences, prohibitive costs, or the lack of technological capabilities.
But even amid these failures, the catalog could also be read as a series of yet-to-be-realized proposals. In particular, “Coded” is revisiting Victor Vasarely’s 1968 pitch to IBM to create “a lumino-cybernetic screen that can send out millions of different color combinations.” The Op art pioneer reckoned there were “endless possibilities” to the project, but the corporation ultimately balked at the price tag of $2 million.
In a companion piece to the exhibition spearheaded by LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab, a descendent of the Art and Technology program, Vasarely’s proposal for a “multi-colored electric device” will be reimagined by new media artist Casey Reas. His interactive METAVASARELY, said Joel Ferree, the program director of the Art + Technology Lab, will contain “similar ideas that are in the original Vasarely proposal, but they’ll be executed in a way that has more semblance to Casey’s contemporary practice.” The work will be on view onsite and online throughout the run of “Coded.”
Installation view of “Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982.” Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA
Reas’s installation, however, is the show’s only contemporary concession; Jones emphasizes that “Coded” otherwise centers a historical lens on computer art. The point is to examine how computing technology has disrupted and redefined the framework of what we consider art and who we deem an artist—a dialogue that has yet to run its course. 
“Not everyone in the show is celebrating the computer as a device; there are some critical uses of it as well,” she said, highlighting that technology remains as much a tool as a barrier to acceptance. “But so much has changed since then. It’s not really about who did what first; it’s more about having that conversation, or starting the conversation.”
Below, explore nine key works in the exhibition:

1. Vera Molnár’s computerized ode to Paul Klee
Vera Molnár, À la recherche de Paul Klee (1970), ink plotter drawing. Photo: © Vera Molnár, © Museum Associates/LACMA.

2. Filmmaker Stan VanDerBeek’s early experiments in computer animation
Stan VanDerBeek, Poemfield No. 1 (Blue Version) (1967), realized with Kenneth C. Knowlton. Photo: © Estate of Stan VanDerBeek, all rights reserved, digital images courtesy of The Box, Los Angeles.

3. Edward Kienholz’s patchwork computer(which worked!)
Edward Kienholz, The Friendly Grey Computer—Star Gauge Model #54 (1965). Photo: © Estate of Nancy Reddin Kienholz, courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, California, digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

4. Analivia Cordeiro’s dance compositions,choreographed by a digital computer
Analivia Cordeiro, still from M 3×3 (1973). Photo: © Analivia Cordeiro, digital image courtesy of the artist.

5. Eduardo Paolozzi’s mechanistic silkscreens
Eduardo Paolozzi, Universal Electronic Vacuum: Computer-Epoch (1967). Photo: © The Paolozzi Foundation, licensed by DACS/ARS 2023, courtesy of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

6. Sonya Rapoport’s hand-drawn data visualizations
Sonya Rapoport, page 4 from “Anasazi Series II” (1977). Photo: © Estate of Sonya Rapoport, © Museum Associates/LACMA.

7. Bauhaus designer Angelo Testa’s tape reel-inspired textile, commissioned by IBM
Angelo Testa, IBM Disks textile (1952–56). Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA.

8. The Bangerts’ “computer grass” plotter drawings
Colette Stuebe Bangert and Charles Jeffries Bangert, GRASS SERIES II 80-11-comp-a (1980). Photo: © Colette Stuebe Bangert and Charles Jeffries Bangert, © Museum Associates/LACMA.

9. Frederick Hammersley’s clever dot matrix print-outs
Frederick Hammersley, SCALLOP POTATOES, #50 (1969). Photo: © New Mexico Museum of Art, © Museum Associates/LACMA.

“Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age” is on view at LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, through July 2, 2023.
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As the international art world descends on Los Angeles for Frieze week, we’ve highlighted some of the best art on view beyond the art fairs—in museums. From a glimpse into the life and work of the late polymath Milford Graves to an in-depth survey of South African artist William Kentridge’s oeuvre, plus the last days of Uta Barth’s beguiling photographs, here are the museum shows we’re looking forward to in the City of Angels.

“Tala Madani: Biscuits” at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCAthrough February 19, 2023
Tala Madani, Blackboard (Further Education) (2021). Courtesy YDC.
MOCA presents 15 years of the Tehran-born artist’s sketches, paintings, and animations, in her first North American survey show. With the patriarchy, the canon of art history, and law enforcement firmly in Madini’s scope, “Biscuits” is wickedly funny, timely, and long overdue. 

“Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency” at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angelesthrough May 14, 2023
Philippe Gras, Milford Graves at the Festival d’Automne à Paris (1974). © Philippe Gras.
Milford Graves may have been best-known as a percussionist, but to call him only that is a disservice to a man who was a true polymath in every sense. As his New York Times obituary noted, he was “also a botanist, acupuncturist, martial artist, impresario, college professor, visual artist, and student of the human heartbeat.” The West Coast presentation of this show, which originated at New York’s Artists Space, features archival documentation, film, music, and the artist’s effusive sculptural assemblages.

“Uta Barth: Peripheral Vision” at the Getty Centerthrough February 19, 2023
Uta Barth, Ground #41 (1994). © Uta Barth, courtesy of the Getty Center.
For those in Los Angeles for the weekend only, it’s the perfect time to catch the final days of Uta Barth’s work on view at the Getty. A true California artist, her photographs capture the unique light and space that filters through the city.

William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows at the Broadthrough April 9, 2023
William Kentridge, Drawing for ‘Other Faces’ (2011). Courtesy of the Broad.
The Broad is giving over the entire first floor galleries to the 35-year career of William Kentridge, in the South African artist’s first major museum show in Los Angeles in more than 20 years. Set against a backdrop designed by Sabine Theunissen, more than 130 works by Kentridge rendered in his signature charcoal drawings, theatrical sets, and animated films provide a personal lens through which thorny socio-political issues are explored.

“Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt” at the Skirball Cultural Centerthrough March 12, 2023
Bisa Butler, To God and Truth (2019). © Bisa Butler. Photo © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Works by more than 40 artists including Sanford Biggers and Bisa Butler stand out in this survey, which tells the story of America through quilts. As the show notes, “Whether produced as works of art or utilitarian objects,” the quilts “impart deeply personal narratives of their makers and offer an intimate picture of American life.”

“Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982“at LACMAthrough July 2, 2023
Sonya Rapoport, page 2 from Anasazi Series II (1977) [detail]. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. © Estate of Sonya Rapoport, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.From experimental works made with hefty machines and analog works depicting algorithms to the rise of digital art made entirely online, creatives have been drawn to computers for decades. This show explores the rise of technology and how artists have interpreted its promises and perils.

“Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971” at the Academy Museum of Motion Picturesthrough July 16, 2023
The Nicholas Brothers in a scene from Stormy Weather (1943). Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library ©Twentieth Century Fox.
Taking its name from a 1923 movie, “Regeneration” explores the role of Black creatives from cinema’s inception in America through the Civil Rights movement. Through photographs, drawings, original costumes, and restored reels, the exhibition spotlights forgotten, overlooked, and suppressed films and filmmakers. 

“Adee Roberson and Azikiwe Mohammed: because i am that” at the California African American Museumthrough May 7, 2023
Installation view, “Adee Roberson and Azikiwe Mohammed: because i am that” at CAAM.
Occupying CAAM’s atrium, “because i am that” is a two-person show that, across its six-month run, is inviting a range of collaborators to bring musings on Black creativity into the space. Curated by Essence Harden, the conversation between Robertson and Mohammed includes paintings, video, and sculpture. 

“Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist’s Studio” at the Hammerthrough May 28, 2023
Bridget Riley, study for Shuttle (1964). © Bridget Riley.
Behind every Riley painting is a series of exploratory and probing drawings. As her first West Coast show in 50 years reveals, the black-and-white optical works are no less beguiling. The Hammer’s exhibition offers visitors a chance to track the British artist’s development from her student work in the 1940s through today.    
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Dance is a highly physical art form that often includes numerous senses. Dancers traditionally respond to a beat or melody through hearing; their sense of touch will be used for intricate movements against the floor and in relation to fellow performers. But it is usually the sight of dance that is put centre stage for the audience. Carolyn Lazard, a New York and Philadelphia-based artist and writer, dynamically challenges the way that dance is experienced in a new exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary. 
In their collaborative work Long Take, Lazard almost removes the sense of sight and presents a creative dance piece through a sound installation, complete with recorded reading of a dance score, sounds of the performer’s movements and breath, and an audio description on a black screen. The piece confronts the hierarchy often given to the senses within the arts, with sight typically valued as the most important. Long Take calls for a different approach to rigid ideas that impinge accessibility, expanding the limits of what dance in a public space can be.
“European culture and philosophy has largely privileged sight as our primary means of producing knowledge,” said Lazard. “It’s an epistemic violence that narrows the infinite possibilities for how we make meaning in life.”
The exhibition takes a complete approach to its message. As part of the installation, Lazard has altered four of Nottingham Contemporary’s benches to create a more welcoming and comfortable experience for visitors with different access needs. The heights of the benches have been altered, and cushions and backrests have been added. Their practice is not only a powerful call to explore accessibility and inclusion within the work itself, it also takes a practical approach to reframing the oftentimes exclusive world of art galleries and institutions.
In 2019 they wrote Accessibility in the Arts: A Promise and a Practice. It is a clear yet richly researched guide for small-scale nonprofits to become more open to the public they serve. It covers topics from how best to list access information to different accommodations that can be made to support visitors with varying needs. The straightforward guide delves into matters such as childcare, content warnings, and touch tours for people who are blind or vision impaired. 
“Museums are a colonial project, and therefore inherently ableist,” said “Long Take” co-curator Olivia Aherne, who has worked with Rosa Tyhurst on the exhibition. “They create, perpetuate and reinforce forms of hegemonic power. Within that, productivity and competency are of utmost importance.” The curator added that Lazard’s guide was persuasive that greater accessibility can be achieved regardless of available resources. “It’s about assessing priorities and redirecting resources, both in terms of what you value and privilege but also more practically what you budget for.”
Many of the suggestions in the Accessibility in the Arts guide are seemingly simple for galleries to take on, but surprisingly few spaces have. Lazard’s collaborative approach to art making exposes the power that can be found in working together to find innovative solutions. 
“Long Take is about the relational and how people provide care and access for each other always, before, after, and beyond what one might call the state or the economy,” they said, adding that they invited dancer and writer Jerron Herman and writer and artist Joselia Rebekah Hughes to make this work. “We are all in an extended community of artists who are interested in questions of care and access aesthetics…We danced together, we listened together, we recorded together, and we wrote together.”
An urgent issue within public care systems is the racism and inequality that lie at the heart of their structures. Lazard’s 2019 work Pain Scale confronted the minimization of Black pain that is inherent within the United States’ medical services. The piece depicts a row of brown faces, created in the image of the emoji-like expressions that are presented to patients in hospitals to communicate the level of pain they are feeling. Except in Lazard’s work, all the faces are smiling. The only option for those picking from this scale, is happy and pain free. 
The work speaks to disturbing findings that have been uncovered within the US care system. A 2016 study found that 50 percent of US medical students believed Black people to have thicker skin or less sensitive nerve endings than white people. A broader meta-analysis of two decades of studies found that Black patients were 22 percent less likely than white patients to receive pain medication when requested. These deeply rooted, racist misconceptions can make a world of difference to how a patient is treated by the medical profession, if indeed they are deemed to need treatment at all.
We need to see “the end of the world as it is,” Lazard said, when asked what must change in the United States to address this systemic racism within the care system. Their work is a rallying cry for equality in care and access, but also a creative and often practical exploration of how this might happen.
In Long Take, the work embodies its message. It doesn’t just tell its audience why vision-favored works can be problematic, it shows them another, highly enriching way of experiencing a popular art form. Importantly, the work shows that accessibility within art does not have to mean a reduction of complexity. “In its layered form—score, sound, description—Long Take turns away from ideas of transparency or coherence, arguing that disabled people also deserve access to incoherency,” says Ahearne. “I think that’s really important to note.”
“Carolyn Lazard: Long Take” is on view through May 7 at Nottingham Contemporary.
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Brazil has been a center of the global design scene for decades, thanks to the prolific and groundbreaking output of the Campana brothers. The duo rose to prominence during the 1990s with often whimsical designs that defied formal, aesthetic, and material norms. 
Brazilian designer Fernando Campana poses for pictures at his studio in São Paulo, Brazil, on July 4, 2016. (MIGUEL SCHINCARIOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Working across mediums, Humberto and Fernando Campana took the design world by storm. Notable concepts include the loose cotton rope Vermelha Chair—produced for Italian manufacturer Edra—and the Favela Chair (1991), now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, created from wood offcuts not unlike the dwellings that define those urban areas. Weaving plush stuffed animals—Disney and KAWS characters—into overflowing armchairs became their calling card. 
Campana Brothers, Bolotas Chair, Bicolor (2018). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
The studio distinguished itself with postmodern humor and pastiche—as well as responsibility and resourcefulness, upcycling materials before the term was coined. Campana Studio was one of the first practices to incorporate narrative in its work; the idea of imbuing objects with stories has since come to define much of the collectible design market. 
The duo has been a staple of New York, in particular Friedman Benda, ever since the gallery’s inception in the 2010s. From February 15 through April 15, the gallery is honoring Fernando—who died last November at age 61—with a comprehensive retrospective at its new Los Angeles outpost, during Frieze.
Campana Brothers, Noah Bench (2017). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
As tributes from prominent figures such as MoMA senior curator of architecture and design Paola Antonnelli prove, he was beloved and revered by many. Antonnelli helped bring the duo international acclaim with a dedicated exhibition in the late 1990s.
Milan-based writer and Design Miami curatorial director Maria Cristina Didero said recently, “Estúdio Campana has always attributed several meanings to the word ‘transformation,’ converting ordinary objects into precious ones. [Fernando] deeply loved his work and together with his brother Humberto, conceived it as a mission to help other people through creativity and fun.”
Campana Brothers, Bubble Wrap Chair (1995). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
The “Cine São José” exhibition surveys a significant amount of work produced during the studio’s first 15 years, as well as never-before-seen pieces. The title refers to their hometown cinema, where films allowed them to dream an auspicious future.
Campana Brothers, Yanomami Chair (1989). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
On view is the rare Yanomani Chair (1989), part of the seminal “Desconfortáveis” (“Uncomfortable”) collection, in which Humberto and Fernando forged squiggles into iron using blowtorches. The Bubble Wrap Chair (1995) was created by layering sheets of the packaging material.
Other pieces hail from the “Sushi” series—Sushi Sofa (ca. 2002) sold for over $50,000 at Sotheby’s in 2020—and the collaged “Detonado” series (in production since 2013). Through the clever elevation and integration of cheap, everyday materials, the duo created otherworldly designs and imbued them with a healthy dose of color and levity.
Here are more of the duo’s fanciful designs from the Friedman Benda show.

Campana Brothers, Bolotas Chair, Apple (2020). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Detonado Chair (2013). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Galactica Sofa (2020). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Jalapão Chair (2022). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Noah Mirror (2017). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Ofidia Side Table (2015). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Pirarucu Chair, Pink (2015). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
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The number of works on show is far from huge and the exhibition space may seem to be disproportionately spacious, and yet the Rijksmuseum has set the perfect stage for a highly anticipated, once-in-a-lifetime Johannes Vermeer exhibition—the largest ever “family reunion” of the Dutch master’s paintings.
Opening to the public this Friday, February 10, “Vermeer” at the Netherlands’s national museum of art and history presents a total of 28 out of the 37 known paintings by the artist, making the show the most complete survey of the Old Master staged in his home country.
It reunites many works that have been scattered around the world, including seven paintings that have not been back to the Netherlands in 200 years. They hang near other greatest hits that have remained in the Netherlands, including The Milkmaid (c. 1658-59) and The Little Street, both housed at Rijksmuseum, and three from the Mauritshuis in The Hague, an institution best known for being home to the enigmatic Girl with a Pearl Earring (1664-67).
Critics and journalists admired Vermeer’s View of Delft during a press preview at exhibition “Vermeer” at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Rijksmuseum’s general director Taco Dibbits said the new exhibition is the largest since the show that ran from 1995 to 1996 by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which brought together 21 works. “It was quite an impossible dream to have a monographic exhibition of Vermeer. But it appeared not to be impossible when we heard that Frick Collection was about to renovate. We thought, this is a chance. It’s now or never,” Dibbits said during Tuesday’s press preview, which welcomed around 150 international journalists and critics.
“Vermeer,” an assembly from 14 museums and private collections from seven countries, includes an unprecedented loan of three works from the Frick Collection, which are being shown outside of New York for the first time: Mistress and Maid (c.1664-67), Girl, Interrupted at Her Music (c.1959-61), and Officer and the Laughing Girl (c. 1657-58).
Saint Praxedis (1655), said to be based on a similar picture from around 1640 to 1645 by the Florentine artist Felice Ficherelli, is loaned from the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.
The museum’s curatorial team, as well as conservators and scientists, embarked on an intensive research journey in collaboration with other prestigious institutions, applying the latest technologies in an attempt to resolve the mysteries behind Vermeer’s arresting images and storied paintings and decode his painting techniques. But one of the most difficult mysteries to solve was how to stage the show in Rijksmuseum’s huge halls. “How do you exhibit 28 paintings of which most are relatively small, and depict very intimate spaces?” Dibbits noted.
The Milkmaid featured in exhibition “Vermeer”. Photo Rijksmuseum/ Henk Wildschut.
The solution was not to closely group them, but to offer as much space as possible for each painting. The museum worked with French architect and designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte to design all ten galleries of the museum’s Phillips Wing. The works are divided into 11 thematic sections tracing the artist’s roots, and searching for insights into his life and paintings. The exhibition space is so roomy that sometimes a large gallery features only one or two paintings. Galleries are decorated with classy floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains in different colors to separate the show’s themes.
But these small works are set to have a huge impact: more than 200,000 tickets have already been pre-sold as of Tuesday. “This has never happened before,” said Dibbits. Due to the size of the works, the director added that his team is limiting the amount of tickets sold to ensure that the public has a good viewing experience. The museum also declined to comment on any additional security measures in place given the ongoing attacks at European institutions by climate activists.
Installation view of Mistress and Maid at “Vermeer,” Rijksmuseum. Work on loan from the Frick Collection, New York. Photo Rijksmuseum/ Henk Wildschut.
Rijksmuseum’s spokespeople did not disclose how many visitors they were expecting in total, nor did they disclose the limit of tickets to be sold or the maximum capacity the galleries could accommodate. The institution has extended its normal run-time for an exhibition to four months for the Dutch Golden Age star; it. will extend its opening hours to 10 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays throughout the exhibition period, until June 4.
In spite of the all-star lineup, there has been at least one dispute. On view is a contested work, Girl With a Flute (c. 1665-1675)—the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has said that the small painting may not be a genuine work by Vermeer. Nevertheless, it is attributed to Vermeer on the wall text, and hangs in the show side-by-side with another painting Girl with a Red Hat (c. 1664-67).
Such a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition is likely to make history globally, and is an especially poignant show for the Dutch public. “It’s like an unprecedented family reunion,”  co-curator Pieter Roelofs.
“Vermeer” will be on view form February 10 to June 4, 2023.

Girl with a Red Hat and Girl with a Flute at “Vermeer,” Rijksmuseum. Photo Rijksmuseum/ Henk Wildschut.
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A major exhibition that explores the history of slavery during the Dutch colonial period will travel to the United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York this month for a four-week display.
Originally conceived and staged at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2021, “Slavery” spanned 250 years of the Dutch colonial history, from the 17th to the 19th century, considering personal and real-life stories from those who lived during the period.
The showcase at the U.N. headquarters’s visitors lobby will run from February 27 to March 30 as an adapted version of the original show in the Netherlands, presented with a new title “Slavery. Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery.” On March 29 and 30, there will be a series of talks reflecting on the issue, which still haunts the world today. An adapted form of the display will travel U.N. offices globally for the next two years.
“Recognizing the continuing impact of slavery on world history is of great importance. We are very grateful to the United Nations for drawing attention to this important subject through the exhibition,” Taco Dibbits, general director of the Rijksmuseum, said in a statement. The New York show is partly supported by the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the U.N. and the Dutch diplomatic mission in the United States.
“Tronco,” a symbol of the suppression of the colonial slavery system, on show at Rijksmuseum’s “Slavery” exhibition. Courtesy Rijksmuseum.
Set against the backdrop of the Dutch’s controversial past in Brazil, Suriname, and the Caribbean, as well as South Africa, Asia, and the Netherlands, it tells the personal stories of 10 individuals who were either enslaved or made a profit out of the slavery system, as well as those who resisted against the system. One of the central objects in the show is a tronco, the Portuguese word for tree trunk, a wooden foot stock used to restrain enslaved people by clamping their ankles in the holes.
The show at the Rijksmuseum was among the first of its kind to dive into this part of history, and the effort was applauded by critics when it opened in 2021.
“It is without any doubt one of great achievements of the exhibition that its makers dared to present such new critical perspectives,” University of Amsterdam’s Laura van Hasselt and Paul Knevel wrote in their review in journal The Public Historian. “The narrative has changed from a proud ‘this is us in our Golden Age’ to an uncomfortable ‘this is who we don’t want to be anymore.’” The original show is still available for viewing online.
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The late Canadian artist Rodney Graham is getting a posthumous spotlight at Hauser and Wirth’s Somerset outpost. 
After a breakout turn representing Canada at the 1997 Venice Biennale, the conceptual artist, who passed away last fall from cancer at 73, became known for his dryly humorous films and photographs in which he often cast himself in various elaborate guises and scenarios. The show, on view through May 8, includes a series of large-scale lightbox photographs that thrust the viewer into a number of Graham’s richly imagined worlds. Filled with textured detail they bring a vibrancy to otherwise banal scenes; an overworked chef taking a cigarette break, an unkempt hermit jubilating in front of a ramshackle cottage. 
The exhibition also nods to other dimensions of Graham’s practice, which stretched to encompass adept painting, sculpture, photography, and musical work. Called “Getting It Together in the Countryside,” the show borrows its title from Graham’s 2000 LP of the same name, a jam session of improvised guitar recordings—fitting for the gallery’s rural British location, which Graham visited to perform at its opening in 2014. 
Rodney Graham, Betula Pendula Fastigiata (Sous-Chef on Smoke Break) (2011). ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Throughout his career, Graham seamlessly inhabited his various characters. “It may be a burden to reinvent oneself every time,” Graham said, “but it makes things more interesting.”
The centerpiece of the exhibition is Graham’s The Four Seasons, a late body of work executed between 2011 and 2013. The series was inspired after Graham’s fellow artist and friend David Batchelor remarked that two images of characters—a drywaller and a chef—enjoying smoke breaks, reminded him of summer and winter. This spurred Graham to make two more companion pieces, another smoke break, this time of a Hollywood actor/director on a technicolor film set in the 1950s to represent spring, and a fourth, more meditative take on a kayaker on the Seymour river for fall, which he joked was his chance to take an “oxygen break.”
The exhibition also dips into other aspects of his practice, opening on one of his sculptures, an innocuous-looking door propped against a wall. It could be any old screen door—they are pretty ubiquitous fixtures—but this particular one happens to be an exact replica of Elvis Presley’s door at Graceland. Graham was tickled when the object was offered up for auction alongside other Elvis memorabilia in 1999 and ran with it, deciding to cast the replica in solid silver.
One example from his “inverted trees” series following the artist’s early experiments with the camera lucida, a large-scale pinhole camera that dates back to ancient times, is also on view.
“Getting It Together in the Country” is far from a complete overview of Graham’s polymathic practice, but it is one of the last exhibitions of his own work that he had a hand in organizing, and aptly showcases him as a unique artist, masterfully aloof, and still winking from beyond the veil.
“Rodney Graham: Getting It Together In the Country” is on view at Hauser and Wirth Somerset through May 8.
Rodney Graham, Main Street Tree (2006). ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Tom Van Eynde.
Installation view, “Rodney Graham. Getting it Together in the Country,” Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2023. ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard.
Installation view, “Rodney Graham. Getting it Together in the Country,” Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2023. ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard.
Rodney Graham, Paddler, Mouth of the Seymour (2012-2013). ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Installation view, “Rodney Graham. Getting it Together in the Country,” Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2023. ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard.
Installation view, “Rodney Graham. Getting it Together in the Country,” Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2023. ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard.
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