Shows & Exhibitions

Sabine Schormann, director general of Documenta, has resigned from her post. The quinquennial exhibition’s nonprofit parent company, Documenta gGmbh, announced the decision on Saturday.
According to the statement, the Documenta board and Schormann reached a mutual agreement on “short notice” after a meeting on Friday evening. The news comes after months of allegations of antisemitism came to a boiling point two days after the opening on June 18, when viewers became aware of anti-Semitic imagery in a prominent artwork by Indonesian collective Taring Padi.
The announcement on the weekend came on the heels of a statement Schormann issued on Tuesday, July 12, that sought to clarify how Documenta and the curators had handled an unfolding controversy that began in January when members of the artistic team and some artists were accused of anti-Semitism.
“A lot of trust has unfortunately been lost,” the board said in the statement confirming Schormann’s departure. A search is underway for an interim director for the exhibition, which is just 30 days into its 100-day run.
The supervisory board also recommended appointing an expert advisory board consisting of scholars of contemporary anti-Semitism in the German and global contexts, as well as on postcolonialism. The advisory board should be “responsible for the initial stocktaking of the processes, structures, and receptions” surrounding the exhibition. According to the statement, an investigation should include indications of possible anti-Semitic imagery and the promotion of “Israel-related anti-Semitism… with due regard for the fundamental right to artistic freedom.”
Art lovers look at the large covered painting People’s Justice (2002) by the Indonesian collective Taring Padi, covered with black cloth, on Friedrichsplatz. Photo: Uwe Zucchi/dpa.
Documenta 15, which was organized around the Indonesian word lumbung, which means a communal rice barn, focused on collective practices. With more than 1,500 participating artists, the show itself received generally positive reviews, including from Artnet News’s Ben Davis, who wrote that “the particular network-of-networks that Ruangrupa has pulled in genuinely feels like it knits together artistic scenes that are vital and under-known.”
Despite the achievements, since January, the 15th edition of Documenta, which takes place every five years in Kassel, has been embroiled in controversy over allegations of anti-Semitism since January when an anonymous blog post on the Alliance Against Antisemitism Kassel website accused members of the artistic team and some participating artists of supporting the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement. Ruangrupa said the allegations were “bad-faith attempts” to delegitimize them.
A talk set to take place in April that would address antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism was canceled after the Central Council for Jews in Germany accused the talk’s organizers of bias.
Meron Mendel, director of the Anne Frank Education Center, speaks on the topic of “Anti-Semitism in Art” at a panel organized by the Anne Frank Education Center and the supporting organization documenta gGmbH. Photo: Swen Pförtner/dpa via Getty Images.
Then, in June, just days after the official opening, it emerged that two antisemitic characters were in an artwork in the show. In Taring Padi’s publicly installed work, one could see a caricature of a Jewish orthodox man, with sidelocks and bloody fangs, donning a hat emblazoned with the Nazi SS symbol. Alongside that character, there is a depiction of an Israeli Mossad soldier as a pig. The work was immediately covered up and then removed. Both Taring Padi and the curators of Ruangrupa apologized. The large artwork dates to 2002 and was made to criticize the Suharto regime. It contains hundreds of characters, including demons and animals, as well as KGB and Australian intelligence officers.
The controversy did not quell after the removal of the work, called People’s Justice. An emergency panel was brought together on June 29 to discuss antisemitism in art. Less than two weeks later, artist Hito Steyerl, who was showing in the exhibition, pulled out of the show claiming that there was a “refusal to facilitate a sustained and structurally anchored inclusive debate around the exhibition, as well as the virtual refusal to accept mediation.” That same day Meron Mendel, the head of the Anne Frank Educational Institute in Frankfurt who had been brought on as an advisor to the exhibition in the wake of the scandal in June around Taring Padi’s work, also resigned.
Schormann had just a week ago rebuked statements made by Mendel, who told German media that Documenta was not active enough when it came to redressing in the wake of the revelations about People’s Justice. She said that the artists feared external panels would lead to censorship and that participants “saw themselves under general suspicion” and threatened in part because of their origin, skin color, religion or sexual orientation.
In the wake of Schormann’s statement, a spokesperson for Germany’s Culture Minister responded that the narrative given by the director general was “not accurate” and Roth “was very surprised and alienated” by it. In an interview after Schormann’s resignation announcement, Roth commented that it “right and necessary” and that “reappraisal” of the exhibition and consequences can now take place.
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For the first time in its 87-year history, Frick Collection will present a solo show dedicated to an artist of color—the late portraitist Barkley L. Hendricks. In September 2023, around a dozen works by the artist, best known for his life-size, full-length paintings of Black Americans, will hang alongside works by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and other European masters in the collection’s temporary home, Frick Madison.
The show, titled “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits,” is organized by Frick curator Aimee Ng, and Antwaun Sargent, the influential director at Gagosian, who will act as consulting curator. An illustrated catalogue with contributions from creatives including Kehinde Wiley, Derrick Adams, Jeremy O. Harris, and Toyin Ojih Odutola will accompany the exhibition.
Barkley L. Hendricks, Steve (1976). © Whitney Museum of American Art, licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY.
Hendricks was an accomplished photographer as well as painter, and his keen eye and warm personality “made everyone feel like a photographer’s model,” according to Anna Arabindan-Kesson, assistant professor of African American and Black diasporic art at Princeton University. This was translated through the portraits he often made from still photos, with the friends and family members who were his subjects dressed to the nines in the hottest fashions of the time, radiating pride and charisma on the canvas.
There are similarities between Hendricks’s subjects and those depicted by Old Masters, such as Lawdy Mama, a 1969 painting of the artist’s cousin, whose afro hairstyle set against an arched gold-leaf background recalls the early Italian Renaissance religious panels in the Frick’s collection.
Similarly, in Hendricks’s striking portrait of Steve, the slight gradations of the man’s white trench coat and pants can be compared to the detailed draping of garments in Jan van Eyck’s works, including The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos. Meanwhile, a reflection of arched windows can be seen in the 1970s subject’s sunglasses, alluding to those that appear in the 15th-century Flemish painting.
Barkley L. Hendricks, Woody (1973). © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
In recent years, the Frick has been branching out of its traditional wheelhouse to show work by contemporary artists like Salman Toor and Jenna Gribbons, in the exhibition “Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters.” But the long-overdue inclusion of work by a wider diversity of artists, and the political and social issues that come with it, may rankle with some longtime visitors, the curators acknowledge.
“There are traditionalists who don’t think there is a place for artists of color because that is not what the Frick has been traditionally doing” curator Aimee Ng told the New York Times. But she added: “Our young fellows group is bigger than it has ever been. That tells me we are going in the right direction. I don’t want to alienate people who have been with the Frick for 40, 50, 60 years. I do want to bridge the historic collection and other art.”
“Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick” will be on view at the Frick Madison from September 21, 2023, through January 7, 2024.
Barkley L. Hendricks, Northern Light (1975). Barkley L. Hendricks, Blood (Donald Formey) (1975). Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
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A summertime music and arts festival may not be your usual venue for selling art, but then the annual Henley Festival in Henley-on-Thames isn’t your usual festival.
While the principal players in the festival, which ended July 10, were the musicians and comedians taking the stage, from Tom Jones to Boney M, a slew of contemporary art installations were scattered across the site of the black-tie event at the Leander Club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world.
The tony festival was established in 1982 as a charity for the local community, and to boost local businesses and artists, which has become ever more important following the pandemic.
The visual arts program for the 40th anniversary was curated by the Hollandridge Group art consultancy and included seven galleries, 114 artists, and 10 outdoor sculptures. Participating galleries included Jenna Burlingham Gallery, Panther and Hall, and Zuleika Gallery, showing works by early Modern British names such as Edward Seago (showing with Panther and Hall, with a work priced at £12,759); contemporary names like Damien Hirst and Chris Levine (at Drang Gallery for £19,960 and £89,000); and sculptors Paul Vanstone and Johannes von Stumm (whose works were for sale at £72,000).
“The atmosphere at Henley Festival has been electric, second to none this year,” Alex Hammersley, director at Hollandridge, told Artnet News. “It’s a hugely well-attended festival of over 30,000, that attracts a well-heeled, cultured, and intelligent audience who enjoy all aspects of the arts, many of whom are time poor but who love looking and buying art in a relaxed and informal way.”
Check out some images from the event below.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
Image courtesy Henley Festival.
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Artist Hito Steyeral has withdrawn from Documenta 15, citing organizers’ failure to address complaints of antisemitism.
The prominent artist’s decision comes after a string of controversies surrounding the latest edition of the quinquennial event and the Indonesian artist collective Ruangrupa, which curated it.
After allegations of antisemitism among some of the invited artists surfaced earlier this year, Ruangrupa scheduled, then abruptly canceled, a panel on the topic. Then, days after the exhibition opened, on June 18, the group covered up a banner by art collective Taring Padi that featured stereotypical Jewish caricatures.
“I will no longer take part in [Documenta 15],” Steyerl wrote in an email to the exhibition’s organizers this week, a copy of which was shared with Artnet News. “I have no faith in the organization’s ability to mediate and translate complexity. This refers to the repeated refusal to facilitate a sustained and structurally anchored inclusive debate around the show as well as the de facto refusal to accept mediation.”
The artist, who is based in Berlin, referred directly to “antisemitic content displayed” at Documenta’s “central location” and alluded to “unsafe and underpaid working conditions for some of the staff” working the event. She requested that the production team remove her work—which includes a video piece and an installation of A.I.-animated cave paintings—from view.
In a message to Artnet News, Steyerl explained that she has also removed her work from the Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin after the institution’s namesake collector denied claims that her family’s fortune came from manufacturing gasoline canisters and armaments for the Nazis during World War II.
A Documenta poster hangs in front of the pillars of the Fridericianum during the opening day of the Documenta 15 modern art fair on June 18, 2022 in Kassel, Germany. Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images.
Steyerl isn’t the only figure to sever ties with Documenta over the ongoing scandal. Meron Mendel, the director of the Anne Frank Educational Institute, who was brought on as a consultant, resigned from his role earlier this week. In an interview with the German news outlet Der Spiegel, Mendel claimed that Documenta’s organizing team never made a proper effort to address the accusations against them.
“There is a lot of good at the Documenta, but when dealing with the current antisemitism scandal I miss the serious will to work through the events and to enter into an honest dialogue,” he said. 
After the Taring Padi artwork was covered last month, Ruangrupa said it would work with outside experts, Mendel included, to investigate other pieces in the show for antisemitic content. But Mendel claimed that never happened. 
He also called out Sabine Schormann, general director of Documenta, for inaction. 
“When she asked me, I got the impression that she understood the gravity of the crisis,” Mendel recalled. “She said she was taking responsibility for handling the antisemitism scandal with the necessary urgency and determination.” However, he said, nothing came of it. 
Spokespersons for Documenta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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When the pandemic led to the cancellation or delay of major art events all over the world, the organizers behind the nascent Lago/Algo project in Mexico City took it as a time to consider what exactly to do with their project.
“From the roots of the change generated by this crisis, the opportunity arose to recover an emblematic building in Mexico City and give it a new purpose, one that includes transforming the private into the public, the exclusive into the inclusive, the social into the cultural,” organizers said in a statement.
The project, in the heart of the Chapultepec Forest, one of the largest parks in the Western Hemisphere, opened this February as a hybrid art center (known as Algo) and sustainable restaurant (known as Lago) conceived by chef Micaela Miguel.
The first art show, a collaboration between the Mexico City galleries OMR and José García, is titled “Form Follows Energy.” Since opening week, a representative said Lago/Algo has welcomed more than 45,000 visitors, all free of charge.  (The representative also stressed that, contrary to previous reports, the project does not involve Gabriel Orozco, and is not funded with public money.)
Installation views “Form Follows Energy,” Lago / Algo, Courtesy of OMR and joségarcía ,mx;Photos by José Ignacio Vargas © 2022.
The show presents more than 45 pieces, including some monumental works, by 27 artists from both galleries’ programs. Among those included are Atelier Van Lieshout, Pia Camil, Jose Davila, Simon Fujiwara, Christian Jankowski, Alicia Kwade, and James Turrell. It continues through the end of July.
The project grew out of a chance meeting between OMR owner and director Cristobal Riestra and hospitality group CMR chief executive Joaquín Vargas Mier y Terán during lockdown, when both had relocated with their families to Valle de Bravo, about two hours outside Mexico City.
Since CMR’s Restaurante El Lago had been hard-hit by lockdown restrictions, Mier y Terán suggested the possibility of hosting a gallery with a pop-up exhibition as a way to make use of space that was sitting empty.
From their first encounter in December 2020, Mier y Terán and Riestra bounced ideas back and forth and began including their respective teams to participate in “think tank” discussions on how to grow the idea from a pop-up gallery to something more permanent. 
Installation views “Form Follows Energy,” Lago / Algo, Courtesy of OMR and joségarcía ,mx;Photo by José Ignacio Vargas © 2022.
The building that Lago/Algo inhabits was constructed in 1964 in the city’s run-up to hosting the 1968 Olympics and was part of an effort to build up the area of the Chapultepec Forest. (That same year, the city saw the opening of the Modern Art Museum, the Anthropology Museum, and Diego Rivera’s Museo Anahuacalli.)
Earlier this month, Lago/Algo hired veteran curator Jérôme Sans, best known as the co-founder, with Nicolas Bourriaud, of the  Palais de Tokyo in Paris two decades ago, as creative director. Sans’s exhibition, “Shake Your Body,” is scheduled to open in early September and run through the end of 2022.
“I’m always interested in new cultural adventures,” Sans told Artnet News in a phone interview.
Sans, who curated international shows such as the Taipei Biennial, the Lyon Biennial, and who served as director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing from 2008 to 2012, said he will travel to Mexico City frequently.
Photo by Alonso Araugo. Image courtesy Lago/Algo, Mexico City.
“Wherever I have been working in the world, I’ve always been living in between,” he said. “Movement and challenges activate ideas.”
The building housing Lago/Algo is a Modernist hyperbolic concrete structure designed by then-24-year old architect Alfonso Ramirez Ponce.
“We brought back to its original state,” Sans said. “A utopian dream of the 1960s became a new reality in 2022, a place where after two years of lockdown, we can be reunited with nature and reconnected to time and art. A place to share, to live, to reinvent our future. “
Instllalation view of “Form Follows Energy” at Lago/Algo. Photo by Ramiro Chaves. Image courtesy Lago/Algo, Mexico City.
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When the Venice Biennale closes in November, artworks from hundreds of artists will be packed up and shipped back to countries around the world. But a little piece of the contemporary-art circus that brings so many jet-setting art collectors to the Italian city will stay at the lagoon thanks to Bosco Sodi.
That’s because the artist is giving away one of the artworks in his exhibition “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around.” Venetian residents will be able to take home the small 195 clay spheres that surround a giant one in Noi Siamo Uno, an interactive display on view beneath a Murano glass chandelier at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani.
“It’s very gracious, the biennale, in a way. People come, go around, and then boom, everything disappears,” Sodi told Artnet News. “I think it’s important to leave something for the people of Venice.”
The artist sourced the clay for his sculptures in Oaxaca, just a few miles from Casa Wabi, Sodi’s studio and a nonprofit arts center that hosts an artists’ residency as well as programming for children. (He baked the clay spheres on improvised oven on the beach at the waterfront property.)
Bosco Sodi, Noi Siamo Uno in “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
During the show’s run, visitors are welcome to take a single sphere and roll it across the floor to create a space that changes slightly with each guest’s arrival. Each orb represents one of the world’s nation states, while the big one symbolizes humanity (the title means “We Are All One” in Italian.) The opportunity to take one home will come on the show’s last day.
The gesture is in keeping with the exhibition’s themes of global trade, inspired by Venice’s centuries of history as a major sea power.
The artist created new works for the show using cochineal, a red dye made from insects that he brought to Italy from his native Mexico. Sodi hadn’t done a project with cochineal in several years, and had to track down a new supplier for the pigment, which precolonial Mexicans used to paint Maya stelae and other monuments.
Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
“It’s an insect that grows in the nopales cactus, and it’s a parasite,” he said of the bug. “The make a nest and the leaves get covered with white spots. The farmers scrape them off the leaves and put them in the sun to dry.”
“What’s interesting about it is, depending on the batch, the color can change completely. It depends on the acidity of the insect. When the cochineal arrived here, it was embraced by all the classical painters of Europe. It doesn’t fade. It changed completely the approach to red and to color—and it came back to Mexico and there began to be classical painting in Mexico.”
Adding another layer to the cultural exchange, Sodi set up a makeshift studio on the first floor of the palazzo in preparation for the show. He combined the red pigment with sawdust, wood, pulp, natural fibers, and glue to make his textured canvases.
Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
At his waterfront studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the floor is encrusted with excess material that dripped off the edges of each painting, the colors from different works layered atop one another like some kind of manmade sedimentary rock.
But in Venice, Sodi found excessive amounts of liquid seeping through the canvas, which was more loosely woven than what he is used to working worth.
“I was afraid it would stain the marble floor, so I cleaned it up with the rest of the canvas that was left over, and I began to play with it,” Sodi said.
He formed the canvases, now dyed deep red, into small bundles and left them to dry. The result was a group of simple but beautiful sculptures shaped like roses—a form that, serendipitously, echoed the rows of ornamental rosettes that adorn the ceiling in the room where they are now on display in Venice.
Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
There are also new works made during lockdown at Casi Wabi. During a trip to the local fruit and vegetable market, Sodi became intrigued by the sack cloths used to transport food and began using them as makeshift canvases. He ransacked a storeroom full of materials left behind by former residents, finding tubes of oil paint and using them to mark the sacks with simple red, black, and orange circles.
Installed in the palazzo courtyard are a set of sculptures made from volcanic rocks, coated in a fiery red glaze that recalls their origins as molten lava. The series grew out of boredom a decade ago, while Sodi was in Guadalajara fabricating an edition of individually crafted ceramic decanters he was making for 1800 Tequila.
“I had nothing to do while I was waiting for them to dry. I said to the owner of the factory, ‘What happens if we put a rock in the kiln and we glaze it?’” Sodi recalled.
Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
At first, the factory owner was worried the rock might explode. Then, a salesperson stopped by selling molcajetes, a Mexican mortar and pestle traditionally made from volcanic rock. If he used a rock that had already been fire tested, Sodi realized, it was unlikely the kiln would be in any danger.
Soon, he was leading an expedition to the Ceboruco volcano, about two and a half hours outside the city, in search of raw materials for his experiment.
“We went the Mexican way, not with a crane—with two donkeys and 10 guys,” Sodi said. “I call it rock hunting. I pick the rocks that I like, I clean them, and I do the glazing. I respect the form of the rock totally.”
Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
The result is a fusion of art and geology. Sometimes, the rocks did still shatter in the heat of the kiln, revealing the raw insides—an accident that Sodi embraced.
Inside the palazzo, works have been installed amid the historic decor. The Grimani family owned the home from 1517 to 1959, and the original interior remains largely intact, with neoclassical frescoes, damask wall coverings, ornate tapestries, and terrazzo floors.
There’s even a collection of decorative fans, which Sodi has cheekily augmented with contemporary fans bought in Mexico and in Venice that he’s painted to match his other works in the exhibition.
Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
Curated by Daniela Ferretti and Dakin Hart, the show is the first contemporary art exhibition at the palazzo, which opened to the public in 2021 and is operated by the Fondazione dell’Albero d’Oro.
On the ground floor are more clay works: another giant sphere, cracked towers of large cubes, and a neatly stacked pile of bricks. The sculptures sit just beyond the doors that open out onto the Venetian canal, where deliveries would have been historically made to the home and its residents.
Installation view of “Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Venice. Photo by Laziz Hamani, courtesy of Kasmin, New York; Axel Verwoordt, Antwerp; and König, Berlin.
“We wanted to present the works as if they were unique goods coming from America—these red paintings that maybe were found in the Amazon, these clay cubes that were part of a pyramid discovery,” Sodi said.
But he also believes that these works have a universal quality.
“Clay has been part of the evolution of man. If you go to a museum in Rome or Egypt or Korea of India or Peru, the first figurines are all very similar, because it’s the essence of man,” Sodi said. “Clay is in our DNA.”
“Bosco Sodi: What Goes Around Comes Around” is on view at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, San Polo, 2033, 30125 Venice, April 23–November 27, 2022.
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As current circumstances draw comparisons to medieval times, the Getty Museum presents “The Fantasy of the Middle Ages,” an exhibition that pairs illuminated manuscripts dating back to the 1200s with modern relics inspired by the era, from Brothers Grimm to Lord of the Rings. 
The show presents nine manuscripts alongside objects on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, UCLA, even the Getty’s own staffers (think: Beanie Babies, Dungeons & Dragons). One prayer book circa 1450, for example, is echoed in Eyvind Earle’s concept art for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959).
The juxtapositions reveal just how much medieval times—and the epic adventures of heroism, romance, and magic we associate with them—have saturated American culture, and the hazy bounds between fact and fantasy that exist in popular (mis)understandings of the Middle Ages.  
“This exhibition aims to tell a visual story about how these elements appear in medieval examples, and how they have been changed over time and layered with new cultural and social meaning to result in our modern version of what constituted the Middle Ages,” Getty assistant curator Larisa Grollemond told Artnet News.
Unknown Franco-Flemish, A Dragon (ca. 1270). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
The idea for the show began with a 2014 social media initiative titled “Getty of Thrones,” which recapped HBO’s Game of Thrones episodes with imagery from the museum’s singular collection of medieval manuscripts. The Getty first began collecting in the category in 1983 to help bridge the “chronological gap between the antiquities and Renaissance paintings that Getty himself had collected,” according to Grollemond.
The social media initiative evolved into Instagram videos “addressing audience questions about links between the ‘real’ Middle Ages and the medieval-inspired world presented in the show,” Grollemond said. Obviously, there weren’t really dragons back then, but even the architecture of medieval-inspired media comes from a self-referential culture resembling Orientalism. “The Fantasy of the Middle Ages” exhibits a 1879 photo called “Stairway of Christ Church,” for instance, that bears striking resemblance to the entrance at Hogwarts. “This was probably not something the filmmakers looked directly at,” Grollemond told the L.A. Times.
“The Fantasy of the Middle Ages” continues that conversation over two galleries and six sections—a story of storytelling, rooted in mesmerizing drawings of painstakingly preserved tempera, ink, and, of course, gold leaf.
“There’s a very complex interweaving of fantasy and history in these contemporary takes on the Middle Ages,” Grollemond said. “The ‘medieval’ world that fantasy stories present has the power to shape our view of the historical Middle Ages as well, and so continues to be hugely relevant for artists, creators, and audiences today.”

Below, see more cultural comparisons from “The Fantasy of the Middle Ages,” on view at the Getty Museum through September 11, 2022.
Julia Margaret Cameron, The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere (1875). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
C. Hertel, Stolzenfels Castle (1878). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
Loyset Liédet & Pol Fruit, The Battle Between Arnault de Lorraine and His Wife Lydia (1467-72). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
Master of Guillebert de Mets, Saint George and the Dragon, (ca.1450-55). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
Unknown Silesian, The Battle of Liegnitz and Scenes from the Life of Saint Hedwig (1353). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
Unknown English, Constellation Diagrams (1200s). Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
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Gallery Weekend Beijing returns this weekend after nearly a month’s delay due to Covid restrictions in the Chinese capital, making it the first major in-person cultural event in China this year. Featuring a stellar line-up of more than 40 thematic exhibitions, by both local and international commercial galleries as well as non-profit organizations, the week-long event aims to bring audiences back after a difficult first half of 2022.
“The first half of the year has been a great challenge to local galleries, and people have high expectations of this year’s edition since it is the first main cultural event taking place physically,” said Amber Yifei Wang, director of Gallery Weekend Beijing, during an online press conference. “We hope this can be a great reboot of the local art scene.”
Running from this Friday, June 24, through July 3, with the first three days (June 24 to 26) serving as VIP previews, this year’s edition features exhibitions revolving around the theme of “Sharing.” There are 30 galleries and five non-profit institutions in the main sector, a rise from the last couple of years. as well as seven international galleries featured in the “Visiting Sector.”
Chen Shuxia, Eastward (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Asia Art Center.
Female artists are in the spotlight this year, with several galleries presenting works by women artists. Beijing Commune presents a solo show of paintings by the Xi’an-born, Beijing-based artist Liang Yuanwei (b. 1977). And at the Asia Art Center, Chen Shuxia (b. 1963) reflects the helplessness and depression experienced during the pandemic through a new body of work on canvas. Tabula Rasa Gallery has a group show of paintings by eight European female artists, while White Space presents the Beijing-born Liu Shiyuan (b. 1985), who works with photography, video, stage performance and installations.
This year also features the first collaboration among Beijing’s non-profit institutions, which are staging thematic exhibitions. Held at the 798 Art Center, the show “Crosstalk” is curated by four young curators—Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum’s Wenlong Huang and Yichuan Zhang, as well as Neil Zhang and Jiashu Zou from UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. It features works by more than 20 artists represented by galleries in Gallery Weekend Beijing’s main sector.
International dealers Pilar Corrias, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Gladstone Gallery, Balice Hertling, Kiang Malingue, Timothy Taylor, and Almine Rech are participating in the event’s visiting sector, presenting shows in temporary spaces with local staff. Among them, Chantal Crousel, Timothy Taylor, and Almine Rech are making their debut at Gallery Weekend Beijing.
Andrea Marie Breiling, Emma (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech. Photo: Adam Reich Photography.
Despite the stringent Covid restrictions and hard lockdown across the country, galleries are confident in Chinese collectors’ buying power, particularly those from a younger generation. Star-maker gallerist Almine Rech, who is presenting abstract paintings by the New York-based Andrea Marie Breiling—the artist’s debut show in China—said demand for works by the artist has been going strong, and Chinese buyers have been very active internationally.
“We have galleries in Paris, London, Brussels, and New York, and Chinese collectors are buying from each of them,” Rech said during the virtual press conference. “They are buying internationally. The young and active collectors in China are tastemakers, and they are an important force for the global art scene.”
Despite the high hopes, Wang admitted that organizing this year’s Gallery Weekend Beijing has not been easy, as the pandemic situation in China keeps changing, and restrictions take a very localized approach to meet the country’s ongoing dynamic zero-Covid policy.
But the show will go on. Last year’s edition saw a record-breaking attendance of 199,000 visitors, despite Covid restrictions, but setting a new record this year isn’t a priority for the event’s organizers.
“We have to adhere to the restrictions by maintaining control over the attendance, with allocated time slots. We also adopted a hybrid format for those who cannot join us in person. We just have to be flexible and be agile in terms of organization and planning,” Wang said. “Visitors’ safety is our priority.”
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