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The Headlines
NEA NIXES GRANT. In the latest anti-DEI news, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has cancelled its Challenge America arts grant program for 2026, reports Hyperallergic. The 2001-founded program awards $10,000 for arts initiatives targeting “underserved communities,” including those with limited access to mental health services. New requirements for the grant also recently stated that recipients must certify they will not use the money to “promote gender ideology.” The cancelation “sends a message to corporate donors that they should reconsider their grant-making,” observed Robert Kesten, executive director of Stonewall National Museum, Archives, and Library. He added that most of the museum’s corporate donors have “vanished” since the new Trump policies. “That has been the biggest surprise, just how fast corporate and foundation America has closed its doors and is reducing the size and scope of the public conversation on important issues,” he added.
UNCLEAR FUTURE FOR FEARLESS GIRL. In a related story, Artnet News reports that the “fate” of the Fearless Girl sculpture opposite the New York Stock Exchange by Kristen Visbal is in question. The company behind it has reportedly “quietly backed away from its commitment to diversity.” The landmark bronze sculpture, installed on International Women’s Day in 2017, shows a young girl with her hands on her hips. In its initial location, she appeared to stare down the Wall Street Bull sculpture opposite. However, the investment firm State Street Global Advisors, which paid for Visbal’s installation, released new 2025 guidelines on Friday, detailing where clients should invest, minus previous requirements that companies meet certain gender, racial, and ethnic quotas, particularly amongst board membership. “We believe nominating committees are best placed to determine the most effective board composition,” state the guidelines. “We encourage companies to ensure that there are sufficient levels of diverse experiences and perspectives represented in the boardroom.” The company has renewed the sculpture’s temporary permit at its current location many times in the past, but Artnet reports that it’s unclear whether it will want to secure a 10-year permit, ensuring its longer term display.
The Digest
The Japanese Fluxus artist Tatsumi Orimoto, born in 1946, also known for his Bread Man character, has died. The artist famously attached loaves of bread onto his face like a mask, creating an alter-ego he performed in the streets, and also with his mother. [ArtReview]
German artist Anselm Kiefer says he feels “threatened” by his native country’s far-right AfD party, and its recent gains in a federal election. The 79-year-old spoke during the preview of his exhibition, “Tell Me Where the Flowers Are,” in Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum, from March 7 to June 9, 2025. [Le Figaro and AFP]
Banksy’s painting Crude Oil (Vettriano), a re-imagined version the late Scottish painter Jack Vettriano’s painting, The Singing Butler, sold at Sotheby’s in London for $5.4 million (within its estimate). [BBC]
Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed will curate the forthcoming third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale in Saudi Arabia, opening in January, 2026. Razian is deputy director and head of exhibitions at Dubai’s Art Jameel, and Ahmed is a curator at Dubai’s Ishara Art Foundation. [ArtReview]
The Kicker
YOKO ONO’S MIND. Yoko Ono’s largest retrospective to date, “Music of the Mind,” has traveled from the Tate Modern and is currently showing at K20 in Düsseldorf until March 16, before heading to Berlin. Writing for the London Review of Books, Frances Morgan takes readers through the artist’s practice and radical thinking, as well as the exhibit of over 200 pieces, which sounds like one of this year’s highlights. Ono, 92, who lived through the bombing of Tokyo by US forces, has seen “first-hand the growth of the postwar counterculture industry, flyers and other ephemera recast as talismans for fans, investments for collectors or objects to be displayed in a museum or gallery,” writes Morgan. “An insistence on the power of the speculative and a feeling for the way material things accrue meaning coexist in her work without too much friction,” she adds. A highlight involves revisiting Ono’s 1971 piece in which she placed ads in the New York Times and Village Voice announcing her fictive, solo exhibit at MoMA. When visitors came to see the show, a man in a sandwich board told them Ono had capture flies in a jar, plus the fragrance of her favorite perfume, and released them in the “exact center of the museum.” Visitors were kindly invited to go find them.
