Happy Thursday! Here’s who’s moving and shaking in the art world this week.
- Jessica Morgan Appointed Director of Tate:The British curator, currently director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York, will succeed Maria Balshaw at the helm of the Tate network, which oversees Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St Ives.
- Watermill Center Announces New Creative and Advisory Councils: The Long Island institution established the bodies to guide its next chapter following founder Robert Wilson’s 2025 passing. Members include Marina Abramović, Laurie Anderson, Isabelle Huppert, Shirin Neshat, and Carrie Mae Weems.
- Philadelphia Museum of Art Appoints New Head of Costume and Textiles: Ann Marguerite Tartsinis has been named the Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Curator and Head of Costume and Textiles, succeeding Dilys E. Blum, who led the department for four decades before her death in December 2025.
- FEMME Art Fair to Debut in Washington, D.C.: Produced by USAN USAN and Our Daughters’ Futures Fund, the inaugural fair runs Aug. 26–30 at International Square, spotlighting more than 100 women artists, including the Guerrilla Girls, across 35,000 square feet. The fair takes no commission, with all sales going directly to artists.
The Big Number: $75 M.
That’s how much Nvidia founder Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang and his wife, Lori Huang gave to Nashville’s Vanderbilt University. In January, Vanderbilt announced that it was purchasing the campuses of the Bay Area’s California College of the Arts. Now, the university has revealedt hat the campuses will open next year as the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design.
Read This
Did you, dear reader, like me, not get into Florentina Holzinger’s buzzy Venice Biennale pavilion? Well, novelist and critic Lauren Oyler’s new essay in the New Yorker will make you feel like you’ve attended the show—or, at minimum, been splashed by a errant hose of brown water. The Austrian performance artist behind Seaworld Venice is having a moment, after a career spent staging productions that involve herself and which provoke strong reactions. Oyler proves an ideal guide to Holzinger: she’s on the floor when a cleaning lady gets a faceful of sewage, reads an upturned production notebook, and gets the full download on how a urine filtration tank actually works. For anyone who has been trying to figure out why Holzinger is suddenly everywhere—and why the answer requires words like “Gesamtkunstwerk”—this is the piece.
