Good Morning!
- A majority of workers at the General Services Administration, which maintains and preserves public artworks, were put on sudden leave pending terminations.
- An anonymous donor has gifted the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago $10 million to support the performing arts.
- The Indian sculptor and multidisciplinary artist Himmat Shah has died.
The Headlines
PUBLIC ARTWORKS IN LIMBO. The Trump administration has fired most workers in the General Services Administration’s fine arts and preservation units, putting the fate of over 26,000 public artworks in jeopardy, reports The Washington Post . Workers at these federal units that care for the paintings and sculptures dating back to the 1850s told reporters that five regional offices were closed down last week, and that over half of the division’s three dozen or so staff members were put on sudden leave pending their terminations. They said the layoffs could spell trouble for the preservation of art located in federal buildings, including Alexander Calder’s Flamingo (1974) at the John C. Kluczynski Federal Building in Chicago, and Michael Lantz’s Man Controlling Trade (1942) at Washington D.C.’s Federal Trade Commission building. In a March 3 memo signed by GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian notified workers that the cut units “no longer align” with agency and White House goals to reduce government spending. “It’s just the rug being pulled out,” said one worker in response.
SPOTLIGHT ON PERFORMANCE ART. The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA)has received a $10 million anonymous gift towards supporting performance art, reports the Art Newspaper. The money will establish a “Performance Fund endowment” that will finance the medium, and it comes after the MCA hired Moira Brennan as director of performance and public programs. “What this gift enables us to do is to reinvest in who we already are as an institution and to make that relevant in the contemporary moment,” said MCA deputy director and chief of curatorial affairs Joey Orr. “Our intention for the Performance Fund is commissioning live arts events, archiving, collecting, documenting – and what all those things mean for performance.”
The Digest
The Indian sculptor and multidisciplinary artist Himmat Shah has died, aged 92. Shah’s artwork was deeply inspired by archaeological sites in the Bronze Age society that lived in the Indus Valley Civilization. [ArtAsiaPacific]
Archaeologists in Israel have excavated what is believed to be some of the oldest intentional burial grounds in the world, dating to the Middle Paleolithic period, around 100,000 years ago. The remains from the Tinshemet Cave point to a shared culture between Sapiens and Neanderthals. [Haaretz]
As the Centre Pompidou in Paris closed its permanent collection on Monday, visitors talked about what the institution meant to them and said their goodbyes ahead of a five-year renovation that will begin in September. The modern and contemporary art museum will loan its artworks to institutions around France and abroad while it is closed. [ARTnews]
The balloon art by DJ Morrow, 29, is something to behold, and nothing like what one might find at a birthday party. The Houston-based artist is passionate about balloons, using them as a medium to create uncanny, ephemeral sculptures that express his deepest emotions, and have begun attracting widespread attention online. Works include a recreation of Francis Bacon’s “Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X,” where the pope is replaced by Clarence Thomas, and he has exhibited at the Jung Center in Houston. [ The New York Times]
The jury of this year’s ANDAM Fashion Awards will have a “French touch” and include guest jurors who work across the disciplines in art and fashion, such as art dealer Emmanuel Perrotin. [WWD]
The Kicker
WHERE AN ARTIST BEGINS. In time for the opening of his retrospective at the Seattle Art Museum today, Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei spoke to T: The New York Times Style Magazine about his life and art. He goes far back, sharing memories of his childhood spent exiled with his father, Ai Qing , a renowned poet, and living together in an underground home he calls “the black hole.” He remembers his first artwork, as well as early art projects that he is “shy about sharing” in the current Seattle exhibition. “We all have a beginning,” he says. “The beginning is always pretty clumsy and unprepared. But if you keep working, you may reach some unknown.” Nearing 70, he has kept at it. “My work is trying to break the boundary of what is normally called “creative.” I avoid trying to be creative. I try to push myself into normal life and bring the integrity of a normal life into the so-called art world. That makes me very busy. So I should say I’m working all the time, as long as I’m awake.” While discussing the first piece of art he made at the age of 10, which involved trying to build a makeshift oil lamp in his underground, barely-lit home, he also gave an intriguing definition of art: “Finding a good solution for an idea, developing a form and the skill to achieve it—that should be called art.”
