Art News

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced today that artist Martin Puryear to represent the US at the 2019 Venice Biennale. In its 58th year, the Biennale will run May 11 through Nov. 24, 2019. The Madison Square Park Conservancy will serve as this year’s curator of the United States Pavilion and will commision site-specific work from Puryear. Puryear follows 2017’s representative for the US, painter Mark Bradford.

A new set of tariffs proposed by President Trump could hit the art world this month. As part of continued efforts to reduce the US’s trade deficit with China, the list of items subject to import tariffs continues to grow. Set to go into effect as soon as late August, that list now includes categories covering paintings, sculpture, collage, ceramics, and antiques from China. The 25 percent import tariff would present a heavy burden to galleries, individual collectors, and museums in the US.

Master Wu started making neon signs in the ’80s and has been filling Hong Kong’s streets with bright neon signs ever since. But recently, Master Wu has seen his business slow down as brighter-burning and more energy-efficient LED signs emerge. In addition to getting fewer requests, Hong Kong’s iconic neon landscape is also losing thousands of signs per year, ushering in the end of the city’s neon era.

You've likely seen this glassy-eyed late 19th Century barmaid before, but what can we make of this painting today? Let's explore Edouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

This week the Uffizi Gallery made a significant portion of its remarkable collection much more accessible. Through a partnership with Indiana University, scholars from both institutions have been working for two years to create 3D scans of the museum’s classical sculptures. Launching this week, the Uffizi Digitization Project website hosts over 300 digitized sculptures and fragments from the collection. The digital models offer views of the sculptures and fragments heretofore only available through in-person inspection.

Andy Warhol would have been 90 years old on August, 6. Museums and art lovers the world over are celebrating. The pioneer of Pop Art died in 1987 at the age of 58, but 30 years later, his fifteen minutes of fame aren’t up and his art is still ubiquitous.

Artist Ellsworth Kelly, a minimalist pioneer, recalls his first encounter with abstraction and reflects on how his decades-long fascination with line, form, and color has manifested in both his paintings and his creative process. This video was filmed shortly before his passing in 2015.

Sometimes art is paintings, and sometimes it's a chair. Why? Let's learn about "Conceptual Art," where the idea is more important than the form.

Brooklyn polymath, Erik Zajaceskowski, has been making his imprint on the borough’s art and nightlife scenes for nearly two decades. Zajaceskowski and friends launched Mighty Robot, an illegal art and party loft, during Williamsburg’s cultural heydey in the late 1990s. During that time, he forged many connections that remain essential to his art making and curating. Mighty Robot eventually became Secret Project Robot, Zajaceskowski and Rachel Nelson’s acclaimed Bushwick performance space, music venue, and gallery.

This summer in Chicago, public art is being used as a call to action. Fifty-one 6 foot lighthouse sculptures that have been decorated by national and local Chicago artists, many with disabilities, are now on display on North Michigan Avenue, Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.