Art News

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.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents an inside look at the tough and unsentimental world of boxing—including Philadelphia’s Blue Horizon gym—through the photographs of Larry Fink. Widely recognized as one of this country’s greatest photographers, Fink captures the subculture of boxing through its champions and challengers, its ambition-fueled gyms and rowdy rings and overheated atmospheres of locker rooms, as well as the many fascinating people—among them coaches, trainers, mothers, fathers, girlfriends, and spectators—who populate this world.

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.

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) announces Cycle 30 of its Artist Studios program. The selected artists, who will work in MAD's sixth-floor open studios from August 7, 2018, through February 3, 2019, are Elodie Blanchard, Damien Davis, Jesse Harrod, Victoria Manganiello, Lily Moebes, and Monika Zarzeczna.

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.

Carlos Cruz-Diez: Luminous Reality, the first exhibition for PHILLIPS X, transforms our London galleries this summer with both stationary and kinetic works by the famed artist and innovator. Take a look behind the scenes at Cruz-Diez’s atelier in Paris, where we sat down to talk with him about his enduring legacy, social responsibility and his still-evolving artistic discourse.

Now at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, The Last Days of Pompeii, an installation by multidisciplinary artist Delia Gonzalez, creates a multimedia environment, using intricate drawings, neon sculpture, architecture and music. Gonzalez's multi-layered work is informed by many sources, including history, surrealism, mythology, and mystical traditions. The Last Days of Pompeii uses the dramatic destruction of that ancient Roman city to allude to cycles of destruction and renewal, and current issues of ecological, economic, or political disaster. 

Aicon Gallery in New York is showcasing the work of New Delhi-based Shobha Broota. An educator and award-winning artist, Broota has had a 60-year career exhibiting internationally. Resonance is her first solo show in New York. The exhibition includes work from the past decade, representing two types of abstractions the artist has explored. 

The tagline is: what if—what if Indians invented photography? Would there be a different set of protocols or ideas or notions of exchange in relation to this kind of image-making process?  – Will Wilson