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ARTNET NEWS By Eileen Kinsella Charles White's "Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man)" (1973) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo Credit: Jonathan Muzikar, The Museum of Modern Art Imaging Services When Charles White died in 1979 at age 61, he was reasonably famous. His work was in 49 museums, he had won 39 awards, and he had been the subject of 48 books and 53 one-man shows. The artist Benny Andrews said in his obituary that even “people who didn’t know his name knew and recognized his work.” Today, however, White is hardly a household name. His f irst retrospective in 30 years has just opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His path from humble beginnings to renown to cult figure—and, finally, back to renown again—is at once singular and representative. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Jonathon Jones Inner harmony … a detail from The Hamzanama (c 1558–73, India) in the new Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World. Photograph: © Trustees of the British Museum The best way to get to the British Museum’s new gallery of Islamic art is via the Sutton Hoo gallery. That way, you first take a trip through Anglo-Saxon England, past Celtic gold, Viking jewels and treasures from the burial of a seventh-century king. These artefacts, lurking in shadow, all date from a time that is often called the Dark Ages. Then you step out of that gallery and into a world of light. There is far too much to explore in one review, but then, this is not an exhibition to get a ticket for and see once. It is part of the museum’s permanent displays. At the British Museum, London . Opens 18 October. [ More ]

ARTDAILY Kehinde Wiley, American, born 1977; Portrait of Mahogany Jones and Marcus Stokes, 2018; oil on linen; 108 x 84 inches; Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California © Kehinde Wiley SAINT LOUIS, MO.- The Saint Louis Art Museum presents “ Kehinde Wiley ,” a free exhibition of 11 commissioned portraits of people the artist met during a 2017 visit to St. Louis. The exhibition will be on view in galleries 249 and 250 from Oct. 19 through Feb. 10, 2019. Kehinde Wiley creates large-scale oil paintings of contemporary African-American subjects that address the politics of race and power in art. Recalling the grand traditions of European and American portraiture, Wiley depicts his models in poses adapted from historic paintings. Wiley studied the Saint Louis Art Museum collection to identify works he would reference in the exhibition. During a 2017 visit to St. Louis, he invited people he encountered in neighborhoods in north St. Louis and Ferguson to pos...

ARTDAILY Romanov liturgical silver, 1877, part of the imperial dowry of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna Romanova; on loan from a private collection; the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign, New York; NY; the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA; and the Russian History Foundation, Jordanville, NY. CLINTON, MASS.- The Museum of Russian Icons will be presenting Opulence Rediscovered: the Romanov Liturgical Silver, the first exhibition in more than 50 years of a lost masterpiece, October 19, 2018 – January 13, 2019. This extraordinary set of Russian Orthodox liturgical implements was made in 1877 as part of the imperial dowry of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna Romanova (1853-1920), the only surviving daughter of Russian Emperor Alexander II, who married Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1874, and used this opulent silver set in her private chapel in the Clarence House British Royal Residence in London. Commissioned by the cabinet to the Russian Imperial Court, the Romano...

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Robin Pogrebin Ann Ziff, with art from the collection she amassed with her husband. From left, an African Suku figure; on the wall, two panels from second-century China depicting musicians; and a grouping of Eskimo snow goggles estimated to be between 1,700 and 2,000 years old. Credit: Alice Gao for The New York Times Ann Ziff is typically associated with the Metropolitan Opera, in no small part because she is its chairwoman and gave the organization a whopping $30 million in 2010, then the largest single gift from an individual in the opera’s history. Ms. Ziff also serves on the boards of Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles Opera. But Ms. Ziff — who has her own jewelry label, Tamsen Z — also collected pre-Columbian, African and Oceanic art beginning in the 1980s with her husband, William B. Ziff Jr., a publishing executive. (Mr. Ziff died in 2006.) The Ziff collection — which amounted to some 8,000 pieces at its peak and also includes Tif...

ARTNET NEWS By Eileen Kinsella Museum of The Bible, courtesy of SmithGroup JJR Architect. Some of the Museum of the Bible’s most valuable objects—five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls—have been deemed fakes following a German analytics company’s forensic examination. The artifacts will be taken off display from the private Washington, DC, museum, which was founded by Hobby Lobby president Steve Green. After doubts were raised about the scrolls in April 2017, the museum sent five fragments to the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in Berlin. The analysis found that the fragments “show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin and therefore will no longer be displayed at the museum,” according to CNN.com . [More]

NPR | MORNING EDITION By Susan Stamberg Mark Bradford says he wanted his Spoiled Foot installation to make the viewer feel "as if the center of the room was no longer available." Joshua White/Courtesy Mark Bradford, Hauser & Wirth Mark Bradford is an activist and abstract artist who tends to get described with a lot of adjectives — tall (he's 6'8"), black and gay; he's been both a hairdresser and a MacArthur Fellow. "What's most important to me is that I'm an artist," Bradford says. In 2017 Bradford represented the U.S. at the Venice Biennale. Now his work is on view at The Baltimore Museum of Art. It's a beautiful, uncomfortable and haunting work of art inspired by real-life horrors — "the mold that you saw permeating New Orleans after Katrina, or the skin disease that was one of the first signs of the AIDS crisis," Siegel explains. His exhibit Tomorrow Is Another Day will be on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art...

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Joshua Barone Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith in the dining area of their townhouse, with, from left, Emi Winter’s small “Untitled #35B” (2002); James Casebere’s “Reception Room” (2017); François Morellet’s “40,000 Carrés” (1971). Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith, a married couple and the founders of MOS Architects, don’t think of the art on their walls as a collection, per se. It’s more like a visual autobiography — a haphazard log of the artists they have collaborated with, sprinkled with the occasional gallery purchase or craft project by one of their children. Their own work makes an appearance alongside prints by Josef Albers and François Morellet, as well as pieces by Terry Winters, Enzo Mari and more. They all lean on a raillike ledge that runs the length of a floor in their Harlem townhouse, where Ms. Sample and Mr. Meredith work downstairs and live upstairs. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Ernest Disney-Britton stands in front of Chris Johnson's "A Question of Faith," a blackboard installation this week at the Oakland Museum of California. Image courtesy of Gregory Disney-Britton This week, as supporters of President Trump either massacred , murdered or tried to bomb other Americans, the Oakland Museum of California asked visitors, "Do you have faith?" We experienced the museum's temporary public artwork by Chris Johnson this past Tuesday night at the museum, but versions of it are also being shared on billboards throughout Oakland. Johnson's work remixes photographs by celebrated 20th-century documentary photographer Dorothea Lange along with a quote by American preacher and scholar Theodore Parker . When we left Oakland to return home to Indianapolis, we returned with a renewed commitment to promoting faith and fighting racism , and that makes Chris Johnson's ...

ARTNET NEWS By Kate Brown Cast brass plaques from Benin City at British Museum. Photo: Andreas Praefcke [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons. Major museums across Europe have agreed to loan important artifacts back to Nigeria for a new museum the country plans to open in 2021. The African nation’s Royal Museum will house a rotating display of artifacts, including the Benin bronzes that were looted during the Benin Expedition of 1897. The agreement marks a significant step after years of negotiations among European institutions and Nigerian authorities. The announcement came out of a meeting of the Benin Dialogue Group—which includes Nigerian representatives and European museum officials—in the Netherlands at the beginning of the month. The objects in question were looted by the British army during a so-called “punitive expedition” in 1897. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Paul Lewin's surrealist images of Haitian women and their connection to the spirit world.  Ernest was in an artist funding workshop this week in downtown Oakland, CA when one of the artist-speakers made a quick comment about the “spiritual roots” of her performances. It prompted one attendee to stand-up and thank her for publicly acknowledging those roots. We also saw works by visual artists that also revealed those spiritual and religious roots. At  Spur on Broadway , there was “Dominic Alleluia,” a multi-media work of newspaper, cut-paper, and pen & ink. Across the street at  Betti Ono Gallery ,  Paul Lewin's  portraits include tiny African masks to indicate the spirit world. We bought a $60 print there. If you’ve not been to Oakland recently, go now to witness this urban arts renewal.

ARTNET NEWS By Tim Schneider Practically everyone in the art world understands the importance of small and midsize galleries to the arts ecosystem. This broad recognition explains why we’re now seeing more and more actions being taken to shore up these key players. Less discussed is the importance of small and midsize arts nonprofits to the same ecosystem—and beyond. But at least one particular patron has taken a keen interest in the health of this cohort. Administrated as a branch of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ American Cities initiative , AIM grew from Bloomberg’s belief that small and midsize cultural organizations have been vastly under-appreciated in terms of their impact on metropolitan communities and economies. [ More ]

HIGH COUNTRY NEWS By Katherine E. Standefer In the painting, Matthew Shepard’s hands are finally free. He rises into the air surrounded by angels, each bearing the face of Saint Sebastian — patron saint of those who conceal their identities to avoid persecution. The angels’ wings stand tall and arched, like the wire and cloth wings Shepard’s friends wore at his funeral in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming, to block out anti-gay protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church. Titled “The Ascension of Matthew Shepard,” the portrait is part of a series by painter  Carl Grauer  that seeks to honor pivotal leaders from the LGBTQ movement through religious iconography. (The full series will be unveiled in June to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, demonstrations in New York City.) [ More ]

THE WEEK By Hannah Beech Since leaving the forest eight years ago, Mr. Tarip, left, has converted to Islam, the dominant religion of Indonesia. Credit: Kemal Jufri for The New York Times JAMBI, Indonesia — When the flowers could no longer summon the gods, the healer knew it was time to leave the forest. As a traditional healer of the Orang Rimba, or forest people, here on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Temenggung Tarip had long depended on jungle blooms to conjure the divine for his seminomadic indigenous community. Mr. Tarip said. Mr. Tarip’s conversion was facilitated by his son-in-law, Rahmat, who is from the outside. The child of a family of transmigrasi — settlers from crowded parts of Indonesia who were given government incentives to work the land in remote places like Sarolangun — Mr. Rahmat said he grew up not certain whether the Orang Rimba were human or not. “They stole fruit from us,” he said. “So we taught them the Quran and they learned how to be better.”[ More ] ...

THE TIMES By Roberta Smith Altarpieces, left to right: No. 2, Altarpiece (Altarbild), 1915; No. 3, Altarpiece (Altarbild), 1915; and No. 1, Altarpiece (Altarbild), 1915. If you like to hallucinate but disdain the requisite stimulants, spend some time in the Guggenheim Museum’s staggering exhibition, “ Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future .” In 1896 she began meeting regularly with four other female artists to pursue occult practices. They called themselves The Five, prayed, made automatic drawings, kept notebooks and through séances attempted to communicate with other worlds.During trance-like states, The Five eventually contacted spirit guides they called High Masters and even named them: Amaliel, Ananda, Clemens, Esther, Georg and Gregor. By 1904, the High Masters began calling for a temple filled with paintings to be created. When the other four members declined the commission, af Klint accepted and in November 1906 she began work on “The Paintings for the Temple.” [ More ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Holland Cotter José Alves de Olinda, a Brazilian artist, created “Eshus’s Barge,” from wood, vegetal fiber and metal, at the Tomie Ohtake Institute. Figures of two dozen Yoruban divinities, armed, have taken charge of a miniature slave ship.CreditMuseu Afro Brasil SÃO PAULO, Brazil — It’s worth going a distance for greatness. And great is what the exhibition “Histórias Afro-Atlânticas” (“Afro-Atlantic Histories”) is. With 450 works by more than 200 artists spread over two museums, it’s a hemispheric treasure chest, a redrafting of known narratives, and piece for piece one of the most enthralling shows I’ve seen in years, with one visual detonation after another. Its timing, for better or worse, is apt. The story of the westward African diaspora has been told many times, but never, in my experience, with this breadth or geographic balance. Installed at the São Paulo Museum of Art , known to everyone as MASP, and the smaller Tomie Ohtake Institute, the exhibit...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Jonathan Merritt Jeff Rogers More than 70 percent of Americans identify as Christian, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to them. An overwhelming majority of people say that they don’t feel comfortable speaking about faith, most of the time. While many of our most visible leaders claim to be religious, their moral frameworks seem unrecognizable to masses of other believers. How do we speak about God in times like these when God is hard to spot? As a student of American Christianity and the son of a prominent megachurch pastor, I’ve been sensing for some time that sacred speech and spiritual conversation are in decline. So last year, I enlisted the Barna Group, a social research firm focused on religion and public life, to conduct a survey of 1,000 American adults. This study revealed that most Americans — more than three-quarters, actually — do not often have spiritual or religious conversations. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "Triumphal Entry" by Brian Jekel . A framed print hangs in home of Robert & Marva Sears, Minnesota. Every Spring, the family of Robert Elmer Sears rents cottages by the lake to be together for a week: five sons and daughters, and their spouses, 13 grand kids, and nine great-grands. Most extended families get together for the obligatory holidays, weddings, and funerals, but not this one. Family gatherings are their weekly norm, but this weekend was an obligatory one. It was a funeral for the family patriarch, Robert Sears. During the eulogy his youngest child shared the story of his driving them in one of his vintage cars, and playfully warning them to “be ready to jump if the brakes fail.” Greg’s Uncle Bobby is now gone, but those brakes did not fail because Christ brought him home safely, as he’ll bring us all home one day.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Casey N. Cep Paul resuscitating Eutychus. Credit: DeAgostini/Getty Images With all the stonings, smitings, beheadings and bear maulings in the Bible, it is easy to miss the rather staid death of Eutychus. Poor Eutychus comes and goes in only a few verses, but I thought of him while reading the poet Christian Wiman’s curious new book, “He Held Radical Light” — not because it’s in danger of putting anyone to sleep, but because, like Acts, it’s an episodic account of equally strange encounters, in this case, with apostles of verse. If it were only those close readings, “He Held Radical Light” would be a textbook; instead, the real joy is how beautifully it melds intellectual labor with humane fellowship, refusing to forget the flesh that made the words. Even the most transcendent art arrives via the transient vessels known as artists, and Wiman knows how to bring both to life on the page. [ More ]

THE TIMES YORK TIMES By Roberta Smith Christ in the Garden of Olives (The Agony in the Garden) Eugène Delacroix (French, Charenton-Saint-Maurice 1798–1863 Paris) NEW YORK---The achievement of the French painter Eugène Delacroix — the Romantic paragon of 19th-century French art — is like a huge puzzle whose pieces don’t easily fit together. But at least we finally have a chance to try to make them cohere. The first full-dress retrospective in North America devoted to this complex, enigmatic, foundational figure, titled simply “Delacroix,” opens on Monday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . Organized with the Louvre Museum in Paris, where it appeared in fuller form this year, the Met show presents nearly 150 paintings, prints and drawings in a dozen large galleries whose arrangements sometimes have the clarity of individual exhibitions. [ More ]

THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER By Father Raymond J. de Souza Catholic religious garments on display during the press preview for the fashion exhibition ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art May 7 in New York. (Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images) “Heavenly Bodies” drew more visitors to the Met than any other exhibition in more than 40 years. I was one of them and I hope that there were many other priests and lay Catholic leaders on hand too, for the Church has three lessons to learn — or better, to remember — from the Met exhibition. The first “remembering” is of our own Tradition, which the Met exhibition made more visible than can usually be seen in great cathedrals or even the Vatican. The second “remembering” highlighted by the Met is that the Catholic Tradition ought to be enchanting. The third “remembering” offered by the Met was that beauty — both simple and ornate — is the Catholic Tradition, especially in the liturgy. The Ch...

THE GUARDIAN By Owen Bowcott PHOTO: The cake was eventually made at another bakery. (Facebook: Queer Space) LONDON---A Belfast bakery run by evangelical Christians was not obliged to make a cake emblazoned with the message “support gay marriage”, the supreme court has ruled, overturning a £500 damages award imposed on it. The unanimous decision by the UK’s highest court was greeted as a victory for free speech but condemned by gay rights groups and the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland as a backward step in combating discrimination. Ashers had refused to produce the cake, featuring the Sesame Street puppets Bert and Ernie, in 2014 for Gareth Lee, who supports the campaign to legalise same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. He wanted to take it to a private function marking International Day Against Homophobia. [ More ]

INDYSTAR By Chris Sikich, Indianapolis Star A t left, supporters of adding LGBT protections rallied with Freedom Indiana. On the right, religious freedom advocates, who oppose adding LGBT protections, rallied with the Indiana Pastors Alliance. The dueling rallies took place at the Indiana Statehouse on Organization Day, Nov. 17, 2015. (Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar 2015 file photo)(Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar 2015 file photo) INDIANAPOLIS---What is religious freedom? Social conservatives and the religious right have been advocating for Congress, states and the courts to make clear people have the freedom to live as their religious beliefs and their consciences dictate. They generally oppose same-sex marriage, the idea that businesses should have to provide services for same-sex weddings, anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgenders and employers being required to provide health care options such as contraception. Hoosiers have heard a lot abou...

STORYPICK By Jinal Bhatt Aniket Mitra’s ‘Menstruating Durga’ MUMBAI---The taboo on menstruation in still quite rampant in this day and age. Still deemed to be unclean, unhealthy and a matter of embarrassment as opposed to a natural bodily function that heralds fertility in a woman. Mumbai-based artist Aniket Mitra has attempted to address this very taboo on menstruation and celebrate womanhood with his latest artwork. The picture is that of a sanitary napkin with a bloodied lotus on it. Mitra’s artwork has been condemned by many as ‘hurting religious sentiments’. A complaint was posted on Kolkata police’s Facebook page, following which Mitra had to take down the post from Facebook. However, the artwork has found its own band of supporters too, particularly women, who have lauded Mitra’s bold message. [ More ]

SIMON & SHUSTER The #1 New York Times bestseller from Walter Isaacson brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography that is “a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it…Most important, it is a powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life” (The New Yorker). Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson “deftly reveals an intimate Leonardo” (San Francisco Chronicle) in a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. [ More ]

YUCATON TIMES In the last 12 years the disappearance of around one thousand pieces of Catholic temples has been reported, of which 80% is sacred art, and only 10% has been recovered. YUCATAN, Mexico---“The theft of sacred art in the country is not so frequent, but it occurs because there is a black market. Although Yucatan does not figure in the first places, it is not exempt of this type of crimes”, said priest Jorge Martínez Ruz, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Yucatán. Although Mexico is the second country with the largest number of Catholics in the world, it occupies the first place in sacred art theft in all Latin America. According to data from the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico City, in the last 15 years at least 250 robberies of pieces of historical value have been recorded within Catholic churches across the country. 42% of the robberies to temples are committed by organized groups that are dedicated to the international traffic of pieces of art and unfortunately, t...

THE GUARDIAN By Neil MacGregor ‘There is no God,’ says Yuri Gagarin in this 1975 Soviet propaganda poster … The Road is Wider Without God/God Doesn’t Exist by Vladimir Menshikov Photograph: The State Museum of the History of Religion, St Petersburg, Russia In the 1970s, most politicians in the US and western Europe, as in the USSR, broadly believed that scientific advance, material progress and growing prosperity would lead to the continuing retreat of faith from the public realm. All that has changed. Russia now defines itself loudly and proudly as Orthodox. Putin is ostentatiously devout. Even the KGB has its own church. The whole of the Middle East is caught up in murderous conflicts that are articulated and fought out in religious as much as economic terms. India, whose constitution enshrines the state’s equidistance from all religions, is convulsed by calls for the government to assert an explicitly Hindu identity, with grave consequences for the hundreds of millions of Indi...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Farah Nayeri “Supper at Emmaus” by Caravaggio was painted after he was on the run from Rome — and staying on an estate outside the city — because of his involvement in a fatal stabbing. C redit Pinacoteca di Brera One evening in May 1606, a street in downtown Rome became the scene of a gory confrontation. Caravaggio fled Rome, putting behind him what was arguably the richest and most productive period of his career, and died in Tuscany four years later, a fugitive from justice. Caravaggio’s Roman period, which began in 1592, is being celebrated in an exhibition at the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris (through Jan. 28, 2019). Ten of his paintings are being shown alongside nearly two dozen works by his peers and rivals, including Cavaliere d’Arpino, Annibale Carracci and Orazio Gentileschi. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS  Elisabeth Jones is a lifelong advocate for the environment, social justice, and peace. She also loves art. The Elisabeth Jones Art Center strives to present a dynamic merging of those interests. The Elisabeth Jones Art Center has issued a Call for Artists based on Pope Francis’s Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality. The center in the Pearl District NW Portland, Oregon is dedicated to ecological and social justice issues, and the exhibition will be opening on January 3rd, 2019. The center will be selecting 25 artists for the show. Ten artists will receive $500 honorariums to exhibit. They are open to all mediums. We are also looking for an art project that is interactive and community involved. That would be a $1500 project. If you would like to learn more about us and our Encyclical show, here is a link to our website: elisabethjones.art/encyclical.html

GRANT RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL  The winners of ArtPrize 10 have been crowned. A total of $487,500 was awarded after 253,161 votes were cast in the 19-day competition. The winners of the public vote and juried vote each received $200,000. Chelsea Nix and Mariano Cortez from Fort Wayne, Indiana won the public vote grand prize for “THE STRING PROJECT.” The husband-and-wife duo’s 2-D entry features photographs from Africa, Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America. The remaining $87,500 was divided among the winning public vote and juried vote entries in each of the competition's four categories: 2-D, 3-D, installation and time-based. Each category winner, except the grand prize winners, and the outstanding venue winner received $12,500. [ More ] 

ARTNET NEWS By Julia Halperin & Charlotte Burns Installation view of "Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen" at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Photo: David Stover © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Last spring, one of Basquiat’s paintings sold for $110.5 million, becoming the most expensive work by an American artist ever sold at auction. Such landmark moments make it easy to assume that there has been a fundamental shift in the way the work of African American artists is valued. But since 2008, just 2.4 percent of all acquisitions and gifts and 7.6 percent of all exhibitions at 30 prominent American museums have been of work by African American artists, according to a joint investigation by In Other Words and artnet News. There are signs of change. Last year, the number of solo and thematic exhibitions focusing on the work of African American artists jumped almost 66 percent (to 63 shows, from 38 in 2016). [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Philip Campbell's "Annunciation Lily" (2018) Dressed in his standard black T-shirt and black jeans, Philip Campbell watched knowingly as one of the gallery guests staggered drunkenly from his opening night reception. Then he looked at Ernest and said, “Good luck.” Painter, sculptor, ringmaster, and shaman, Campbell’s new show “Bulletproof” is about safety and protection from a society filled with dangers. His colorful quilts are made from kevlar , with images like a German Shepard, or a Lily. Campbell is also the 2016 winner of the Alpha Omega Prize, and voting for 2018 is now open to our followers through November 1st. That’s why Philip Campbell’s “ Annunciation Lily ” (2018) is our art of the week.

ARTNET NEWS By Eileen Kinsella ulie Ault, Titus Kaphar, and Wu Tsang. Photos courtesy of John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Artist and curator Julia Ault, painter Titus Kaphar, and filmmaker and performance artist Wu Tsang have been named among the latest group of “genius” grant winners from the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The “no strings attached” grant of $625,000 is paid out in quarterly installments over a period of five years. According to the MacArthur Foundation website, the fellows are determined based on three criteria: exceptional creativity; promise for important future advances based on past accomplishments; and potential for the grant to facilitate subsequent creative work. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Ted Loos A large tapestry, circa 1480, with scenes from the life of Christ, possibly made for the monastery of Saint Walburga in Eichstätt, Germany. It will be on display at Frieze Masters. CreditCourtesy Sam Fogg, London LONDON---By almost any measure, women still don’t have parity in the art world, whether it is the number of solo museum shows, institutional directorships or major gallery representation. In that context, Frieze London and Frieze Masters , the sibling art fairs taking place Thursday to Saturday in London’s Regent’s Park, are notable: Women have most of the leadership positions, and they have pushed for female-centric programming at every level. “They’re trying to counter the effects of the male-dominated art market,” said Diana Campbell Betancourt, the curator who is this year in charge of Frieze Projects, the parts of the contemporary-focused Frieze London that extend beyond the traditional dealer booths. [ More ]

ARTNEWS By Andrew Goldstein MARINA ABRAMOVIC Miracle 3, 2018 Galerie Krinzinger – Vienna €175,000 LONDON---“This is Marina Abramovic. She is the most famous performance artist in the world.” Such was the shorthand used by a Frieze guide to introduce this piece to a tour group, and it was a bracing reminder of the power such superlatives have—particularly in an era of cultural overabundance, where everyone wants to edit down to the “best” and “most”—to focus the attention of a wide audience. It’s also a kind of reminder that, no matter how much the elite culturati might resent it (vis à vis Abramovic, for example), there’s no such thing as overexposure these days. And what the 71-year-old Serbian-born artist is doing with her prominence is actually very interesting. Frieze London this year is an enjoyable romp through the cream of the market, where the ambition is often most evident in the show-stopping booth arrangements rather than any revelatory new messages beamed in from Plan...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Farah Nayeri David Hockney in his London living room in September. On his right is a facsimile of the of a stained- glass window he designed, which was formally dedicated at Westminster Abbey on Tuesday.Credit Suzanne Plunkett for The New York Times LONDON---On a drizzly September morning, David Hockney sat in his skylit London living room, puffing on a cigarette. The walls were covered with his art: framed self-portraits, tender etchings of his dogs, and a large, brightly colored composite photograph. Leaning against one wall was a poster-sized image of his latest creation: a stained-glass window for Westminster Abbey to commemorate the 65th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Measuring 28 feet by 12 feet, the “Queen’s Window” — which was inaugurated on Tuesday — represents a hawthorn, a thorny floral shrub, blooming in a joyous profusion of reds, blues, greens and yellows. “The hawthorn is celebratory: It’s as though champagne had been poured over bush...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS "Annunciation Lily" (2018) ny Philip Campbell INDIANAPOLIS---The Annunciation is one of the most popular subjects in Christian art, and early on, the Lily has been used to represent both Mary's virginity and spiritual purity and Christ’s Resurrection. Tonight, a new show at 10th West Gallery in Indianapolis opens with work by Philip Campbell and featuring one of his latest textile works, "Annunciation Lily." He is a 2016 Alpha & Omega Prize for Contemporary Religious Arts  awardee. In 2017, he was also awarded one of the first DeHaan Artists of Distinction Awards by the Arts Council of Indianapolis. The "Annunciation Lily" is part of a new exploratory body of textiles that directly deal with the intimate fear people face in our current society and bulletproof quilts. 10th West Gallery , 212 West 10th Street, Suite B-110, Indianapolis, IN.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Katharine Q. Seelye Lamentation with Saints (detail) Plautilla Nelli Date: 1569 INDIANAPOLIS---While wandering through an antique book fair in Florence, Italy, in 2005, Jane Fortune, a philanthropist from Indiana, came across a book about Plautilla Nelli, Florence’s first known female artist, whose works date from the 1500s. The book inspired Ms. Fortune to visit the San Marco Museum in that city to see Nelli’s painting “ Lamentation With Saints .” Sadly, Ms. Fortune saw, it was caked with dirt and had lost its luster. She decided then and there to pay for its restoration. At the age of 63, Ms. Fortune thus began the final and perhaps most notable chapter of a long life as a patron of the arts. She founded a nonprofit foundation called Advancing Women Artists to find and salvage art created by women between the 16th and 20th centuries. She died on Sept. 23 in her hometown, Indianapolis. She was 76. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Marisa Mazria-Katz Frieze Los Angeles, the newest iteration of the British fair, is scheduled to debut in February. Credit: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Los Angeles is a place where desire, fantasy and commerce come together, yet contemporary art has traditionally been overshadowed by the star power of Hollywood. Still, the city has quietly emerged as an important contemporary art hub — a process that has been decades in the making. It’s with “a hunger to build on this already fantastic foundation,” that Frieze Los Angeles , the newest iteration of the British fair, will debut next year, says the Frieze co-founder Amanda Sharp. It is scheduled for Feb. 14-17, between the Grammy Awards and the Academy Awards. Bettina Korek, a local art impresario and founder of the Los Angeles-based arts organization ForYourArt , will be the event’s executive director. [ More ]